The United States and the Second World War: New Perspectives on Diplomacy, War, and the Home Front

8. Semper Paratus: The U.S. Coast Guard’s Flotilla 10 at Omaha Beach

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c h a p t e r e i g h t ........................................................... semper paratus: the u.s. coast guard’s flotilla 10 at omaha beach Mark A. Snell The United States Coast Guard, which can trace its founding to 1790, is the nation’s oldest continuous maritime service. The Coast Guard and its predecessors have participated in every war since 1790, including the wars against Saddam Hussein. Yet in 2003, the Coast Guard came under attack by the secretary of defense. A Washington Post article appearing on August 31, 2003, claimed, ‘‘Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has all but decided to remove the U.S. Coast Guard from participation in future wars, a prospect that is devastating morale in the maritime service because of its pride at having taken part in most of the nation’s armed conflicts over the past 200 years, defense sources said.’’ Continuing, the article alleged that In recent months Rumsfeld, who is considering a number of radical changes in the organization and structure of the U.S. armed forces, has written several increasingly harsh memos raising questions about the Coast Guard’s role in wars, officials said. Rumsfeld has expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that last year, when the Pentagon asked whether the Coast Guard could send cutters to the Persian Gulf to protect Navy ships, Coast Guard officials declined, citing budget pressures. . . . Rumsfeld has also noted that the Coast Guard has its hands full attending to its homeland security mission along U.S. coastlines, waterways and harbors.1 During the Second World War, the U.S. Coast Guard also had ‘‘its hands full’’ with homeland security, yet its contributions to overseas military operations were extremely valuable, especially the role that it played in amphibious operations. In fact, one of the bloodiest days in U.S. Coast Guard combat history was June 6, 1944, during the largest amphibious assault of the war. While the men and women of the Coast Guard performed their traditional homeland security missions along the U.S. coastline , their mates in Flotilla 10 of Assault Group O transported and landed troops in landing craft, infantry (LCIs) under intense enemy fire on Omaha Beach. The Latin motto of the Coast Guard is Semper Paratus— Always Ready. On that day, they would have to live up to their motto. The Coast Guard, which had been a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department in peacetime, became a combatant force when Executive Order 8929 transferred the service to the Navy Department on November 1, 1941. In addition to its traditional responsibilities, the USCG then took on roles in anti-submarine warfare and convoy escort, as well as port control and security . Coast Guard sailors also served alongside naval personnel on Navy ships, and entire Coast Guard crews manned other naval vessels, typically transport ships and attack transports, the latter having the ability to carry and launch smaller landing craft, such as landing craft, assault (LCAs) and landing craft, vehicle and personnel (LCVPs: more commonly called ‘‘Higgins boats,’’ after their designer and manufacturer, Andrew J. Higgins of New Orleans). The manning of troop transports by Coast Guard crews even predated the transfer of the service to the Navy Department when President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the authorization on June 3, 1941.2 The original Coast Guard crews who served on the transports were transferred from the service’s oceangoing cutters, but the men who originally operated the smaller landing vessels were called ‘‘surfmen,’’ Coast Guardsmen who previously had served at coastal lifesaving stations and who possessed the boat-handling skills needed to bring a craft through rolling surf onto the beach. These men would then train recruits in the necessary skills as the service expanded during the war.3 One young recruit attending Coast Guard basic training in St. Augustine, Florida, recalled that assignment to ‘‘landing barge’’ duty, as it sometimes was called, was seen as punishment. According to Marvin Perret, a Coast Guard coxswain who landed troops on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, . . . we were there [basic training] for six weeks and there were rumors around the reservation that ‘‘Man, whatever you do, don’t mess up’’ and we were like, ‘‘What do you mean?’’ ‘‘Well if you do something out of order or you don’t pay attention they may send you to Landing Barge Mark A. Snell : 237 School.’’ Of course a lot of the kids...