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Most items around 11" x 8½". Six newspaper clippings (2 mounted, 4 smaller loose) + 6 letters (4 handwritten, 2 typed, about 1,350 words) + 13 official military documents + 4 pages of handwritten notes. Generally very good with light to moderate wear; some old folds, scattered foxing and chipping; old adhesive to clippings. This is a collection of personal reminiscences and correspondence, official military ephemera and great photographic clippings documenting the illustrious career of United States Coast Guardsman John Sloan. In the years preceding and during World War II, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) grew exponentially, with nearly 250,000 men and women serving over the course of the war. The Guard supported both combat and traditional service missions, not limited to amphibious operations, search and rescue, marine safety, port security and beach patrol. Sloan served on important USCG missions aboard the ship Shoshone, patrolling Alaskan waters and the Bering Sea from 1940 to 1941, and the USS Joseph T. Dickman, which commissioned at the New York Navy Yard in 1941 and saw action in several major World War II campaigns. This collection holds his transfer request of April 1943, revealing that "it has been two years since I have been home or seen my mother. I enlisted in the Coast Guard in October, 1939 and have had 3 years continuous sea duty." He served 19 months aboard the Dickman "in the Eastern, African, Middle European and Asiatic waters, and was a coxwain [sic] aboard an invasion barge at French Morocco. It would be greatly appreciated if I could be stationed somewhere around San Francisco, California, which is near my home at Windsor, California." A few present clippings identify Sloan as part of a USCG Amphibious Force ("they call them the boys with 'one-way tickets'") that gained honor for a raid on "a Nazi submarine nest under the guns of a North African fortress . . . after nine hours of stubborn fighting the enemy resistance was broken." The men returned to the United States at the turn of 1943. A Windsor newspaper printed Sloan's letter home telling the thrilling tale: "So, mother, dear, we did a good job and it looks like the defeat of Hitler will be very soon." He also made headlines for his work fighting a San Francisco pier fire, and a few clippings concern tragedies that occurred on other USCG ships. The collection holds fantastic letters to Sloan from former shipmates, relating personal stories of service on new assignments, as well as a few handwritten notes. These include the lyrics to a "Coast Guard song," day-by-day details on the Shoshone's movements, and musings on "Amphibious transport": "The USS Dickman A.P. 26 was called the Dirty Dick by US sailors because of the Mines, Bombs, and Torpedoes we encountered landing troops on enemy beaches and getting a little liberty." One typed letter on Columbia Broadcasting System letterhead told Sloan where to check in to "be weighed in, examined, and matched for your second bout in the Tournament" and one friend wrote, "we salute Jarring Jawn Sloan, welter weight champ of the C.G. (restricted of course to the C.G. 64021-F and pier #5 San Francisco)." There are also a dozen or so military documents, including a Dickman Drift newsletter of November 1942 with news of the war in French Morocco and North Africa as well as a memo from the ship's Commanding Officer lauding the "splendid work done by the officers and crew prior to and during the recent exercise. This type of operation, consisting of a surprise landing at night on a strange and hostile shore, is the most difficult that a ship can be called upon to perform." There are forms of his applications and graduations from USCG institutes, certificates of honorable discharge with enlistment and service data recorded, and a list of ribbons and stars Sloan had earned by April 1943. The collection also holds a worksheet on Indian currency and common phrases, and two copies of a hand-drawn signal map "for the.
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