The United States Coast Guard Auxiliary is the uniformed volunteer component of the United States Coast Guard ("USCG") and was established on June 23, 1939 by an act of Congress as the United States Coast Guard Reserve, and was re-designated as the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary on February 19, 1941. Congress authorized the Auxiliary to support all USCG missions, other than those related to direct engagement in either law enforcement activities or military combat operations. The support provided by the Auxiliary in these situations can be administrative and it can be in areas that make available, either active or reserve members of the USCG. Once available, the active or reserve member is able to function in these two restricted areas. As of May 2010, there were approximately 30,000 active Auxiliarists.
As a volunteer, an Auxiliarist is not paid a salary and participates in activities at her or his own discretion. Auxiliarists may be reimbursed for expenses incurred when they are under orders from the Commandant. Unlike the active duty and reserve components of the USCG, Auxiliarists are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Auxiliarists who own a boat, aircraft or radio station (amateur or marine band VHF sets) often use their equipment (i.e., "vessels") on behalf of the USCG and are reimbursed for expenses incurred while under mission orders, although membership does not require ownership of a vessel. An Auxiliarist can also serve on a USCG asset once they have obtained proper training. When under orders, the member is recognized as a Federal employee and any approved vessels are recognized as property of the U.S. government. Members use previously-acquired skills and skills obtained via approved training. Examples of previously-acquired skills include carpentry, cooking, radio repair, engine repair, and maintenance, as well as professional skills such as medical, legal and computer skills.
Read more about United States Coast Guard Auxiliary: Membership Requirements, Missions and Core Values, Relationship To The Military, Organization, Leadership and Staffing, Recognition, Public Affairs, Daily Contribution
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, coast and/or guard:
“Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damn business.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Then the bird
breaks with his beak the thread
of dream within him,
and the tree unrolls
the shadow that will guard it
throughout the day.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)