To Celebrate Nazi Capture

The importance of an obscure event in the history of World War II has been brought home, literally, in recent years with the annual re-enactment of Nazi saboteurs’ landing on the ocean beach near Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett.

At 7 p.m. on Monday, 74 years to the day after four would-be saboteurs landed on the beach armed with a plot to destroy New York City’s transportation infrastructure and terrorize Americans at home as the war raged overseas, the event will be commemorated in a new way. Instead of the live re-enactment staged in years past, Hugh King, East Hampton’s town crier and director of the Home, Sweet Home Museum here, will present a double feature on the silver screen. This will include a re-enactment filmed last year by LTV and newsreel reports of the landing from 1942. The action will take place at the Amagansett Life Saving and Coast Guard Station, which is nearing the completion of an extensive restoration. The rain date is Tuesday.

Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1942, the trained German saboteurs landed in the fog on the beach near the Coast Guard station. Their U-boat stuck on a sandbar, they had rowed ashore in a collapsible rubber boat filled with explosives, clothing, several thousand dollars in cash, and a two-year plan to blow up aluminum and magnesium plants, canals and other waterways, bridges, and locks, according to the Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary, a document held at the National Archives and Records Administration.

A 21-year-old coast guardsman, John Cullen, was patrolling from the Atlantic Avenue station when he encountered the men on the beach to the east of the station. The saboteurs offered him $400 to keep quiet. Mr. Cullen took the money, ran back to the station, and reported the incident to Carl Jennett, boatswain’s mate. The saboteurs made their way to the Amagansett railroad station and, from there, to New York City, where they were captured after being betrayed by one of their compatriots.

Subsequent information led to the arrest of four more saboteurs who had landed at Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Fla., on June 17. On June 27, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced the arrest of all eight saboteurs, and events that would surely have terrorized the population and impeded the war effort were averted.

“The man in charge of the Coast Guard station that night was Warren Barnes,” Mr. King told the East Hampton Village Board last Thursday. Recently, he said, Mr. Barnes’s family donated artifacts from the landing, including the coast guardsmen’s handwritten statements. Mr. King will read Mr. Barnes’s account on Monday. He will also introduce family members of Mr. Barnes, Mr. Cullen, and Mr. Jennett.

Rumor Has It, a singing group, will entertain in the guise of Patty Page and the Andrews Sisters, and Mr. King will introduce the actors who appear in the LTV video. Monday’s event will also have an update on the Coast Guard station’s restoration, including future events and fund-raising efforts.

Those interested in attending the commemoration of this historic event have been advised to bring a chair and a flashlight.