Stitches Thru Time: Word War II

Hi, all! Since this is my first post on Stitches Thru Time, do you mind if I take a second to introduce myself? I’m Jodie Bailey, and I live in the great state of North Carolina. When I was growing up, I was not the kid who wanted to get out of town. I always thought I’d live and die right near my tiny little hometown. (Well, unless I married one of the New Kids on the Block and moved to Boston, but that’s a whole other story that we’ll never, ever talk about.) As it turned out, I married a soldier and moved far, far away… came home… moved far, far away again… came home… moved far, far away yet again… You get the picture. It happened so often, I figured we’d settle somewhere far, far away and yet, here we are in my grandmother’s home, which we bought from my uncle after she died. I could not be happier to be really and truly home.

Since that was sort of a long rattle, I’ll keep this little tidbit rather short. One of my very favorite places on earth—next to my own backyard—is the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Ocracoke Island is only accessible by plane or boat and boasts wild ponies descended from horses marooned on the island after Spanish exploration and shipwrecks. Out there is more history than you’d think possible for a tiny little square of land floating between the Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. For instance, one of my favorite bits of trivia is the fact that there is a part of the island that is British soil.

Few people know that the British sent ships to help America patrol the coast against Nazi U-boats during World War II. On May 11, 1942, the HMS Bedfordshire was sunk by a U-boat, resulting in the loss of the entire crew. Four sailors were buried on what is now called British Cemetery Road on Ocracoke. The land where the graves lie was leased in perpetuity to the British government so that the sailors can be at rest on British soil. There is an additional set of graves on Hatteras Island as well.

The more I type, the more I realize I could talk all day about my favorite place. We’ll have to do this again soon!

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