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 Seventy-five
years ago, the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve was established by the
passage of the Coast Guard Reserve and Auxiliary Act of Feb. 19,
1941. To honor and celebrate the Coast Guard Reserve's birthday,
Joint Task Force Guantanamo's Maritime Security Detachment Port
Security Unit 313 conducted Reveille at the U.S. Naval Station
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Headquarters building. The celebration was
followed by a birthday cake cutting ceremony at the at Gold Hill
Galley.
There have been few opportunities for many Coast
Guard Reserve members to celebrate the day they were established.
This was an exciting and rare treat for members of the Coast Guard
Reserve, as they do not often get to celebrate these events
together.
“I've been in a long time,” said Coast Guard Chief
Petty Officer Joel J. Burkhardt, the weapons division chief with
MARSECDET. “Believe it or not this is the first time I have ever
seen a cake for the reserve's birthday.”
The Coast Guard
Reserve was modeled after the Naval Reserve and has two service
classifications: Regular reservists and temporary reservists.
According to Coast Guard Cmdr. James R. Hotchkiss, the MARSECDET
commander, during World War II, regular reservists served on active
duty and temporary reservists were volunteers and former auxiliary
members who served for coastal patrols and port security work.
This birthday is a celebration of when the Coast Guard Reserve
ramped up for World War II, said Hotchkiss. About a quarter of a
million personnel served in the Coast Guard during the war and about
90 percent of them were reservists.
“It is good that we
commemorate (and) remember our past,” said Hotchkiss.
Every
military service holds birthday celebrations, however, being the
smallest branch of the Armed Forces, the Coast Guard does not
usually have enough members in one place to celebrate events like
this, said Hotchkiss.
The Coast Guard is here to provide
maritime security for the detention center, detainees and the
personnel working on NAVSTA.
The Reserve is essential to the
Coast Guard, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Nathan R.
Poppink, a waterside security division lead petty officer with the
MARSECDET. The Coast Guard has a broad range of jobs and without the
support of reservists; they would not be able to accomplish the
mission tasked to them.
The Coast Guard Reserve has
conducted many missions along the coastlines of the U.S. and its
territories to include overseas missions.
Its Reserve
components have been extremely active globally over the last 15
years, said Hotchkiss. The Coast Guard Reserve served in Kuwait,
Bahrain, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Sicily. They were in New
York during 9/11, New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, as well as the flooding of the
Mississippi River in 2011 and in 2016.
Burkhardt thanked
everyone for coming out to support the celebration, “75 years and
still going strong.”
PSU 313 is responsible for maritime
security for the JTF detention center and the personnel working on
NAVSTA.
By U.S. Army Sgt. Ryan L. Twist
Joint Task Force Guantanamo Public Affairs
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2016
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