American Ingenuity at Work During WWII
By Dorothy Joan Riley



Present an impossible scenario and American ingenuity and adaptability will find a way to surmount it. Beach pounders are just such an example.

With passage of the Auxiliary and Reserve Act on June 23, 1941, the Coast Guard Reserve was designated as a military branch of the active service while its civilian volunteers, formerly referred to as the Coast Guard Reserve, became the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Barely six months later, on December 7, 1941, Japan pushed the United States into World War II (WWII) by attacking Pearl Harbor, and four days after that, Hitler declared war against the United States.

Despite the war which raged world-wide, in December of 1941, the United States military forces were still at peace time strength. This meant conscripting and training soldiers at an incredible rate to meet the immediate demands of not just one war, but of two separate wars at nearly opposite ends of the globe. If one were writing a plot for a gloom and doom movie, this would be tossed out as just too preposterous to ring true. Add to that a victorious outcome for our besieged nation, and one must admit that in the end, fact can be far more astounding than fiction- especially in the history books.


During the years of WWII, American ingenuity and drive was at work wherever one looked. Able-bodied men were called into service, women filled our factories, and dogs and horses patrolled our shores. Dogs and horses?

One often overlooked mission of the United States Coast Guard was to patrol our beaches; a monumental task considering the United States has over 6,000 miles of coastlines (not counting Alaska and Hawaii), many of which were in remote areas. Some posts were completely isolated from civilization. Patrolmen worked seven days a week, often 10 to 14 hours a day without leave or liberty, and while many of these men were active duty Guardsmen, most of the Beach Patrol consisted of volunteer citizens. While historians do not specify, it is not unreasonable to assume with the recent formation of the Coast Guard Auxiliary as the civilian volunteer component of the Coast Guard, that many of these volunteers were members of this great organization.

Beach patrols were more than preventive. They also guarded prohibited or restricted beach zones. Patrolmen and patrol boats recovered flotsam and jetsam, discovered booby traps, mines and other dangerous attempts at sabotage by the enemy, and turned over to the authorities valuable articles or bits of wreckage that were found along the beaches. Beach patrols aided in blackout and defense exercises and provided assistance to civil authorities in ordinary law enforcement. They were often the first to spot beach fires set by saboteurs and put them out before they posed an even greater threat or destroyed nearby forests. While the day to day duties of these ‘beach pounders’ as they were called, was usually routine and uneventful, fighting fire, or relief work in flooded regions and during storms or hurricanes were often regarded as a welcome relief to an otherwise, monotonous routine.

As more men were needed to fill combat roles, the Coast Guard found new ways to stretch their limited resources and still complete these vital missions. One answer was assigning trained dogs to beach patrols. Dog patrols began in August 1942, and within one year, 1,800 dogs were on active duty for the Coast Guard. One patrolman and his dog worked together as a team. These teams replaced earlier two-man patrols, thereby reducing personnel requirements. The dogs’ keen senses and unusual alertness proved to be invaluable as well. They easily sensed the presence of strangers and were formidable adversaries. A fifty to seventy-five pound dog, attacking with teeth bared, was often more dangerous than a man with a gun. The dogs were trained and provided by Dogs for Defense, Incorporated in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. This agency provided about 2000 dogs to Beach Patrol during its operation.

A second ingenious scheme employed by the Beach Patrol was to conduct patrols on horseback. Horses were authorized in September of 1942, and by 30 June 1943, nearly 3000 horses were on active duty, virtually all provided by the Army. By September 1943, the number of horses in Coast Guard service reached 3,222. The Army Remount Service provided all of riding gear but the Coast Guard equipped its riders with uniforms.

“The most outstanding work of the Beach Patrol was in its traditional role of life saving. Foot or beat patrols were in a position to sight vessels in distress or to spot planes as they were forced into crash landings. In fact, if not in form, patrols became an important rescue agency. On many remote beachheads or on isolated islands, Coast Guard patrolmen and lookout watchmen were the only people present for this kind of work. The mounted service proved especially valuable because on several occasions, horsemen were able to locate bodies that were missed by the foot patrolman. Further more, the efficient beach communications system enabled alarms to be turned in quickly enough to bring almost immediate assistance. Official reports are filled with instances of outstanding service rendered by patrolmen in saving the lives of shipwrecked sailors or airplane crews that had been forced down or had crashed.”*

Just how did Americans emerge victorious from the dire circumstances of WWII? While there is not space or time to describe the ingenuity and drive of our soldiers and sailors overseas, there is no doubt that the creative use of resources and manpower illustrated by the Coast Guard’s Beach Patrol in protecting America’s shorelines serves as a fine example: dogs and horses. Civilian volunteers.
* Malcolm, Francis Willoughby, The U.S. Coast Guard in World War II, Maryland: Ayers Company Publishing, 1980.





All photographs are from the USCG archives.