Black Outs and Beach Patrols: Fire Island During World War II
FIRE ISLAND NEWS -- July 30 - August 5, 1987
“I am asking the Congress to declare that as of yesterday, Sunday, December Seventh, Nineteen Hundred and Forty-One, a state of war exists between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan … “
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Address to the U.S. Congress,
December 8, 1941
“We believe that the keynote of vacation this year will be healthful recreation, rest, and recreation with economy … “
-- J. Wright Taursig
President of the Point O'Woods
Association, in a letter to
association members,
March, 1942
Geraldine Stretch of Ocean beach was on the beach when she heard.
Her friend and neighbor, Elizabeth Peters, was enroute from Baltimore to New York. Like virtually every American over the age of five on that infamous day, Fire Islanders were angered -- and galvanized -- by the news of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that pitched the United States into World War II. They suspected, too, that the conflagration would change their lives, and their world.
They didn't think, however, that it would change the entire character of their islands community - as indeed it would. World War I had come and gone without bringing drastic change or danger; why, most Islanders felt, as their sons dutifully shipped out to fight this newest, distant conflict, would this one be much different? The Kaiser's men hadn't invaded -- although a German submarine had managed to sink a Navy cruiser off Point O'Woods in 1918 -- why should Adolf Hitler, or Hirohito, be any more dangerous? With the devastation of the hurricane of 1938, still vivid in their minds, most Islanders remained more concerned about the natural furies than those of man. After all, this was Fire Island. Who cared about Fire Island?
“The narrow strip of sand known as Fire Island is anything but a military objective, J. Wright Taursig president of the Point O'Woods Association declared in his annual letter to association members in March, 1942. “Foreign troops would have to come thousands of miles to reach its shores … There are many other places in the Metropolitan [sic] area which would be more accessible and important for incidental raiders.”
To be sure, by this time air raid alarms had become routine, as well as other civil defense measures. Nevertheless, Taursig insisted, “Insurance companies are floating odds of 991/2 to 1 against air raid damage of any kind. We have been advised that no blackouts are anticipated in this area.”
Nevertheless, blackouts did come to the Fire Island area that spring. And, as the news of the grievous American reverses in the Pacific began to sink in, Fire Islanders realized that they were in for a different, and perhaps much longer war.
And, just as the first wartime summer season was getting under way something happened that really gave everyone the jitters.
On the evening of June 8, 1942 a young Coast Guardsman by the name of John Cullen was on foot patrol on the beach near Amagansett, Long Island, when he thought he heard the sound of the diesel engine off in the surf. Shortly afterwards, his probing flashlight outlined the forms of four men. Upon questioning, the four claimed that they were fishermen that Cullen had ever seen.
In fact, the four were trained German saboteurs; the engine Cullen had heard belonged to the U-boat that had just given them a lift from Wilhelmshaven.
The leader of the four, who newspapers later identified as one George Dasch, pressed $300 into Cullens' hand (at least what he said was $300; it turned out that he had short-changed Cullen by $30) and made Cullen look him in the eye and swear that he would forget having seen the night stalkers.
Fortunately, Cullen did nothing of the kind. As soon as the clandestine landing party had left, the sailor raised the hue and cry, and, with the aid of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the fishy commandos were found and captured before they had a chance to set off their explosive gear. So was another, an equally hapless group which the Germans had simultaneously put ashore in Florida.
The Nazi landing at Amagansett, a mere thirty-five miles away from the eastern tip of Fire Island, proved to be the true keynote of the '42 season. Rumors, echoing the alarms of 1917, proliferated. Vigilance increased to the point of paranoia: someone was sure that he had seen another group of Germans, signaling out to sea with powerful flashlights; and one skittish lady, that she had espied an alien periscope - in eight feet of water. Old guns were taken out of closets; binoculars were dusted off. Heads turned when an airplane engine was heard at night; you never knew, maybe Hitler had perfected that New York bomber he had been screaming about.
Blackout rules, once laughed at, were now taken seriously. Grimfaced civil defense volunteers, led by air raid warden George Stretch, made their way around the island during the tense drills, telling residents to “Cut that light!” and “Pull that shade down!”, until the two short welcome blasts of the all-clear signal rang out. “When in doubt,” the motto of the day became, “put it out!”
Beach curfews, once honored more in the breach than in the observance, were also rigidly adhered to -- especially now that the Coast Guard had instructions to shoot on sight.
By day, the skywriters still plied their languorous trade in the summer skies, coughing out their slow-motion pitches for Burma Shave and Coca-Cola.
But now they were followed by Army fighter pilots, - would-be Flying Tigers - diving, passing, and shooting at imaginary Zeros and Focke-Wulffs.
At night, dud bombs washed up on the beach, along with the detritus of torpedoed Liberty ships.
One day, the sands of Ocean Beach were littered with five-gallon cans of cashew nuts. Another time, it was onions. In its own way, the war had come to Fire Island.
An item in New Yorker’s Notes and Comments section of July 4th, 1942, aptly caught the post-Amagansett mood. “The tides that travel from Portugal still roll in a hundred yards from the porch of our shorefront cottage,” wrote the magazine's anonymous correspondent, “but they aren't the innocent tides of yesterday. Nobody knows what the waves ma bring in, or what may lie further out, in the dark-blue water where the bottom falls away.”
“ … The people on the beach and in the shorefront cottages watch the sea, too, watch a black log, drifting in with the tide, watch the run of the horizon, where this year no boats pass. The Fire Island lightship is gone from her moorings and the lighthouse is dark; there are no lights in the village after the sun sets, only rows of blind houses and life hushed and invisible inside … “
“Already, in fact, it is almost as if nobody on the island remembered any other existence. Obliging women call a neighbor's attention to a chink of light visible in the same tone in which they would have told her that her slip was showing … “
“Sandwiches, cakes, and cigarettes and soft drinks are brought nightly by summer residents. Hostesses are present as dancing partners. Civilians may give funds but may not cross the threshold unless connected with the entertainment ... “
-- article from 1943 “New York Herald Tribune”
describing Ocean Beach Service Club.
Fortunately, the invasion jitters of 1942 proved unfounded. “As far as is known,” writes Madeleine Johnson, in her book, Fire Island 1650-1950s, all that the beach patrols found on Fire Island were “small boys who delighted in lurking on the beach and scrambling up the dunes to safety when they heard a patrol approaching.”
Nevertheless, the Amagansett scare, as well as the natural progress of the war and attendant mobilization measures, had brought a considerable number of servicemen to the Bay Shore and Fire Island area. In addition to the enlarged complements of men at the Coast Guard stations at Point O'Woods and Kismet, the Army saw fit to send a platoon of infantry to Point O'Woods, as well as an Army Crash Boat Unit - complete with six P.T. boats equipped as marine ambulances - to Bay Shore.
And men had to be entertained.
Elizabeth Peters and Isabella Adler, were two of the Ocean Beach residents who cheerfully pitched in, riding shotgun with the guardsmen and soldiers in their jeeps as they churned throughout the sands.
“Sure there were fraternization,” says Betty Peters, who taught at the island's Woodhull School during the school year while her husband Walter was off somewhere in Europe with the Army combat engineers. “Buy,” Mrs. Peters is quick to add, “there was no hanky-panky.”
“They were young, they were far from home, they were lonely. We were happy to help out. Gosh,” she says, her eyes moistening at the memory, “some of them were only babies.”
Isabella Adler fondly recalls placing orders for winter supplies with the Coast Guard, in those days of restricted travel, a service that was particularly appreciated during the winter. ”We were good to them,” she says, “and they were good to us.”
Frank Flynn, who returned to Fire Island in 1943, after spending the first two years of the war in the Army -- and who witnessed the island-based servicemen’s' antics as manager of Maguire's isn't quite as sympathetic. “You got to admit it,” he says today. “It was a pretty easy duty. Anyone who was assigned to Fire Island was darn lucky.
As one might suspect, there was little love lost between the Army and Coast guard. Aggravating the usual interservice rivalry Frank recalls, were the marked differences between the two services' accommodations. While the Guard was comfortably ensconced in modern quarters, the Army was camped out in tents. Inevitably, this led to resentment - and bar fights.
Then there were the usual interservice fights -- including at least one shooting. “One lieutenant got into a violent quarrel with an Army cook,” Frank recollects. “Apparently they had been at each other's throats for some time. Anyway, before you know, the lieutenant takes out his pistol and fires two shots into the ceiling. “Eventually the MPs [military police] came and broke it up.”
At any rate, there was much relief when the Army, having apparently determined that its men could be put to better use elsewhere, ordered the pugilistic Point O'Woods detachment to decamp and return to the mainland in 1943.
One soldier -- and local son -- who Fire Islanders were sorry to see go, however, was General C. Marshall. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, maintained a summer home at 588 bayberry Breeze, Ocean Beach, during the 1940s and mid-1940s. Islanders were cheered by the sight of the Army seaplane which brought the country's highest-ranking general to their shores for the weekend at the beginning of the war.
Apparently, Marshall was quite approachable. “He was just a regular guy. We'd see him on the beach,” says Robert Stretch, who would later serve with the Coast Guard in the Pacific, and “we'd say hi, and he'd say hi. Of course, no one bothered him about the war.”
But in 1943, as Marshall and other war planners began to focus on the upcoming invasion of Europe, the general’s visits to the island abruptly sopped. He was just too busy -- even for Fire Island.
“So here is a war job and a vital one that every woman in America can do. If every housewife saved only four ounces of fat a week our war industries would have enough to make nearly two million pounds of high explosives … Our Sea, Sand, and Sunshine are not going to be rationed licensed or stamped.”
-- Excerpts from Point O'Woods Association
community newsletters, 1944
Interestingly, the aspect of the war was which probably had the greatest long-term impact on the island seems to have been gasoline rationing. With long automotive trips temporarily verboten, people living in the metropolitan area now looked for a closer place to home to vacation. Fire Island, they discovered, was only a short hop by train away -- followed by shorter hops by bus and ferry.
In addition to the “ration refugees,” the island also found itself playing host to a growing number or real-albeit very wealthy European refugees, particularly Frenchmen, who made the island their new Riviera.
The result was something of a development boom, particularly in Ocean Beach, as well as a breakdown in the psychological barrier separating Fire Island from the Rest of the World.
“Before the war he always used to stress the word 'escape' in our advertising,” recalls Frank Flynn. “ 'Escape to Fire Island.' And it was really a place to totally escape to. It was primitive. The reason [New York theater critic] Woolcott Gibbs liked to come here in the thirties, for example, was because he couldn't be reached. And he couldn't -- except by telegram.”
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