On January 28, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed the law creating the US Coast Guard by combining the Lifesaving Service with the Revenue Cutter Service. The law placed the Coast Guard under the Treasury Department in peacetime and under the Navy in time of war. For USLSS personnel, including those in Orleans, this brought major change as they entered military service with new ranks, rates, and pay scales: district superintendants became commissioned officers, keepers became warrant officers, and surfmen became enlisted Coast Guardsmen, known to their sea-going counterparts as “sand pounders.” The Orleans Lifesaving Station became Station 40. A principal architect of the legislation was USLSS Superintendent Summer I. Kimball, who had guided both the Service and the Revenue Marine Division of the Treasury Department into formidable organizations; early in his career, Kimball had taught school in Orleans. On July 21, 1918, during World War I, a German U-Boat surfaced off the coast of Orleans and shelled the tugboat Perth Amboy, its four barges in tow, and the coast near Nauset Beach. Station 40 Keeper Robert Pierce, a surfman since 1890 and the son of a Wampanoag Indian, saw the attack, recognized mariners were in danger, and led the launch of the lifeboat. As it approached the tug, concussions from the U-Boat’s deck guns blew the hats off several surfmen. Surfman Bill Moore transferred to the Perth Amboy and was later credited by doctors with saving the arm of one injured crewman. The rescue under enemy fire gave new meaning to the lifesavers’ unofficial motto, “you have to go out; you don’t have to come back.”