Semper Paratus: The U.S. Coast Guard and the Defense of the Hawaiian Islands, December 1941

Presented by Mark Snell

Mark Snell, PhD, is a retired U.S. Army ordnance officer as well as a retired history professor.  Snell is the former National Chief Historian of the US. Coast Guard Auxiliary (“Americas Volunteer Lifesavers”). He is the author of the recently published, THE FIGHTING COAST GUARD: AMERICA’S MARITIME GUARDIANS AT WAR IN THE 20TH CENTURY (Lawrence, KS: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2023). While on active duty with the U. S. Army, he served from 1987-1990 as an assistant professor in the Department of History at West Point, and then became the executive officer of the Academy’s support battalion (1st Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment) as well as the commander of the U. S. Military Academy Airborne Detachment and Parachute Team from 1990-91. Upon his retirement from the Army in 1993, Mark taught for twenty years at Shepherd University and was the founding director of the university’s George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War before retiring again in 2013 as a full professor. In 2008 he was the Visiting Senior Lecturer of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom.   He was a historical consultant for the 2003 movie, “Gods and Generals” and has appeared as a “talking head” on several History Channel, BBC, PBS and C-SPAN programs. Mark also is a member of the Gettysburg Foundation and the Adams County (PA) Rescue Mission (both for which he frequently volunteers).