My grandfather served in the Coast Guard on the USS
Bayfield in the Second World War. He served in both the Pacific and European theatres and, unfortunatly, saw many of his shipmates taken out by enemy gunfire and (once) by the bombing of the ship by the
Luftwaffe (thankfully, the ship only sufferred minimal damage.
Megabump for the Coasties, the most underrated branch of the service (and the branch that lost more men in WWII per capita than any other).
The Coast Guard Reserve (numbering only 7 or 8 thousand) deserves a hell of a lot of credit too. In particular, their Port Security Units tend to get deployed all over the place. Some of them have been on every major deployment in the last decade, IIRC. I'm giving serious thought to trying to transfer over to one of those units when I get off active duty...They have 25 foot boats that get airlifted to the theatre of operations, meaning they get places real quick in order to keep dirtbags away from the Navy's transport craft.