Rescue Warriors

by David Helvarg

  “The ship didn’t know if we or the other boat [the suicide bomber’s] had hit a mine, so they couldn’t get close to us. All I could see was blood out of my left eye and this edge of skin from my face, and the only person I could see was Nate, who was maybe thirty to thirty-five feet away. I swam to him, and there was a big open wound on the back of his head, and he was mumbling ‘no’ very slowly, and when he realized I was there he said, ‘Joe, what happened?’ His eyes kept rolling in his head. I got his life jacket inflated and braced him against my chest and swam him to the RIB and started working my way around it. Coxswain Daly was holding on to it and screaming about his arm, and his whole face was covered in blood. I lifted his arm and like 90 percent of his triceps was gone, all the meat was just gone and part of his hand, and he was there in the middle of this pool of blood. I slung Nate across the overturned RIB with his arms and upper body on it, looked around, and could see Christopher Watts with this other break-in coxswain closer to the ship. There was this Australian helicopter that came over and was hovering over them, and I saw the rescue swimmer in the door, and Christopher was flailing his arms waving like he was in trouble.

  “I looked in the opposite direction and fifty to sixty yards away saw [Bosun’s Mate] Michael Pernaselli floating facedown in the water, and I grabbed Nate and pushed him up on the RIB and told Daly to keep talking to him and swam to Mike. This [fast] current got me to him real quick, and I roll him over and see there’s this huge slice across his face. The skin is peeled away, and I could see the bone and tissue and brain matter, and the only intact part is the jaw structure. He was almost decapitated, and I just started screaming, I was so mad at the people who had done this, and I was shouting and then realized the other people [back on the ship and in the water] didn’t know he was dead.

  “So I stop shouting and just put him on my chest and start towing his dead body, and now I’m fighting the current and the copter is coming my way and the prop wash is hitting me and I’m getting killed by this sea spray from the helo, like I’m just breathing saltwater. Eventually I got back to the RIB and straddled the keel and put Mike’s body over it.

  “I guess the Australian small boat must have picked up Nate and Daly when I swam for Michael. I saw John Fox, one of our [Coast Guard] team [on the Firebolt], strip down to his boxers and jump in the water, and he swam to me and asked if I was OK.”

  It would take another half hour to get Joe Ruggiero back to the ship with Michael Pernaselli’s body. Joe, John Fox, and another rescuer had to swim against the current in the darkness with the sound of sirens and another explosion going off in the distance.

  Nate Bruckenthal was evacuated by helicopter from the 170-foot Firebolt to a larger Australian warship thirty miles away in deep water. When Joe and the other less seriously injured survivors arrived there by RIB, there were a dozen people working on Nate in the helicopter bay.

  “I squeezed through and squeezed his hand, and they had a regular doctor there who said he’d be all right. Another helicopter came and took him and Daly and a third guy with a compound fracture of his leg to Kuwait. They took two of us to Camp Wolverine, an Air Force/Army base [also in Kuwait]. My ears were bleeding, and they X-rayed my arm and were amazed nothing was broken. They found metal structures in my head and also embedded glass.

  “The next day I found out Nate had passed away at 4:00 A.M. I spoke to one of the docs, who said it was a closed-head trauma, where his skull bruised on the inside and the pressure on his brain killed him. They’d considered drilling into his head, but that was a fifty-fifty thing. A third death was that of Chris Watts, who’d been flailing in the water, and the cause there was death by drowning.”

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  wenty-four-year-old Nathan Bruckenthal, whose wife was pregnant with their first child at the time of his death, and whose previous posting had been Neah Bay, Washington, where he’d grown close to the Makah Indian tribe, was the first Coast Guard service member killed in combat since Vietnam. It was his second tour of duty in Iraq.

  He and Joe Ruggiero were given Bronze Stars with combat V’s for valor, as were Pernaselli and Watts, the two Navy sailors who died. Joe, curly-haired and medium-sized but buff, became a weapons trainer for two years before returning to duty in the waters off Iraq in February of 2006. Today, along with his battle scars and tats of a trident eagle, barbed-wire-entangled anchor, and mariner’s cross, he’s thinking of getting a tattoo of the events of April 24, 2004. Because the Coast Guard now restricts visible tattoos, he’s thinking of having it etched across his back.

  Coast Guard service members like Nate and Joe are not unique but rather have played their part in every war fought by the United States since 1790.

  The Jaws of Death

  Two years after the modern Coast Guard was established in 1915, it was transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of the Navy for the duration of World War I. During the “Great War,” Coast Guard cutters carried out escort and patrol duties in the Atlantic and Mediterranean while also handling port security on the home front. Six weeks before the end of the war, in September 1918, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the Coast Guard Cutter Tampa with the loss of 115 crewmen. It took a year after the war ended for the Navy to finally return control of the Coast Guard to the Treasury Department.

  The Coast Guard played a larger strategic role in World War II, escorting supply convoys in the North Atlantic and the Pacific, protecting the U.S. coastline, and piloting landing craft for every major amphibious landing of the war, including North Africa, Sicily, D-Day, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima. Over 240,000 people served in the Coast Guard during the war. Close to two thousand of them were killed. One of the bloodiest days in the service’s history was June 6, 1944, D-Day at Normandy. Probably the most famous image of the D-Day landing, a photo of soldiers slogging through the water toward Omaha Beach framed by the open bow ramp and sides of their landing craft, was taken by Coast Guardsman Robert F. Sargent, a member of the landing craft crew. Its title is “The Jaws of Death.”

  In the early years of the war, when German submarine “wolf packs” tried to strangle the vital U.S.-British supply lifeline by sinking hundreds of merchant vessels, 180,000 Coasties were involved in convoy duty, including the Battle of the North Atlantic. Coast Guardsmen were armed with deck guns, depth charges, and newly developed sonar signaling to track their enemy below the surface. They disdainfully referred to the Nazi subs as “hearses” and were credited with sinking or helping to sink thirteen of them. They also sank two Japanese submarines in the Pacific.

  One of the earliest subs sunk was U-352 off the coast of North Carolina in May of 1942. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Icarus that sank the U-boat then rescued thirty-three of its surviving crewmen, the first German POWs taken in the war.

  The Coast Guard seized the only two German surface ships to be captured by U.S. forces in World War II, the Buskoe and the Externsteine, both taken off of Greenland. The Coast Guard also suffered a major loss not far from there when the 327-foot cutter Alexander Hamilton was torpedoed and sank in the frigid waters off of Iceland. Twenty-six of her crew were lost.

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  he Coast Guard’s only Medal of Honor winner to date, twenty-two-year-old Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, was the officer in charge of a group of Higgins boats (small landing craft) at Guadalcanal. On September 27, 1942, he organized the evacuation of five hundred Marines trapped by the Japanese at Point Cruz. He led five of his boats toward shore, then used his plywood Higgins boat with its two old-fashioned Lewis .30 caliber machine guns as a shield for the beachhead as the Marines and their wounded were evacuated under intense fire. On the way out, he noticed a grounded landing craft full of Marines. He directed a second craft to tow it off the beach while his boat again provided cover and he again manned one of its machine guns. After twenty minutes, the grounded craft was free. By then the Japanese had moved one of their machine guns onto the beach and opened fire, hitting Munro once in the head despite a sho
uted warning from a wounded comrade. He died a short time later.

  It was not unusual to see Coast Guardsmen functioning as both combatants and lifesavers during the war. The Coast Guard saved over a thousand merchant mariners, British sailors, and others whose ships were sunk while it was on convoy duty. Its “Matchbox Fleet” of sixty 83-foot patrol boats saved another fifteen hundred men on D-Day and later on the English Channel.

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  till, the one Coastie who captured the public’s heart and imagination wasn’t a combatant or a rescuer but a four-legged mascot named Sinbad whose illustrated biography, Sinbad of the Coast Guard, was published in 1945. Sinbad, a mixed-breed mutt, served aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Campbell from 1937 to 1948. His book, written by Coast Guard publicist George Foley and illustrated by Coast Guard artist George Gray, used the popular dog as a way to portray real-life stories from the war, including the Campbell’s epic battle with a German wolf pack on February 22, 1943 (during which Sinbad allegedly scampered, barked, and snarled at all the appropriate times).

  It started with heavy seas and gale force winds as Convoy ON-166 was being stalked by German submarines. When the Campbell received orders to pick up survivors from a torpedoed and sinking freighter, it came into the sights of a Nazi sub lying in ambush. Luckily the sub’s torpedo exploded just before reaching the 327-foot Coast Guard cutter. With the rescued seamen aboard, the Campbell went after its would-be killer. It dropped a number of depth charges and saw the sub rise near the surface before diving again. An oil slick was then seen on the surface, but the Campbell had no time to pursue its quarry, as it had now fallen twenty-five miles behind the convoy.

  Halfway back it joined a Canadian corvette that was firing on another sub. As soon as the Campbell joined in, the sub dove, and the Coasties dropped more depth charges, or “ashcans.” This time large oil patches appeared on the surface, but that wasn’t enough evidence to claim a kill. By then the Allies were aware of the German trick of dumping oil to make their pursuers think they were crippled or dead.

  Within minutes of securing quarters, another sub was spotted surfaced at some distance. The Campbell opened fire with its deck guns. With its conning tower shot up from the cutter’s accurate long-range fire, the sub dove. The Campbell quickly closed the distance and began dropping more ashcans. Just before sunset, they spotted and attacked a fourth sub, suggesting their convoy was being trailed by a very large wolf pack. Just before 8:00 P.M., a fifth sub was spotted outlined against natural phosphorescence in the water. Again the Campbell attacked with depth charges, and again an oil slick appeared. “All those Jerries bleed is oil,” one gunner complained.

  The cutter caught up with the main body of the convoy just before midnight, taking up its outrider position. Within minutes a lookout called out that a sub was surfacing off their starboard bow. Amazingly, this one appeared in the churning sea some ten yards from their ship. The Campbell’s gunners opened fire from point-blank range. “This one won’t get away,” one of the men shouted above the cacophony, as the U-boat captain tried to cut across the Campbell’s bow too close for its forward guns to come into play. “Ram the thing. Break its back,” Cdr. James Hirshfield ordered his helmsman. The Campbell shuddered as it hit the U-boat, crushing its black hull. The German sub sank in less than two minutes, being chased by Coast Guard gunfire all the way down.

  The Campbell did not come out unscathed, however. It had holed itself at the waterline, and the seas were now rushing in, flooding the engine rooms. Captain Hirshfield, who’d been wounded by ricochet fire, maintained command, directing the emergency repair efforts. Dead in the water and vulnerable to attack, they soon heard the approach of another vessel. It turned out to be the Polish destroyer Burza, sent to render aid. The crew worked on through the night to fix their cutter. To lighten the load, equipment was thrown overboard and half the crew, along with the rescued merchant seamen, transferred to the Burza. The captain, Sinbad, and the rest of the crew remained on board. A British tug was dispatched and, over several days, was able to tow the Campbell into a Canadian port.

  When Commander Hirshfield, who was awarded the Navy Cross, was later interviewed in New York, he spent much of his time talking and joking about their mascot, Sinbad, and his canine courage. The New York press, loving a good angle, ran headlines including “Hero Dog Brings Back Cutter” and “Mascot Mutt Helps Lick Sea Wolf Pack.”

  At the end of the conflict the Coast Guard claimed itself a war prize, the 295-foot German training sail ship Horst Wessel, renaming it the Eagle. Today it’s America’s largest tall ship and the Coast Guard Academy’s training vessel. Built in the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in 1936, it was keel number 508. The next keel laid, 509, was for the infamous Nazi battleship Bismarck, later sunk by British warships—with the Coast Guard Cutter Modoc stumbling into the middle of the epic battle and getting a too-close-for-comfort view.

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  orld War II established the United States as a world power and acted as a driver of human and technological innovation. On the home front the need for expanded war production at a time when many workers were going off to fight meant the doors to factories and shipyards were opened for the first time to working women, symbolized by “Rosie the Riveter,” along with African American, Hispanic, and other minority workers who had previously been denied employment. Unfortunately, with the end of the war many of these doors of opportunity would be slammed shut again.

  The Coast Guard was the first service to integrate its operational activities, thanks to the efforts of Reserve Lt. Carlton Skinner of the Sea Cloud, a weather patrol cutter that became the first seagoing command to include both black and white officers and men.

  In 1943, the Coast Guard graduated its first black officer, Reserve Ensign Joseph C. Jenkins, a year ahead of the Navy. The Marine Corps didn’t accept its first black officer candidate till the end of the war. Still, African Americans made up only 2 percent of the Coast Guard compared to 5 percent of the Navy and almost 10 percent of the Army. In addition, at the end of the war over 60 percent of black Coast Guardsmen were still serving as stewards (as were all Filipino members). The Coast Guard Academy would not start admitting African American cadets until ordered to do so by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

  Back in 1942, the Coast Guard also established a women’s reserve force called SPARs (an acronym for Semper Paratus—Always Ready), which would only begin accepting black women in 1944. While mostly doing clerical and administrative duties in order to free up men for sea duty, some SPARs worked as airplane fuelers and loran operators. The women’s reserve was disbanded at the end of the war. It would take another generation before women were welcomed into the regular ranks of the service, beginning in the early 1970s.

  In terms of technological innovations, World War II saw the development of radar, sonar, and all-weather long-range aids to navigation (loran) that used timed low-frequency radio transmissions from several stations to determine the position of ships and aircraft. The manning of loran stations, highly classified during the war, became a key Coast Guard responsibility. Loran is still used on a limited basis even as new aids to navigation such as GPS, digital charting, and improved direction-finding antennae (the Coast Guard’s Rescue 21 program) have come online.

  Along with helping to develop loran, the Coast Guard was also the first service to recognize and develop the potential of the helicopter, both for search and rescue missions and as an antisubmarine weapon for convoy duty. Today Coast Guard helicopters have become as integral to the service as its small boats and cutters (more so, according to some aviators).

  The Coast Guard was not transferred to the Navy during the Korean War, or “police action.” Instead it expanded its regular duties relating to port security, maritime inspections, search and rescue, ocean stations (for weather reporting and to help downed aircraft), and loran stations.

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  ietnam would prove different, involving the Coast Guard in eight years of river and coastal com
bat, arms interdiction, search and rescue under fire, training missions, and other wartime activities.

  Adm. Edwin Roland, Coast Guard commandant from 1962 to 1966, pushed hard to get the service into Vietnam in order to maintain its “military credibility” after its reduced role in Korea.

  Navy and Special Forces operators quickly came to appreciate the Coast Guard patrol boats they worked with in the “brown water war” fought in Vietnam’s shallow, rain-soaked Mekong Delta. The Coast Guard was also active along the coastline, where, as part of Operation Market Time, they worked to stop the smuggling of arms from North Vietnam to National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) forces in the south. More than eight thousand Coast Guardsmen would serve in Vietnam aboard 82-foot patrol boats, High Endurance Cutters, and rescue helicopters. Seven lost their lives, and fifty-nine were wounded.

  The worst single incident, which killed two and wounded eleven (including a South Vietnamese officer and a freelance journalist), involved a case of friendly fire. At 3:15 A.M. on August 11, 1966, the Point Welcome, an 82-foot patrol boat, was stationed three-quarters of a mile south of the 17th parallel, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divided North and South Vietnam. It was on a Market Time patrol, lingering at the mouth of the Cua Viet River with its lights off, when it came under attack from an Air Force jet directed by a C-130 command aircraft. Over the next hour, attempts to reach the planes with signal lamps and by radio failed as the Point Welcome took desperate evasive action under strafing attack from 20 mm cannon fire. After the CO was killed and his XO and helmsman badly wounded, Chief Bosun’s Mate Richard Patterson assumed command. He put out a deck fire, got the wounded below, maneuvered to avoid the repeated attacks, and, when he realized that two Phantom jets had been called in to bomb them, ran the cutter close ashore and got the crew, including the wounded, over the side. Once in the water they came under fire from South Vietnamese forces ashore until another Coast Guard patrol boat, the Point Caution, finally came to their rescue and the Air Force stopped trying to kill them. Patterson was awarded a Bronze Star for his courage. Former commandant Jim Loy thinks that, along with a communications breakdown between air and marine operators, the Point Welcome’s attempt to warn off the first attacking aircraft with a blinking signal light might have been mistaken for muzzle flashes from a gun barrel and encouraged the jet to continue its attack.