UNITED STATES COAST GUARD AUXILIARY UNOFFICIAL NEWSLETTER
Boston Globe Salutes USCG Auxiliary Aviation
By: H.D.S. GREENWAY
Date Published: June 6, 2003 Boston Globe Page: A23 Section: Op-Ed
ON A CHILLY day earlier this year I found myself in the back seat of a twin-engine Cessna 340A flying up the Hudson River from the sea. The plane flew so low that I could look up at the top of the Empire State Building and down into the pit of what was once the World trade Center. My pilot, John Friedlander, has a day job running a New Jersey construction company called MHC Group Inc. The Cessna is his. But for a few hours on that day he was part of one of the most successful and valuable volunteer services in America: the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
The Coast Guard, which on March 1 was transferred from the Department of Transportation to the new Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for guarding some 95,000 miles of America's shoreline as well as the nation's 361 ports from terrorist attack.
This is in addition to all its other functions such as search and rescue, icebreaking, preventing illegal immigration, guarding against environmental hazards such as oil spills, and maintaining aids to coastal navigation. With a strength of roughly 35,000 regulars and 8,000 reservists, the Coast Guard is stretched thin.
The service has, however, what is called in military circles a force enhancer: some 37,000 civilian men and women who devote part of their time, expertise, and energy to the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Some, like Friedlander, even donate their own airplanes to help patrol the nation's harbors and shorelines. Others donate their boats. They are civilians, but for those hours when they are in the service of the Coast Guard, these boats, planes, and the Auxiliarists who man them become part of the US Coast Guard under military discipline. They are highly qualified and authorized by Congress to do anything that regular Coast Guard personnel can do except engage in combat or direct law enforcement.
Auxiliarists wear Coast Guard uniforms, the only difference being that their insignias and badges are silver instead of gold. They elect their own officers. You can find Auxiliarists on Coast Guard cutters out at sea serving with regulars and reservists. You can find them in every Coast Guard station manning telephones, answering radio distress calls, dispatching search and rescue efforts, or in some instances cooking, keeping the books, or teaching maritime safety. Some donate as little as a few hours a month. Others are on auxiliary duty many days a week.
"They have really taken up the slack" since 9/11, says Rear Admiral Vivian Crea, commander of the First Coast Guard District. This was especially important during the recent Gulf War when eight of their 110-foot cutters were shipped out to the Persian Gulf.
"In the past it was just their maritime skills, but now we are taking inventory of their personal skills and talents," says Crea. Since many of the Auxiliarists are retirees, "they bring to the table more mature and experience people . . . a wonderful additional layer of judgment."
Even before 9/11, the Coast Guard was aware that America's shores were dangerously under-guarded, and so the doctrine of "Maritime Domain Awareness" was born - a program to increase alertness in harbors, waterways, and coastlines nationwide. The idea, according to the Coast Guard, is that "every arriving, departing, transiting, and loitering vessel will be known and subjected to risk assessment before the vessel can become a direct threat."
This is where the Auxiliary comes in. The Auxiliarists are locals who know their local waters and shorelines better than Coast Guard regulars who might come from Ohio or Kansas. Only a local can tell if an otherwise innocent-looking craft is out of place. This is why Friedlander was taking his Cessna up that day on a routine Maritime Domain Awareness mission - flying over the shorelines of New York Harbor and its sea approaches, looking for anything abnormal, anything out of place, any sign that something might be amiss or threatening in one of the nation's most target-rich environments.
Nationwide, Auxiliarists bring to the Coast Guard the part-time use of 5,000 boats, 240 aircraft, and 3,000 shore radio stations that they operated. Often they get little more than a sandwich for lunch and the gasoline they burn. In 2001, Auxiliarists put in almost 4.4 million volunteer hours, which cost the federal government less than $12 million.
In many ways the Coast Guard is returning to some of the practices of World War II, when civilians and their boats were brought into service. The Coast Guard Auxiliary itself is the result of the Coast Guard Reserve Act of 1939, setting up a civilian arm to aid and assist. It was renamed the Auxiliary in 1941. Eight German saboteurs were landed on Long Island in 1942. Others were landed in Maine, with a mission to cause as much mischief as possible. Today, fishermen, too, are being brought into Maritime Domain Awareness in the service of increased vigilance, just as they did in the Second World War.
Some Coast Guard officers are saying that their service cannot perform what is required of it in the new age of terrorism without a personnel increase of about one-third. But whatever the service is given, the Coast Guard could not function without the thousands of men and women willing to donate their time to the service of their country. As Crea described it: "The Auxiliarists backfill us in non hostile missions. . . . They free the Coast Guard regulars to pick up their weapons and head out to sea."
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
We Need You-- The Coast Guard Auxiliary is called upon to provide essential services to the Coast Guard as they focus more heavily on their military missions. We need all the help we can get. You needn't own a boat or be an experienced boater, since our missions are wide-ranging. For information about Auxiliary missions and the Auxiliary in general, go to our Join the Auxiliary web page. You will find there a form through which you can ask that a local Auxiliarist make contact with you to explore the ways in which you can assist Team Coast Guard.
