U.S. Army soldiers pose for a photo at Station and White streets in Port Aransas after a hurricane struck the town in 1945. Soldiers manned gun emplacements atop two dunes off Cotter Avenue, near the beach, during World War II.
Today, the two large sand dunes that once held gun emplacements off the eastern end of Cotter Avenue are lonely places where low stone walls crumble and weeds grow high.
Claude Lamoureux stands amidst the ruins of what once was a U.S. Army gun emplacement site atop a sand dune just off Cotter Avenue, near the beach in Port Aransas. Lamoureux, who is commander of VFW Post No. 8967, is helping lead an effort to have a memorial built at the foot of the dune to commemorate the coastal defense that the army put in place in Port Aransas during World War II. .
Port Aransas Garden Club President Kevin Fry, right, passes a check for $5,000 to VFW Post No. 8967 Cmdr. Claude Lamoureux on Thursday, July 3. The Garden Club made the donation to help in an effort to establish a memorial at the foot of two Port Aransas sand dunes where U.S. Army soldiers manned artillery to defend the Aransas Pass throughout much of World War II.
“It’s a part of Port Aransas history. It’s a significant part,” said VFW Commander Claude Lamoureux, who is leading the VFW in the effort.
“When you have as many soldiers on the island as residents for a … period, that’s an historical event that happened on the island.”
Lamoureux is calling the would-be site the Coastal Defense Memorial.
Organizers of the effort have been talking with city officials because some city right- of- way easement is involved. They’ve also been talking to the University of Texas Marine Science Institute because the dunes are on the institute’s land.
Officials from the city and the institute have indicated they’re receptive to the general concept, but a lot of details still have to be worked out, because the full scope of the project hasn’t been determined. The bigger the project, the more difficult it could be to pull off.
Design and funding
Port Aransas architect Jack Rice Turner is helping with the effort. He has drawn up plans that would mean bringing in two retired 155 mm guns – just like the ones that were at the tops of the dunes – and setting them up permanently at the foot of the dunes as part of the visiting area.
The drawing lays out 16 parking spaces, including two for the disabled. It also includes flagpoles, landscaping, signs describing the history of the site and a monument honoring veterans.
Exactly how much something of that scale might cost isn’t known yet. Organizers are trying to come up with a number.
But Lamoureux already is seeking funding. He said he has communicated with the office of state Rep. Todd Hunter about it.
Lamoureux said he’s planning to make presentations about the project to various community groups in hopes that others will get on board.
“I want to emphasize that this is not just a VFW or a (PAPHA) project,” he said. “This is a community project.”
The Port Aransas Garden Club has donated $5,000 as start-up money, said Kevin Fry, president of the group. He said the club wants to challenge other civic groups and individuals to donate even more.
PAPHA has earmarked $2,000 for interpretive signs, said Mark Creighton, a board member.
PAPHA volunteers have cleared debris from the site. Port Aransas Museum volunteer Bill Behrens personally has done a lot of the work to rip out Brazilian pepper trees – an invasive species – away from the gun mount dunes and other dunes in the area.
City, PAPHA efforts
The idea of establishing a visiting area has popped up repeatedly over the years.
Creighton said Port Aransas historian John Guthrie Ford and Behrens proposed the idea in the past.
City Manager Dave Parsons said he proposed rebuilding a gun emplacement atop at least one of the dunes several years ago. Parsons, who was the city’s planning and projects manager at the time, said he pitched the idea to then-City Manager Michael Kovacs, and the city even got so far as to ask the U.S. Army for old army equipment that could be used in the display.
The Army’s TACOM Life Cycle Management Command responded that no equipment was available but offered to put the city on a waiting list.
The city’s efforts never got serious traction due to funding issues and more immediately pressing city business.
Parsons said city administration supports the current efforts to do something at the site. However, he said, if the city is to become the construction manager, the city council would need to approve it.
The state historical marker that was placed at Roberts Point Park in 2005 commemorated World War II defenses of the Aransas Pass – the body of water that lies between the north and south jetties. It describes the gun emplacements.
Ford put together the information that was submitted to the Texas Historical Commission to get the marker erected. He wrote that putting the marker nearer the dunes where the gun mounts were would not have been feasible because the location didn’t have space where motorists could pull over and look at the marker. (Turner is proposing to have a small parking area built just off the road.) Is this necessary since to mentioned it earlier?
Ford also wrote that people should be discouraged from hiking up to the ruins. He said it could harm the historical integrity of the place. And, he pointed out, rattlesnakes live in the dunes.
Questions also exist about how the dunes could be made accessible to the handicapped.
Some history
The narrative that Ford wrote says the move to get the gun emplacements in began with someone reporting that a German U-boat was seen 15 miles off the jetties in January 1942.
That report should be considered “highly suspect,” Ford wrote.
“German naval (Kriegsmarine) records show no submarine in the Gulf of Mexico in January 1942,” he wrote. “One suspects the sighting resulted from war hysteria; at the time, however, a U-boat close ashore to an active and strategic U.S. coastline was taken as a very real threat.”
But, at the time, the report alarmed American authorities. Vessels coming from the Port of Corpus Christi and an oil depot just inside the Aransas Pass were seen as possible targets.
A field artillery battery from the Second Infantry Division at Fort Sam Houston was dispatched to Mustang Island. The soldiers brought 105 mm howitzers with them, but the guns weren’t permanently emplaced.
The field artillery battery was replaced in April 1942 by a coast artillery battery that could provide for a stronger defense.
“The arrival on Mustang Island of Battery E, 50th Coast Artillery Regiment, ushered in a fully articulated defense of the Aransas Pass, namely a defense plan to include emplacement procedures for powerful coast artillery guns, a multifaceted fire-control paradigm, extensive communication equipment, searchlights for night action, … and plans for a built-up army base camp with logistical support,” Ford wrote.
Fire one!
Situated atop each of the two dunes was a gun that fired six- inch ( 155 mm) shells and reach targets up to 11 miles away. The guns were put on reinforced concrete and involved what is known as a Panama mount – a gunmount developed by the U.S. Army in Panama during the 1920s and still used during World War II for coastal defense.
What came to be known to Port Aransas residents as “Fort Port Aransas” was finished in April 1943. It was made up of structures including 60 army “huts” for soldiers, plus vehicles, machine guns and more, Ford wrote.
In addition to the previously mentioned batteries, Battery G and Battery E of the 20th Coast Artillery Regiment also served in Port Aransas before the war was over.
The coastal defense of the Aransas Pass lasted from January 1942 to July 1944, when enemy naval threats in the Gulf of Mexico ceased.
The soldiers practiced often, firing shells into the Gulf.
Rollins Rubsamen of San Antonio said he watched as the guns were fired a number of times when he was a child visiting Port Aransas.
“ They made more noise than you could imagine,” said Rubsamen, now 81 and still living in San Antonio. “You’d hear this ‘flash, boom, flash, boom, flash, boom!’ It was a really exciting time.”
No actual conflicts with enemy craft ever occurred.
“At no time during the defense of the Aransas Pass in World War II were any weapons of any unit discharged at any enemy; testament to the deterrence provided by the coast artillery guns and the American patriots servicing them,” Ford wrote.
Steve Lanoux, an administrator at the Marine Science Institute, said the public is free to hike along trails to the top of the dunes where the ruins are because the institute is an open campus. However, he, like Ford, cautioned that rattlesnakes live in the dunes.
How to Donate
Make checks out to:
VFW Post 8967
Write “Coastal Defense Memorial” on the
memo line.
Send checks to:
VFW Post 8967
P.O. Box 1447
Port Aransas, TX,
78373
Questions?
Call VFW Commander Claude Lamoureux at (979) 830-7960 or email him at claude_ lamoureux2000@yahoo.com.
Leave a Reply