War
In its original form the Coast Guard Reserve lasted less than two years. By early 1941 the Coast Guard was preparing for war. Events in Europe had demonstrated what demands for manpower and boats the service could expect to confront when, as now seemed inevitable, the United States entered the Second World War.
On February 19, 1941 Congress passed a law restructuring the Coast Guard Reserve. Henceforth the Coast Guard was to operate two reserve forces. The existing civilian reserve organization was renamed the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. A new U.S. Coast Guard Reserve was to function on a military basis as a source of wartime manpower, like the reserves of the other armed services.
Members of the new Coast Guard Reserve were to be divided into two categories. "Regular Reservists" were paid for their services, had to meet normal military physical standards, and when on active duty could be assigned to stations anywhere the Coast Guard deemed appropriate. Men who, for any reason, were unable to meet those requirements were invited to become "temporary members of the reserve." A "Coast Guard TR" was a volunteer who served only in some designated geographic area (usually near his home or workplace) and less than full-time. Age limits for TRs were seventeen and sixty-four, and physical requirements were not stringent. Members of the Auxiliary were invited to enroll in the Reserve as TRs - and bring their boats with them.
The officers running the Coast Guard appreciated the staggering demands that war would put on it, and the value of the new reserve system in helping them meet those demands. By the summer of 1941 the District Commanders were sending Coast Guard headquarters lists of boats owned by Auxiliarists that would make good patrol craft - and requisitioning Lewis machine guns, Thompson submachine guns, rifles, and pistols for them.
On November 1, 1941, President Roosevelt signed an order transferring the Coast Guard from the Treasury Department to the Navy Department. A few weeks later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the Coast Guard's reserve system was put to the ultimate test. On the night of December 7, amid rumors of Japanese invasion, twenty Coast Guard Auxiliarists from the 13th District took their boats out of Seattle on the service's first wartime patrol cruise. In May, 1942 the Secretary of the Navy authorized uniforms for the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Between 1941 and 1945 the Auxiliary was the Coast Guard's general-purpose assistant. The Auxiliary was supposed to be, in the words of a headquarters directive of May, 1943, "a civilian organization which is engaged in the training of its members to qualify them for active duty whenever needed with the CG, as temporary members of the CG Reserve." In some districts the Auxiliary did indeed function as a recruiting and training agency for the reserve; the wartime training courses became the nucleus of the Auxiliary's public education program. In other districts the jobs performed by Auxiliarists and Reservists were virtually indistinguishable. No one seemed to mind.
Early in 1942 five German U-boats arrived off the east coast of the United States, inaugurating the heartbreaking season known as "Bloody Winter." The Navy and the Coast Guard, woefully short of escort vessels with the necessary anti-submarine weaponry, could do scarcely anything to keep the U-boats from running amok in the shipping lanes.
In desperation the Navy ordered the acquisition of "the maximum practical number of civilian craft in any way capable of going to sea in good weather for a period of at least 48 hours...to be manned by the Coast Guard as an expansion of the Coast Guard Reserve...and operated along the 50-fathom curve of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts." Motorboats and sailing yachts, with numbers preceded by "CGR" painted on their bows and depth charges stowed awkwardly on their decks, began appearing on patrol stations all along the coasts. Many were donated by temporary members of the Reserve, or bought outright by the Coast Guard. Others were owned and manned by Auxiliarists. Known variously as "the Putt-Putt Navy," "the Splinter Fleet," and "the Corsair Fleet," they made up much of the American response to the U-boat threat in coastal waters during the early months of the war. As newly-constructed warships took over the load, the Coast Guard abandoned the concept. None of the two thousand CGR craft ever sank a submarine, but they rescued several hundred survivors of torpedoed merchant ships and may have driven some U-boats away from tempting cruising grounds.
Perhaps the Auxiliary's most important contribution to the war effort came in the form of the Volunteer Port Security Force. An executive order of February, 1942 directed the Secretary of the Navy to take the necessary steps to prevent "sabotage and subversive activities" on the nation's waterfronts. The task of protecting the hundreds of warehouses, piers, and other facilities that kept the American shipping industry in business fell to the Coast Guard, which in turn delegated it to the Reserve and the Auxiliary.
In each port city a Coast Guard officer with the title Captain of the Port was placed in charge of a Port Security Force, consisting of TRs, Auxiliarists, and other civilians recruited for the purpose. The precise organizational structure varied from city to city. The Coast Guard set up a Reserve Training School in Philadelphia to train TRs in such subjects as anti-espionage methods, fire prevention, customs inspections, and small arms handling. Eventually some twenty thousand Reservists and Auxiliarists participated in port security patrols. About two thousand women enrolled as "TR SPARs," attending to the mountainous paper work that dispatched ships, cargoes, and troops overseas.
As the war went on and the Coast Guard's resources were stretched thinner, Auxiliarists and TRs were called upon to fill gaps wherever active duty Coast Guardsmen left them. Auxiliarists' boats patrolled the waterfronts and inlets looking for saboteurs, enemy agents, and fires. At least one unit of temporary Reservists, recruited from the Auxiliary, patrolled east coast beaches on horseback. Other Auxiliarists manned lookout and lifesaving stations near their homes, freeing regular Coast Guardsmen for sea duty. When a flood struck St. Louis in the spring of 1943, Coast Guard Auxiliarists and Reservists evacuated seven thousand people and thousands of livestock.
The Auxiliary and the Reserve attracted their share of celebrity members. Actor Humphrey Bogart took his yacht on several patrols out of Los Angeles, and Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, put in his twelve hours per week on patrol duty in Boston Harbor.
By 1945 the Coast Guard Auxiliary boasted a membership of 67,533, and 53,214 men and women (most of them Auxiliarists) were serving as temporary members of the Reserve. At the end of the war the Coast Guard TRs were "honorably disenrolled." Many remained Auxiliarists for years afterward. Wartime service had earned them no veterans' benefits and precious little other public recognition. In 1946 the TRs were awarded the Victory Medal. Auxiliarists who had not joined the Reserve had to be satisfied with the thanks of ADM Waesche:
The Auxiliary during the war years was indispensable. Many thousands of you served faithfully and loyally as Auxiliarists and as temporary members of the CG Reserve, performing hundreds of tasks and relieving thousands of Coast Guardsmen for duty outside the continental limits. The Coast Guard is deeply appreciative of this service.
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