The 1942 Nazi saboteur landing on the ocean beach in Amagansett will be commemorated at the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station Friday at 6 p.m. An evening of film, re-enactment, and speculation on the infamous interception of Nazi infiltration on the Amagansett shore is in store.
In the small but important incident in World War II, trained German saboteurs landed in the fog on the beach near the Coast Guard station shortly after midnight on June 13, 1942. Their U-boat became stuck in 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, bridges, and waterways, according to the Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary, a document held at the National Archives and Records Administration.
Coast Guard seaman John Cullen had just begun a beach patrol from the station when he encountered the Nazi agents. They tried to bribe him, pressing $260 into his hand, after which he ran back to the station and reported the incident. Later in the morning, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Warren Barnes took four boxes of explosives, which his men had found buried in the sand, into the boat room. After one of the would-be saboteurs turned himself in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the others were apprehended and tried.
Friday’s commemoration will feature a re-enactment of the incident, said Hugh King, East Hampton Town’s crier and historian, who will narrate.
“We’ve tried all sorts of ways of presenting this story,” said Genie Chipps Henderson, who has written narratives for the annual event based on recently unearthed F.B.I. files and contemporary accounts from The Star. “Last year, we got into the F.B.I. files, which were kept under wraps for 30 years by J. Edgar Hoover,” the F.B.I.’s first director. “This year’s event capitalizes again on that, because the great mystery of the story is whether the saboteurs were double agents working for the United States, or whether it was just a last-minute decision that they were going to turn themselves in and be heroes. We still don’t know the answer after all these years.”
Friday’s commemoration will explore this mystery, she said. “This is one of those stories that never gets old, because it never really had an absolute resolution to it. That’s why it’s exciting. When people who don’t know hear ‘Nazis landing on the Amagansett beach,’ it’s a great story, one of the best we’ve got in this long and eventful town of ours.”
Friday’s event is free and open to the public. Those planning to attend have been asked to register at amagansettlss.org.
