Bald-Headed SPARS

One night last week, in rain hard-driven by an icy wind, a shipfitter, an insurance salesman, a machinist supervisor and a Boston Traveler pressman boarded a 50-ft. cruiser and purred out to patrol Boston Harbor. Their "duty" was the water off the busy Navy Yard. Aboard their cruiser they stood eight-hour watches and took turns at catching a little sleep. In the cold dawn they shucked their blue work clothes, sheepskin coats, stocking caps and went back to their civilian jobs.

They and thousands like them on both coasts are members of the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve, which has relieved many Coast Guard regulars for combat service. They are unpaid. All they get out of it is $135 worth of uniforms, transportation to & from duty, chow on the job.

They man the pleasure cruisers which have been turned over to the Coast Guard Auxiliary, fill out depleted crews of regular Coast Guard cutters, squeegee paint, scrub decks, inspect buoys, board incoming merchantmen and seal their radios, run signal lights, patrol docks and beaches. In their idle time between their twelve-hour-a-week duty and their regular civilian jobs, the hottest zealots study seamanship, gunnery and navigation.

Old Salts. The middle-aged men and able-bodied gaffers who give their time to the TR are salty as mackerels. Among them: Apprentice Seamen Lewis O. Barrows, ex-Governor of Maine; Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pop Concerts. Faithful members of Flotilla 415 of Rockport, Mass. are septuagenarians Coxswain Dan Woodbury, ex-marine architect, Carl Green, ex-fisherman.

An outstanding flotilla is the one organized by Kenneth S. Magoon, ex-commodore of the Cottage Park Yacht Club, now a TR lieutenant (j.g.). Lieut. Magoon's flotilla has grown from 100 to 600 volunteers. Most of Magoon's flotilla patrol the Massachusetts beaches, stepping thoughtfully around lovers, eyes beamed seaward for flares, boats in distress, enemy submarines. Chunky, energetic Lieut. Magoon resents the intrusion of his State St. importing business on the long hours he devotes to the TR.

Good Deeds. Outside the routine work of helping to run the Coast's harbor services, TR's deeds have been numerous, if not publicized. Alfred Miller, refrigerator serviceman, saw smoke trailing from a vent on a munitions ship. Sparks in a pile of sawdust had started a fire. In time's nick Miller sounded an alarm, got credit for preventing the kind of catastrophe which devastated Halifax when a munitions ship blew up in the harbor.

Not long ago a Boston patrol, made up of a physician, a druggist, a bookseller and an undertaker, spotted a fire in the coal docks, fought the blaze until the firemen arrived, probably saved the Boston waterfront from a major disaster.

So far, the TR's casualties have been few. Boatswain's Mate Henry Trongone, manufacturer of women's coats, fell overboard one day but was quickly fished out. Mr. Trongone and the contents of his pockets, $1,200 in bills, were spread out in the galley to dry.

The regular Coast Guard sometimes scoffs. The TRs themselves keep happily busy. They even accept cheerfully the regulars' nickname: bald-headed SPARS.

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