Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project Interview with Paul C. Dalrymple, PhD conducted on August 5, 1999, by Dian O. Belanger

DOB: Today is the 5th of August, 1999. I'm Dian Belanger and I'm speaking with Paul Dalrymple about his experiences in the International Geophysical Year.

Good morning, and thank you so much for talking with me.

PD: Very nice to have you come here. Hope I can help you.

DOB: Let's begin with just a very brief background. I'm interested in where you grew up, where you went to school, what you decided to do with your life. I'm especially interested in anything from these experiences that might suggest you'd end up in a place as exotic as Antarctica.

PD: Well, it all goes back to when I was brought up here in Maine. My father, at a late age in life, decided to go back and get his Ph.D. degree. So I came up here to Maine with my mother and my brother, and I lived here.

And something happened back in the mid-1930s which got me really interested in the Antarctic. Living out here in the country, I had read Admiral Byrd's books, and I knew all the people in those books just like I would know people that lived in the town. And a man came up here, and he gave a lecture on Antarctica. His name was Amory H. "Bud" Waite, and Bud Waite became a very famous man because later on he came up with a method for determining the depths of snow from radio echo sounding. So as a very young kid—I was about twelve years old—I heard Bud Waite lecture on the 1933-35 expedition.

Later on I went to Clark University, and Paul Siple, the very famous polar explorer and geographer, had gotten his Ph.D. at Clark University just before I got there. And I continued my interest in the Antarctic, you might say, through a professor at Clark University who had spent a lot of time in the Arctic. His name was W. Elmer Ekblaw. So I took three courses from him. I kept hearing about the Arctic and everything, so that enhanced my interest in the polar regions. And he was influential in getting me to go to Syracuse University graduate school because he had an interest there through the chairman of the department. He secured the job for Dr. Cressey as chairman, and he took me as a graduate student because of his connection with Dr. Ekblaw at Clark University.

When I was up at Syracuse University, Admiral Byrd said he was interested in forming another expedition to the Antarctic. I wrote the admiral. I said, "I'm a graduate student in geography, and if you ever go back and have room for a geographer of some kind, I'm no Paul Siple"—he was a geographer—"but I would like to have an opportunity to apply for any position that might be open."

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 2

I got a nice letter back from the admiral—in fact I still have it upstairs—and he said that he was going to put my letter on file and if anything came up he would let me know. I just thought it was a polite letter, a routine letter that he sent to everybody and it really did not mean anything.

But it turned out when the IGY came along, I did get a letter back from Admiral Byrd. And Admiral Byrd said, "Do you still have an interest in going to Antarctica?" And I certainly replied that I did. He told me who to get in contact with.

Well, by then my professional career had more or less gone forward somewhat from what it was at graduate school, and I was working for Harvard University at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts. And while there, I took a course which became very important for my selection to go to Antarctica.

I went to MIT in the summertime when they had a graduate session in climatology. One of the courses offered was micrometeorological instrumentation—the only time it was ever offered at MIT. I took that course. I tried to drop the course at the end of the first day. I went to the class and there was calculus all over three boards, and I said I couldn't handle the course. I walked around the campus at MIT for three hours. I walked in to see Professor Kiley at the end of the afternoon and I said, "I have to drop this course. I can't handle it." And he said, "With your background working for Blue Hill Observatory, you can handle it." And he said, "Twenty-two people have already walked in here today and dropped that course, and if you leave I don't have the minimum number to keep on with the course." So he said, "If you'll stay here, I will see to it that you get through the course."

So when the IGY came along, they were looking for a micrometeorologist at Little America V, and I had had this one course at MIT on micrometeorological instrumentation! And you might say the course which I tried to drop, which the professor would not let me drop, led to me being selected as a micrometeorologist for Little America V. So I was very, very lucky in having Kiley keep me as a student.

DOB: What's micrometeorology?

PD: Micrometeorology is studying the atmosphere right close to the ground. It's not concerned with upper air, and in the case of Little America V, we were just studying the lower ten meters of the atmosphere plus subsurface temperatures.

During the IGY there were only two programs in micrometeorology—one in the Arctic and one in the Antarctic. So I worked closely with a man by the name of Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 3

Dr. Richard Hubley, H-u-b-l-e-y, at the University of Washington, and he was to go to the Arctic, I was to go to the Antarctic.

Prior to our going into the polar regions, there only had been one program in micrometeorology ever conducted in the polar region, and that was conducted under the Maudheim, M-a-u-d-h-e-i-m, expedition, referred to as the Norwegian- British-Swedish Expedition, 1949-1952. And the scientist who conducted micrometeorology there was a man by the name of Dr. Liljequist, L-i-l-j-e-q-u-i-s-t, first name Gosta, G-o-s-t-a. But Dr. Liljequist had just about completed his analysis, and he was able to provide us with draft copies of what he had done. So we did have, you might say, a solid ground plan for what we should be doing.

With micrometeorology, you also study radiation, so you might say my part was temperature profiles, wind profiles. We measured the temperature and the wind at very close intervals to the snow surface and subsurface temperatures. And my colleague was Dr. Herfried Hoinkes, H-o-i-n-k-e-s, first name Herfried, H-e-r-f-r-i-e-d. He was chairman of the department of meteorology and geophysics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. So our program was combining my measurements of temperatures and wind with his measurements in solar radiation. So we worked together as a team at Little America V in 1957.

[Interruption]

DOB: We've been joined by Ken Moulton, who was at the National Science Foundation and the Academy before that, correct?

KM: Yes.

DOB: What I wanted to ask you was where and how you prepared for going to the Antarctic, if you did.

PD: I got into the Antarctic programs through a man in our office who was on a panel for meteorology for the IGY, and he found out about this opening for a micrometeorologist. I was prepared at the time to ask for a leave of absence to go down with the Weather Bureau, and our office said we'd rather have you go down there on our program. I was with the Quartermaster Corps. They had a great interest in feeding, clothing the troops, you see, in all regions of the whole world, so they were interested in climate from the clothing aspect and also of the welfare of the soldier in the polar regions.

I would say I probably started preparations to go to the Antarctic at least nine months ahead of time, and I had help from different people in the field on the choice of instrumentation, and I told you I had the advice of Dr. Liljequist and of a Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 4

Dr. Donald Portman from the University of Michigan. These people were experts on instrumentation for micrometeorology.

You see, back in those days there was no funding agency like NSF, so the people that went down there in my time, the home office had to fund them. So in this case here, I was working for the Army as a civilian. And I went to the Department of Army Expedition Office, and they didn't have a large amount of money. But they gave me something like $7,000 for the whole program! This is unbelievable when you talk about the kind of money that's available for scientists today.

So I picked out my instrumentation through Dr. Thornthwait down in New Jersey and through Beckman and Whitley out in California. The instruments were ordered, and I went through a short training program out in California on the use of the equipment and talked to people that knew something about the type of instrumentation which I was choosing.

And the funniest thing happened to me out there. When I was out there, we had to take a very comprehensive physical examination, and they also checked us out with a psychiatrist to see whether we should go to Antarctica or not. I was on this instrument training program and I was told to report to the Oakland Naval Station. I went to the Oakland Naval Station, and the physical took, I believe, three full days. And at the end of the third day, the very last examination, the doctor put one of these wooden ladles into my mouth to check my throat, and he gagged me and I coughed in his face. The doctor, who was a captain in the Navy, was furious. He took my complete form and he wrote all the way across the first sheet "Disqualified."

So here I was, selected for the Antarctic, I had the instrumentation, I had my training, I was within weeks of leaving for the Antarctic, and this captain disqualifies me. I'm petrified. I'm not home. I'm out here on the road. So I went back to Beckman and Whitley and I said, "You have to find a doctor for me. I have to have another examination." So they found a specialist for me and she examined me. On the forms it said I had an ear infection, even though I coughed in his face. And my doctor said, "You don't have any infection," and she gave me an affidavit to take back to the Navy saying I did not have any ear infection.

So I went back to Oakland Naval Station, asked for the captain. They would not allow me to see this man, and I showed them the letter. They changed it to "Qualified." So at the very last minute I almost was disqualified.

At the time we went down to the Antarctic, it was late December in 1956.

DOB: Did you have any cold weather training?

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PD: Well, living here in Maine, I can remember it got down pretty cold in 1933. [Laughs]

DOB: But no survival training. PD: No. At the time I was not really involved in polar work. It was just an interest. No experience.

DOB: Okay. Tell me about approaching Antarctica. How did you get there?

PD: Let me say there's only one bad thing about going to Antarctica, and that's leaving home, and I had a young baby in the crib. That was the only bad part, and she was about two years old. My wife was very magnanimous about me going. In fact, she encouraged me. She said if she was a man, she would liked to have gone.

The United States government told us that we were to report at San Diego to go on the USS Curtiss on Christmas Eve. I said, "There's no way I'm going to leave a two-year-old baby in the crib on Christmas Eve and walk out on her." I knew exactly when the ship was sailing, so I refused to leave that night and I left on Christmas night instead!

I guess, you know, we had a royal sendoff off from San Diego. They had the Navy band, they had speakers from Washington, and it was a very elaborate sendoff. The USS Curtiss was a big ship. We had on board Dr. Larry Gould, a very famous scientist who was Admiral Byrd's chief scientist, so we had top- notch people with us going across the ocean.

A few minutes ago we were talking about Jackie Ronne and Jennie Darlington. Jennie Darlington had just written a book called My Antarctic Honeymoon, and something funny happened on this ship. There was a meteorologist from the Weather Bureau going down there by the name of Paul Humphrey, and Dr. Gould came up on the deck, Paul was reading this book, and he said to Paul, "What are you reading?" And Paul Humphrey said, "Dr. Gould, I'm reading My Antarctic Honeymoon." And Dr. Gould said, "Let me take a look at that book," and Dr. Gould took the book and he flipped through the pages and he threw it overboard. And he said, "Paul, you shouldn't be reading stuff like this."

[Laughter]

PD: But we had a whole series of lectures all the way across the ocean.

DOB: By whom?

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PD: By these VIPs, plus our staff. We had to come up with lectures. And we had training programs out there, such as how to rappel. But basically it was just a beautiful crossing. We got down to New Zealand and we met some other people who were there in the harbor of Port Lyttelton probably for about a week. The people down there gave us a great sendoff. The New Zealand people turned out; the whole dock was covered with people. It was exciting.

And then other people had joined us on the ship, like Paul-Emile Victor, the very famous French explorer scientist. And we had distinguished scientists from other countries. The reason they were aboard our ship, we were taking these people down to the ice for the dedication of the South Pole Station, and they supposedly were going to fly in to the South Pole for the dedication. So it was fun traveling with all these famous people, particularly for someone like me. I'm a hero worshipper, you know, and here I am with people like Paul-Emile Victor.

So we got to McMurdo, and the runway had deteriorated from airplanes crashing on the runway while landing, spilling fuel, and the fuel on the ice had melted right straight through. There were large holes on the runway, so there was no way that the people could get to the South Pole.

We had an ice expert on the ship by the name of Dr. Andy Assur, A-s-s-u-r, from Austria who worked in our country, and his mission was to find a way to put that runway back in shape so the planes could fly to the Pole. He did come up with a way. His way eventually was to grind up ice, put ice into these holes and it eventually refroze . . . on the admiral's birthday!

So they had to dedicate the South Pole Station at McMurdo.

DOB: Yes. And they didn't tell the people at the Pole it was even happening.

PD: Dr. Siple was very upset. He never found out until people came in to the station, as you know. So after that station was dedicated, the ship took off to go to Little America V. It was, I don't know, probably a twelve-hour trip. It didn't seem like it was very long. The sensation of going along the Ross Ice Shelf, someplace you've read about, and there it is right there next to the ship!

DOB: Tell me about approaching Antarctica by ship. What do you see and what do you feel and think?

PD: Well, I think most people that go down there certainly are fascinated by the change in bird life, and a lot of birds come around the ship. It seemed like a lot of our people had a great interest in birds. And because also, there's no way to get to Antarctica unless you're going through some pretty heavy seas. It's very seldom that you approach Antarctica, particularly the Drake Passage, without Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 7

encountering some rough weather. But our crossing was quite mild, as a matter of fact. It wasn't rough at all.

An icebreaker came out to take us through the ice pack, but the ice pack was very loose. It was all broken up. There wasn't any reason for us to have the USS Glacier come out to meet us.

But one bad thing did happen. You talked to Rudi Honkala yesterday. He was on the icebreaker, and some of those people came over to our ship, and we were transferring cargo from one ship to another.

We had a helicopter deck on the USS Curtiss, and the helicopter pilot tried to come as close to these people up on the flight deck as he could, sort of playing, scaring them. And then the helicopter took off, hit the paravane off on the flight deck, flipped over, and went into the sea. A brand new helicopter. And of course the helicopter submerged immediately. The pilot and the co-pilot got out and they swam over, grabbed onto a cake of ice, crawled up on the ice, and our ship turned around and went back and picked them up.

But that was the only thing that was unusual that happened on the way going down. It was a brand new helicopter. It cost a lot of money. It was a severe loss to the whole program.

I still go down there on cruise ships. I'm still fascinated every time I approach Antarctica. I think Ken would tell you, you know, you can't go to Antarctica without falling in love with the place. There's something about it. And Paul Siple says that once you've been to the Antarctic, you'll never be the same.

DOB: That was one of my questions. How were you different?

PD: I don't know whether we're different or not.

DOB: Well, he says you're not the same.

PD: Well, certainly in my case, my love for Antarctica continued. I think you'll see this manifested in these people all wanting to get back together. Like you're talking about the Deep Freeze reunion, we had one. We had the fortieth anniversary of the people at the South Pole a couple of years ago. And I have maintained touch with these people.

I think one of the saddest things is the number of people who have died that was down there when I was there. I don't look at it as being over forty years ago, but it was over forty years ago. It also seems strange that so many of the Antarctic Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 8

people have died from cancer. There's a lot of cancer deaths if you take a look at the obituaries.

But hey, it was very exciting to me. Nothing in my life has been more exciting than being at the South Pole, because I was there when they had the first crossing of Antarctica—the British Commonwealth TransAntarctic Expedition— and I was there. Ed Hillary of Mt. Everest fame came in and he stayed there. When he left the station, Peter Mulgrew stayed on with us.

And then Dr. Fuchs came across from the Weddell Sea side. So I saw the very first crossing of Antarctica, and Dr. Fuchs was doing more than just crossing Antarctica. He had a scientific program. He had scientists. He was originally supposed to stop about every fifty miles and take measurements. He got behind time because of having trouble with crevasses.

I thought this was extremely exciting. Seeing all these people and meeting them. Like when Dr. Fuchs got there, he stayed for five days. One of those people with Dr. Fuchs became a close friend; I was his best man at his wedding in New York. Another man, George Lowe, who was with Hillary on Everest, came here to visit me a year ago last fall. I think there's a big bonding of people who go to Antarctica.

DOB: I think you're right. Let's go back to Little America. That was your first station. This would've been in what was Deep Freeze II, the first year of the IGY.

PD: Nineteen fifty-seven. Right.

DOB: That was the first year that there were scientists, I believe, at Little America, although the station had been in existence for a year.

PD: There was one technician there the year before, a fellow by the name of Chet Twombly from Portland.

DOB: Yes. Tell me what you found at Little America on this big ice shelf and small base.

PD: I guess the most disappointing thing about the whole operation was that we had maps before we went down there showing the layout of the camp, what it was going to be like. And the antenna farm was on one side of the camp, and another area was set aside for glaciology and micrometeorology, solar radiation. We got down there and we found out that the antenna farm was right next to where we were, and I did not have shielded cables. And when they were transmitting, I would pick up RF [radio frequency interference] on my line which affected my readings. And also the same way with the radiation measurements. Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 9

DOB: What can you do about it?

PD: It was too late. I could not reorder shielded cable. I was working five hundred feet from camp. Tremendous differences in my two years. That first year, a hundred and eight people at Little America; South Pole had eighteen! And at the South Pole, there's nowhere to go. At Little America, even in the middle of winter, if you want to get away from camp you can walk down to the barrier edge, you can go down to the bay ice, you can get away. And also, with a hundred and eight people, there's going to be someone there that you're going to get along with. So there's no problem. And also, I cannot say enough about Bert Crary as a leader. He was just such a great person to be with, not only as a scientist but as a man.

DOB: What was so great about him?

PD: Well, as far as I was concerned, he was a man's man. He had a lot of experience in the Arctic. He was famous for being on T-3, Fletcher's Ice Island. And it's just the way that he ran and operated the camp. He more or less left us all alone to do our own work. And it was kind of fun. If you had to send a message back to your home office, you had to clear everything through Bert. But Bert made it also a social event. You knew he was going to approve your message, but he'd say, "Come on in my room and have a beer." So it was always fun.

We had a party every other Saturday night in the camp. And mind you, back in those days, all we had at a place like Little America V was beer. That's all. The doctor would give out a little bottle of medicinal brandy about every two weeks, you know, but there was no liquor there. No hard liquor at all. But at these parties we would have every other Saturday night, and then the doctor would put out a bottle of Old Methusalem. That was the name of the whiskey.

And what impressed me about this Bert Crary, he would go to this party, and he would seek out someone that he wanted to get information held from the Navy. And he would talk very seriously, and a lot of things got accomplished at these parties. He'd end up getting smashed, but gee whiz, these parties were a great outlet for everybody. It was always a happy camp throughout the whole year.

Also, each camp . . . you know, you talked to Rudi Honkala yesterday and he told you about how things were at his camp with Carl Eklund, who was very, very popular. Everybody loved Carl Eklund. And at the South Pole, they had Paul Siple, and he ran a series of lectures up there. And he also had the Navy and the civilians working together, where at Little America, with all our one hundred Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 10

eight people, the Navy, eighty-five in number, supported us, and the scientists did not wash dishes or anything like that.

DOB: How many scientists were there?

PD: Well, there were eighty-five Navy, so there were twenty-three scientists. And one of the beautiful things about Little America V was this was the International Geophysical Year, and Little America V truly was international. I worked with a man from Austria, as I said, Dr. Hoinkes. There was a German scientist there, Dr. Peter Schoeck. The man in charge of ionosphere was Dr. Hans Bengaard from Copenhagen. In Weather Central, there was Vladimir Rastorguev from the Soviet Union. There was Commander Jose Alvarez from Argentina. So it really was an international camp on the International Geophysical Year program. DOB: How did that work out? How did it work? Did you all work together or did everybody have their own program?

PD: Everyone had their own program. Now the largest program was meteorology, so there'd be a head man from the U.S. Weather Bureau. The U.S. Weather Bureau now is called the National Weather Service. For the first time ever, they had enough stations in Antarctica so they could draw a weather map. So at Little America V where I was, they had Weather Central. Now that Weather Central could've been in Washington, D.C. or Melbourne, it could've been anywhere. But they decided it was going to be at Little America V.

So these people were working there, they were drawing weather maps the same as you'd see if you went to the weather office in Peoria or someplace like that— upper air charts, synoptic weather maps—and they were forecasting for all of Antarctica. So yes, the big program was definitely meteorology.

DOB: And I'm assuming all of the foreign scientists spoke some English?

PD: Yes. But when the Austrian met me, he thought he could understand English. But with my coastal Maine accent on top of Boston, he threw his arms up and said, "How am I ever going to be able to understand Dalrymple?" But we worked okay.

DOB: And socially it must've been a very rich experience to have people from so many parts of the world.

PD: Yes. We only had really one man there besides Bert Crary who had polar experience, and that was a physiologist. He came from Alaska, Fred Milan, and he had done a lot of work with the Eskimos. After we'd get through our meals, we used to go into his office and just talk, and Fred (we called him "Mukluk") Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 11

would regale us with stories about working in the Arctic. It was a lot of fun. As far as I'm concerned, there was no hardship down there.

DOB: A cushy life, huh?

PD: Well, we had radio contact back home about once a month or so. As I said, the only bad part about the whole deal was leaving that night. And once you got on the plane, everyone was in the same boat. Maybe some people were single, some were married, but they had a girlfriend, they had family. They were always leaving their dear ones behind. So you couldn't feel sorry for yourself because everyone else was in the same boat, and we all had volunteered to go.

Like when you talked to Rudi Honkala yesterday, he wanted to go down there originally, as he probably told you, with Ronne, but he wasn't accepted. So there was a big difference between the first year I was there, 1957, and the ensuing years. There was a lot of older people like myself. I was classified as an old indoor worker at Little America V. That was the category the physiologist put me in!

DOB: How old were you?

PD: Let's see. I was born in 1923, and that was '57, so I hadn't had my birthday so I was thirty-three years old and classified as old indoor.

DOB: In addition to all of the foreign scientists that were there, you also had a boy scout.

PD: Yes. He was fantastic, a great kid. Later in life he became a very, very distinguished scientist in his own right.

DOB: Richard Chappell.

PD: Dick Chappell.

DOB: Yes. Chappell.

PD: He's a professor at Hunter College; he works at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in the summertime.

DOB: What did he do to earn his keep at Little America?

PD: He could write his own ticket. As a boy scout, anyone that had any need for an assistant or something like that, they had Dick to help out. He wasn't assigned to any one project. He was very, very well liked. To this day, he still maintains an Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 12

interest in Antarctic scouts. As you probably know, they send a scout down every year, whether it's a boy scout or a girl scout, and Dick Chappell is always chairman of that selection committee.

DOB: I've met him.

PD: Nice guy.

DOB: Tell me about how the scientific program was organized. This is a worldwide effort. Did you have to collect your data in a certain way or report it in a certain place so that everybody's information would feed into the broader whole?

PD: Well, they did have a United States National Committee for the IGY, and it would have like a seismology group, they would have a gravity group, and these would have top scientists from our country in it and the managing aspect was up to those people. They also had worldwide data centers, so meteorology from the IGY would go to the World Meteorological Data Center for meteorology, and it was the same for the other programs. In the case of mine, it was just my program versus Dick Hubley's up in the Arctic.

I want to say something off the record, okay? But I will say our programs in micrometeorology suffered when Dick Hubley died in the Arctic.

[Pause in recording]

PD: You've probably seen the IGY calendar, and they had what they call Special World Days and like this. They had intervals, and it's these intervals where you're supposed to concentrate on your measurements. You might be taking extra measurements during those particular periods. Of course the IGY was all set up to tie in with the sunspot activity. I presume you've read all about how the IGY came about through the cocktail party at James Van Allen's house in Silver Spring?

DOB: I have actually.

PD: And of course the man who came up and initiated the conversation that night was Lloyd Berkner, who had been a radio operator with Admiral Byrd on an earlier expedition. It was he who said, "Isn't it about time for another international polar year?"

DOB: Though there are other people who claimed to have had the idea as well.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 13

PD: Well then, of course Sydney Chapman took it from there and made it into an International Geophysical Year. Of course Sydney Chapman was a very, very well known international scientist.

DOB: How much did the weather affect what you could do or did do?

PD: At the South Pole, not at all because the South Pole has the best weather in the whole world. The wind is blowing gently all the time, the wind's blowing all the time from the same direction. It never changes. So I set up my mast so I could always climb my tower. I had to change instrumentation every day before I took my measurements. I always could climb the tower with the wind to my back. You don't really have blizzards at the South Pole, very, very seldom, never in winter.

DOB: What about at Little America?

PD: Little America, sure. You're going to have some storms because storms go right around the coast of Antarctica, if you look at it on the weather maps. And yes, you would have storms there, you would have blizzards, but nowhere near like what they experience at a station like Wilkes Station or Mawson Station. Over there, their storms are reinforced by katabatic winds coming off from the continent, so it's not uncommon . . . like the station at Mawson, they had average wind speeds for a whole year that were over fifty miles per hour—average wind speed. But not at Little America.

DOB: Were you involved with the Ross Ice Shelf traverse at all?

PD: No, I was not. Have you talked to anyone who had been on that?

DOB: Not that one. I've talked with people who have been on other traverses.

PD: Well, of course I told you over the telephone that Bill Cromie is in Boston at Harvard University, and Bill did an oral interview with Bert Crary. He was on that traverse, and Blackie Bennett at Michigan State, now retired, was on that traverse.

DOB: The German scientist, Peter Schoeck, was on that traverse.

PD: For a while.

DOB: And he did not complete it.

PD: Well, he wasn't very popular. He was the only person in camp who wasn't popular. The reason . . . you probably know . . . remember that Peter Schoeck, Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 14

to begin with, was a very macho man. He was on the cross country Olympic ski team in Germany, and his desire in World War II was to get the Iron Cross from the Fuehrer. He would go the movies in Little America, and remember, back in 1957, there were all these World War II movies. He would stay there until the Germans started losing the war, then he'd go stomping out of the theater. So he was really greatly disliked.

What happened, I guess you've probably heard, they had walked over this area, there was Hugh Bennett, and there was Walter Boyd, and Peter Schoeck. And all of a sudden, Boyd and Bennett looked and there was no Peter. There was just a hole in the snow. He had fallen in. There was some speculation among the two of them whether they should just leave him there. [Laughs] But they called up the camp, to Little America V, said that Peter had fallen into a crevasse. And Bert Crary said, "I don't want a plane coming out here right now because we don't know where the crevasses are. Until we can find out, you hold off." Well, the pilot didn't listen a bit. He hopped in a plane and he flew out there.

DOB: Was this Waldron?

PD: Yes. You talked to him? He's in Virginia.

DOB: Yes. He's written a little book.

PD: So Waldron went out there and got him. Lucky he did. The weather set in bad. If he hadn't gone out, it would've been impossible to fly a plane for the next five days. So they got Peter back to Little America.

DOB: Was he badly hurt?

PD: Yes, he had some cracked ribs. He had to go to the hospital in New Zealand, they air-evacuated him out.

DOB: And he never came back.

PD: Never came back as a scientist. He's down there right now. He lectures occasionally on German ships. We found out when it came time to pack up his stuff to go home, he had stolen things from the camp and he had them in his footlocker and he was ready to take them home.

He went to see my colleague, Dr. Hoinkes' widow, I mean wife in Innsbruck. He came home earlier after being in the hospital and he went and tried to sell her pictures of her husband. And she said, "I don't need to buy any pictures. My husband will come back." And Peter said, "Oh, your husband's not a good photographer. I'm a great photographer. You better buy my pictures." Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 15

So as I say, he wasn't well liked in camp. He was the only person I know of in my two years that wasn't liked. People were real strong about it.

We had problems . . . you know, you told me you read John Behrendt's book, so you kept reading about references to people calling in to Little America V to talk to Bert Crary. So we were well aware of what was going on over there.

DOB: At other camps, too.

PD: No. No other camp had any problems.

DOB: No. Other camps heard the problems from Ellsworth.

PD: Oh yes, I'm sure.

DOB: They all told me about it. A couple of weeks after the accident with Peter Schoeck, Bert Crary fell off the barrier.

PD: No, that was several months later. I was at the South Pole then, that happened during 1958. That's the best story about all of Antarctica . . . the funny one.

DOB: Tell me. I don't know that I know the story.

PD: The story is he was down there with Steve den Hartog. He was one of them.

[Interruption]

PD: They were establishing a hydrographic station right on the barrier edge. I don't know all the people who were there, but I know one of them was Steve den Hartog, whose father was head of the chemistry engineering department, I believe, at MIT.

All of a sudden the ice shelf calved off, and these young people—I'm saying Bert was about forty-nine at the time—and other people scurried away, but Bert got thrown into the Kainan Bay. And when he got down in the water, there wasn't any large hunks of ice to get on. So he went over and he got aboard a very small piece of ice. It was big enough for him to stand on, but it wasn't big enough for him to keep jumping up and down to keep warm or anything like that because he was afraid that thing would just go.

So they called back on the radio to the camp. Little America V was about a mile- and-a-half from the barrier edge. They called back, "Hey. Crary's in the bay. Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 16

Get a helicopter down here to get him." And they said, "All the helicopters had been broken down and they're being repaired, so there's no helicopters."

Bert Crary told the funniest story. He said here he is out on this cake of ice, and everyone in camp knew that Bert was out there, and down came the tractor train with these big sleds with all these people on it, and they all get out there with their cameras, they take pictures of him, and as soon as they take the pictures, everyone disappears. They go back to camp. [Laughs]

DOB: While he's standing there freezing.

PD: Yes. So if you take a look in a Deep Freeze yearbook, there's a picture of Bert Crary. He's at least a half-mile offshore, he's on this cake of ice drifting out to sea. They finally came down with a rubber raft, and they went out there and they brought Bert back and they got him ashore.

The funniest thing is what happened about three days later. They had a chaplain at McMurdo; they had a chaplain at Little America V. The only two stations with chaplains. And the chaplain came up to Bert and he said, "Well, that was some experience you had this week when you got cast into the Kainan Bay. There must be something there which I can use for a sermon this coming Sunday." And he said, "Perchance, do you remember what you were thinking or what you were saying when this all happened?" And Bert said, "I remember very distinctly what I was saying." And the chaplain says, "Will you mind sharing it with me?" And Bert said, "No, not at all. All I was saying was 'Oh shit, oh dear. Oh shit, oh dear.'" And the chaplain said, "That's very interesting, Bert, but I don't think we can use it for a sermon this Sunday."

[Laughter]

PD: Back in those days, this was a common story you'd hear Bert talk about. And then Steve den Hartog, who was with him, got in touch with the New York Times, and that ended up on the front page of the New York Times about Bert being thrown into the sea.

He was a fantastic leader to be associated with. He really was. I think one of the great pictures of the IGY, you talked about the Ross Ice Shelf traverse, and that was covered by Look magazine and there was a series of pictures taken out there. And there's a great picture of Bert Crary. Bert was a heck of a worker. He worked like twenty hours a day. Here's this picture of this scientist with a beard, he had a beard down there, and he—

[End Side A, Tape 1]

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 17

[Begin Side B, Tape 1]

PD: I was talking about this picture of Bert Crary, and as I say, he had a can of beer up to his ear like this. It was quite a large picture in Look magazine. Well what we did down there, we always had to take the beer and we would take the can up like this and see whether the beer was frozen or not. So that's what Bert was doing in this picture.

That was quite an interesting traverse that you spoke about with all those people out there. And then, at the same time, Jim Zumberge came down. He was very young at the time. He was president of a small college in Michigan, and he came on down. And he headed the Roosevelt Island project. Dr. Zumberge went on to become chancellor at Nebraska, he became president of Southern Methodist University, he became president of Southern California, he became head of SCAR, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, he was head of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy. I don't think anyone ever met Jim Zumberge that didn't feel they met one of the kindest persons around. A great personality, too. So he was out there the same time on the Ross Ice Shelf.

DOB: You were working all this time at Little America and also at Pole in a setting where all of the support services were done by the military, by the Navy. How well did that work, do you think? And my second question on that is how well did the scientific and naval people get along with each other?

PD: Well, I'll tell you how come they worked at Little America. We had a Navy captain by the name of Willie Dickey, Captain Dickey, and he went to Bert Crary and said, "Our Navy people are objecting to you people not doing anything outside your scientific program, so we want you to start working in the kitchen." And Bert Crary said to Captain Dickey, "That's all fine, Bill. You and I will start it off tomorrow morning." When Bert Crary said that to a Navy captain, of course a Navy captain's not about to go and start washing pots and pans, so that's how Bert handled that. Captain Dickey forgot all about it. The Navy supported us a hundred percent.

DOB: How'd you get along? Did you interact with them very much?

PD: To begin with, the scientists were all in their individual quarters, you know. We didn't share anything outside of dining together. Like Navy chiefs had their own building. It was more or less by rank. So all the scientists were in their rooms together. We didn't really have much to do with the Navy people.

I was a friend of Harvey Speed, the pilot, because he and I had a common interest in baseball. But I think most of the scientists stuck together.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 18

As I say, there were eighty-five Navy people, but I don't recall any real problems. I was there for two years. I only saw two fights in my life in two years. That's all. And the fight at Little America was between two people from the Weather Bureau who disagreed on how to code an observation. That's how minimal it was. One guy invited the other one to go outside. They went out there and they had a fight in the snow.

DOB: A real fistfight?

PD: Well . . . it wasn't anything. And I saw a very small fight at the South Pole. People had been drinking, and someone took a poke at someone. The stuff that you read in John Behrendt's book never happened at Little America; it never happened at the South Pole.

DOB: What else would you like to tell me about Little America, and then we'll move on to the Pole experience?

PD: What else can I tell you about Little America? I can tell you funny stories. Okay. Again, we go back to Peter Schoeck, who was not very well liked, and Dr. Hoinkes, my colleague, always presented himself as an expert on wine.

DOB: Schoeck or Hoinkes?

PD: No, Dr. Hoinkes, and Peter thought he would test him out. So he put vinegar into these empty brandy bottles, and he gave them to Dr. Hoinkes at a party. Dr. Hoinkes was drinking what he thought was brandy and it was that darn terrible vinegar. Dr. Hoinkes got seriously sick, and he never forgave Peter for doing that to him.

DOB: I'm not sure I would either. PD: Then there's one unsolved mystery from that whole station. It's never been solved. Peter Schoeck got a hamgram from a publishing company asking him for exclusive rights for publishing his memoirs. Well, Peter Schoeck had not kept a journal, but he got all excited about the fact that someone was going to publish his story. And he ran around to people like me and said, "When did we cross the Antarctic Convergence on the ship? Which day was it?" And he started collecting all this information about the year.

He should've known. The message was signed "Jim John Publishing Company." Peter was so excited about going to have a book. It wasn't until about five days later that . . . I don't know what brought it about, but he realized that it all was a hoax. And he ran around and he tried every typewriter in the camp to see which one had typed it.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 19

[Laughter]

PD: And until this day we do not know. I sort of accused Dr. Hoinkes of it, and Dr. Hoinkes said, "No, I didn't do it. I just regret I wasn't smart enough to have done it." [Laughs] I talked to all my friends who were sort of characters figuring they might have done it. I certainly did not do it, and I never found out who did do it. But that was the funniest thing that happened in the camp.

DOB: Well, what made you decide after a year now away from home at Little America V to go and spend a second year in Antarctica at the Pole Station and not even going home between?

PD: This was somewhat of a breach of faith on my part with my wife. I admit that. I told you I left with her blessings for one year. As I said, she was very magnanimous about my going there. Then Dr. Siple called me from the South Pole and said, "We have room for micrometeorology at the South Pole. Would anyone back at your office at Natick want to come here and take over your program?" I said, "No, Dr. Siple, there's no one back there that would want to come down here." But I told you about the problems I had here with the instrumentation. And I added, "I would like to have the opportunity to come back here myself with new equipment and do it at the South Pole."

Everybody wanted to go to the South Pole then, you know. It was the first year that anyone had been at the South Pole (when Siple was there). There was certainly a lot of interest in the South Pole, much more so than at Little America V.

I had my master's degree at the time. I had taken some other courses at Boston University, and I sent a message to Boston University. "If I go to the South Pole and conduct micrometeorology next year, will you accept my analysis of these data for my Ph.D. degree?" And they answered yes.

So this was very overpowering for me, to go for it at the South Pole. If I had used the data from Little America, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting, it wouldn't have been exciting, and there were problems with the data. I could go to the South Pole and I could get shielded cables. The data had to be analyzed anyway. So here I had a built-in program to get my Ph.D.

I sent a message to my wife about this, and the only message that came back from her, "What's God's will is God's will." She certainly wasn't in favor of it. But it all resulted from a telephone call from Dr. Siple to me. I don't know when that was initiated. I would say it was still wintertime.

DOB: Were you planning to get a Ph.D. at that time? Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 20

PD: Well, I was very fond of my dad and had a lot of respect for him. He was an educator. My father always had an interest in what I did, no matter what I did or how insignificant it was. Like I worked for the Weather Bureau out on the North Atlantic. As far as my mother was concerned, I never had an honest job in my life because I worked for the government. But my dad always thought I was doing something important, you see. [Laughs] My dad had died by the time I finished up my degree, but I wanted to do it because he wanted me to. No, as far as a degree, a degree never really meant anything to me. But it certainly helped my career at Natick.

I told you, every damn day down there was exciting for me. You go out at Little America V to change the anemometer cups every day, and there were beautiful auroras in the sky. My God! I mean Dr. Hoinkes and I went out together. We would stay out there in the field and watch the aurora for an hour at a time.

I can remember looking up in the sky one time, and it was just like a bullet or a cigar—all red. It was a very bright red. And all of a sudden, that thing exploded and the whole sky was red. Just great. These things really affected me. And I was with a nice man, Dr. Hoinkes, who appreciated the environment, too.

The man who was head of Weather Central was hand-picked by Dr. Wexler to go down there. A guy by the name of Bill Moreland, and he never went outside one single time during the whole winter. We'd come back in and say, "Bill, you ought to go out and see the aurora." He'd just grunt, you know. And then at the end of the so-called summer, the flag came down as the sun disappeared. It's down for four months, and when the sun returns, the flag goes back up. Everyone goes outside. And we said to Bill Moreland, "Aren't you going out for the flag-raising ceremony?" And Bill's answer was, "I didn't take it down."

[Laughter]

PD: So there were some people that were asked to go there. He was asked to go by Harry Wexler, and he probably never should've gone. What amazed me, I went to a scientific meeting out in Oakland, California afterwards, and this guy who was so strange down there actually turned out to be a human being. Get him back here in the States, he was a nice guy.

DOB: But he wasn't in the right place.

PD: He ran the camp . . . he ran Weather Central just like an establishment back here. The people only had ten minutes an hour to go for coffee. They were there at their desks, they were working. He was a real slavedriver. I don't know Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 21

whether you've talked to my roommate or not. Have you talked to Ron Taylor down in Washington?

DOB: Not yet. I will call him.

PD: My roommate never took his clothes off all year long. He would work at Weather Central, and he was a scholar. He had a footlocker full of physics books. He would come into the room, grab a book, go topsides in his bunk, and study physics until he fell asleep. And then he'd get up and go back to work again.

DOB: He had books but no spare underwear, huh?

PD: [Laughs] Hey. Everyone who goes down there is a little bit crazy. But the people on a whole were very nice people. There was one guy down there at Little America who was involved in an airplane crash up in Labrador in the wintertime. He was able to walk out. I don't know how many miles he walked to bring a rescue group back for that plane. In the process he froze his feet. He wanted to go to Antarctica so badly that when he took his physical, he never took his stockings off, so they never saw his feet. So he was selected and went down!

There were a lot of interesting stories about the people certainly. You know, you said there was one person at Little America V the year before—Chet Twombly. This is a funny story. We came off the USS Curtiss in a helicopter. They landed us at the camp, and Dr. Wexler was there, the chief scientist for the Antarctic. He also was the head of research meteorology for the U.S. Weather Bureau. He said to Chet Twombly—Twombly was there waiting to go home after one year—"I want you to check out Sam on the radar before you leave." And Twombly looked at Harry Wexler and said, "Harry, it's been a long year." He grabbed his duffel bag, threw it over his shoulder, and went out, hopped on the helicopter and went home!

DOB: It was time for him to go.

PD: Time for him to go. Yes. DOB: Well, let's talk about going to the South Pole. I am assuming you did that via McMurdo.

PD: Yes. One of the interesting things about that, I worked for the Quartermaster Corps and we had a scientist by the name of Sir Hubert Wilkins from Australia. He worked in my office and he came on down to help me dig up my cables. I thought Sir Hubert was very, very old at the time, but as I sit here now, I'm a lot older than Sir Hubert was when he was down there! But Sir Hubert was a great snow shoveler, and we dug up all the cables all the way back into camp. Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 22

Sir Hubert had fallen into disfavor with Admiral Dufek, and Admiral Dufek grounded him, kicked him out of the cabin at McMurdo. Sir Hubert, as you no doubt know, was the first man to fly in Antarctica, he was the first man to ever go underneath the ice in a submarine, and he was on several of his own expeditions. He was with Shackleton on his last expedition when Shackleton died in South Georgia.

Anyway, Sir Hubert was down there, so that sort of made the transition nice for me. He gave out an interview at McMurdo and said that the morale was worse than it ever was with Shackleton or Scott. And he said that the conditions were deplorable and everything. It was very unflattering for the Navy operations at McMurdo. So that is why Admiral Dufek more or less ostracized . . . .

DOB: Was it in disarray at McMurdo? You must've been there for a little while.

PD: I say this. No matter where you went back in the fifties, were we concerned about the environment? We weren't. We took things to the dump back in those days. I know. I lived in Wayland, Massachusetts. We just threw the stuff in the dump. Of course, when you build a camp like McMurdo, it's a large camp and you have to put the stuff somewhere. So they did have a large dump area there. But good God, this was the second year, they're building the place, and you can't expect it to look neat.

DOB: So his charge was perhaps not fair.

PD: I have no idea about the morale. My impression of McMurdo was how damn hot it was in those buildings. Holy God. Almost impossible to sleep.

And Sir Hubert also spoke about the heavy drinking there. He said the admiral was a drunk, and it extended all the way down through the ranks. Oh boy. So Admiral Dufek grounded him. No more flights. He couldn't go anywhere, and kicked him out of his flight quarters. So that in a way was a little bit hard for Sir Hubert. One of the things I remember about Sir Hubert was that he was an excellent speaker. At one time he was the second highest paid lecturer in this country. Only Lowell Thomas got more than he did. He used to get $5,000 a night for lecturing.

And he said, of all the explorers, he felt that Sir Douglas Mawson may have been the greatest of them all. Of course there's a certain amount of prejudice there because Sir Hubert was an Australian, and of course Mawson was an Australian. But Mawson was another man like Bert Crary. He was a physical specimen who was a very, very hard worker.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 23

An interesting thing happened, though. I wanted to go to New Zealand before going to the Pole, and they told me I couldn't go. They felt if I went to New Zealand I would never go back to the ice. Well, I would have. I wanted to go so badly, but they wouldn't let me go. So I went over to McMurdo, and Sir Hubert had a parka made by the Eskimos, and he said, "I want you to take the parka to the South Pole." And I said, "No. I don't need it. We've got beautiful parkas that were given to us by Eddie Bauer. I don't need your parka."

And then the night before I left, Sir Hubert's parka, which was made by some Eskimos in the Arctic, was folded on the end of my cot. Sir Hubert said, "I want you to take it there because this was worn by Lowell Thomas up in the Arctic when I was with him." Lowell Thomas at that time had a program called High Adventure on TV, and Sir Hubert said, "Lowell Thomas may come to the Pole, and I want him to wear the same parka he wore in the Arctic. So you take it to South Pole. If you want to bring it home, you can bring it home. If you want to leave it at the station, you can leave it at the station." "But," he said, "take it to the South Pole anyway."

So I did, and the end of the year I brought it back. I got into Christchurch, and they told me I had to go to this press conference. I went to the press conference and I walked out and I picked up an afternoon newspaper in Christchurch. On the bottom of that page it said, "Sir Hubert Wilkins dies in a motel in Framingham, Massachusetts." Well, I knew the relationship between Sir Hubert and his wife. It was, you might say, terrible. It really was. And here I am with this parka, and he had told me he had two, so I said to myself, "I'm not going to give that parka to his widow." I kept it. I didn't know what to do with it. I figured this parka belonged somewhere special.

Then a man came to Washington, D.C.—you probably remember his name, I don't, Ken—but he was with the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, and they were setting up an Antarctic wing. I said, "Would you like to have Sir Hubert's parka?" And they said, "We would love to have it." So Sir Hubert's parka is prominently displayed in the Antarctic wing of the Canterbury Museum.

KM: Baden Norris? Is that who it was? [Pause] I can't remember the fellow's name.

PD: Anyway, they've got it down there and it has my name on it as the donor. That was a little bit different.

DOB: Tell me about what it was like to fly to the South Pole in 1957.

PD: The most exciting thing that ever happened to me. If you fly to the South Pole now, you fly in a C-130, you're flying up there at 30,000 feet, you're looking down on the Beardmore Glacier. It doesn't look like much from 30,000 feet up in the Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 24

air. But back in those days, I went up in an R4D, we were flying right over the glacier, and actually the tributary glaciers on the side were above us! And Dr. Hoinkes was there with me. We were going crazy. Flying over the route where Captain Scott had walked up, and you look down and you see these crevasses close up. Tremendous!

DOB: What was the station like when you got to South Pole?

PD: It was all completed.

DOB: It had been used for a year.

PD: Been used for a year. And the same day I flew up to the South Pole, Father Dan Linehan from Boston College, a seismologist, flew up earlier that day. He took the first seismic shot ever taken at the South Pole. So he determined the thickness of the snow at the Pole for the first time!

There was only about one or two people left over from the first year. Dr. Siple had come out and I went in on the next plane.

DOB: Palle Mogensen complained that there were just too darn many visitors at the South Pole Station.

PD: Do we have to talk about Mogensen?

DOB: Well, I'll leave it to you.

PD: He was miscast. He never should've been a station scientific leader.

DOB: Why?

PD: He never went outside at all. He did absolutely nothing. The only thing he did during the winter was paint posters of nude women, and he hung them up on the garage—I thought this was terrible—he hung them up on the garage door to meet the people coming in. He was not well liked. A cohort of Ken Moulton, Phil Smith, told me he almost became station leader that year.

DOB: Oh. I know Phil.

PD: Yes. Phil Smith. But even though he was interested in the job, he turned it down.

DOB: He would've been pretty young then.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 25

PD: We all were young once. [Laughs] Phil was a Transportation Corps officer when he went down then. But once at the station, I think someone is naturally going to take over as a leader of the camp. Like on the Belgica Expedition, Cook took over. He actually was the leader of their trip. It wasn't Gerlache. The same way with the South Pole, because Kirby Hanson was a nice guy, and most of the people were meteorologists. You might say Kirby became our station scientific leader.

And the Navy doctor there, that was an interesting case. A young fellow by the name of Vernon Houk, H-o-u-k. Vernon Houk was not too popular, but he became a famous doctor afterwards. He worked for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. You will find his name in the scientific literature on medicine. He went on and became very, very well known and famous.

DOB: Well, there were only eighteen of you, you said. I counted seventeen actually on the list.

PD: You counted seventeen?

DOB: But in any case, that's a very small number.

PD: There were eighteen of us.

DOB: Okay. A very small number.

PD: Two of us were on our second year—my roommate, Mario Giovinetto from Argentina, and me.

DOB: He'd been at Byrd.

PD: He was at Byrd, right. You talk to Mario about Mogy!

DOB: Okay. I'll do that. It was much . . . well, I guess it was much colder at the Pole. It was certainly higher.

PD: The cold doesn't bother you. Gee whiz.

DOB: You didn't have trouble with the altitude?

PD: When I got there, yes. Sure. I came directly from sea level. When I got there, we were mining snow in a snow pit . . . in a tunnel which Siple had done, and that was hard work. I tell you. That Navy doctor took me down there, he'd practically kill me. You have to take the ice out with an ice ax and you get large hunks of it, you know. And every time I'd turn around, he was hitting me in my belly with a Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 26

big cake of ice to put on the sled to be hauled to the surface. I was sitting there and I said, "You son of a bitch. I want to stay here long enough to get in shape, and I'm going to take you down here and I'm going to work you." But it happened the winch broke shortly thereafter, so after that we got all our snow off the surface. And we used one of the tractors that Sir Edmund Hillary drove to the South Pole.

DOB: To get the water.

PD: Yes. Well, parachute bags—they stand about three feet high and they're about four feet in diameter. So we'd go outside, and everyone dug snow. If there's one fear in the Antarctic, it's fire. You don't worry about cold, for heaven's sakes, but everyone worried about a camp fire. So that snow melter was always full of water at the South Pole.

Another interesting thing happened at South Pole. The first Russian plane flew over the South Pole when we were there. The Russians told us what time they were coming in, what azimuth they were coming in. A beautiful plane. Jeez. Nice and shiny. It looked like it was brand new. Went by the camp, and he came back and he was below the height of the aurora tower. Unbelievable. And then he made a final pass over the camp, and he rocked the plane so the wingtips were practically touching the snow surface. And then he went . . . were you there when that plane went to McMurdo?

KM: Yes.

PD: From there they went down to McMurdo. And someone told me the pilot, when he got out of the plane was six feet six or something like that?

KM: Could be.

PD: The story I heard was that after you got down at McMurdo, you people were having a great time and having a party, and someone broke out a motion picture camera and the Russians just clammed up then. Is that right?

KM: Yes, I remember some of them going to—I think it was around Christmastime as I recall—going to church with us at McMurdo which was quite an item.

PD: You know, it's interesting how a camp like Little America V, a hundred and eight people, nothing really matters. The South Pole, eighteen people, it does matter. The camp becomes divided. And how does a camp become divided? You might think it becomes divided by scientists versus military, right? But it doesn't become divided that way at all. The only cleavage I could see was the people who liked classical music sat at one end of the table, and the people who liked Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 27

hillbilly music sat at the other end of the table. It doesn't matter whether you were Navy or civilian. That's where there was complete integration of people. Everyone talked to everybody.

DOB: Did everybody share all the work at Pole Station also?

PD: Yes, we did pots and pans and like that. We did not cook. We had the regular cook for that.

DOB: Even today, wintering over at South Pole means complete isolation from the time the sun sets until it rises.

PD: So what's new about that? You know what you're going to do before you go there. It's no shock.

DOB: Did you have concerns about that long isolation?

PD: I wanted to stay through the summer, for heaven's sakes. After two years, they wouldn't let me. They took me out of there. I wanted to have my measurements right through mid-summer. But no, I don't . . . I don't go along with this Big Eye stuff, you know, when you can't sleep. I say if you're doing your work, you can sleep anytime. I think the people that may have trouble sleeping like that, maybe they don't have enough work to do.

DOB: So you didn't worry about, oh, I don't know, a severe injury or . . . ?

PD: You don't worry about those things when you're thirty-four years old, do you? The world is a cupcake then.

KM: What about loneliness in isolation, Paul, from your family and your wife?

PD: I probably talked to my wife less than anyone because my wife was in Bermuda. I had no single-sideband contact in Bermuda, so I had to go through a radio operator in Clark, New Jersey, who was just fantastic. A very well known young lad. If you take a look at my journal, my journal is highlighted. It has the number of showers I'd taken during the year [laughs], double-cross for a shower. I also put down whenever I did my laundry. So that was a big day when you did your laundry. I also put down phone patches to my wife. I'll show it to you if you want. My journal is quite large. I put the max. temperature for the day, min. temperature for the day.

But what I said and I've said all along, I really don't want people like you looking at my journal, because I might have said something about Charlie Green one day, you know. I wouldn't really feel that way the next day. If someone picks a Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 28

journal up and reads it, they'd say, "Dalrymple and Charlie Green never got along." This wouldn't be true.

DOB: But the reader would look for a second evidence.

PD: I tell you. I got madder than hell one time in the Antarctic. I really got mad. I was furious. And the reason was, when Fuchs came in to the South Pole, he had two dog teams. And the dogs were flown out because they were spent, those dogs were almost as small as cats. They had just been run down on the trail. They were very, very small. Well, Fuchs' dogs all came from Greenland outside of one dog, and that dog was given to Fuchs by the London Zoo. And that dog was flighty. When they took the dogs off the line to put on the plane, the dog escaped. So they couldn't catch the dog.

So the Navy doctor I told you about issued an order, we're going to shoot that dog. We already had one dog. In fact, I'd taken the other dog up there as a puppy. So the Navy started chasing this dog with a Weasel trying to shoot the dog. They never could. And then the temperature got cold at the South Pole, it doesn't take long before the temperature at the South Pole is below minus 40, even in the end of summer. And the revolver wouldn't go off!

We had an emergency hut up there, and the dog would go in there. And every time I went to my equipment in the field, I took the other dog with me. Then I started stealing food from the camp, and I would take out a half a dozen hot dogs and give it to this stray dog. The other dog came up, and it got so the other dog was friendly with me, and eventually I could put a line on that dog and could walk around with the dog.

So I finally told the people at camp, "Hey. I can bring that dog in here, but you're not going to kill that dog." So it was agreed that no one would kill the dog. I brought the dog in and I tied the dog up in the passageway at nighttime. I didn't bring the dog into the buildings. I went out the next morning and someone had taken a fire ax trying to kill the dog, and they severed the rope right by the dog's neck. I got up that night at dinner, and I was furious. I gave a big speech. I was really raising hell.

So after that, I brought the dog in. The dog was with me all the time. The dog went to bed with me, the dog went to work with me. When I slept, that dog was awake. I'd wake up in the night, and that dog would be looking at me with her tongue hanging out. The only time that dog slept was when I was working.

I sent a telegram to Fuchs: "Can I bring Beauty back?" And Fuchs said, "Go ahead. The dog is yours." So when it came time to come home, I got some cortisone pills and forced them down Beauty's throat to quiet her down. When I Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 29

went out to the airplane with the dog, a P2V, the pilot said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm taking this dog home with me." And he said, "The hell you are. There's only one dog on this plane and that's my dog." He had a German shepherd aboard. You probably knew the guy, huh? So that dog wintered over for a second year!

That's the only time I really got mad in my two years down there. I think camps like that are pretty harmonious. Ellsworth's the only one where they had trouble that I know of. Certainly Honkala at Wilkes Station, those guys had a blast over there. You talked to Gil Dewart, too, right?

DOB: Yes.

PD: Gil told you the same thing, right?

DOB: Yes. So how do you get along with the same people day after day and there's no place to go to get away from them? Do you wish that there were more people or fewer?

PD: Why do you want to get away from them? Each of us had our own working routine. One guy from Argentina, he would work like hell for two weeks in a row, and then he might take off five days and just sleep.

And my routine, I established my own routine. I found out that I didn't care particularly for breakfast, so I would get up in time for lunch at noontime. And then I had to change my equipment, my instrumentation, every afternoon. I ran a series of wind profiles when the anemometer cups were clean. You get a little accumulation in these very lightweight plastic anemometer cups, and that throws off the profiles tremendously. You can see it. So I would take my measurement all afternoon and into the evening, then I would stop. I would spend the night working up the results of what I did during the daytime. I would go to bed about three o'clock in the morning.

I think everyone more or less worked at what was convenient for them. There's no one to tell you what to do. You have your own program; you do what you want.

DOB: At least one psychologist has compared being in Antarctica to being in prison. I take it you're not of that school.

PD: I was in prison camp during World War II, and it's no comparison. I don't recall ever being lonesome, for heaven's sakes. And all of my friends here from the South Pole Station . . . when we had the reunion, as I said we had the fortieth reunion a couple years ago, only one guy didn't show up. And he said when he Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 30

woke up some morning, the South Pole was the worst year of his life. And he said he woke up the next day, and he wanted to see all of us. In fact, what he did, he shot a movie down there that year and he made a video for each one of us and sent it to us. But no lonesomeness.

DOB: Not even for family? PD: As I say, the only bad time was leaving Christmastime. It's kind of tough to get home and you find a daughter who has no idea who you are. You've been gone for two years, you know. I don't know anyone that was homesick or anything like that. I honestly don't. You have a good time.

I wrote an article when I came back here for the Antarctic Society newsletter. It was when Michelle Rainey went to the South Pole—the first woman. And I wrote an article, and I said, "The end of a great era." And Bert Crary's wife wrote, "It's about time." It was just sort of tongue in cheek.

But I enjoyed . . . hey. I've been associated with men all my life, really. Out on the weather ships for over three years—that was all male. I did a little work in Greenland—that was all male. South Pole was all male. And I said there's no reason in the world why women can't do what men do. But I like the idea of being in an all-male environment. You have fun. Don't you think men have fun together?

DOB: Women do, too.

PD: Sure they do. And I said at the same time as this article, I said there's no reason in the world why you couldn't have an all-women camp, and of course they did several years ago. The Germans had an all-women camp. They did everything. There wasn't a single male there.

DOB: What if there had been women there in the '50s. What would you have thought of that?

PD: That's the toughest question you've asked me. [Laughs] What if there had been women there? I think the overpowering thing was I wanted to be in Antarctica, and I really was interested in my own program. So it wouldn't have bothered me, I don't think. I never thought of it. No one ever asked me that. But I think the overpowering thing was if you're motivated, you want to be there.

I like the environment. I live here in Maine, you know. People talk to me and say, "Gee, how can you stand Maine?" I said, "Hell, there's nothing wrong with Maine. Even in the wintertime, it's nice here." I know George Denton, a famous glaciologist at the University of Maine, he was telling me one day, "Isn't it Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 31

amazing people from Ohio state say to you 'How can you live in Maine?'" He said, "Don't tell them how good it is up here." [Laughs]

DOB: I've read a lot about the mixed feelings of winter-over parties when it was finally over and your replacements come in. There's a great excitement when that first plane lands, and then they're not so sure about it. Is that true?

PD: Well, nowadays I think you . . . so many people are going back. Like the people going to the South Pole this year, a lot of those people have been there before. Like this German . . . the scientific leader last year was a German—Robert Schwartz—and he's gone back to the South Pole. So it's not like a group of people who have never been there before. They're some who have been there. I went in to Palmer Station on a cruise station with Jeff [Rubin, another visitor] here, and it was amazing. The number of people working at Palmer who had been at the South Pole. So you have a cadre of people now—

[End Side B, Tape 1]

[Begin Side A, Tape 2]

PD: —the people coming in don't want to be told anything. They don't. I saw this at Little America and I saw it at South Pole. They resent anyone telling them how to do their job.

I learned a lesson in the Antarctic. I also worked in Thailand, and I was head of a project over there. And when my project manager came over, I said, "I know enough to get out of town. I'm going to take this man around and introduce him to people in the Thai meteorology department, Kasetsart University, but I'm getting out." I learned that from the South Pole. New people don't want to be told by the old people.

DOB: And do old people want to give it up . . . their authority and their habits?

PD: When you've been there for a year, you think maybe you know some answers, and you think they want to listen to you. They don't want to listen to you. They just want to see you get on that plane and go.

DOB: Were you ever truly scared?

PD: No. There's nothing to be scared of, I don't think. I didn't have a dangerous job. I'm not out in the Pensacola Mountains or something like that. I'm living in a nice warm quarter; my equipment is only five hundred feet from me.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 32

I tell you, I wasn't scared. Minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit is not cold because the wind is not blowing. You feel pretty good. But when you do feel bad is when you are on the mast, have to take off those big, warm mitts, and work with just gloves. You're holding onto this tower, and when the temperature is 75 below zero and the wind may be blowing 30 miles per hour, that is when it is cold. I would sometimes have to come down off the mast, warm my hands in my armpits, and go back up and finish the job. Those times the cold affected my stomach, and I wanted to throw up. But I never did!

But the combination of a relatively cold temperature with winds, that's what did me in. But I was never scared. As I say, I had nothing to be scared of.

DOB: What are you the proudest of from your experiences on the ice?

PD: I don't know if I'm proud of anything. I know what I appreciated. I appreciated the friendships I had made down there. They mean a lot. It's nice to know guys like Ken, you know. Ken and I, we weren't down there together, but we have a common bond in the Antarctic. It's kind of nice to see these people.

I'm happy with the way the data turned out. When I got back from the Antarctic, the chief scientist says, "Well, we want you to go to the University of Wisconsin and analyze the data under Dr. Lettau." And I said, "Hey. I've been away from my wife and family for two years, and you want me to take off and go to the University of Wisconsin? No way."

So I went out to see this man, I took my data with me and I showed them to him, and he was excited about it and he said he would work with me. Now mind you, this man was the top micrometeorologist in the whole world—a very distinguished scientist. And the funny thing was, during the war Dr. Lettau, a German, was a prisoner in our country in Louisiana, and I'm an American, I was a prisoner in his country over in Germany. And yet we end up working together.

DOB: That's amazing.

PD: I tell people, hey, don't we all have egos? Don't you have an ego, and doesn't Ken and Jeff? We all have egos. And certainly I'm glad that my work came out good.

DOB: Have you continued that same work?

PD: Indirectly with a program over in Thailand, because I worked for the military and I went where the military priorities were. Yes, in a way I continued in the Antarctic. The work at the South Pole was continued out at a station called Plateau. When I used to go around to talk, I used to take a big map of Antarctica and I had a big Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 33

circle. And I would tell the people, "This area represents a third of Antarctica, and there has never been a scientific station within that circle." I told Bert Crary about this, and he said, "Hey. You must be a mind reader. We're thinking of putting a station out there." And they put in Plateau Station!

Well, I was the program manager for micrometeorology at Plateau, but I never went there. I hired people from the University of Wisconsin who were students of Dr. Lettau, and Mike Kuhn, who later became one of Dr. Hoinkes' associates. So these people went down and they conducted the program at Plateau Station for three years. But my priorities then were taking me to Thailand because of the Vietnam War. So yes, you could say the South Pole Station program was continued for three more years at Plateau Station.

DOB: The upshot of the IGY was the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, and the idea was that the continent would be set aside for peace and for science. Do you think it's possible for that to continue indefinitely?

PD: I don't see any reason not to. The only conflict seems to be with the peninsula area where there's overlapping claims. And even though they supposedly have been all set aside by the treaty, there's strong nationalistic feelings certainly in Chile and Argentina. You take a look at their maps of those countries and their publications, they extend all the way to the geographical South Pole. I cannot see ever there being an issue of coming to war over it. Gee whiz. I can't see that.

DOB: Do you think they'll ever find anything so valuable there, some mineral or something, that will . . . ?

PD: I'll have to take a look at Jeff's book here. What's that say, Jeff? [Laughs] Well, I don't know. Probably eventually they will find something, but I think geologists have worked all over that whole area, and I think that these people pretty well know what's in those mountains.

DOB: One of the big issues today in Antarctica is tourism, and you know something about that. I'm interested in your read on the continent's ability to sustain increasing tourism.

PD: Well, Jeff and I both have been involved in it. And Ken also. He's gone down there with tour ships as an ice cop. The National Science Foundation put people like Ken aboard ships to see how tourists behaved. So that was his job, so he was on several ships down there watching the tourists to see how they respected the environment or if they did respect the environment on what should be done. The National Science Foundation did this for two years, Ken?

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 34

KM: Two to three, yes.

PD: But then I had a letter the other day from a lady who went with me, and she wrote Marine Expeditions. And she starts the letter out, "Shame on you." And she took Marine Expeditions to task for sending a ship down there with a capacity of six hundred and three passengers this year and making two runs to the Antarctic.

Well, like Jeff, I also work for Marine Expeditions on occasion, and I called her up. I wanted to talk to her. I said, "Hey. I don't represent the company, but Marine Expeditions still has to operate under the guidelines of IAATO [International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators] which says that only one hundred people can be taken ashore at any one time."

There's a big ship going down there with a lot of people this year, but they're not making any landings at all. The projected figure probably . . . you probably have that package of materials from Nadene Kennedy, don't you, from the tourism meeting? She prepares it every year. Do you have it?

DOB: No.

PD: Okay. Nadene [Kennedy] can give you these figures from last year's operation and projected ones. They just had a meeting in Hamburg about a month ago. Last year, for the first time ever, they did go over ten thousand tourists. Ten thousand thirty-two or something like that. And they're projecting this year fourteen thousand. But on the other hand, I talked to Denise Landau the other day, and Quark is actually withdrawing a ship that was scheduled to go down there this year.

DOB: So what do you think of all that? Is tourism a good thing?

PD: It's certainly a good thing for the tourists. I think all these ships do a pretty good job with the passengers. Don't you, Ken?

KM: Yes.

PD: Guides tell them ahead of time how many meters they have to be from a penguin or how many meters from a seal. And then it's up to people like us to make sure that these are not violated. A lot of these people are more environmentally conscious than we are. They are. They're very strong on the environment. And remember, the people who are paying these megabucks to go there, they have an interest in Antarctica for the most part. Probably the only people that are not interested in Antarctica are those who collect continents. They have to go to all seven continents. Antarctica could be an island anywhere; they would go to it.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 35

DOB: I've asked everyone this question, and I'd like your response. If you were an artist and could paint on one canvas the essence of your Antarctic experience, what would you paint?

PD: If I were an artist? What would I paint? That's a hard question. Certainly these caves . . . like you go down to Ross Ice Shelf and it freezes over, then it goes out, and you can go into these caves when it's all frozen over and you can walk in from one room to another room, just like in a cave back in the States. You have to get down on your belly and crawl, and look up and see the fantastic light overhead coming through. It's about the most beautiful thing I ever experienced. The highlights of my life, I guess, would be that. Certainly flying up to Beardmore, that would be a highlight.

And last year on a cruise ship, the very last trip, I wasn't particularly interested in a Zodiac cruise. I don't like to go on these Zodiac rides where you just ride forever. But this one we went among the most spectacular icebergs. Gee. The color . . . we just drove all the way around them. Oh, God. Just out of this world.

DOB: So you're responding to the beauty of the continent.

PD: Oh sure. I don't get excited about whales, but most of the tourists, oh my God. They go from one side of the ship to the other looking at whales. They're interesting. I go there for the beauty of Antarctica, and because I love it.

I like to talk to the passengers. I love it. If a passenger will talk to me, I will talk to them all night long. A lot of these people think I'm so damn old I was down there with Admiral Byrd. [Laughs] But I love to talk about it, and I like to talk about the history. But I don't talk about Shackleton, I don't talk about Mawson, I don't talk about Amundsen because I think where we go with the tourists down the peninsula, that those people who are down there like de Gerlache, Nordenskjold, Charcot, these people are fantastic people. And a lot of these people, unlike Scott and Amundsen and those people, like Dr. Charcot, a very distinguished doctor, Nordenskjold, a very distinguished scientist, are not just leaders, but were professional people.

DOB: I'm fascinated by how few people who went to Antarctica to do a job put themselves or their job in their painting.

PD: I have a painting—I don't know whether you saw it when you came in—of the Lemaire Channel. I hired an artist to do that painting for me, and that symbolizes the beauty of Antarctica. I just love to go through the Lemaire Channel. It's so great. Don't you, Jeff?

JR: I feel exactly the way you do about the beauty. It's just overwhelming. Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 36

DOB: I have one more question for you and that is, what haven't I asked you that you would like me to know?

PD: Well, I don't know how to answer that one, but certainly you might say the family relationship afterwards. I don't have a clue on this one really. Ask Mary Bell Bentley. Her husband's been there probably on more trips than any other modern-day Antarctic scientist. I asked her about her feelings about Charlie being there so much, leaving her, and she said, "You will never know, Paul. I'm taking that to my grave with me."

I think the people like me . . . I know I'm selfish, you know? And I knew enough not to get remarried because I am so damn selfish. But I think that probably there is a story to be written about families afterwards. And the good thing about right now is husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, they can go there together and they can work. I think this is great. They go there as a team. What a wonderful way to share a great experience than to do it with your loved one. And I feel sure, I'm selfish.

My wife said to me that I was a good guy before I went to the Antarctic. Yes. I don't question that at all. But you know, it opened doors for me. Antarctica did. I had a menial job before. I was working on camouflage maps for the Army. The worst damn job in the whole world. I had no interest. I don't have any interest in the military. But I do have interest in basic research, and that's basically what I was doing down there.

There were a couple, Suedfeld, out in Vancouver. They tried to do a study from the woman's aspect about people who went to Antarctica, and they finally gave up. None of the wives wanted to cooperate and tell.

JR: Peter Suedfeld?

PD: Yes. But you know, some fantastic things have been said by Charles Swithinbank. He just lost in wife from cancer, and he went down there. They're going to be in the next newsletter. So I think that's probably the hardest thing to get a handle on—what has happened to families as a result of going down there.

I had an idea that . . . my marriage would've gone on the rocks anyway. This probably was accelerated by Antarctica. My grandchildren. I don't fault them anything, but they aren't interested in where I've been.

DOB: They will be someday.

Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 37

PD: No, I don't think so. It becomes so important to you, doesn't it, Ken, what we've done? It really does. And you get a false sense of what you did because you enjoyed it so much.

Of course I continue this interest doing the newsletter. It was fun. And it was fun in Washington, DC because I was there, I could come around to Ken's office and ask people questions. But then I came up here, retire, and I find out it's not the same as knocking on the door and walking in and talking to the people.

DOB: Anything else? If not, it's been a great morning. Thank you so much.

PD: Thank you for coming by.

[End of interview]