Papers (1943-1946) of U.S. Marine Corps officer, including correspondence, orders, photographs, and miscellaneous.
Cox was born in Calypso, NC in 1919. His family relocated to Mt. Olive when Cox was 10 years old. He stayed there until 1937, when he graduated from Mt. Olive High School. After graduation he attended Duke University. He left the university right before the start of World War II and joined the United States Marine Corps. Very soon after the war started, Cox married Mary Gwin Oliver, a Mt. Olive native. Within weeks Cox was sent to the South Pacific. Cox's assignments during the war included service on the Samoa Islands (Upolu), the Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal), the Marshall Islands (Kwajalein) and the Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan and Guam). He served as a company commander with the famed First Battalion, Seventh Regiment of the First Marine Division while serving on Guadalcanal. After being injured during this service, Cox was assigned to the Norfolk Navy Yard as chief of security. After the war he trained for an attack on the southernmost home island of Japan, Kyushu. Cox then spent a year in China as part of the First Marine Division overseeing the evacuation of the Japanese Army.
At the end of the war Cox was given the status of 100% disabled due to his war wounds and various contracted tropical diseases. Though he had a great desire to go back to college he ended up joining his uncle in Mt. Olive at the Cox Brothers wholesale grocery business. Cox later bought the business from his uncle and operated it until the mid-1980s when he retired. Cox stayed busy after retirement. He served as co-manager for the political campaigns of Terry Sanford, John F. Kennedy, and George McGovern, was Past Master of the local Masonic Lodge and a longtime member of the Boards of Directors for the Mt. Olive Pickle Company and the North Carolina Wholesalers Association. He died in 2001 in Mt. Olive, NC. Source: http://www.cox-brothers.org/Zach_Davis_Cox/index.html
Included in the papers are correspondence, orders, photographs, maps, drawings and other printed materials. The bulk of the correspondence consist of letters and telegrams from Cox to his wife, numerous times telling her he very much misses her and that anticipating coming home frustrated him greatly. Cox also describes in great detail his fellow officers, social settings and his stay in Guam and travel route as he moves on to Okinawa. He also mentions his stay in Peiping, China (formerly Peking and now Beijing) and the barracks he occupied there, including a hand drawn diagram. In these letters (all postwar) he also notes his locations and projected arrival times for new assignments. The bulk of orders, menus, passes and invitations all relate to the launching of USS Shangri La at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, VA on Feb 24, 1944. Cox attend the ceremony and also received an invitation for the commissioning of USS Randolph at the Norfolk Navy Yard during the same year. Oversized material consists of two maps of Peiping, China and a drawing of the launching area for the USS Shangri La.
Gift of Mr. William C. Hatcher
Encoded by Apex Data Services
Processed by Dale Sauter March 2020
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.