- Washington Island, Wisconsin
Note: This interview began with Allen Thiele in March of 2013, with more recent, shorter conversations added.
Allen, pictured above, entered the Coast Guard as a young, energetic recruit. He nearly left after his first enlistment with disappointment at not advancing in grade to Third Class. But, he got his advancement and reenlisted, for another hitch, and then another. Pretty soon, some 28 years had passed and he was selected as the Coast Guard's leading enlisted man, Master Chief of the Coast Guard, with responsibilities only a very few, before or since, have had the honor to carry.
This interview is split into two parts, and a large part of it is a transcript of Allen's voice narrating the twists and turns of his career.
We're proud to have Allen as an Island resident, and I believe this piece is fitting for publication in the days leading up to Memorial Day 2014. - Dick Purinton
PART I - An Interview With Coast Guard Master Chief (Ret.) Allen
Thiele
Allen Thiele joined the Coast Guard at age 18. Early in his career, he served at the Plum Island Station, and during that time he met his future wife Nancy (Llewellyn).
In a Coast Guard career that
spanned 32 years, Allen 's final assignment was in Washington, D. C. as the fifth Master Chief of the Coast Guard, representing the interests of all enlisted Coast Guard men and
women.
Allen was born May 28th 1940 in Manitowoc,
Wisconsin. His grandparents had a
farm near Manitowoc, and his father,
Don, worked for the Chicago Northwestern Railroad (CNWRR) as a railcar
inspector. He also helped out on the family farm near Clover, Wisconsin.
Allen had two younger brothers, Chuck, born in 1941, and Bill, born in 1953. He attended Manitowoc’s Lincoln High
School and graduated in 1958. He then worked for the Manitowoc Herald Times in
the circulation department operating an Addressograph, and he helped deliver
papers on mail routes.
Allen joined the Coast Guard in November 1958. At that time, a recruiter from Green Bay came to
Manitowoc one day each week, and the recruiter set up in the hallway in the Post Office
across from the Herald Times. Newspapers then sold for a nickel. (Allen recalled when they went to seven cents, because the people who
bought papers questioned in disbelief, “SEVEN CENTS?”)
The recruiter bummed a newspaper from the first batch of papers that came
off the press, the odd cuts and seconds before the presses were up to speed.
Al recounted the conversation that led to him joining the
Coast Guard:
So the recruiter said of the imperfect copy of the paper we pulled aside, “That’ll be fine. That’ll be fine.”
So we’d give him one of those papers. And he’d always ask, “What’re you guys going to do when you
get out of high school?”
“Well, we
don’t know,” we’d reply. He said,
“Well, there’s the Coast Guard.
You can join up for $78 per month, with 30 days paid vacation each year
… and free travel. It’s not
a bad deal.”
Okay, so we
thought about that. Medical is
paid, and everything. Well,
Okay. He did that every week for
about…three months, as I can recall.
Finally, I said to my buddy at the newspaper, "When that recruiter comes
around next time, I’m going to say, 'Yeah. I’ll join.' See
what he says. What about it,
Frank? You and I go in the Coast
Guard?”
“Ya, that’s a good idea, Al,” Frank responded.
When the recruiter came by again, and he gave us the same
pitch after bumming yet another newspaper, I said, “Well, I’ll join. Frank, you too, right?”
Frank said, “Well, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?
You just told me the other day we were going to do this.”
“Well, now I’m not sure.”
The recruiter picked up on this and he said, “Al, can I get your
address? I want to stop by and see
your parents.”
So there I am.
I’m not going to back out of this.
I never backed out of anything.
Grampa always said, “You’re gonna make a deal, you follow through.” So I said, “OK, I’ll still join.”
And the rest was history. I joined. I had
to wait from graduation until November for a boot camp opening. I got to boot camp in time for Thanksgiving.
* * *
It was November 1958 when Allen was officially sworn in, and he traveled to Cape May, New Jersey. (At that
time, there was one other Coast Guard boot camp in Alameda, California.) Ironically, he notes that the size of the U. S. Coast Guard force had remained pretty
much the same, with manning levels similar to what they were just after
WWII. The size of the Coast Guard
has always been at around 39,000 – 41,000 max, he said, and it just never changed much in size.
Boot camp lasted 13 weeks. Having just arrived there in November, they closed it down for
Christmas. They were told by camp officials, “You can go
home on leave if you can afford it, or you can stay right here."
"And because I had some money, the
train was the way to go. So I took the train home. I wore my uniform.
I was as proud as all get out.
"I’ve got to tell you a story about that. I had gone as a kid to parochial school, the First German Grade School. I knew the
minister, who was also the minister when my mother went to school, an old
German guy. We went to
church on Christmas Eve, and man, I wore my uniform. I was so proud of that. On the way out of church, the pastor and his wife were greeting
everybody. And when I got to the
door with my mom and brother, my mom said, “Look, here’s Allen, home on leave
from the Coast guard. We’re so
proud of him.”
The pastor’s wife said, "Isn’t it a shame what the
military’s doing to our young men?"
I said, "What?"
She said, "Well, they’ve got men fighting, teaching them to
kill people.”
So I said, "You don’t approve of the military?"
"Well, it’s just so sad."
"I said, 'I’ll never come back here again." And I never did. I’ve been back to that church for a funeral, only. My uncle’s. They’ve
since put in another church on the other side of town.
*
* *
What were your duty stations during your career?
Allen went down the list, which took some time, with a few side trips into the specifics of his duties and the times:
1. November 1958 - March 1959 –
Boot camp in Cape May, NJ.
2. March 1959 - Nov. 1959 - Pilot Town, LA – Located at the mouth of the
Mississippi, where the South Pass and Southwest pass of the rivers come
together. We shared a facility with
Fish and Wildlife and moored our boats there. We had three 40-footers down there. We also stood watches on ships that
arrived from overseas, the Iron Curtain countries, and those ships that had visited Iron
Curtain countries in the previous six months.
3. Nov. 1959-1960 - A Coast Guard Loran Station for maritime navigation,
Cantanduanes, Phillipines.
4. 1960- Jan. 63 - Assigned to Light Station Algoma.
During his first 1½ years Allen had four different station
assignments.
Were you a bosun mate striker at that point?
Yes, I made Third Class when I was stationed at Algoma. That was
pretty ironic, because the Chief in charge there, Art Mitchell - my brother was
stationed with his brother.
Both Mitchell brothers ended up being master chiefs, and both retired
from the Coast Guard.
In Algoma, I was two weeks away from the end of my first
enlistment. I was ready to get
out. I was a seaman, bosun
(boatswain’s) mate striker, and I had been on the list for Third Class for
almost two years - 22 months. I said, "I just can’t stay.”
Mitchell asked me, “What would it take for you to reenlist
in the Coast Guard?”
I replied, “I don’t know. I started out 186 on the list, and
now I’m down to number six, after 22 months. And it doesn’t look like I’ll make it to Third Class in the
next two weeks. I’m not going to
reenlist as a seaman.”
“If you
reenlist as a Third Class, would you stay then?” Mitchell asked.
“Would I get a bonus at all?”
“$1300.”
I said, “Really!
Sure.”
“Is it for the money?” he asked.
“No, I like the Coast Guard. I’ll stay if I make Third Class.”
The Chief picked up the phone and called the Group Commander down
in Two Rivers. They talked for just
a few minutes. I didn’t hear a
lot of the conversation. Then he hung up the
phone. The next day when the phone rang, he answered and said,
“Thiele, it's for you.”
I said, “Yes sir.”
It was the Group Commander Hutchison. He wanted to see me that next morning at 8 am.
“Thiele, have your dress blues on, and make
sure you have that Third Class crow sewn on. You’re reenlisting.
Tomorrow morning. Don’t
forget to sew on that crow. You’re
making Third Class, right now. I
just took care of it.”
"I hung up the phone, turned around, and said to myself,
“Holy Cripes. If a chief has that
much pull to just pick up the phone and talk with the Group Commander, I know I
want to be a chief." And that’s how I stayed in the Coast Guard. Ironically, in 1976, when I got transferred from Governor’s
Island, New York, to Green Bay, Mitchell was in charge of recruiting for
all of Wisconsin and part of Upper Michigan. Here I was, relieving him after his 30 years
of service. He now lives in Iron Mountain,
and we still talk. I spoke with
him just the other day. We’ve been
friends since - gosh, since 1961."
5. Jan. 1963 – “I made Third Class while in Algoma. Then I got transferred to the Raritan
in January 1963, which was stationed in Milwaukee. It was built in Bay City, Michigan in 1939. It was on the east coast during the
war, on patrols from the east coast to Greenland, assisting troop ships headed
for Europe. On the Lakes, Raritan broke ice out of Milwaukee,
going to Grand Haven and Muskegon.
The whalebacks were running then [the Jupiter and Saturn were oil tankers of the unique whaleback design] but they
didn’t have much power. We were
constantly trying to break them out. “
Al was assigned to the deck force of the Raritan . (The Arundel, also an ocean-style tug in appearance and was a sister
ship to the Raritan. Both were 110-ft. long.)
6. “I came to Plum Island in 1964. We closed the Plum Island Station at
Christmas time, and I was
transferred to the Mesquite for duty, from
Christmas to April 1st.
The skipper was a guy who ran the thing aground. He was a short man, and they built a
box for him so he could stand on the bridge wing and look down on the buoy
deck. When they got ready to set
the buoy, he wanted to be the one to holler, “Set the buoy.” No one was going to say that but
him. The crew had the buoy set to
go, and all they had to do was knock the pin out.
“One time - and it was noisy down on deck - he hollered, but
nobody heard him. He started getting upset. Then he got a whistle.
The Chief Bosun just about went nuts with that whistle, and the Chief
said, "I’m going to fix that damn whistle thing, once and for all." So he set me right up. I’m down on deck, and we had a buoy
ready to go over the side. The skipper was up there ready with his whistle. The quartermasters were maneuvering the ship to get it into
position. The Chief said to me, “Go to the bridge and ask the skipper … “
I said, “But we’re setting this buoy.”
“Thiele, get up there.
Right now! Ask him…”
“Okay, Chief.”
"I asked the question (which Al either can't, or prefers not to, remember) just as the skipper was about to whistle, and in the middle
of my question he dropped his whistle over the bridge wing onto the deck below. The chief walked over, stepped on it
and broke it. We laughed so
hard. That was a funny day!
Not the most harmonious officer. Our skipper was a marine inspector kind of guy, and he didn’t have the charisma to bring
the crew together. He didn’t establish a working relationship with the crew.”
7. April 1965 - “We opened Plum Island. At Easter, we used our boat to break
ice into Gills Rock. I was with
Bill Oldenberg who was from Baileys Harbor. He and I served on the Raritan together. Our
Station Chief said, ‘Break a track
into Gills Rock, but don’t kill the boat.’ We spent three or four hours against heavy ice. Then, in the afternoon he asked us to
go to the island for mail and supplies.
On the way back to the station from the grocery store, Oldenberg, who was
riding with me, asked me pull in to Nelsen’s Hall."
He said, “I think I recognize that car. I think its Jo Ellen’s car.” He had
evidently dated her in the past.
“But Bill, we’re on duty,” I said.
“We’re just gonna see if she’s here. I went out with her a few times.”
“That’s when I met Nance. She and Sherry (Bjarnarson)were playing a game of pool. I don’t know nobody. Oldenberg’s down there at the other end
of the room, happy as a … so I’m like a wallflower. Here’s these two girls. They got done with their pool game and I said, ‘Would one of
you two girls like to play a game of pool? Sherry just turned and looked at Nancy, and Nancy said, 'I
will.’"
“I didn’t know she was a pool shark. Oliver Bjarnarson, Frankie Gibson…they
taught her how to play pool. I
mean, for years since she was a young teenager she played pool. She beat me two games in a row, and
that was the last time I played pool with her. And I married her!
“She wrote her phone number down on a matchbook. She probably figured I’d never, ever
call her. She was working in
Milwaukee and living with Florence Jess (Butch Jess’s mom). Meanwhile, I had an aunt and
uncle who lived in Cedarburg. So
I’d go down to Cedarburg and help him with his mud-jacking business. So I called her up and said, “I’m off
Plum Island. Remember me? Want to go on a date tomorrow
night? Have something to
eat?”
“And that was it.
The rest was history.”
* * *
Looking around the
Thiele home many photos, memorabilia and awards can be seen.
“Somewhere
you have a picture of you alongside Colin Powell," I noted. "Was that taken on your retirement?”
“No…that picture with Colin Powell was taken in his
office in the Pentagon, the day after we went into Panama to capture
Noriega. He called us to brief all
four of us – the Army Sergeant Major was in Panama with his troops.”
“And here's a picture of the boat I had in Dubuque, the Wyaconda, pushing a 130-ft. barge.”
*
* *
Allen's duty station conversation continued…Allen picked up from the time when he met Nancy.
“We got married September 17, 1966. By that time (in 1965) I had made
Second Class on Plum Island. And
from there, I was transferred to Two Rivers. It was while I was at Two Rivers that we got married, and once we were married Nancy moved with
me each time I changed duty stations.
“I got transferred from Plum Island in December of ’65, and
they sent me to Great Lakes Training Center so that I could become an Officer
in Charge of the law enforcement detachment in Two Rivers. I had just made First Class.”
Advancement was rapid
after your initial promotion?
“I was in Two Rivers by January of 1966, at that Boating
Safety Detachment, and I stayed there until July of 1969. In October of 1968, I made Chief.
“I went from Seaman to Third Class in four years, from Seaman to Chief
in 9 ½ years. There were a
lot of First Class who suspected something was up, that I cheated on the exam and so on. They said, 'He’s too
young to make Chief!' I was 28
years old at the time.
“Advancement includes time-in-service as well as
time-in-grade. Only 6 months is
required between Third and taking the test and getting Second Class. One year is required as a minimum
time-in-grade between Second and First Class, then two years is the minimum
between First and Chief. I was
right at that two-year mark.
“Then, from Two Rivers we moved to the island of Kauai,
Hawaii. I was the Executive Petty
Officer at that station, about 25 people in all at that station. It was a Loran station, so a lot of
electronics people were stationed there. The main
objective was to continually put out a navigation radio signal. Kauai was also a mini-group office,
because there were also two light stations on Kauai, and a small
search-and-rescue boat run by a Second Class Bosun. As the Executive Officer, I was administrative, shuffling
papers."
8. August 1971 to June
1973 - “From Kauai
I went to the Owasco, a 255-ft. ocean-going cutter from WWII, built in 1941 or 1938. They built a fleet of them, something like 14 of them. She was home ported in New London, with
a crew of 150. As a Chief I was
in charge of deck force, and we had about 20 people in the deck crew.
“We’d run ocean stations in the North Atlantic. For example, Station Bravo was between
Nova Scotia and Greenland. A tough
area. In winter, we were often on
Ocean Station Charlie, about 600 to 800 miles east. There was a 100-mile grid, with ten-mile blocks, and
the center was labeled ‘OS’ for On Station. Our mission was primarily weather reporting, and reporting
icebergs. We monitored planes that
flew over and other ships that were in trouble. Mostly we tracked commercial flights, not so much military
flights. We were supposedly
there to assist the commercial planes if they were slightly off course. We ran on Loran C, and the planes
generally had better equipment than we did. Those stations are now all gone. Everything in navigation now is done by GPS.
“We used to have Loran stations all the way out on the
Aleutian chain of islands. There
is very little presence in those remote waters today. We had as many as 26 people sitting out there on a
rock, isolated duty, tending the Loran station equipment. Some places it was good duty, other
places not so good."
1973–1976 -
“From the Owasco I was
transferred to Governor’s Island, New York, and the Cutter Tern, the Coast Guard’s only 81-ft. stern-loading buoy tender."
Did you ever run into
many people you knew?
“With 4,000 Coast Guard on Governor’s Island, it was a great
place to run into old shipmates you served with on previous tours. I was on the Owasco
with Gussie Peterson.” (From Washington Island, son of Phil and Evelyn
Peterson).
[Allen showed me photos of the Chief Master Sergeant of the
Air Force, Sergeant Majors of the Army, and Marines and the Master Chief of the
Navy, all whom he knew well when he was stationed in Washington D. C. Each wore a similar uniform
device showing their position. ]
“The Owasco had a
rounded bilge shape with a hangar back aft for preparing and launching
weather balloons.
“The Tern is no
longer in the Coast Guard.
It was a boat that was built to fit a certain deck crane. It didn’t work well, coming from a
barge that was pushed by a tug.
The next idea was to design a boat around that crane, using a constant
speed engine. If you threw
the toggle switch for hydraulic pressure, it went to 2000 psi instantly, and it
blew fittings and hoses regularly.
I issued rain slickers to the crew, and it wasn’t for rain!
“Finally, I pulled out a key from my desk drawer - and I
have no idea what it was from - and I wrote a letter to my superiors, saying, "Here is the key to the boat. If
you want to see this boat underway any more, bring the key, bring the money,
and let’s get this thing fixed the way it should be."
“I had a captain and a commander who said, "Who the hell is
this? Who does this insubordinate
little chief think he is?" But once they saw what the problem was, and we got to talking, they
backed down from their footstool, or whatever it was. They said, "Let’s get it fixed."
"This was only about my tenth letter," I said. "I’ll show you the file. I don’t know what you did with the rest
of my letters…"
"It was very interesting."
* * *
1979 – From duty
based on Governor’s Island with the Tern (1976
to 1979), Allen was transferred in
1979 to Milwaukee as recruiter.
“I thought I’d have the office in Green Bay like Mitchell
did, but I had no sooner had I relieved him when they called up and said, "Hey
Thiele. We want you to move that
office to Milwaukee. We’re going
to downsize it to one man. That’s
where the schools are, and so on."
“I said, ‘Aye, aye.’
That took care of that. But
it was good. We lived in Port
Washington. In fact, we lived in
the old lighthouse, now a museum.
We were on the second floor.
“Then, in June of 1982, I was selected to be the Senior Enlisted
Advisor by the Admiral for the Pacific.
And I traveled throughout the Pacific: Japan, Eniwetok, Yap, Guam Saipan,
Iwo Jima, Midway, to name a few.”
When was the cutter
Washington Island christened?
“The cutter Washington Island was christened in 1989, while we were in D. C. Nancy was the sponsor. One photo of it was given to the Ferry
Line, where I thought more people would be able to see it. The photo and an engraved nameplate were made by
Bollinger, a shipbuilder in New Orleans, and a copy of the ship’s bell was placed
at the Maritime Museum. It was a second
bell similar to the ship's bell that the builder had cast and engraved."
1982-1986 -
“So, from Honolulu I went to the Wyaconda,
home ported in Dubuque, Iowa, from August of 1982 to 1986.
“From Dubuque, I originally had a set of orders in my pocket
to another buoy tender in St. Louis. Because about 30 candidates had applied for the Master
Chief of the Coast Guard job, they pared the names down to five men, and then the five of us
were brought out to Washington DC for interviews by the soon-to-be Commandant, just selected, ADM Paul Yost.”
Will there ever be a
female Master Chief? I asked.
“Sure.
Its only a matter of time.
“The Master Chief for each service as a concept started in
1967. I met the first Master Chief
selected for that position when I was in Kauai, when he traveled to talk to the
different crews in the Pacific.”
Describe your responsibilities as CG Master Chief:
“I was just going on 28 years in the Coast Guard when I got
that job. What you are is
the go-between, to travel and to find out what the feeling of the sailor is at
the deck plate level. Are there
any family problems? Medical
issues? We don’t have hospitals in
the Coast Guard, or even Coast Guard bases, in many cases. Because of that, everything is done
commercially, contracted out. For
the Coast Guard, you have to rely on yourself, with people scattered all over, often on small stations.
“There’s a great deal of consternation with
assignments. Most shipboard
assignments were two years; shore billets for three years. The assignment detailer would
work with the crew, but often the crew felt they got the short end of the
stick with back-to-back tours on ships, etc. The E-9s would try to resolve it at their level, but
if they couldn’t they’d say, ‘Al, here.
Take a round turn on this one, and see if we can get this thing
resolved.’
“I’d go right to their offices and try to resolve it. There were very few times I had to go to
the Commandant for anything.”
What was your level of
job satisfaction as Master Chief?
“What we did, which was really great…was to get together
with my other counterparts, the five service representatives, with our wives,
once each quarter. Different
problems would come up, but we found we had identical things happening across
the services, without having to kick it up to the big stars, or into the
political arena.
“We did get involved with the associations. For example, the
NonComOfficers Association. They
have around 400,000 members, with lobbyists. We’d discuss retirement vs. active duty benefits, and so
forth, or co-pay on health, as an example.
"I’ve been called to testify before the Maritime
Commerce Committee. They requested
my presence before the committee, and then a short time later, I was asked to furnish X number of copies of my
testimony 10 days before appearance.
I had no idea this is what they expected.
“The Captain said, "You can’t go up there and just say
anything. You can add to it,
especially if asked a question.
But they want to know what you’re going to say, and they want to prepare
themselves. They don’t ever want to look bad on camera."
“One of the members of the Committee was a retired Coast
Guard Captain, Howard Coble, North Carolina. He came down from behind the dais and introduced
himself before the hearing began.
Coble shook my hand and said, "This is your first time testifying, isn't it? It’ll be OK.
Just be as frank as you can.
We just want to know what’s going on. You’ll be OK."
“Then just after the meeting began, in walks young Joe
Kennedy. Late. And he sits down, with his staff behind
him. When his turn comes, Coble,
as the senior member, cut him short by saying, "Mr. Kennedy, you were a little
late. That question has already
been answered. You can read about
it in the testimony. Do you have
another one?"
“I thought, ‘Oh, man!
It’s a one-upmanship game, all of the time.' ”
[To be continued with Part II ] - Dick Purinton
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