‘Watching dogfights at 20,000 feet’

After completing desert training for deployment in the North African theater, Burley Davis was unexpectedly sent to Great Britain with his U.S. Army unit. There, he and his fellow soldiers found themselves below some sky-high action when air-raid sirens sounded. It was Christmastime in 1943, and World War II was at full throttle.

“All the people went to the bomb shelters when the sirens went off,” recalled Davis. “We asked, ‘Where do we go?’ because only civilians got to go to the shelters. So we got the privilege of watching dogfights at 20,000 feet. There were big spotlights, and if two spotlights ever crossed and a (German) plane got caught in them, the big guns would shoot at them both ways. We’d say, ‘He’s in trouble!’ and we got to see them shot straight down.”

Davis, age 100, grew up in the Pleasant Gap community of Gilmer County, and passed away on Dec. 9. In late November, he recalled during an interview going on trips to Ellijay when it was a much smaller and close-knit town.

“I remember when Tom Penland was a redheaded boy who ran around in Sam Penland’s store (on River Street),” he said. “Sam would take wild rabbits to Atlanta to sell them.”

Davis was drafted in 1943. After basic training at “Fort Mac” (Fort McPherson in Atlanta), he went to Camp Beale in California to train in the desert. His military specialty was vehicle mechanics, and he also became a tank mechanic and transporter.

“I was taught to recover vehicles that had got knocked out; we’d take parts off one and put them on another one and transport ‘em back out to the field,” he said.

Davis was with the 801st Engineer Battalion in England when his unit was staged at Salisbury, near the historic site of Stonehenge. Before then, they spent time in Glasgow, Scotland, and experienced the terrible sound of what were called “buzz bombs,” the German V-1 rockets.

On June 9, 1944 — three days after D-Day — his unit followed the Army’s 1st Infantry Division into France via Omaha Beach. In Germany, he found himself with the 128th Medium Maintenance Ordnance Battalion of the 83rd Infantry Division.

“By then they had a 5-mile beachhead (established),” Davis recalled of the landing site in Normandy. “My youngest brother, A.J. Davis, was in the D-Day invasion. He was part of a mortar squad of a heavy weapons platoon. A.J. was in Aachen, Germany, when he was hit with shrapnel in his backside. He was sent to England for two or three months to recover, then they sent him back to his outfit that was shooting mortars at the Germans. He told me, ‘They were better shots than me — they got me, but I didn’t get them!’ I went to see him, but by the time I got there he’d been released.”

On to the Pacific

Davis was also involved in the Battle of the Bulge, again retrieving wrecked vehicles and tanks and getting them back into battle. A highlight of his time on the European continent was getting to see a Bob Hope show in Marseilles, France. After that, his unit boarded a ship and headed for the Panama Canal en route to the Pacific Theater. They were moored in Manila Bay in the Philippines when the war came to a violent end.

“We sat on the boat until the Japanese quit after we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Davis. “We were waiting for him (the emperor) to surrender so I wouldn’t have to go over there and capture him! So I got in on both wars, the Pacific and Atlantic — I got a doubleheader! It wasn’t much fun back then, though. I stayed on that boat 42 days.”

Davis said the occupation of Japan by U.S. forces that began in 1946 after the surrender resulted in the “Americanizing” of Tokyo.

“I think we did too good of a job at it during the occupation,” he believes. “I was rebuilding vehicles and getting them ready for the war in Korea. So I fought in the Korean War in the middle of Tokyo!”

In 1952 when the occupation ended, Davis went back to the States with his unit. In 1964, he retired from the Army after 21 years of service as a sergeant first class. After that, he worked at the Fort Benning PX Garage as a civilian and repaired vehicles for six years. Since Davis still had property in Gilmer County, he returned to Ellijay in 1969 and worked at Automotive Discount for around 10 years. Ironically, some of his work was rebuilding foreign cars.

“I don’t really have a good story about what makes a long life,” he reflected when asked. “For one thing, I didn’t have to dodge any bullets.”

Another good ending to the war came when he married his British wife, Patricia, at Worcestershire, England, in 1945. They were together for 45 years until her death in 1999; they have two children, Mark and Sharon.

Billy McGraw said he’s known Davis for around 30 years.

“We used to go hunting and camping a good bit, we were both in a deer club,” he said, “and I would go out to visit with him at his place some. We would walk his property, and he could tell a lot about the people and animals that had lived there. I remember him saying he was on the beach after D-Day and spent a lot of time in France. I believe he is a true patriot and took his oath seriously. Years after retiring, he still carried himself like the soldier he was.”

Davis’ caretaker, Jennifer Griffin, said he became like part of her family.

“It was a real honor to take care of him, and he became a special part of my life and that of my family,” she shared. “He enjoyed my kids and my nephew visiting with him, and he will be missed very much.”