Monument To Honor Coast Guard's Role In Vietnam War
 

On Friday, July 16, 2004, a monument recognizing the U.S. Coast Guard?s participation in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War will be unveiled and dedicated at USCG Recruit Training Center Cape May, N.J. The ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. in a newly developed historic monument area adjacent to the training center?s gymnasium and galley. This July represents the 39th anniversary of the first Coast Guard 82-foot Patrol Boats arriving for duty in Vietnam. Representatives from several veterans? organizations, reunion groups, and Coast Guard cutters and units that served in Vietnam will be in attendance. More than 8,000 USCG men served in Southeast Asia, afloat, ashore and airborne, in Operations? Market Time and Tight Reign, command and support, and special combat operations.

The large granite monument and its engraved bronze plaque will be officially presented to the Coast Guard from the Coast Guard Combat Veterans Association (CGCVA), an organization of approximately 1,700 members comprising veterans from WWII to the recent War in Iraq. A second similar Coast Guard Vietnam Monument will be unveiled and dedicated October 23, 2004 at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Ct., during Homecoming Weekend ceremonies. Funds for both monuments were raised entirely from the CGCVA membership.

Both monuments list all Coast Guard units that served in the Southeast Asian theatre during the period 1965-1973, and the names of the seven Coast Guardsmen who were killed in theatre during that period. Family members of the deceased Coast Guard personnel will be among the attendees.

Keynote speaker for the unveiling and dedication ceremony at Cape May will be CGCVA Historian, Chief Warrant Officer Paul C. Scotti, USCG (Ret.), a Vietnam veteran and author of the book ?Coast Guard Action in Vietnam: Stories of Those Who Served,? which describes, through first-hand accounts, the daring activities of the Coast Guard in Vietnam. Keynote speaker for the unveiling and dedication ceremonies at the Coast Guard Academy will be CGCVA Member Captain Alex J. Larzelere, USCG (Ret.) who is also a Vietnam veteran and author of the book ?The Coast Guard at War: Vietnam, 1965-1975.?

Serving as emcee for the Cape May dedication ceremony will be CGCVA Trustee Mr. Robert MacLeod, a Vietnam veteran who coordinated the fund-raising activities for both monuments and spearheaded both projects.

The CGCVA participates is many veterans-related activities and most recently saw an engineering building at Coast Guard Training Center Yorktown, Va., named in honor of Distinguished CGCVA Life Member Larry Villarreal, who earned the Silver Star for heroism in Vietnam in 1965. The armory at USCG Training Center Cape May is named for Distinguished CGCVA Life Member Jerry Goff, who received the Silver Star for the same combat situation in Vietnam. The CGCVA also played a significant role when the remains of Lieutenant Jack Columbus Rittichier, previously listed as the Coast Guard?s sole MIA from Vietnam, were found and returned to the U.S. for interment at Arlington National Cemetery in November 2003.

For more information, contact Robert MacLeod at 704-455-6868 or e-mail: rgbysheast@aol.com.

Recognition is long in coming. The Coast Guard did find a job over there and suffered along with the rest of us. I salute them for services rendered.

Though I was a Coast Guardsman during the Viet Nam war, I did not serve there. Boats on behalf of those who did, I thank you. When you think of our participation in numbers its not exactly overwhelming but when you think of the size of the service, it is incredible. During those years the Coast Guard Guard averaged about 35,000 men.

So we had a high presence there relative to the size of our service.

Bill

People don't know that the Coast Guard guards more than just the coast of the US. They are currently around the world serving with the Navy in battle groups and in drug interdiction.

They don't even put out news releases on these operations. They release reports of drug seizures and lives saved or lost at sea. I usually find this information in a report about a naval exercise.

Joy

If there was one thing that I could criticize my old service for it is the fact that we never toot our own horn. I don't know why but we have always had this Can do attitude even when we were insane to go out in 50 year old cutters to rescue people.

Everytime congress assigned another duty to us, we just shrugged our shoulders and went ahead and did it. Our cutters are old our service is small and our missions are endless:
ATON (Aides to Navigation), SAR (Search and Rescue). LEDET (Law Enforcement Detachments), Drug Interdiction, Ice Breaking,Harbor Inspections and now homeland security.

I sure hope somebody wakes up soon and decides to give us appropriate funding and ships. One example of stupidity is a program that will transfer all of the Navy's 175 foot patrol boats to the Coast Guard for our use. Trouble is the boats are such fuel guzzlers that when the Navy gave us one to try out a few years ago, it rarely left the dock because we didn't have enough money in the budget to buy fuel. In fact some years ago, it was so bad that cutters stopped going on patrol and just tied up at the dock, leaving only in the event of an off shore emergency. THat situation has gotten better but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Bill