1930-1954

War pumps life into Fayetteville

Soldiers gather at The Town Pump, a popular spot in Fayetteville during World War II. It boasted the country's 'longest bar.'

Familiar sounds have echoed through Fort Bragg's history: the boom of artillery shells and the drone of planes overhead.

But it was the marching of the infantry and the clatter of construction workers that forever transformed Fort Bragg and, in the process, Cumberland County.

On the brink of World War II, Fort Bragg was the home of the Field Artillery. All the Army's artillery units east of the Mississippi River were based at the post, about 5,000 men.

Soldiers tested the Army's new bantam car - soon to be known as the Jeep. But most of the power to move artillery came from horses and burros.

On Sept. 12, 1940, the Army contracted to expand the post, bringing the 9th Infantry Division to Fort Bragg.

The division of 8,000 men needed barracks, officer quarters, mess halls and a hospital. In the end, 780 buildings that could house 14,000 men were built for the 9th Division.

Construction started on Sept. 20, 1940.

The stream of workers caused traffic jams on the dirt roads that led to the post.

Marcelle Truelove was a teenager living on Main Street in Spring Lake then. Her parents had paid $60 for 2acres when her dad left the Field Artillery.

"We would sit on the porch and watch them come and go," she said. "They would back up for miles."

Invasion of dust

The nonstop work resulted in fine red dust that "swept in billowing clouds across artillery ranges and parade grounds," according to a story in Life magazine.

The dust settled on everything in Truelove's home. Her mother dusted every day, she said.

Spring Lake rapidly expanded to meet the needs of soldiers and construction workers. Workers, desperate for housing, slept wherever they could rent space - in family houses if they were fortunate, often in barns. Sometimes they slept in the backs of their cars.

The Army built two in-town housing complexes, one for white troops near what is now Fayetteville Technical Community College and another for black troops near what is now Fayetteville State University.

The construction pace on the post was frantic. More than 3,100 new buildings were erected - with one being completed every 32 minutes, according to Life magazine. At the peak of construction, 1 million board feet of lumber arrived daily.

The labor force swelled to 23,500 - almost twice the population of Fayetteville.

The influx changed Fayetteville, then a mill and market town, to the state's first war-boom town.

"Fayetteville got in an uproar," remembered Cecelia Gambill. "There was not enough housing, not a supermarket. It was trying, but the merchants had a field day.

"The soldiers from up north thought this was a pokey little town - the end of the world like the Sahara Desert. But we managed to have a good time. There was not a Sunday that mother didn't have a soldier over to eat."

Beer flows freely

Lines of soldiers and civilians filled Fayetteville's theaters, shops and bars. Beer sales, which had averaged 2,500 cases a week in Cumberland County in 1940, increased to 25,000 cases by July 1941, and the price doubled from 10 cents to 20 cents a cup of beer.

The Town Pump opened on Donaldson Street in May of 1942, boasting in advertisements that it had the longest bar in America.

Soldiers who got into scuffles broke the bus station's windows so often that the station had a standing order with Huske Hardware for replacement glass.

Airborne troops came after the 9th Infantry deployed. Five airborne divisions trained at Fort Bragg during the war. The post continued to train artillery soldiers.

At its peak in 1943, there were 153,000 troops at Fort Bragg.

The 4th Artillery Battalion unpacks gear in a picture from a 1941 36th Field Artillery yearbook.