RAFINO Report
ISSUE 22 - Summer 1999 - Return to Index

ALASKA
By Carl Rotz

(Carl's introduction: "Note, I'm not much on writing memoirs "A la Holt Blomgren (keep them coming, Holt!) but way back when -- in the early 1960's -- I did describe some of my Army experiences in bulletins for consumption of my family back home.  Here are excerpts from one such bulletin.  Those of you who never served in Alaska may find it interesting.")

"I'm just naturally lucky I guess.  The crappy details just seem to gravitate in my direction.  Actually, I was tagged for this one even before I arrived last summer for Exercise POLAR SIEGE.  The other officers in J-4 wanted no part of it -- not that I blame them -- as two weeks of roughing it in the Arctic is no fun.  There was a lot of POLAR SIEGE coverage in newspapers and news magazines.  Some correspondents were there on the scene and many publicity releases were flown back to the "lower 48".  Well, I was on the Exercise Director's Joint Staff helping run the operation -- with the exalted title of Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, J-4 (as most of you know, the J-4 stands for Joint Staff-Logistics).  See how versatile this comptroller has become!

We were located in an area near Fort Greely which is some 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks - central Alaska between the Alaska Range on the south and the Brooks Range on the north (Mt. McKinley is in the Alaska Range).  My office was in a heated trailer.  I ate in a field mess using paper plates and slept in a canvas covered structure shaped like a Quonset Hut - this "Jamesway" hut had small stoves at either end and a line of cots down either side.  But don't get the idea we lived it up with sheets and blankets and all the comforts of home.  We threw our sleeping bags (I had 2 large ones this time) on a cot and zippered up - not only to stay warm, but to drown out the snores - while crowded, this was better than a tent with stove that had to be shut off before everybody crawled in.  We washed up in a jerry-built hut with no running water and "best of all" - we had a 3-holer out-house for the little boy's room.  It had a little stove - but the cold boards and the frigid air below the holes coming up to caress bare bottoms sure discouraged meditation.  Everyone got off and out in the shortest possible time so there was no waiting for a seat.

For the first few days we had temperatures as low as 25° below - somewhat mild for this part of Alaska.  Then the winds started howling and kept it up for 2 days and nights - fortunately the temperature went up (actually 30° above one day) so the comfort index was somewhat higher; but still not very comfortable.  We had warm clothes but still stayed sheltered as much as possible.  I took off in an L-20 (light Army fixed wing, single engine aircraft) to "visit the troops" the day after arrival.  The engine started to overheat about 20 minutes out so we set down on a frozen snow-covered lake to investigate.  Fortunately the plane was equipped with skis.  Couldn't locate the difficulty, so we took off again and flew back to camp.  I wasn't frightened.  Of course, I didn't need to visit the out-house on my return.

Undaunted I went out in another L-20 a few days later.  This time we flew all over the area and landed -- on an airstrip this time -- to make some visits.  Then when the winds grounded the airplanes, I rode out in our Jeep -- but 3 to 4 hours of bumping over unimproved roads and trails was no fun so I was quite pleased when I found I could make the next few visits via 'copter lift. 

A word about the country-side.  It's not much to look at.  Frozen rivers and streams and high hills covered somewhat sparsely with either birch or tall skeleton-like frost-covered evergreens.  Despite the cold one can find spots of soft ground and even water -- warm springs which are an Arctic phenomena.  Those you see are no problem to operations -- it's the ones that get snow or ice crusted that are dangerous.  We had two tractor-dozers break through such a crust and sink in 18 feet of water and muck.  The Arctic takes the best men and equipment have to offer and fights back so hard that our combat units have to spend most of the time just surviving the outdoor rigors.  Every time they move they have the time-consuming tasks of packing or unpacking tents, gasoline stoves, sleeping bags, etc.  Even drinking water has to be carried and kept from freezing.  The body needs water because it becomes dehydrated in the cold.

The last day I went out with a General to visit front line combat units.   We 'coptered in where fire fights (blank ammo, of course) were going on and sure got a taste and feel of the exercise battle.  At one point we left our 'copter on a hilltop and hopped aboard a tank moving down to a road block position about 3 miles away.  When we finally got there after much grinding and slipping down a trail, the position was attacked by two R-105 jets.  Suddenly, as one jet completed its strafing run and kicked in its after burner, we got him.  Actually, we weren't shooting and this bit of realism was, of course, unplanned.  The jet screamed up bursting into flame as the after-burner exploded, fluttered over as the pilot ejected, and then screaming down it crashed and exploded about a mile or so from where we were standing.  Our 'copter pilot moved down and picked up the pilot about one minute after he landed unhurt.  Later we flew over the crash site - saw just a few charred pieces of scrap metal left of the $3,000,000 plane.

I can't say I enjoyed the experience, but one can get used to anything that one has to.  My most unpleasant memories were of dropping my britches to crawl onto the can and of undressing in the cold to crawl into the sack and then of crawling out to dress in the mornings.  My most pleasant memory is of debarking from the C-130 transport on returning to Elmendorf."