Operator, operator

Coast Guard emblem ca. 1942.

Editor's note: We return now to the summer of 1942 and the narrator's dashed hopes for getting into the Coast Guard Band. The Coast Guard was now ready for its latest recruits.

After a few weeks of living in the garages of the California Yacht Club, the new barracks were finally complete and we moved in.  

The new Coastguardsmen, individually and in squads, were taken by boat down the Los Angeles Harbor channel to Watch Horn Basin in San Pedro for uniforms. He remembered he was equipped with a full allotment of clothing and a sea bag to carry the gear. When it was his turn he was also issued a Springfield rifle and ordered to carry out sentry duty on the pier until relieved. Off the watch he could sleep on a small yacht tied to the pier. 

This was more like it, he said to himself. He was finally in uniform and was carrying the same kind of rifle with which he drilled when he was attending a military school. He knew how to operate the rifle, but was shown how anyway.

PBX switchboard.

The moment for permanent assignment of duties came in the division of the Coast Guard then referred to as "Captain of the Port." He assumed all ports were protected by the Coast Guard with this organization during the war. At the morning muster he learned he was in a group whose duties included care and operation of the base itself. There was a need for an additional PBX (switchboard) operator of the office. A Chief Petty Officer asked for anyone who could operate a PBX to raise his hand. He had never operated a PBX, but he had seen a lot of them in action and punched out a lot of lights himself answering phone calls on the reservations board. He raised his hand.

Captain Frank Higbee was the Captain of the Port. The captain’s office (which the new coastguardsman would never see) was at the back, over the channel. The PBX office was near the front steps. 

El Centro's Barbara Worth Hotel.

After a briefing he was brought to Ray Worth, the duty operator, who was not glad to see a new recruit. Nevertheless, he showed him who belonged to which light on the switchboard. It was a simple operation. Later on when the new operator became more  efficient, Ray loosened up. Ray told him one of his aunts was the Barbara Worth for whom a well-known hotel in El Centro was named. Later in his railroad career, he became familiar with the hotel and recalled his days with Ray.

There were interesting tales floating around on the base concerning Capt. Higbee, he remembered. One said he was picked up at 3 a.m. in a dark part of the harbor dressed in rags and a large straw sombrero, rowing a small boat. The harbor patrol, it was said, was not amused. 

Another had Higbee's face clawed by a patrol leader as the captain, on a dark night,  tried to board a docked boat. The patrol leader’s excuse was the person coming aboard may have been wearing makeup. (This was close to Hollywood, after all, and the patrol boat’s commander had himself been an actor.)

Capt. Higbee, it was said, had finally stopped this peculiar kind of patrolling after he had attempted to grab a sentry’s rifle and was dumped on the ground. 

He had a distinguished war career and retired an admiral. Sometime later, Higbee was appointed by the Harbor Department to the position of Port Warden.

Wartime defense installations around San Pedro and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, 1940s.
Image from the Coast Defense Study Group, http://www.cdsg.org/home.htm.