I won't bore you with details about the 'worst weather on the planet', but as a travel tip, don't make it your 1st or 200th choice, by my observation.
Our barracks, as I said before, were warm enough, but outside was a frozen wasteland. Ok, I repeat myself.
You can never ever figure when it's night or day up there. (It's either dark all the time or low light all the time..) But the wind and snow and fog are constant.
Anyway, one 'evening', I had the dubious job of 'duty driver', which meant I got to deliver the crews to their planes, and later their box lunches from the galley, if it was functional, etc, after working working all 'night' to make those same planes ready for a 11 or 12 hour patrol. No recovery if a plane went down in that frozen water. We never lost a plane, but another story will get into that.
The only vehicle we had was an old, old panel truck. It must have been indestructible, because we had no good roads, just a general path with less snow than the rest of the landscape. It ran through the worst weather, allowing for a Texas boy to learn how not to run off into a snowbank.
This particular evening, I had to take the 'tank', the panel truck, and deliver the next day's flight schedules, etc to the Officer's Club on the other side of the island.
Now, Adak had a serious shortage of women. There was a small contingent of nurses and even a few school teachers that ran a small school for kids's whose parents were stupid enough to be stationed there for a year. A woman on Adak was a link to the real world.
Anyway, our barracks were full of frozen guys that worked twenty hours a day in fur parkas, or so it seemed. We dressed in Navy issue fur clothing and such to work out in it. That evening, I
drove the old truck to the other side of the island to the Officer's Club. I walked into the Officer's Club to deliver the next day's schedule...I had to find a certain officer to deliver the schedule to...I found him and he ordered me away in less than 10 seconds. I wasn't dressed appropriately for the Officer's Club.
But the Club, geeze, was fantastic.
From us enlisted guy's that had an awful rec room with broken vinyl chairs playing awful repeats of awful movies, they had a 90 foot wooden bar with bartenders in suits and women, real women..the officers were dressed in sport jackets and the ladies were like our wives and girl friends, dressed to the 'nines', except our's were 6000 miles away.
But the kicker of it all was the music. A singer at a piano was playing 'Spanish Eyes" as the officers and the ladies endured Adak's torments, a thousand miles away from our barracks. I don't know if I love or hate that song, but it was a world away from where I lived, 2 miles away.
In the room I shared with 5 others guys, we had three old, old country 'LP's...we played them all day, the younger or lower ranked enlisted guys lived in what we called the 'animal dorm' Their music was '60's rock, which I hated at the time. (I later became a big fan of Janis).
Just another Adak story. More to come, if you're interested..
Thanks..
Our barracks, as I said before, were warm enough, but outside was a frozen wasteland. Ok, I repeat myself.
You can never ever figure when it's night or day up there. (It's either dark all the time or low light all the time..) But the wind and snow and fog are constant.
Anyway, one 'evening', I had the dubious job of 'duty driver', which meant I got to deliver the crews to their planes, and later their box lunches from the galley, if it was functional, etc, after working working all 'night' to make those same planes ready for a 11 or 12 hour patrol. No recovery if a plane went down in that frozen water. We never lost a plane, but another story will get into that.
The only vehicle we had was an old, old panel truck. It must have been indestructible, because we had no good roads, just a general path with less snow than the rest of the landscape. It ran through the worst weather, allowing for a Texas boy to learn how not to run off into a snowbank.
This particular evening, I had to take the 'tank', the panel truck, and deliver the next day's flight schedules, etc to the Officer's Club on the other side of the island.
Now, Adak had a serious shortage of women. There was a small contingent of nurses and even a few school teachers that ran a small school for kids's whose parents were stupid enough to be stationed there for a year. A woman on Adak was a link to the real world.
Anyway, our barracks were full of frozen guys that worked twenty hours a day in fur parkas, or so it seemed. We dressed in Navy issue fur clothing and such to work out in it. That evening, I
drove the old truck to the other side of the island to the Officer's Club. I walked into the Officer's Club to deliver the next day's schedule...I had to find a certain officer to deliver the schedule to...I found him and he ordered me away in less than 10 seconds. I wasn't dressed appropriately for the Officer's Club.
But the Club, geeze, was fantastic.
From us enlisted guy's that had an awful rec room with broken vinyl chairs playing awful repeats of awful movies, they had a 90 foot wooden bar with bartenders in suits and women, real women..the officers were dressed in sport jackets and the ladies were like our wives and girl friends, dressed to the 'nines', except our's were 6000 miles away.
But the kicker of it all was the music. A singer at a piano was playing 'Spanish Eyes" as the officers and the ladies endured Adak's torments, a thousand miles away from our barracks. I don't know if I love or hate that song, but it was a world away from where I lived, 2 miles away.
In the room I shared with 5 others guys, we had three old, old country 'LP's...we played them all day, the younger or lower ranked enlisted guys lived in what we called the 'animal dorm' Their music was '60's rock, which I hated at the time. (I later became a big fan of Janis).
Just another Adak story. More to come, if you're interested..
Thanks..
Damn, makes me cold just reading that!
ReplyDeleteUh, question: Sarah Palin could see Russia from her back door....could you? :)