THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 26, 1994 TAG: 9410260436
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
On an average day, says the U.S. Coast Guard, it saves 12 lives and $2 million in property, seizes 318 pounds of marijuana and 253 pounds of cocaine, interdicts 112 illegal immigrants, responds to 23 oil or hazardous-chemical spills, inspects 64 commercial vessels, and so on.
Even civilians know the peacetime Coast Guard is busy, guarding the coast or something.
What most people don't realize, says Robert M. Browning Jr., the service's chief historian, is that the Coast Guard has fought in all the wars since its formation in 1790.
``Most people,'' he said, ``don't even realize the Coast Guard ever went to war.''
Although armed services commercials often omit it, the Coast Guard is, in fact, one of the five armed services, along with the Navy, Army, Air Force and the Marines.
More than 300 members of the Coast Guard Combat Veterans Association will begin gathering today at the Howard Johnson across from Scope. The organization is 10 years old and meets every other year.
This is their first convention in Hampton Roads.
Most of the members saw combat in World War II, when 250,000 Guardsmen served.
``We manned over 300 ships for the Navy during World War II,'' Browning said. ``Destroyer escorts, frigates, big transports. That doesn't include the 800 cutters we manned and 288 Army vessels and thousands of small amphibious craft.''
Every American landing in World War II included the Coast Guard, the specialists in surf. The majority of the landing craft at Normandy and all over the Pacific were manned by the Coast Guard, Browning said.
One of the former Coast Guard members in Norfolk for the convention is Art Green, 82, of San Jose, Calif., who took two of the more memorable and gruesome photographs of World War II.
One shows a 2,500-foot-high ball of flame of the munitions freighter Paul Hamilton exploding on April 20, 1944, killing 547 men, including 471 Army Air Corps ordnance experts.
Green, a former United Press photographer, was serving aboard the destroyer escort Menges when the Paul Hamilton was torpedoed and destroyed. He had time, he said, for only one shot.
On May 3, 1944, he narrowly escaped death when an acoustic torpedo struck the Menges' stern. Green had been standing on the stern, a good vantage point, when he heard someone holler, ``flares dead ahead.''
He had just strode forward to see when the rear third of the Menges was ripped by the torpedo explosion, killing 31. Quickly he photographed a dead Coast Guard member, and that photograph, titled ``The Dead Coastguardsman At His Station,'' was widely used by the government to anger citizens into buying U.S. War Bonds.
The dead guardsman was from New Jersey, Green said, and a relative of the man later told Green the photograph hung in every grocery store window in the state. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Art Green, 82, left, took memorable photographs of World War II.
One, above, shows a 2,500-foot-high ball of flame as the munitions
freighter Paul Hamilton explodes on April 20, 1944, killing 547 men,
including 471 Army Air Corps ordnance experts.
KEYWORDS: U.S. COAST GUARD HISTORY WORLD WAR II by CNB