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Show On Every Beachhead, It's the Coast Guard That Puts 'Em Ashore Coast guardsmen landed the marines ma-rines at Tulagl. They were under Arc at Guadalcanal. They were in there again at Tarawa. They manned landing barges storming the beaches of Cape Gloucester and Bougainville, Kwajalein and Fnlwe-tok Fnlwe-tok in the Marshall. Hollandia and Wakde and Biak in the invasion ot Dutch New Guinea. More recently, when navy task forces moved against Saipan In the Marianas, coast guardsmen operat ed assault transports and tank landing land-ing ships, and coxswains and gun crews were at their posts In the LCVPs that swarmed to the Saipan beaches. On the other side of the world, coast guardsmen landed 'em In North Africa, on Sicily and at bloody Salerno. On D-Day when the Liberation Lib-eration Armada swept across the Engliih channel to breach Hitler's vaunted Festung Europa In Normandy. Nor-mandy. cnt tuardsmen were ur- der the terrific Nazi fire that made a literal hell of the beach. Coast guard crews operated transports. LSTs, LCIs and landing barges In those heavily mined waters. A flotil-la flotil-la of coast guard 83 footers-dubbed "match boxes" boldly and tire-lessly tire-lessly poked amidst wreckage and mines to save the lives of more than 800 American and Allied soldiers and sailors In U.e first 21 hours of Invn-sion Invn-sion under fceavy shell-ftre from Gee-man Gee-man shore Implacemcnti. |