Chester Segers 12 April 2001 Brian Shoemaker Diane Belanger Interviewer (Begin Tape 1 - Side A) (000) 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? 4 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. (50) 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. 7 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. (100) 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. 10 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.