Chester Segers 12 April 2001

Brian Shoemaker Diane Belanger Interviewer

(Begin Tape 1 - Side A)

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BS: This is an oral interview with Chester Segers, taken as part of the Polar Oral

History Project conducted by the American Polar Society and the Byrd Archival Program of The Ohio State University on a grant provided by the National Science Foundation. The interview was conducted in the Broadmore Resort Tower Hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi, by Brian Shoemaker and Diane Bellanger on the 12th of April, 2001. Chet, this is the story of your life and we'll ask questions as you go along, but usually they're ones that you'll prompt. You'll leave pregnant questions hanging in the air and so, we're just going to turn it over to you and let you go and we'll interject stuff if it will help out and answer questions that are in our minds.

CS: I grew up in the South and I'd heard about Admiral Byrd when I was a youngster. I joined the service when I was 17. I was at Great Lakes, then I was transferred to the Seabees. I was in CBME-523 at Pearl Harbor for a while, then we went to Okinawa. And then I come back and I was on various ships and I was on shore duty at Quonset and this 2

other cook says, "I've signed up the Antarctic. Why don't you go sign up?" And I says, "OK," and I was accepted and he was turned down.

BS: What year did you join the Navy?

CS: 1945.

BS: 1945. Tail end of the war or . . . ?

CS: Just before it was over. I made it to Okinawa . . .

BS: You were 17 then.

CS: I was 17, and from there we went to Davisville. We done our training and . . .

BS: So, this was 1955, then about .

CS: '55 . . .well, '56. And we left in October of '56 on the Nesplin out of Norfolk, Virginia, and we went to Tahiti, and Littleton, and then we went on into the Ice with the icebreakers.

BS: How long did you stop in Littleton?

CS: Oh, two or three days, I believe. Maybe a week. We was a week in Tahiti.

BS: Did they have some training for you back when you first joined the Antarctic group.

You were in Rhode Island? Right? 3

CS: Right.

BS: Was there any briefings or training?

CS: We went to films and they give us lectures and 30 mile marches to get us in shape for going down there, to walk.

BS: You didn't have to cook outside in the cold anywhere or anything like that?

CS: They wouldn't even let us work the galley. They wanted us with the Deepfreeze Operation, so we'd know everybody and know what was going on and that sort of thing.

BS: That was MCB . . .

CS: Specialty . . . MCB Specialty II.

DB: Did you have training in Davisville on anything to do with cooking or was this more a survival and living kind of training?

CS: We went to the supply department . . . or to a dietitian in Washington, DC, and she was telling us how to cook different things and do dehydrated foods and what kind of fresh meat we should serve first and what we should save till last and how many calories and all of that.

DB: Did you have anything to do with choosing the food or ordering it?

CS: It was all ordered, what they figured we would need. But, the Navy ordered their part and the IGY ordered their part.

DB: And were they always kept separate or . . . ?

CS: No. They was all mixed together in one storeroom, which was a tunnel. It was always 60 below zero in there. You had no worry of refrigeration.

BS: This was in Davisville?

CS: No, at the Pole.

BS: Oh, OK. We were back in Davisville. I've got a question for you before Davisville, even.

CS: OK.

BS: When you heard of Admiral Byrd, were you a young man?

CS: I can't remember if it was before I joined the Navy or after. And I read about him going to the Antarctic in '47 with that Operation High Jump and I'd heard of a Boy Scout that had been to the Antarctic, but I couldn't remember his name until I got to the Pole and that was Doc Siple.

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BS: So, you were in the Navy, actually, when the High Jump went. 5

CS: I was stationed in Cuba then.

BS: Um-hum, and Guantanamo?

CS: Gitmo Bay.

BS: Yeah.

DB: What made you decide to go to Antarctica?

CS: My shore duty was up. I was going to go back aboard ship, so I figured I would give it a go and if I didn't make it, I'd go back aboard ship.

BS: What were you? First Class, Second Class?

CS: I was First Class.

BS: First Class when you went down there.

CS: Yeah. Cook and Baker's School was in Newport, Rhode Island, that I went to. I guess I'm getting things a little out of order, but . . .

BS: That's all right.

CS: I went to that. They show you how to cook, bait, and cut meat. Then you had to be everything. There was no separate rate for cook or . . . some of us was cooks, some of us 6

bakers and some of us was butchers. It was called a commissarymen, but now they're called mess managers.

BS: So, you were a C . . . ?

CS: CS-1.

BS: CS-1. So, you were on the Nesplin and you're in Christchurch.

CS: Right.

BS: You got ordered to go, or they get ordered to go. You back on the Nesplin again?

CS: No, we were passengers. And we lived on the Nesplin while we was in New Zealand. In other words, whenever they got ready to go, we were there when they was going to depart.

BS: OK, and when did you leave New Zealand?

CS: I know I went to the Pole the 28th of December.

BS: So, you left in October or November, then.

CS: I had to be in December when we went in to the Ice. We left Norfolk in October, and it was sometime in December when we got to the Ice and then on the 28th. I think we there either 5 or 7 days before they shipped us to the Pole.

DB: Did you have anything to say about which station you would to go?

CS: No ma'am. They picked you. Whatever station they wanted you at. First, I was going to back out. Then I said, "Aww, the heck with it. I'll be by myself. I'll probably be better off up there."

BS: Were you married?

CS: I had two children.

BS: And your family stayed where?

CS: Rhode Island. Pautucket, Rhode Island.

BS: So, the Nesplin. You sailed on the Nesplin. How was the trip across the seas going to

Antarctica?

CS: Not too bad, I didn't think. Because I'd been to sea lot. It was a smaller ship. It would get a little rougher than, of course, a bigger ship. And I worked in the galley on the

Nesplin to help them out with the extra crew members. I kept all the book work and everything.

BS: Were you with other ships?

CS: How's that?

BS: Were you with other ships? The Nesplin. Was it alone or . . . ? 8

CS: Until we got to Littleton, we were by ourselves. And then when we started in to the Ice, we were with a convoy.

BS: Convoy, OK, led by?

CS: The icebreakers and then whatever cargo ships that went in like the Tal. The Tal, the Arneb, I don't remember if the Greenville Victory was there or not.

DB: It was. I don't know if it was with you or not.

CS: Because they put us at the end of the line, the end of the convoy so that if anything happened, it wouldn't spill diesel or gasoline all over and av gas.

BS: You were full of av gas.

CS: Right.

BS: OK.

CS: That's when they showed them the day pumping it over to the Valgeez.

BS: Yeah. So, how was the ice? Was it thick?

CS: They said it was 8 feet. Eight to ten feet.

BS: Yeah. 9

CS: And they warned you about falling overboard. Only 8 seconds or something like that in that water, if you didn't have anything on to protect you.

BS: So, you went into . . . where did you go to?

CS: McMurdo.

BS: McMurdo? And did you live on the ship there or . . . ?

CS: They put us over in one of the barracks at McMurdo.

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BS: How long were you in McMurdo?

CS: Five or seven days. I don't remember, really, you know.

BS: And that was in December?

CS: December of '56.

BS: Do you remember Christmas? Where was Christmas?

CS: I think we were on the ship for Christmas. We had to be on the ship for Christmas. We were there for Thanksgiving and then we were there for Christmas, too, I do believe.

BS: OK, so here you are in McMurdo. You get the word to go to the plane to go to the

Pole, I assume?

CS: Right.

BS: Anything significant in McMurdo? Did you get to hike around, go up Ob Hill?

CS: I think we stayed pretty close to the barracks that trip, you know, on the way to the Pole.

BS: Just stayed ready to go.

CS: Stayed ready to go, keep our sea bags and everything packed.

BS: How did you get to Pole?

CS: On a P2V. I think it was an R4D or a P2V. I don't know which one it was.

BS: Was it a tail dragger or up a little?

CS: Well, we come back on a P2V. It must have been an R4D we went down on.

BS: OK. You don't know who the pilot was?

CS: I was too nervous.

DB: Were you? What do you think about when you're on an airplane going up the

Beardmore Glacier and it's a long way?

CS: Well, we were sitting where we couldn't see out. We were just in there. And the only thing you really worry about is it crashing somewhere out there with nobody around to pick you up in a hurry.

DB: So, you did have some thoughts.

CS: Well, it didn't really worry me, but I thought well, if this is the time, here it is. That's something I never worry about.

BS: That's a very military attitude. So, you flew up, you landed at Pole, and you got out.

What was your first impression?

CS: Well, it was something different. I can tell you that.

BS: Had they built the station?

CS: Well, they had quite a bit of it built. And when the construction crew left, they had everything but our barracks. They had a Jamesway setting in where our barracks was to go. And they was worried about it getting too cold before they put it in. And they took the old Jamesway out and put the new one in.

DB: You all did that?

CS: Well, they wouldn't let me help. They didn't want me to get hurt. Then they'd have nobody to cook for them.

BS: Well, you were cooking all that time anyway, weren't you? Was there a cook there for the construction crew?

CS: That was Spears.

BS: Spears?

CS: Spears was a First Class cook. I relieved him and I worked with him until he got ready to leave and then when he . . . I think he left the day after I got there or the next day.

BS: So, you went to work right away.

CS: Well, first I had to put, like shelving . . . I had to use packing boxes to stack. They had no lumber to build with to mention, and I took packing cases to make places to put my cups and my dishes and silverware. I made a little tray to put my silverware in and shelving over on the other side like with a table top for setting stuff while I was cooking. And then I had to make my own . . . I made bread. I had to make bread. The first time I made bread, I figured, well, in the morning I'll get up and I'll give 'em nice toast. I put it in a pan and I set it on this table and the next morning, you couldn't slice it. It was all dried up. So, I would take the plastic bags that the hamburger come in and the meat and save them and when I'd make bread, I'd put them in there and that'd keep the moisture in the bread and keep it fresh.

BS: Let me back up a little bit. Did they give you menus or did you have to make up . . . ?

CS: We had to make them.

BS: You did it all.

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CS: Well, for a while. An then the crew says, "Well, I think we can eat better than this," so I says, "OK, you make the menu." And each week, a guy would make a menu. But, he had the same stuff to work with as I did. And if you didn't get it before, when you got there, you didn't have it when they wanted something to eat. But, it was the same. You only had hamburger and steak and roast, a little bit of chicken and turkey. I can't remember having cold meat, you know, like bologna and stuff like that up there. But, we had bacon. They had the eggs in a can. The only thing you could have was scrambled eggs. No fried eggs or anything like that. I used to make pies for them and I was making cakes, but every time I'd make a cake -maybe I shouldn't tell you this one.

BS: Sure, tell us.

CS: I almost got in trouble over it. So, every time I'd make a cake . . . you know how they raise up real nice. You open the oven and you look in there and man, that's a beauty. And it got done and in the middle it was like a valley.

DB: Altitude.

CS: Altitude. That's right. And the radioman picked it up, so he sent a message to this couple of guys and they wouldn't have nothing to do with it. So, they sent it to this one amateur radio operator and he got them to . . . he sent the Minnesota Mining Company, you know that's the people that made the cake mix, and some lady went up in a plane at 10,000 feet and baked a cake. Sent a message back to Paul Bloom and Paul sent one to us telling us what to do. Told the radioman to tell me what to do.

BS: All the way from Minnesota?

CS: Yeah. That was the company that made it.

DB: Right. But, what was the advice?

CS: Add so much flour, and then after that, they come out and they had that high altitude stuff on it. And the first birthday cake I made after that was for Cliff Dickie.

DB: Oh. For his birthday?

CS: For his birthday, and it come up real good.

BS: And what was the name of the company?

DB: Would that be Betty Crocker?

CS: Betty Crocker. Is that the one that comes out of Minnesota? Yeah. I've got the papers. If we was at my house, I could show you all this stuff.

BS: What a neat story. So, you cooked cakes then. That was for . . .

CS: Cliff Dickie. The guy that's here with us today.

BS: Yeah. OK. You cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

CS: Three meals a day.

BS: You were the only cook?

CS: I was the only cook.

BS: Did you get any help from any of these guys, mess cooking?

CS: Well, everybody had their own jobs to do. I had my job to do and that was . . . the other men would make the coffee for me, so when I got up at 5:00, whatever time I had to get up to cook breakfast, they would have all the coffee - they'd have four big pots of coffee made for us.

BS: Who cleaned the dishes? You did. So, you didn't have mess cooks.

CS: Well, sometimes the guys would come in and help me out. But, I can't remember having a mess cook. Seems like I was always the one washing pots and pans.

BS: So, they didn't take turns. You didn't assign it to anybody else. You just did it all. So, you did that for a year?

CS: Yeah. But, see one thing about up there, everything was stored in that tunnel, like all your canned stuff. Over the water tank in the galley, there were shelves. I put shelves in, or somebody put them in for me. And I'd have a case of beans here, I'd have a case of beans here, and when this one was empty, I'd pull this one forward and go get a frozen one and so it would be thawed out. Or, whatever I was wanting to cook would be thawed out.

DB: How far in advance did you have to prepare your menus in order to have food thawed?

CS: A week at a time. They'd go for 7 days. Only day I had off was Sunday. Somebody else would do their thing that day.

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BS: And you said the guys made a menu up for a week.

CS: Yeah. I'd give them a list of what I had for them to go by. Usually at lunch, they used to like grilled cheese and tomato soup, one day a week. And something else another day. You know, not the same thing every . . . But, like, if you give them meatloaf for dinner tonight, you'd have to give them steak the next night. That's another beef. Or the next night, maybe you'd have a roast. You couldn't mix it up like you could here where you get fish and scallops and lobster tails once in a while. Things like that. You only had what they sent you in at the beginning of the year.

BS: But, everybody knew that. So, the focus didn't really get focused on you. They knew what your limitations were. 17

CS: We were supposed to use the chicken and the turkey first. But, for Thanksgiving, when we was up there, I'd save two turkeys so we could have a turkey. What's Thanksgiving without turkey?

BS: Yeah. It's almost a year later.

CS: But, at 60 below, how is it going to go bad, you know? Once it's froze.

BS: Yeah. So, you'd cook the meals.

CS: Right.

BS: Trays? Chow line? Did they come in with the trays?

CS: They'd have plates.

BS: They had plates.

CS: Yeah.

BS: OK. And they'd serve themselves?

CS: I'd just set it out on the counter. You know the picture you showed today of the mess hall. That was it. And the cabinet . . . that one cabinet right on the right hand side is where I stored the dishes, so they would come through and they'd get their dish, go through the chow line, get their silverware and they'd go sit down. 18

DB: Not too different from that now.

CS: But, the mess hall looks a lot better. We had enough tables, I think it was for 18, or maybe 20. They had four men tables and they was lined up on one side of the mess hall.

BS: Total number of people at the station?

CS: 18.

BS: 18, so you had enough chairs for everybody.

CS: Enough places at the table for everybody to eat at once.

DB: Did you get to eat with everybody else?

CS: Yes. I'd serve all of them, and then I'd go sit down. But, some of them would be finished by then. The ones that got there first would be finished before I sat down. Everybody lost weight, including me, up there.

BS: Did you . . . or did the meals turn into a discussion period. Was the chow hall a meeting room, I guess is a good question?

CS: Well, anything you had was in the mess hall. That was the biggest . . . the movies, lectures, the scientists would give a lecture one day a week. We'd have movies, maybe one day a week. Doc Taylor would give a lecture.

BS: The mess hall served as the general meeting place.

CS: That's right.

BS: Training room.

CS: Anything that went on, because they didn't have a room big enough.

BS: The mess hall was the central location for the meetings, planning sessions, I assume? Siple and Tuck want to plan and talk, they'd meet in the chow. Did you sit in on these things?

CS: Oh, yes. They'd have them at night, in the evening after dinner. So, everybody could . . . if they wanted to go could be there.

BS: Anything significant that you remember out of those meetings? Was there any crisis things, like . . . ?

CS: No. They'd talk about general things in the camp, the snow mine and things like that.

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BS: You got science lectures from the scientists about what they were doing?

CS: Yep. Like Moose, he was a glaciologist. We'd get one from him. And the guys from the Aurora Borealis, you know, that takes all them shots. 20

DB: Did you all talk about the work that you did in a lecture format?

CS: I wasn't interested in that. I know what I did, I think. I don't know for sure.

DB: Well, I'm referring to the fact that at Pole that first year, you had a yearbook and everybody wrote a little biography and then everybody wrote about the jobs that they did and it was in that same vein that telling other people in layman's terms what their job entailed and how that contributed to the overall and you must have done one, too.

CS: I don't know. I can't remember. But, I know, I wrote a little autobiography there. And they messed that up. They had my daughter born a year earlier than when she was. And when I was up there, my son had a hole in his heart and my wife would never tell me until I went back home.

BS: Wow.

CS: She had to take him to the hospital up in Boston. What's the name of that big Navy hospital? Not Bethesda - Chelsea Navy Hospital. That's where she had to take him.

BS: Take good care of him?

CS: They straightened him out. He's big and healthy now.

BS: Good.

CS: Bigger than I am. 21

BS: So, the chow hall was the center of life there, more or less. Did you decorate the chow hall?

Pictures? Banners?

CS: There really wasn't much up there to decorate it with. You know, a lot of our stuff streamed in. Like one time, they'd put all the tomato juice on one palette, all the grapefruit and all that on another one. But, if one of them, like the tomato juice, streamed in, we didn't have tomato juice all year. We did have fresh eggs once time, though. The Air Force dropped 47 eggs, so they packed them in that bubbly stuff and all of that and put them in an egg case and they told us, "Now, when this palette hits the ground, make sure they get in to the galley real fast because it's got fresh eggs." When I unpacked them, there was one egg in there that said, "This egg was cracked before packing." And that's the only one that was cracked, was that one egg.

DB: 47, that's an odd number.

CS: Well, maybe that's all they could get off of the mess hall up in Christchurch, to ship out.

DB: They must have been appreciated.

CS: They were.

BS: That's interesting. Did you go out when they dropped stuff and cut parachutes?

CS: Yeah, a couple of times. After the other cook come up. 22

BS: Oh, you got another cook.

CS: Well, the one to relieve me. I went out and helped them bring stuff in.

BS: They started air dropping again.

CS: Yeah.

BS: OK. That's quite interesting. They never ever, ever really solved the problem of dropping watermelons and eggs.

CS: No.

BS: Even in the '80s. I was on those drops.

CS: Oh, I see.

BS: OK. Where did you stay? Where did you sleep?

CS: In my room over in the . . . I guess they called it the enlisted men's barracks there.

BS: You only had one officer there, didn't you?

CS: Two. Well . . .

BS: Two. 23

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CS: Well, Doc Taylor and Doc Siple and Mr. Tuck, all slept up in a Jamesway up on the . . . the Jamesway, you know, they left - that was their quarters. I think there was either three or four places to sleep up there, and Mr. Tuck and all of them took that. And I think like Willy Huff and a couple of other scientists, they had places they slept, too.

DB: In the Jamesway.

CS: Somewhere up there. See, I kinda stayed down in my area. I didn't have too much business messing around up on that end of the camp.

BS: But, you could sleep by yourself because you . . .

CS: No, I was in a bunk with . . . not in a bunk, but in a room. The radioman and myself was in the same room.

DB: And that was . . . ?

CS: McPherson. Right. And Kenny and Moose was across the hall from me. And then you had Oz and Mel. That was the mechanic and the builder. They were together. And I don't know . . . I can't remember about the rest of them. That was a long time ago, you know.

BS: Yeah. Did you go outside? Did you go for hikes?

CS: I never. When I'd take the trash out, I'd just run out to the Hubel hole and come back. Or I'd go out and take pictures. Movies.

BS: Still got them?

CS: Yessir.

BS: Did you interface with the scientists at all? Like, did you ever go up and say, "What you doing?" And have them put you to work or anything like that? No? How were science-Navy relations?

CS: I thought it was very good.

BS: Why was it good?

CS: Well, people didn't try to really create a disturbance. I could tell you in the morning when somebody comes in the mess hall, what kind of mood they were in by the way they opened the door. After a couple of months up there.

BS: You knew them that well.

CS: Well, I knew their moods that well. But, most of the guys were always happy. No trouble, you know. Nothing with anybody.

DB: What do you attribute that to? Just the inherent personalities of the people involved or how much would you credit the leadership to the atmosphere that you're painting quite positively? 25

CS: It must have been the people that were there. They had been pretty well picked, and I mean the Navy Department. We had to go through a lot of stuff before they would accept us. Like the psycho, we had to go see the psycho. When we was at Davisville, they'd sent us to the psychiatrist and we went to see him, and I guess he could approve you or disapprove you. Whichever one he wanted to do. To me, I thought it was a very good crew myself. Because you could be on some ships and there was always fighting and stuff like that. But, up there, we never did appear to have any trouble. Sometimes I'd go over at night and read a book or something like that because we all had little night lights over our beds. So, you could go in there and be by yourself or do whatever you wanted to do.

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BS: Tell me about Paul Siple.

CS: I thought he was a very good man, myself.

BS: Good leader?

CS: I think so.

DB: What was it about him that made it work?

CS: I think it was because he'd been to the Antarctic so much, he knew what was going on. And if he was here today and he went back and asked me, I'd go back again. 26

BS: In a heartbeat, huh?

CS: Yeah, in a second. Wouldn't even be a heartbeat.

DB: Would you go back otherwise?

CS: Well, I was talking to that one guy. I'm a little older now. I don't know. I might not be able to keep up with the younger guys down there anymore. Do you think you could if you went back again?

BS: I go back with the tourists, but I go to the Peninsula. It's a lot easier there. It's a lot warmer, too.

CS: No . . . sometimes I think I'd like in some way I would like to go back to the Pole just to see what it's like today compared to what it was when I was there.

BS: You think a lot of your experience was because of the camaraderie of your shipmates at the Pole?

CS: I think so.

BS: Civilian and Navy, huh?

CS: The Navy.

BS: How about Jack Tuck? 27

CS: Well, he was a good leader.

DB: He was awfully young.

CS: Yeah, sometimes that don't make any difference, you know. I was the oldest guy at the Pole.

DB: How old were you?

CS: Then? 30. Of the sailors. Not of the civilians, because Paul Siple, I guess, was the oldest. He was in his 40s then.

DB: He was 48.

CS: 48, yeah.

DB: And Lee Remington was 12 years younger than that, so that would put him in his

30s.

CS: Yeah. 36. And then, I don't know about the other guy. He was supposed to be . . . the guy you went to see. Arwal? He was young.

BS: He was the youngest scientist. He was 22.

CS: Bob Benson was young. Willy Huff was probably in his 30s and who else? The weather men . . . most of them, I guess, was in their 30s. Now Kenny, he turned 21 on the way down.

BS: Now you're up at South Pole. I want to back up kind of a little bit. You had a sunset in there and you had a sunrise. Do you remember those?

CS: Yeah.

BS: Special occasions? How about we start with the sunset first?

CS: Lowering the flag. That was . . . everybody went out for lowering the flag at sunset.

DB: Do you remember how cold it was?

CS: No, I don't.

BS: So, you had a formal ceremony. Navy base style.

CS: Yeah. Just like they do in the States. And then, there was twilight for about 3 weeks or 4 weeks. Something like that. And then when the sun come up, they had like a sun dog - one straight up and two off to the sides of it.

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Well, you see them in Florida a lot of times like that, too, early in the morning. And when that come up, we had a formal ceremony again for raising the flag. But, I can't remember the temperature.

BS: Did you have an arc with the sun dogs, over, or did you have just the three suns?

CS: When the sun first started coming up, every once in a while you'd get the arc - bar across.

DB: How important was sunrise to the people? You'd been in the dark for a long time.

CS: Our time was getting short when the sun come up, so . . . but it was nice to be able to get out and walk. Well, when it starts getting twilight, you could go out and look around and see how everything is. How much it's covered the base up?

DB: How much did it?

CS: Completely. I mean, you know, from the . . . the wind would blow and on that one side, they plowed the snow up against the building and left this one empty, so that whenever the snow would blow, it's like a snow fence. You know how it will go over, and there's only a little bitty space that we kept open so we could go out. You show movies about that, you know, where you dig out just in front of the door. That's the same thing they done. Dug out by the door coming out of the mess hall or garage. They dug the garage out first so they could get their equipment out. And most of that was by hand because at 78 below, our D2 quit. The fuel housing broke on it. And then the next one they streamed in wasn't any good. I don't know . . . the next question?

DB: Well, I wanted to go back to the period when you first got there, because it was quite a long time where there were only about 9 of you there when the McMurdo ice runway broke up and I'd like to hear you talk about what you were thinking during that period, which was quite tenuous.

CS: Well, when the runway went out, naturally we didn't get any more supplies. We was going to ration the food that we had. No cigarettes. No pipe tobacco. People were picking up butts and stuff like that that had been laying around. And they'd been short of a lot of scientists and things like that. The scientists and some of the sailors. The support force.

DB: How low were you on food at that time? Could the nine of you have made it through

. . . ?

CS: Yes, we could have made it, but there would have been very slim pickin's probably at times. In other words, it would have been rationed.

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DB: Did you have second thoughts about your decision to go there when . . . ?

CS: I want to tell you, I've never had a second thought about even joining the Navy much less going up there. I think that was one of the best things I've ever done in my life was to join the Navy first, and then going to the South Pole was another one.

BS: Who did they have there? Were they all Naval personnel in that time?

CS: No, they had like Doc Siple and Mr. Tuck and I think they had two of the weathermen there. And one of our . . .

DB: Two or three scientists.

CS: Yes. And then Brown. A guy by the name of Brown. He hurt his back, but I think he was a builder, then Oz come in, or he was a mechanic and they got somebody. In other words, one of the guys hurt his back and they had to send him out before the ice went out and they brought somebody else in his place.

DB: But, it wasn't until February that the full 18 finally got there.

CS: That's right, yeah. The last . . . they repaired the runway and then they sent the rest of the crew up and they also started airdrops up again, to give us all of our supplies and all of that.

DB: How much fuel did you have when there were the 9 of you there? Would you have had enough fuel for the winter?

CS: I can't remember them dropping any more fuel, because they had all the tunnels lined with fuel barrels and they'd have to bring that in and I guess let that warm up before they could pour it in the generator or into the container for the generator. See, that wasn't really in my field. I was worried about my cooking and the stuff - all the IGY stuff - groceries, were there. But, some of the Navy stuff wasn't there. They was shipping up to us.

DB: Were you missing specific foods that would have made it difficult to cook? 32

CS: Probably canned vegetables and I can't . . . I don't think we had our scrambled eggs yet. And a few other items. But, like I say, I can't really remember. That was a long time ago. Your turn.

BS: We're not taking turns. Somebody said, do you remember when Admiral Byrd died?

CS: Yes.

BS: How did it affect the camp and I guess, how did it affect Paul Siple?

CS: It affected him very badly. They had a little memorial service for him.

(500)

The flag was half mast. They flew the flag at half mast for him.

BS: Paul was OK, then.

CS: Yeah. He got over it. He was OK later on. I mean, just a couple of days he was kind of down and out.

BS: Paul knew he was dying before he left. He was sick for a while.

CS: It'd be like your best friend. And I tell you, in the Antarctic, you kind of bond to people better than you do on . . . I give a good example of a lot of the days that people are together. You know, the Antarctic is more you bond together more than you do on a ship. 33

But, if you're on a ship and you go get in trouble on the beach, you got people that will help you, but not in civilian life. Your best friends will run off and leave you if you're in trouble.

BS: I've got some more. Let's discuss briefly before we turn the tape recorder back on, the ham radio. And we just had an experience with a ham radio here. How important was ham radio?

CS: Very. You could talk to your family once a week, if the conditions was OK.

BS: Talk to your wife?

CS: Your family.

BS: Did you talk to your wife?

CS: Oh, yeah. Every week. There was a guy in Rhode Island, by the name of Warren Hens___ WPGD - I think that was his amateur handle - and he invited my wife and McPherson's wife to come to his house and they'd go over there, I think it was every

Tuesday night.

DB: How nice.

CS: And if conditions were . . . he even went out and got a KWS-1 and put a big antenna up above his house so he could go through. He had his neighbors convinced it was their duty to go out on that night and not watch TV, so that our wives could talk to us.

BS: Interesting. You mentioned a card game over ham radio.

CS: They had a gin rummy game in Las Vegas and I think it was Dean Martin that I played against and Cathy Grant held my hand - my card hand out there - and she would tell me what cards I had and what she was throwing away, and then she would draw another one and then tell me what that was. I won the gin rummy game and I got a trip to Las Vegas and somebody donated an iceberg to Dean Martin for playing the game.

(550)

BS: Did you go to Las Vegas afterward?

CS: I heard the guy that went had to sleep in a broom closet, so I didn't go.

BS: So, you sat there and you told Cathy Grant how to play your hand.

CS: What cards I wanted. I held a hand up at the Pole just like the hand she was holding and I'd look it over and then tell her what to discard. She'd discard, draw another one and then she'd pick that one out of the pack and give it to me. And let me put it and see if I wanted to keep that or on the next turn get rid of that.

BS: Neat. OK, that's ham radio. Here was are. Sun's up. When was the first flight in to the South Pole?

CS: How was it?

BS: When was it? 35

CS: I think they come up there in October and they had to stay for about 6 weeks because an engine froze up on them in a P2V and they had to change the engine while they was there.

DB: What did you do with all the extra company? Where did you put them?

CS: Wherever we . . . some of us had to hot bunk it.

DB: Did you?

CS: I think I did, with the other cook.

DB: What'd you think of that?

CS: Well, no the cook wasn't there. It was one of the plane crew. Well, what are you going to do? There are a lot of people in other places they have to hot bunk, like in submarines. They have to hot bunk - they did. I don't think they do any more.

BS: Slept in the holes at Little America.

DB: How did you feel about these new people coming in? It seems to me there's a lot of ambivalence about it. You're just dying for company and then when they come, they're in the way, kind of, and they're in your spot.

CS: Yeah. I know. But, it was OK. It was somebody different to talk to with different stories and bring the germs in so we could all get sick up there. 36

(600)

BS: You all get the flu?

CS: Colds, I guess. Quite a few of us got colds when the new people started coming in.

BS: OK. When did you fly out?

CS: In January. Don't ask me the date.

BS: So, you stayed there for Christmas and New Years.

CS: I think two Christmases and two New Years.

BS: Flew out, January, '58.

CS: I think it was the 5th. I wouldn't . . . I know I was home around the 20th of January, back in Rhode Island.

(End of Tape 1 - Side A) ______

(Begin Tape 1 - Side B)

(000)

BS: We're now on Side 2 of the Segers tape and we're discussing flying out from South

Pole.

CS: Did you get the 5th of January? And then I was back to Rhode Island, around the 20th of January, I believe.

BS: How long were you in McMurdo?

CS: Oh, maybe a week.

BS: Flew out by . . .

CS: We went in on a P2V and we didn't' fly out. We rode a ship back to new Zealand.

BS: Um-hum, which one?

CS: Well, I always thought it was the Arneb, but it was a MSTS. It must have been a . . . what was the other one besides the . . .? I know it was an MSTS ship because the cook wouldn't let me help him up in the galley. He said, "You've had a tough year. Go rest."

BS: So, you got to Christchurch and how did you get home?

CS: C-118. We flew from . . .

BS: Navy?

CS: Navy. There was only, I think, Cliff and Kenny, and I, and maybe a couple other guys on the whole plane on the way back.

BS: Got to sleep, huh?

CS: Sure did. We's tired. We had had a couple of tough days in New Zealand. Not being around for a long time.

BS: So, you went back to Rhode Island. What kind of duty did you have after that?

CS: I went into Air Devron 6.

BS: Oh, you were in Big 6.

CS: Well, I had orders when I left the Pole to go to Air Devron 6.

BS: You went back to Antarctica with them, or . . . ?

CS: I went as far as Christchurch every year. I run the mess hall.

BS: At Christchurch.

CS: At Christchurch.

BS: So, you were with the Antarctic program for a couple of years.

CS: Yeah, until '64. 39

BS: Until 1964. And you spent every year after that in Christchurch? You never got to the Antarctic again.

CS: Well, I was going one time and they wouldn't send me because they didn't have anyone to run the mess hall. I'd have to go back and order everything but meat. You couldn't take meat into New Zealand, like canned ham, or . . . because of the hoof and mouth disease, they had had years ago in '29 or something like that. I tried to sneak some canned hams in, but they caught it because it said keep refrigerated, so they transferred it to the Ice.

BS: So, you worked in the chow hall there. Did you cook for any of the flag officers or anything? They made their headquarters there in those days.

CS: I was the chief in charge of the galley.

BS: Yeah.

CS: That wasn't the first year. That was the second year, I made chief. So, then I was in charge of the galley.

BS: OK, you made chief in New Zealand, or did you make it back home?

CS: Well, I took the test in New Zealand, then in January of '61, I made chief.

BS: So, you deployed every year. You weren't part of the staff in New Zealand. 40

CS: I was Air Devron 6, assigned to the staff.

BS: Well, they had a DET there. Yeah.

CS: They'd let me know when they had a flight and how much fresh vegetables and all that they could send to McMurdo for the guys down there.

BS: Attached to VX-6 till '64, huh? So . . . 5 years.

CS: '58 - '64.

BS: Six years. So, you saw a lot of changes. The flying, the Hercs.

CS: They started out with the Globies. The Globemasters were there when I first went there, and then they brought down an experimental Air Force outfit with C-130s and then VX-6 got theirs. And now they're out of business.

BS: Yeah, and the Air Force is back. Did they have the 141s come then?

CS: No.

BS: They finally got it through in 1966. Began flying them then.

CS: Do they have skis on them?

BS: No, they have to fly on an ice runway. Changed things, though. Well, that was a surprise to me. I didn't know you'd been assigned to VX-6. I'm glad we brought that out. So, you've really got from 1956 until 1964, eight years attached to the Operation Deepfreeze. Eight years experience. So, that's something to be proud of. And what after that?

(50)

CS: I went to shore duty, Quonset Point, and retired in '66.

BS: And after that?

CS: I drove 18-wheelers for 25 years.

BS: Retired again.

CS: Retired again.

BS: Never thought of volunteering to go back to the Ice again?

CS: Well, I didn't know if I could go or not, being a civilian, but then I found out they're taking civilians down there.

BS: Yeah.

CS: Would the pay have been better as what I got as a sailor? That's the main thing.

BS: I think they make more money than the scientists.

CS: They do? What, the support people?

BS: Yeah, they get paid a salary. Some of them are living on their grants.

CS: How about some in support? Are they on a . . . do they get paid?

BS: You'd better pin Jerry Marty down.

CS: I don't want nobody's job. I'm just curious.

BS: No, no, I mean he can give you the information. I don't know. Well, I think that's good. We should wrap it up there. Chet that's great.

(End of Tape 1 - Side B) ______

End of Interview