Chapter 3-First Impressions.

Guess what. It was cold! I had no experience to draw upon to prepare for this cold. Nor was I prepared to walk on the ice and snow. I wore “Class A's”. That means wool. Itchy and hot in the States but hardly a match for the cold in Thule. Dress shoes. Not a match for the ice and snow there. Had to immediately master a new style of walking. It looked sort of goofy but it was effective. In order to walk on the ice and snow, you first had to turn your toes more outward so that when you walk you roll your foot onto what would be the inside edge of your foot. This would give you a bit of a bite into the snow or ice. Also, you learn to come down flat on the sole of your foot to keep from skidding. Now you understand why penguins walk the way they do.

Anyway, we landed at night. “Cultural Shock” was a phrase I had not yet encountered. Everything was so totally different from what I was familiar with. Not just the weather. The clothing. The buildings. The sun. Yes, the sun. It wasn't where it was supposed to be or at the time it was supposed to be there. Neither was the North Pole. If you had a compass and chose to follow it north, you would actually be heading sort of southwest from where you are. So, when you find out north is southwest and that you are too far north to see the northern lights and that sun rises at four in the morning, you become somewhat disoriented. But I was old not to worry, it could get worse. It did.

Take the sun for instance. It was in transition toward total daylight. So, it would stay above the horizon four or five minutes longer each day until the day would come when it never set again until the summer had passed. But, by the same token, it was never really directly overhead, even at “high noon”. In either total daylight or total darkness, the most disorienting time is when you are sleeping. You would awaken to some sort of noise, look at your watch and not be sure if you had been asleep for an hour or twelve hours. I remember one instance where my radar set had suffered a major malfunction and, as a result, I had worked on it for twenty eight hours straight before I could put it back on the air. I finally got to bed at 5:00PM. I was awakened by some sort of announcement over the intercom. I looked at my watch and it was 6:00 (AM or PM, I didn't know). I looked up and down the barracks hallway. No one in sight. So I hustled down to the latrine and showered. I dressed and went to the mess hall for breakfast only to find dinner was being served and I had only been asleep for about an hour. To further confuse myself, I went back to bed again. When I again awoke, it was 6:00 again. I went through the shower routine and headed for breakfast. Dinner was being served again. I had slept the clock around. See what I mean?

I'm getting ahead of myself a little here. After landing, I was sent to a transient processing area. It was the weekend so I just passed the time getting to know the area and learning how to walk. Finally I was assigned (or rather mis-assigned) to one of the four ninety millimeter antiaircraft gun units, A battery is what they call it. Anyway, the reason I was attached to the gun battery is that it had a detachment assigned to it that flew the drones that were used for antiaircraft target practice. It was with this outfit that I met one of those memorable characters that left the vivid memories of that time.

His name was Little. Everyone called him “Tiny” so he was PFC Tiny Little to me. Over twenty years in the service and still (or rather again) a PFC. (Private First Class for the uninformed. Just one stripe. Tiny told me that he had been an air cadet in the 1930s but was washed out because he crashed on his graduation day “fly by”. Up and down the rank ladder for years. He was what they called a career private. Although never disrespectful to officers, Tiny wasn't afraid to tell an officer what was on his mind. Or to fabricate and answer when he didn't know the real answer to a question. To illustrate that point, there came a time when we were scheduled for an inspection by some ranking officer from the States. In preparation, everything was cleaned, aligned, adjusted and so forth. If it was scratched, it was sanded and painted. Now here's the rub. There was a severe shortage of military color paint in Thule. But there was an abundance of white with an array of pigments. Now remember that this was a radio controlled aircraft target detachment. Tiny Little, being the radio expert, was in charge of several pieces of delicate precision instruments. These instruments were kept in a padded foot locker. It was very scratched so Tiny decided to paint it. The color he mixed using the white and some pigments would today be called “hot pink”. Over the objections of the C.O., Tiny painted the foot locker this color. Although Tiny, himself, thought it a bit bright, there was no time to repaint it before the inspection.

The inspecting officer came through, A few grunts and nods as he inspected our are. Then he encountered the pink foot locker. Slightly startled by the color, he asked PFC Little why the color. Tiny explained about the shortage of military color paint and the elaborated on the importance of the locker being recognizable wherever it night be due to the importance of the instruments contained therein. “What do you keep in there?”, asked the officer. “That's where we keep the Knuten Valve”, responded Tiny. “What's a Knuten Valve for?”, asked the officer. “That's what we use to zero-beat our franistat, Sir.”, said Tiny. “Very good, private, Carry on.” The officer, a colonel, departed our area. Our C.O., a lieutenant, who was about to faint, let out a long sigh and winked at Tiny. Once again the master of double talk had prevailed. Now if I had tried to “snow” a colonel, I would have been courtmartialed. But again that might have been why tiny was a career private. At least we passed the inspection.

In 1959, the antiaircraft guns were on their way out and missiles were on their way in. The detachment would go through one more round of qualifying the gun batteries and then head back to the States. Since I was on temporary assignment to them, I would not allowed to leave when they did. Since I was mis-assigned anyway, I found that the radar that I was trained to repair was located at the unit next door to the gun battery. Since I was required to stay in Thule, I was able to transfer to the unit next door, the operations center know as the AADCP.