Broward Community College - Silver Sands Yearbook (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

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ln!- I . . . I i P. P . V .. H R . li I i j. X. il Once a long time ago I enjoyed the tranquility of the beaches ofa little island paradise in the Caribbean. I had been there for almost two years and would have gladly stayed another except for one small problem: I was scheduled to be transferred. When I first saw my orders and the part about location, I yelled mistake. I was to report to an island known as Adak and it was in a region of the world commonly called the Aleutians. At first I calmly thought of going A.W.O.L., but this I ruled out as unwise as I only had a year more in the service. Later. about fifteen minutes or so, I resigned myself to living in a place people only hear about and never want to visit. Thinking that I should at least familiarize my brain with Adak, I made a very cautious journey to the library. I started with the encyclopedia, only to find that the information available was some old World War Two accounts and nothing really pertinent to the present. l then found a book entitled The Thousand Mile War, A History of the Aleutians. I enjoyed reading the book until I got to the part about being stationed there. The page read: Quarters and food on the western islands have improved considerably and even recreational facilities are present. Even genuine female nurses are found on Adak, but none of this is compensation enough for service in the Aleutians. That grey place of williwaws fstrong windsj and terrible seas, could never be anything but penal servitude. After reading that. I realiv thought about going A.W.O.L., and I had not left my tropical paradise, y6I. I arrived on Adak on a day that I was later to be told was the best residents of Adak had seen in montl thought the exact opposite. The opened on the aircraft and an icy I came roaring up through the cabin made me very glad l had had the in to wear a sweater. As I walked off the plane I no' happy smiles on most of the peop the waiting room. Not one to b outsider I smiled, also, and walked tc bUS that was waiting to take us tc barracks. The driver routed us arou traffic jam. A car of 54 vintage, new Adak, had collided with a hill. At door step of our new home, I strug off with my suitcase into a sixty milt hour wind and made it inside. So began my year on Adak. land of a girl behind every tree. But t are no trees, only three small pines ba iloaqorjre Pao TIER tall enough to hide some of the tundra. I found out later that the reason people in the waiting room were smiling was that they were leaving Adak. They had already served their year. The terrain on Adak is composed of hills with deep gorges, huge plains and two half-size moutains. You can hike for just so long before you are lowering yourself down one side of a gorge, possibly 300 feet deep and then pulling yourself back up the other side. hand over hand. After three or four such gorges you are physically exhausted and usually you never cross them at the beginning of the hike .hen you are full of vitality. No, they are always right in the middle of the only possible route. Food can play an important part in keeping a person blooming on these hikes. Two months before I left Adak. a friend and I planned to hike to the other side of the island. a journey of more than fifteen miles. We had prepared ourselves for this rigorous trip by progressively lengthening our hikes until we thought we were ready to tackle our cross-island journey. The first mistake we made was HOI bringing enough food. In a climate such as Adak you burn up energy at a very fast rate, especially hiking. Most people never have truly felt hunger, but that day we did. So much so that I never wish to experience it again. We took two apples. three pieces of cake, and a couple of candy bars. Having hiked for some two hours over terrain of the worst sort twe forsook the marked trail to do some exploring and to get back on the trail would have cost us at least another hourj we came to the beach and marshy area. There we devoured half our rations and proceeded to comb the beach for souvenirs. After an hour or so decided to head back but again: in: of hiking on a trail. we chose an alter TOUIG that would lead us over one ot ridges of a mountain. The trip back lengthier yet, and after traveling rw areas for three hours we were exhaustion. Our food had long : been eaten and we were both hungry. With each passing moment stomachs sent hunger pains to our br Both of us had gone through sur training but thought that we would r have to use it. We were sadly mista My friend's second wind had al given out and mine, also, was failir we strived for home. Suddenly my fr jumped down on all fours and b eating a plant that grew beside a str we were passing. After a momen regained his senses and stopped, but sight has still not left me.

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When I visit a new place I try to pnstruct how it might have been in its . When I did this on Adak, a kind real and penetrating experience lpened. The weather had been cold and idy, naturally. A friend and I had n tracing a series of Quonset huts fthe semi-cyclindrical metal buildings ted by the Armed Forcesl which lay bling into ruin on one of the many s overlooking the base. 'Ihey had led us to a hill into which eep gorge had been etched by many ons of erosion. In the gully lay two is which looked in good condition. ng careful not to fall on any pungy :ks Qmetal stakes planted so that a rp point protrudes about three inches we the groundj I made my way down the hutsg They were in better shape LTI any of the previous ones we had lored. The huts had been swiftly tndoned in the period between the end World War Two and the early fifties. the rush, objects were left and gotten to be discovered later. I opened what appeared to be the door fthere are usually three openings on these huts, not all doorsj and carefully stepped inside. As first impressions are said to be the best, I looked around very slowly, studying each hall and corner. As my eyes traced the outline of the hut I saw what appeared to be a piece of paper stuck to a wall. Floors in the old huts were weak and dangerous if traversed quickly. Gradually, by inches and then by feet I moved closer to the paper. The edges were gone and only a thin shred of tape held the paper to the wall. As I got closer, I saw that it was a photograph. As one rummages through these huts, it is hard to realize that they were at one time inhabited. So little remains that without an imagination they appear to be old dirty pieces of wood and rust. I carefully removed the photograph and walked back to where the light was better, What I had found was the picture of a girl, smiling brightly surrounded by a rose garden. I imagined what a fantastic effect this picture once had upon the inhabitants of the hut, stationed in a land that nobody really cared about. Sick call was a time when men would come in to be checked over in hopes that they would need treatment in Anchorage. Some tried reading up on diseases in our library and then playing the faking game with the doctors. Most were tumed dovm for the Anchorage trips but a few actually went and enjoyed their free trip back to the real world. Navy doctors came up with two major problems: one was the lack of available women for unaccompanied men and the other was the stress placed on the individuals being stationed in isolation with weather that was completely unpredictable. But I believe another problem existed on Adak. Most guys called it the Adak Stare. Commonly referred to as a one-thousand foot stare in a five foot room, it actually went much deeper than the eyes. Objects of fascination might be a cockroach or a piece of wood skewed in some direction. Anyone who stayed on Adak for a year got this psychosomatic disease. But thank God, it passes very quickly once you leave the rock. Adak, the island of snow, rain, wind, and fog is no paradise. It was never meant Y i 'D' , . 1 - A ' I ancric ocEAN l 'F f if X I ' -N D- g l ' , t 1 ',,'g jCA ,51f!5' , , 77? . f . ,fl I If ,. ', A' t ff' I -- .. c SOVIEIT UNION 1 1,77 fjp fff Xg ff, ,. p i I f I 1 i Q, T -J, .Z . .4M,4faz,.,,2 'X . - 7 02 l Je . I, ,,, . X ,Q . - a vm I- if ' . lLf '..' V 1 - ' T an 4 fgi - Q -,KY num 5 t - .:?:..,f . .X F X Q, Og ' auf'