I am very interested in this project because I knew that my Grandfather, Paul A. Mack, was in the United States Coast Guard during World War II.  In fact, his future wife, my Grandmother also served in the Coast Guard Spars and they met towards the end of the war.

My Grandfather was born in 1920 and is the youngest of five children.  He was raised in Detroit, Michigan.  While attending Wayne State University, he decided to enlist in the Coast Guard.  Most young men of that time found it necessary to serve their country in the armed services.  The Coast Guard has served in every major war involving the United States and it serves primarily a logistic role.  In the Coast Guard, my grandfather spent many months on the LST ships.  These are amphibious ships first built in 1942 designed for transporting tanks, artillery, and other cargo. 

As they raised their children, my grandparents lived primarily in the Detroit metropolitan area except for a few years on the East Coast.  Unfortunately, my Grandmother died in 1973.  I am sure it would have been interesting to hear about her experiences in the Coast Guard as well.  My Grandfather now lives in East Lansing, Michigan.  He recalls the years he spent in the Coast Guard as a great experience and a most interesting adventure.

Following are excerpts from my interview with him.  The complete transcript can be found in the Novi Public Library.  I very much appreciate his taking the time to share with me his story.

BR:  What branch of service did you enlist in?

PM:  It is a pleasure, Brian, to meet with you this day.  It is kind of lousy out, rainy but I am glad you were able to come.  I enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942.  At that time, everyone had to pretty much participate in some way or another.  I was attending Wayne State University at the time.  I think I was a beginning senior, I'm not sure about that, but all your friends were leaving, everyone was going.  It was a total immersion in this war effort by the entire country.  I never saw the country so united as it was during this period so I felt that going into a small service like the Coast Guard would give me the chance for some advancement and perhaps some different opportunities.  So that is why I enlisted there.

BR:  What was your family's reaction to going?

PM:    I don't think there was any particular commentary one way or the other.  I went in the service because I didn't want to be drafted.  I wanted to have a choice in where I could go.  I remember hearing about the war on December 7, 1941.  My brother, my Dad and I were sitting in the living room listening to the radio when President Roosevelt came on and announced the day that would live in infamy forever, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and that of course changed everybody's lives forever.  I remember going down and signing up; and the day came that I had to depart and I walked out the back door with a small bag of toiletries perhaps.  My Dad met me at the back gate to the alley and we shook hands.  I'll never forget this; he bent his head down and a tear fell out of his eye and dropped on my hand as we shook hands.  I then left and walked down the alley to Woodward Avenue to the streetcar and got on the streetcar.  I think the streetcar fare was about 6 cents in those days and took it to Grand Circus Park in Detroit where I got off.  I then walked over to the Federal Building and got on a train and went to Manhattan Beach, New York for basic training. 

BR:  How many years were you in the Coast Guard?

PM:  I was in roughly better than four years.  I think it was 4 years, 3 months from March 1942 to May or June of 1946. 

BR:  What is one of your best memories of being in the Coast Guard?

PM:  There were a lot of memories.  It is hard to pinpoint any one of them.  I looked at going into the service as an educational opportunity, a great learning experience.  You had the opportunity to meet with people from every walk of life . . . those of your fellow shipmates in the U.S. to foreign personnel.  So during all this exposure to multi cultures, I could almost tell where people were from.  I could almost tell what state they were from.  It was fascinating to be able to recognize this just by listening to them.  There were times when you were tied up at a particular landing spot and along side of you was a ship from Australia or England. You learned a lot about the various cultures throughout the world.

BR:  What was one of your worst memories?

PM:  It is hard to put a finger on any worst memory.  There were some scary moments if you were going into an area that was under attack by the Japanese on occasion so of course you were under stress.  Your ship was under what they call, "general quarters" when everybody was on alert for an attack.  So those moments were somewhat scary.  There were other scary moments when you were on watch in the middle of the night when you were on high seas and there were heavy swells battering the ship, which was an LST, a very flat bottomed boat with very limited draw which rolled and which was subject to violent shifts.  So if you were standing guard with a 21-mm gun in the forward deck and the bow would suddenly dip one way or the other, you would be suddenly thrown about; and you had to be sure that you held on and you weren't sleepy.  Otherwise you could easily slip into the sea and no one would ever know that you were gone.

BR: What did you do when you were discharged?

PM:  Upon discharge, I got married, that was it, to a girl that I met at the separation center.  We were both stationed there, that was in Detroit at the naval armory.  The job there was to process people who were being discharged.  So we met there and that developed into a romance and suddenly at the end I was on my way to Minnesota to get married.  So that is the first thing that happened. 

BR:  Did you know anybody who was killed or injured during WWII?

PM:  Yes, I knew several of my high school friends who didn't come back.  I went to one of the funerals, a friend of mine who was killed in Sampan, one of the islands of the South Pacific.

BR:  How does the Coast Guard differ from the other branches of service?

PM:  Well, it is basically a smaller branch of service that is given the job of defending the interior lakes and coastlines around the U.S. to provide rescue work to sailors and ships that are in distress.

That is their primary job; however in wartime they become part of the Navy and that is what happened then.  But now I believe it is a permanent branch of the Navy, I am not positive on that.  One of the reasons I got involved in sea duty is that shortly after basic training I wanted to see if I couldn't better myself so they had officer's training school there at the Coast Guard Academy there in New London, Connecticut.  This was a three-month course, you were called a 90-day wonder if you completed and graduated as an ensign.  So I wanted to try that and made application, but I wasn't accepted because my vision in my left eye wasn't quite right; you had to have 20-20 vision in both eyes.  I had about a 20-40 in the left.  So anyway they also said you had to have three months of sea duty so I thought I would volunteer for sea duty.  So then I got word that I would be part of a crew that was being assembled for sea duty in Curtis Bay, Maryland and so I spent some time there until they assembled a crew, which is approximately 50-75 people. We were sent by train to Jeffersonville, Indiana.  Jeffersonville, Indiana is right across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky.  This was where LST 71 was built and it is still where ships are built.  This was a big learning experience stopping at ports along the way . . . Mobil, Alabama . . . and many of the old cities along the Mississippi that had historic homes that you could see and you would also see all the traffic on the river with all the barges.  That was interesting and then you finally wound up in New Orleans where the ship was repainted, camouflaged and more things were added.  You went on training exercises doing various things in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and finally you were on your way to the South Pacific by way of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Cuba, of course, is a country where we still have a permanent Army base there.  From Cuba we went on to the Panama Canal, which was interesting to watch the operation of the locks and from there out into the Pacific for a very long journey, I think it was 27 days before we reached the first port which is an island that today everyone wants to go to.  It is called Bora-Bora.  It is one of the elite destination travel spots for people who would really like to see the South Pacific.  The traveling from Bora-Bora went then to the New Hebrides, a group of islands.  At all of these islands you added on supplies of various types.  Espiritu Santo was the port there.  Finally we wound up in the real destination which was the island of Bougainville.  It was one of the battlefronts of the South Pacific after Guadalcanal was defeated, which was the turning point in the campaign against the Japanese.  During that engagement which lasted for many months, some 50 ships on both sides were sunk in a place they call Iron Bottom Bay.  One of the good things about serving in the South Pacific was that you were able to see many cultures, the Micronesian, Melanesian, Polynesian people occupying various parts of the South Pacific.  Each one was different and you had opportunities to see these people and sometimes they came out in their outrigger canoes alongside to trade goods with the sailors who would drop money down for various trinkets and whatever else they were making and this was an interesting experience.

BR:  What was the ship doing in the South Pacific?

PM:  The ship was primarily a transport of men and materials.  The LST meant Landing Ship Tank.  It had a flat bottom and would proceed at a very low speed, which is quite slow.  It would approach a landing beach of a particular island and then would run at full throttle upon the beach.  Then at the front of the ship, two giant doors would open, the ramp would drop, and the men and materials would depart to this particular island.  Prior to the landing on the beach, the rear anchor was let go and this rear anchor would settle into the water and attach itself to the bottom of the ocean and become the point, which would pull you off.  So after you had landed and discharged whatever you put off, the rear anchor was pulled and that pulling on the anchor would pull you off the beach and then you would go back to wherever you were supposed to go.  The LST has been in quite a bit of notoriety lately. One of the last ones, I think there were about 10,000 made in the United States, was found in Greece and owned by the Greek government.  The former LST Navy people felt that they needed to make a memorial to those people that served on the LSTs so they somehow got some of their own money and other money; and they were able to buy it and it was a total mess.  They were able to restore it through donations and their own hard work and they sailed it from Greece all the way to New Orleans where it is going to be part of a memorial of World War II.  This was a very interesting saga of these men who did this.  I understand there is one in Muskegon Michigan too that they are restoring.  These were very thin boats, I think it was 3/8 inch metal.  They were throw- away types of boats, they didn't cost a lot of money, but they performed a very valuable service.  I think it was Eisenhower who said that the war could not have been won without the work of these landing crafts.  There was a crew of about 75 people, about 7 or 8 officers and the rest men.  My job was to take care of the personnel records of everyone, the crew and everyone else who came on board and the munitions that were also being transported.  So every time we left a particular port with a new shipment, I had to be sure that the complete roster of everyone who was on board and their names, addresses, homes etc. was sent to the Chief of Pacific Naval Operations so in case anything happened to that ship, they would know who was on it.  So that was the last thing that was done before you departed from one location to another.

BR:  So you were stationed on this ship the whole four years?

PM:  My tour of duty on the LST started in 1943, I believe it was  probably 15 to 18 months.  There was a bulletin that came around that said that everyone who had been on a certain length of time was to be taken off and sent back.  Because of the vibration of the ship, it was hard on your kidneys so there was constant vibration up and down all the time that you could feel for the most part.

BR:  What happened after your tour of duty in the South Pacific was over?

PM:  I remember when the bulletin came along that said these eight men were to be released.  I was taken off the ship and I was delighted and somehow wound up in Honolulu and there I got on an escort carrier.  An escort carrier is a small version of a large aircraft carrier and I went from Honolulu to San Francisco and from San Francisco took the train to Detroit.  I wound up at the same place I started, the Michigan Central Station and took a cab and came home.  I think I came home for about thirty days and had to report in Cleveland and was given a physical exam and checked over generally.  From there I would up in Charlevoix, Michigan at a lifeboat station and spent a winter there.  It was pretty nice.  I will never forget the snow.  It was tremendously high and everyone had a large pole with a flag on their car so they could be seen coming down the street.  Anyway, it was an interesting occasion, and then the war was of course winding down.  I wound up in the Naval Station in Detroit where they were discharging people, and I worked there for several months until I was discharged in 1946 in June.

BR:  Describe a typical day on the LST71?

PM:  Well there was lot of monotony, I can assure you of that and there was a lot of heat.  The heat was incredible.  Everyone would run around with their head shaved and every attempt was made to make them to feel cooler.  I pitied the deck crew who had to go out on the deck and chip paint; that was one of the big tasks they used to keep you busy . . . to take a hammer and a chisel and chip paint off the decks that appeared to be deteriorating and get them ready for repainting.  We hoped the cook would find something interesting to serve for lunch or dinner.  We would get mutton from New Zealand which was immediately tossed overboard and traded for something else because that was really lousy.  It was hard to disguise that taste.  Coffee was very thick and heavy and strong but was consumed in great quantities.  You were generally on duty, that is on watch, four hours on and four hours off.  So you were continually tired.  You learned to sleep on very narrow seats that were like in a cafeteria . . . a long bench.  So you slept on a bench sometimes at night because it was much cooler there than in your own hammock.  Then if you were sent to the forward part of the ship, perhaps to the gun turrets up there you would make sure you were wide awake and holding on for dear life so that the tremendous seas would not suddenly toss you overboard.  Everybody had to take turns doing various things.  I used to have to take a turn at the wheel, which was interesting to steer this ship.  The quartermaster in charge would give you the compass readings that he would want.

One of the principal reasons why the Coast Guard operated the LSTs and other small landing craft was because of their experience in handling small boats for search and rescue efforts along the Great Lakes and on the East and West coasts.  So they had a lot of experience handling small boats under all kinds of stress.  So the Navy at that time did not have that kind of experience; they primarily handled big boats so they utilized the Coast Guard for the landing ships so many of them were manned by a Coast Guard crew.  That is how that got started.

You did develop some very good friendships, people from all walks of the United States.  I still remember their names, Erickson from Minnesota, Joe Rennoni from Brooklyn and a few other names.  True, I can't remember his first name, a man from Texas who had an interesting career in the CCC, the Civil Conservation Corps, which had been developed by President Roosevelt to provide employment for young people during the Depression.  He was really well schooled in many things.  There was a broad assortment of many people from everywhere and that contributed to your appreciation of the many ethnic groups we have in this country.

Recollections of President Truman and Roosevelt:

Of course, for most of us the only president we really knew about was President Roosevelt.  He was elected three times.  He was the one we all became acquainted with primarily due to his fireside chats which I believe he gave every Sunday night or frequently and he would tell us what he was doing.  The country was in pretty bad shape during the late 20's and early 30's; and he brought along many government reforms, which tried to stimulate the economy, and of course he was the wartime leader.  We all had a great deal of affection and respect for President Roosevelt.  I don't think anyone knew the extent of his illness and his disability and that he couldn't walk or hardly maneuver at all.  So his death was a real blow and everyone was very sad at that time.  We didn't know too much about Harry Truman; although he wasn't particularly well liked at times, his work was exceptionally good with the rebuilding of Europe and other broad moves that he made. 

I often wonder how it was like to be a civilian or other family member during WWII when everybody was pretty well gone and they were living under rations of gas and sugar and a lot of food.  What was that really like?  There was certainly total support with the United States citizenry; everybody worked really hard to bring that war to a successful conclusion.  Never has the United States been so together.

My family . . . my oldest sister worked at the Red Cross at the local hospital trying the help with the nursing shortages.  My oldest brother was a doctor who served in Europe and was one of the physicians who treated the wounded as they fell on the beaches during the invasion of France.

When one walked down the street during WWII and looked at the windows, you would see these blue stars on a white rectangle with a red border.  This would indicate that someone was in the service in that particular household.  So it kind of was cry of unity for the war effort.  Some people had three or four or five or many stars in the window.  That is what this was.

BR:  When some of historical events occurred, like D-Day, how were you informed about them?

PM:  Most of our news came of course via radio.  There was no television at that time and everyone was tuned to the radio.  You could walk down the street and know that everyone was listening to Amos and Andy and few other of these famous radio shows.  So the radio was the chief source of information along with newspapers.  Everybody had a newsboy who delivered newspapers and there were magazines.  If you went to the theater, every movie was preceded by movie tone news of some type where the latest happenings were shown on the screen.  So that is generally how you received information at that time.

BR:  What was your life like after the war?

PM:  When I was discharged as I said I became engaged and drove to St. Paul, Minnesota, from Detroit in my old '37 Chevrolet which had a wooden running board but which otherwise was in pretty good shape.  After that I came back to Detroit and the next job was to try to find a place to live . . . and finally found a six family flat I believe it was on 3^rd Avenue in kind of an industrial section of town.  It wasn't the greatest but it was all that was available.  Of course there was great housing shortage and much of the people who had been building ships and planes and tanks were put to work building housing needs.  So many new communities exploded with GI's who took advantage of the GI Bill which gave them mortgages with pretty much no down payment and very little interest.  I think the interest rate was three percent or so in 1948 I think it was when I got my first mortgage.  So housing was a problem and eventually it was solved very well.

With the GI Bill, I was eligible for four years of schooling, which I  look back and probably should have really taken advantage of. But I was married then and had to find employment and something to do.  I did take some courses at night but not too many.  I found that difficult to handle a job that involved some travel and study and go to school at the same time.