Serve with SPARS is a U.S. Coast Guard recruiting poster for its Women's Reserve, dated 1942 in the archive and signed L. U. Bentley, USCG. A woman in Coast Guard uniform stands before the American flag and the Coast Guard ensign above the red word SPARS (NAID 515461).
What the sheet prints
The recruit is a woman in Coast Guard uniform, shown in a portrait. Behind her are a large American flag and the Coast Guard ensign. Below, in red, is the word SPARS, and an instruction tells the reader where to apply.
[signature:] L. U. Bentley USCG
U.S. COAST GUARD
SERVE WITH WOMEN'S RESERVE - U.S. COAST GUARD
SPARS
APPLY NEAREST OFFICE OF NAVAL OFFICER PROCUREMENT
Who made it
The rights line names the U.S. Coast Guard. The archive's maker line adds that the Women's Reserve, SPARS, recruited through the Navy's Office of Naval Officer Procurement, which matches the instruction on the sheet. The signature reads L. U. Bentley, USCG. The archive dates the poster 1942, records the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as recruiting, and files it under war and the military and under gender and suffrage. The record is silent on the print run.
How to read it
The archive tags one technique, transfer: the flags and the Coast Guard's symbols are placed around the recruit, lending the service's standing to the appeal. That is a mild charge, and the sheet earns it honestly. It shows a uniform, names the service, and tells the reader where to go. It does not shame anyone who stays home, and it names no enemy.
The main point is the one the poster does not argue, because it does not need to. Here is a military service asking women to volunteer in uniform, under their own reserve's name. The ask is an invitation, not a draft.
The Navy's 1943 sheet Enlist in the WAVES made the same kind of appeal for the Navy's Women's Reserve, with the line "Release a man to fight at sea." The War Department's 1942 Silence Means Security put a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps member on a security poster. The Roosevelt administration essay sorts wartime sheets by the request each one made.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Serve with SPARS: Women's Reserve, U.S. Coast Guard, 1942. U.S. Coast Guard Women's Reserve (SPARS), recruiting through Navy Office of Naval Officer Procurement; signed L. U. Bentley, USCG.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1785, NAID 515461, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
