A little bit of History

Whilst my high powered rapid response vehicle (aka the bike) was in for a service, I had a wander around Poole.

On the quay next to the old lifeboat house is a plaque to the US Coastguard, marking their work from Poole during the D Day landing.



I like the Latin phrase at the bottom - Semper Paralus or "always prepared"

On return I had a look on the Web and found this on the official US Coastguard history web site.

U.S. Coast Guard Rescue Flotilla One at Normandy:
A Historic Photo Gallery

During the spring of 1944, prior to the onset of Operation Overlord, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the Coast Guard to provide search and rescue craft for the invasion. The Coast Guard had a fleet of 83-foot wooden-hulled patrol craft that were used for coastal patrols in U.S. waters and so the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, Admiral Ernest King, USN, ordered the Coast Guard to deploy 60 of these cutters to the United Kingdom for service during Operation Neptune/Overlord. Their hull numbers were removed and they were given new designations of 1 to 60, preceded by "USCG", to ease identification issues in the Allied invasion fleet. Each cutter was transported piggy-back on freighters to the U.K. where they were offloaded, formed into "Rescue Flotilla One" based at Poole, England, and modified for service as rescue craft. They earned the nickname "Matchbox Fleet" due to their wooden hulls and two Sterling-Viking gasoline engines -- one incendiary shell hitting a cutter could easily turn it into a "fireball."

They were assigned to each of the invasion areas, with 30 serving off of the British and Canadian sectors and 30 serving off the American sectors. During Operation Neptune/Overlord these cutters and their crews carried out the Coast Guard's time-honored task of saving lives, albeit under enemy fire on a shoreline thousands of miles from home. The cutters of Rescue Flotilla One saved more than 400 men on D-Day alone and by the time the unit was decommissioned in December, 1944, they had saved 1,438 souls.

No caption.No date listed; probably June 1944.No photo number listed.Photographer unknown.
Left to right: the USCG-29 (83417), USCG-4 (83321), & USCG 2 (83304) tied up at Poole, England.

Further reading and photos can be found at

http://www.uscg.mil/history/WEBCUTTERS/ResFlot1_Normandy_Photo_Index.asp