Cape May Point WWII bunker, photo by James Simard.

Located just east of the Cape May Point Light House in what is now Cape May Point State Park, New Jersey, the bunker was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers during the early months of the Second World War. It contained heavy artillery and was manned by a rotating detail of naval gunnery crews, who spent hours on end scanning the horizon for enemy surface ships and submarines. (In fact, a German U-Boat commander surrendered his vessel just off the coast of Cape May at the end of World War Two)

The vigilant fighting men in the Cape May Point bunker saw little combat, but if the war had taken a turn for the worse, these sailors would have been our last line of defense on the Atlantic seaboard. They may not have gotten much of the glory, but the boys manning this coastal battery were heroes in the truest sense of the word, all those years ago.