TDIH: Quentin Walsh's Navy Cross

A Coast Guardsman engaged in ground combat? Not exactly what you might expect.

On this day in 1944, a Coast Guardsman leads a daring mission, capturing hundreds of Germans and freeing dozens of American POWs. Then-Commander Quentin R. Walsh would ultimately receive a Navy Cross for his actions on this day so long ago.

A Coast Guardsman engaged in ground combat? Not exactly what you might expect.

Walsh was in an unusual spot, though: After World War II began, he was dispatched overseas to work with the U.S. Naval Forces Staff in London. He helped plan for D-Day, preparing plans to rehabilitate and activate French ports after they were captured from the Germans.

Cherbourg was considered a vital port, but Walsh knew it would be hard to assess its condition if he got stuck offshore. He proposed landing at Normandy with the Army instead.

Allied planners agreed, and Walsh was soon tasked with leading a special task force: It was to be composed of Seabees and a handful of Navy officers. The 53-man team would be embedded with one of the attacking Army units.

Naturally, they would have to train as if they were soldiers. The training days were grueling—a nonstop 17 hours. “My idea was to make the training so tough and arduous,” Walsh reportedly said, “that combat would seem easy by comparison.”

D-Day arrived. Walsh and his men went ashore a few days later, moving toward Cherbourg and keeping pace with the Army unit also headed that way.

They arrived in the area on June 22 but didn’t enter the city until June 26, after Germans had refused a demand for surrender.

Our boys were now fighting house-to-house.

“The machine guns never stopped,” Walsh described. “Dead and wounded from both sides littered the streets. German machine guns were placed at sidewalk level in the basements of the building fronting on the street. We would capture the upper part of the structure but the Germans had to be dug out of the basements.”

By nightfall, Americans had control of the eastern side of the port. The western side was still a bit of a problem.

The next day, Walsh and about 15 of his men advanced to the city’s old naval arsenal. Armed with bazookas, grenades, and rifles, they managed to capture the bunker and received the surrenders of about 400 Germans who’d been inside.

But Walsh wasn’t done yet. He’d discovered that American prisoners were being held at Fort du Homet, a German stronghold above the port.

Navy Reserve Lt. Frank Lauer was with Walsh. Why, he wondered, would Walsh make an attempt on the fort when he was so badly outnumbered? “Walsh responded first by asking the lieutenant if he had ever played poker,” Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M. Loy later recounted, “and second by raising a white silk handkerchief as a sign of truce.”

The two men entered the fort under that flag of truce, then worked to convince the Germans inside that the city had already fallen, and they needed to surrender. When the German commander hesitated, Walsh boldly bluffed that 800 American soldiers were waiting outside, ready to storm in.

The ruse worked! Approximately 350 Germans surrendered—leaving more than 50 American POWs to walk free.

When Americans were finally in complete control of the port and city, they found that the Germans had destroyed as much as possible. It was “one helluva mess,” Walsh concluded.

It would take weeks of hard work before the harbor was even partially functional.

Walsh received a Navy Cross for his actions, but a different kind of honor has been bestowed on him more recently. In 2019, the Navy announced that a new destroyer will be named for Captain Walsh. It is the first Navy destroyer to be named for a Coast Guardsman.

His children were thrilled. “I really thought he’d been forgotten,” his son told a reporter. “It’s been 75 years.”

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