One Small Step, A Bittersweet Anniversary

This essay first appeared on Stonekettle Station on July 20, 2009, the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. Nothing has changed since.

 

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Houston, Tranquility Base here…the Eagle has landed.

Forty-five years ago today, the entire world listened as Neil Armstrong spoke those words from the surface of the Moon.

Eagle, that fragile tinker-toy of a spaceship, had just set down on the dusty regolith of the Mare Tranquillitatis and it wasn’t just Mission Control who had been holding their collective breath, but the entire population of planet Earth – with those words, we all started breathing again.

In that one moment, the entire human race was as close to united as it has ever been, black, white, brown, yellow and red, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheists, and agnostics, from the most sophisticated rocket scientists at NASA and Star City to the most primitive bushman, capitalists and communists and socialists and the left and the right and the undecided all stared at the moon in abject wonder and shivered at the smallness of man against the vast and terrible backdrop of the universe. They cried and they cheered and they hugged random strangers in the streets. They marveled at what men could do if only they dared dream big enough and they all wished the crew of Apollo 11 Godspeed.

A few hours later we watched as Armstrong and Aldrin opened the hatch and descended the ladder and made the first foot prints on the surface of a world other than Earth.

There was a silver plaque mounted on the side of the LEM’s descent stage, it said:

Here, men from the planet Earth
first set foot upon the moon

July 1969 A.D.

We came in peace, for all mankind.

Beneath those words were the signatures of Apollo 11’s crew, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, and the President of the United States, Richard Nixon.

It was as if ten thousand years of recorded history, of centuries of scientific advance, of decades of effort, and the dreams of millions had come together in that one moment solely in order to place that message on the surface of another world. You could feel it. Hell, even as a seven year old kid, I could feel it. In that moment the world was different – men had walked upon the surface of another world and everything was about to change. Before that pivotal event our dreams had been limited to the near horizons of Earth, but in that moment our vision was limitless and the whole universe spread out before us. Mars would be next, and the moons of Jupiter, and then Saturn. There was talk of ships that could lift whole colonies, hundreds of people, into space, Orion, rising on a column of atomic fire and even of an unmanned probe to the near stars, Daedalus.

Men had walked on the Moon and there was nothing that we could not do.

It sounds impossible now, ships like Orion, giant stations in orbit wheeling against the stars, colonies on the moon, on Mars – but in 1969 it didn’t seem so. Less than eight years before, John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech, “We choose to go to the Moon. We chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard!” Damn straight. And we did. We kept the promise and the vision of a murdered president, a promise made in one of the darkest hours of our history, the Cuban Missile Crisis. We kept the promise despite the turmoil of that terrible decade, the battle for civil rights, the radically changing culture, the Cold War and the Vietnam War and the threat of imminent nuclear Armageddon. And in less than nine years we went from barely making it into low Earth orbit to the Moon itself.

We choose to go to the moon, you damned right we do.

In 1969, nothing seemed impossible. We would walk the surface of other worlds, we would build our homes there and birth our children there and dream our own dreams. People believed.

Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins came home to parades and the adulations of billions. Six missions followed them to the moon, five landed.

But, by 1974 it was over, all of it.

The hippy dreams of the sixties were lost in the reality of drug addiction and venereal disease and Charlie Mason, Nixon had resigned in disgrace, and we had retreated from Vietnam leaving 50,000 of our countrymen dead on the battlefield. And in far less than five years flights to the moon had become so routine, so boring, that they weren’t even covered by the media. In that five years the dreamers and the engineers and the scientists and the astronauts and the men with the Right Stuff were replaced with accountants and administrators and bureaucrats and those with no imagination.

Somewhere in that five years the dreams of 1969 died and no one even noticed.

The last men to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt, lifted off in their ship Challenger from the Sea of Serenity on December 14th, 1972. And when they, and Command Ship pilot Ron Evans, returned to Earth in America, it would be the last time human beings would leave low Earth orbit.

There were supposed to be three more missions, Apollo 18, 19, 20 – and follow on programs after that, building on the success of Apollo.

The ship that would have become Apollo 18, a fully operational moonship, rests on its side now, moldering and covered in bird shit on the grass in front of Johnson Space Flight Center – The mightiest machine ever built by the hands of man, a ship designed to land men on the surface of another world and bring them home safely again, the culmination of the skill and daring and dreams of millions is now nothing more than the largest and most expensive lawn decoration in the history of mankind. A testament to failed dreams and the cowardice of politicians and the small horizons our children are born beneath today.

Pieces of the ship that might have become Apollo 19 rest now in a similar display on the lawn in front of Kennedy Space Center. That display is made of bits and pieces, some operational and some not, a junk sculpture made from the debris of our dreams, things that could have been and never were.

Apollo 20 was never built, the command module and lunar modules were scrapped, the uncompleted carcasses dumped in a landfill. Pieces of the Apollo program were locked away forgotten in dusty storerooms or sold off to museums. Some components were later used for Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous – sort of like using a semi-truck to deliver the mail and just about as foolish and wasteful.

I’ve been to the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and I’ve seen the Apollo 11 Command Module, Columbia, scarred and pitted, resting beside the great machines of history, the Wright Flyer, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Bell X-1, the Voyager, and Spaceship One and the sight brings tears to my eyes for all the things man has dared and done. And I’ve been to Florida and Texas and I’ve seen our future out there rusting in the sun and the rain and the sight fills me with revulsion and disgust and sadness for all the things we could have done, and did not.

As a kid, I heard great men say that the stars would belong to my generation, I watched brave men walk on the surface of another world and dared to believe that I too would do so some day. That belief has filled me with wonder my whole life and driven me to far ends of the Earth in search of adventure and mystery and far distant shores. That desire filled me with great dreams and instilled in me a belief that men can achieve anything if they only believe, if they only have the courage to try, if they only have the will to seek new horizons and push the edge of the safe and the known. I firmly believe that the meek shall inherit the Earth, and that they are welcome to it - but the rest of the universe belongs to those willing to risk all in order to see what is beyond the next hill.

As a teenager, I watched cowardly men protest that the cost was too great and the price too high, and I watched those selfish fearful sons of bitches dismantle the space program and turn our future into lawn ornaments. I wondered then, and I still wonder now, how if we cannot afford to build a future for all of mankind how then can we afford to spend twice as much in order to build those weapons that would destroy all of mankind? In the last thirty years we Americans have built exactly five manned spacecraft. Five, and one of those only as a grudging replacement for the lost Challenger. Columbia we chose not to replace. America relies now on Russian built craft and has no manned ships of her own at all. In the last thirty years however, we've built thousands of nuclear bombs. Thousands. We've built hideously expensive invisible airplanes that we can't even use. We are even now dismantling many of those bombs and missiles and I am grateful that it is so, but, my God, the colossal waste, the colossal folly of it all. Funny that we can afford to build our own destruction, but not our own future. Funny, and tragic, and ironic, isn’t it?

As an adult I’ve watched our halfhearted efforts to stay in space, to keep thirty year old technology flying, and build a space station that instead of housing thousands, or even hundreds, or even tens, can barely support three - ironically the same number who went to the moon in a tiny capsule four decades ago and the same number who flew onboard Skylab twenty five years ago. Three seems to be the limit of NASA’s vision. As an adult I've watched as robots and machines roll across alien land in place of the men and woman who sent them, and it is no more exciting or inspiring than watching a video game. As an adult I’ve watched my dreams fade and die and know that I will never walk the surface of another world, and yet I look up there at the moon and still dare hope that some day we will see the lights of cities shining back from that shadowed crescent.

You know, it wouldn’t bother me so damned much if we had tried and failed. But we didn’t fail. We did it, we went to the moon, we could have gone to Mars and beyond.

And then we just quit.

We gave up.

Forty-three years ago, we turned our backs on Kennedy’s vision. We didn’t do the things that were hard. We did the easy part, and then we walked away. And I see that legacy all around me here in America today, the failure to face the challenges, to take the difficult roads, and do the things that are hard. We argue and squabble and hate each other, we spend our time trying to tear down what others have built and instead of driving forward into a future that we have forged, we cower in fear. Instead of following the men and women of vision and daring, we listen to the counsel of those small minded fearful men who admonish us not to dream.

My son, like most of his generation, has no interest in space. His school, though a fine place it may be, does not have the classrooms decorated with pictures of the men and the ships and the planets and the stars. There are no big dreams, no great national goals to galvanize his generation.

For these kids it’s not that the dreams have died, it’s that they never were.

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"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just say what I believe history will record, that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander.

The last man to walk on the moon, December 14, 1972.

Same Sex Marriage, I Don’t Get It.

You know, I just don’t get it.

I really don’t.

This week, Maine, a state known for its tolerant liberal attitude and a place where “live and let live” is an old old saying, joined thirty other states in banning marriage between certain members of its population.

Like the rest of the dubious majority to which Maine now belongs, the ban was approved by a majority of its voters, 53% of them – well, 53% of the voters who bothered to turn out anyway.

However, the majority of Mainers, unlike a rather large number of Californians and Midwesterners, don’t seem out and out homophobic per se – though as a practical matter, it is rather obvious that they are. The chief opposition, by and large, didn’t vocalize as bigoted screeds by religious leaders decrying the flaunting of God’s will – which apparently only they are personally privy to. The Mormons didn’t descend en mass on the state - declaring marriage a sacred sacrament between a man and four or five fifteen year old girls who may or may not be his first cousins. Evangelicals largely didn’t flood the airwaves with dire threats of fire and brimstone and Angry Tearful Jesus and admonishments to keep homosexuality where it belongs – as secret affairs for outwardly straight married conservatives in deep, deep denial. Opposition didn’t really manifest in the sanctimonious bloviating of conservative politicians bemoaning the “gay agenda” to deconstruct traditional American values – traditional values being, so far as I can tell, tractor pulls and the shooting of holes in every single road sign along the nation’s highways. Nor did the majority of the opposition consist, as it did in California, of the Pollyannaism of community leaders hysterically predicting that same-sex marriage is a gateway drug to free range bestiality, legalization of pedophilia, and dogs and cats living together in anarchy. All these opposing positions were there certainly, but they weren’t front and center the way the hatred and bigotry and out and out lies and deliberate spontaneously generating and perpetuating falsehoods were during the Prop 8 battle in California.

No, the principle argument against equality for all in Maine seemed to be the fear that “they” would start teaching “gay-marriage” in the schools.

You may use your imagination to insert my Pilot to Co-pilot, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over? face here, if you like.

I don’t get it.

Teach gay marriage in school?

Teach it how?

Like in home economics or something?

Would there be role-playing like for traditional hetero relationships? Some high schools have a class where a boy and a girl are paired up in a “marriage” and given a “baby” – sometimes a doll, sometimes a five pound sack of flour – to care for. It’s supposed to impress on them the challenges of parenthood and marriage. Is this what the opposition means? Girls would be paired up and forced to experience simulated lesbian lifestyles full of hand woven natural fibers and Veganism? Would they spend a week hating men and referring to the cheerleading squad as gender traitors? Would the boys be required to select a simulated same-sex life partner and forgo football for a selection of fabulous shoes and a fieldtrip to the Pink Carousel for virgin daiquiris?

Is that what the opposition is talking about when they say “teach gay marriage in school?”

Or do they mean that it would it be more like how the Christian Conservatives keep trying to sneak their bible into the public schools through the Trojan horse of “Intelligent” Design? Is that what they’re afraid of, that secret pervasive gay agenda? The damned homosexuals want to add Interior Design to shop class maybe? Do they want to teach the controversy? Will they insist that fabric swatches and pastel color wheels be added to the Auto Body Repair class? Will they repaint the gym with rainbows?

I can understand if that’s what the Christian Conservatives mean, because, really, who would know better than them about hidden agendas in the public schools. Right?

Or is it that what they really mean is the schools might teach the realities of actually being gay in America? The hate. The fear. The discrimination. The brutality. The bigotry. The shame. The ridicule. The denial of rights. The isolation. The second class citizenship. The death threats and the actual deaths at the hands of their smugly, morally superior Christian neighbors? How, in the freest nation in the world, yet another group of people has been marginalized by the tyranny of the majority? Perhaps the role-playing class could include a scenario where a hetero couple is arbitrarily denied a marriage license because the rest of the class doesn’t approve of their pairing, or better yet maybe the class could select a “Mathew Sheppard” from one of their number, beat him to death, and leave his battered corpse hanging on a fence in front of the school.

Is that what the opposition really means when they say they are afraid that the schools will be forced to teach gay marriage? Again, I can understand that, if that’s what they mean. Because we certainly wouldn’t want our children to learn about that, would we? I spent my entire life in the military, you want your foot soldiers to fight, to kill, to hate, you don’t want them to see the opposition as human. You sure as hell don’t want your kids empathizing with gays, they might give up the good fight and find a way to live peacefully with their neighbors. Certainly, I can understand why Christian Conservatives wouldn’t want their kids to learn about the reality of being gay in America.

Or when they say “teach gay marriage in school” do they mean that including a line in a textbook like, “In the United States of American, the Constitution guarantees every citizen the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to equal protection under the law, to full and equal participation in society, freedom from persecution, and the right to live their own lives as they see fit without regard for other’s religious beliefs” will somehow make their kids turn gay?

That’s it, isn’t it?

That’s what they really fear.

If their children learn that it’s OK to be who you are, without fear, without shame, well, they just might be who they are. Happily.

And we sure as hell wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Yeah, I don’t get it.

I don’t get it at all.

Grand Haven, Michigan

Here, have a couple of panoramas from my recent trip to Michigan:

The original images the pans were created from were taken in Grand Haven, Michigan. I was walking on the South Pier, which is part of the boat channel where the Grand River empties into Lake Michigan. A pier and lighthouse have been there since the early 1800’s. Ships sailing the Great Lakes could reach as far inland as Grand Rapids, and timber and the products made from it often made their way down this waterway to the Lakes and then to Chicago and the rail roads there or more likely the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence Seaway and from there, well, they went everywhere. Products from Michigan’s glory days of Furniture and Timber can be found all over the globe even today.

The current lighthouse and foghorn building at the pier head were both built in 1905 and are a fixture of the Michigan shoreline. I spent a lot of my childhood and teen years there and have fond memories of the place.

This first pan is from the boardwalk looking North East up the Grand River boat channel. I love the sky in this picture. That big white building on the far side of the channel is the original Grand Haven Coast Guard boathouse, primarily a surf rescue station built nearly a century ago. It’s privately owned now and in need of repair. The new Coast Guard Station is down the channel a mile or so. The Coast Guard has a long and distinguished history on the Great Lakes and there are few Lake sailors who aren’t glad of their vigilance and dedication. Every year Grand Haven hosts the Coast Guard Festival in their honor. There’s a reason why so many Guardsmen come from the Great Lakes.

Grand Haven’s famous beach is to the right, out of frame.

The second pan is from the South Pier itself, just short of the pierhead (the end of the pier farthest into the lake) and the famous foghorn building. The pier juts out from the boardwalk in the previous picture, with the beach off to the right and the Grand River to the left. The iron walkway running down the center of the pier was used by the lightkeepers when the lighthouse and foghorn building were manned. Lake Michigan can be a very violent place during storms – the waves, containing giant chunks of ice during winter before the lake freezes, can and do wash completely over the pier, sometimes in walls of foaming white water ten feet high with hundreds of tons of force behind them. In the winter the pier and its facilities are often coated inches thick in ice and it’s worth your life to walk out there. Dozens have been swept to their death over the years. The walkway once ran all the way to the beach and was used to reach the lighthouse and foghorn building during such storms. The Light and Signal were automated in 1969 and the walkway became superfluous. When I was a kid, the wooden decking was still there, but it has since been removed and the iron framework sealed off from the public. The lighthouse itself is located mid-pier on a large concrete foundation. It is made from cast iron plate held together with large rivets. It was built by the American Bridge Company in 1905 and stands 51-feet tall at the light. The original 6th order glass Fresnel lens was given to the city of Grand Haven when the light was upgrade with a modern plastic lens.

This last picture is of the foghorn building at the head of the pier. The building itself is often mistaken for a lighthouse, this is incorrect. There is a pier head marking light and the red right channel marker, but the cupola on top was an observation deck and housed the original steam powered foghorn. The building itself was built to house the boilers that powered the horn, it is a wooden framed building covered in thick corrugated sheet metal. Fog is a major navigation hazard along the coast of the Great Lakes and signals like this are of vital importance to the lake traffic. In the days before GPS, and even today, the Grand Haven fog horn has guided countless vessels to safety when the the thick gray pea soup of Michigan fog covered the water like a cotton blanket and sailors could barely see the foredeck let alone the beach. Note the concrete breakwater and massive foundation the building sits on. See how the water facing portion rises up like the prow of a ship? It’s designed to break the waves that slam into the end of the pier during storms, breaking the force of the water so that it doesn’t rip the signal building off its foundation and fling it into the channel. The shear size of that battlement should give you an idea of the awesome power of the storms that form on this coast. Note in particular the damaged concrete along the base and the rim, ice does that, waves do that. Trust me, you don’t want to be out where I’m standing to take this picture when those storms hit.

The Grand Haven Light and the Foghorn Building are iconic symbols of Lake Michigan and Grand Haven, there are few Michiganders who don’t recognize them immediately. This has been true for nearly five generations. Both the Light and the Signal have marked the Grand Haven channel for over a hundred years and still faithfully guide the boats and ships of Lake Michigan to this very day.

As are all working US marine navigation signals, the Grand Haven Light and Foghorn are the responsibility of the United States Coast Guard.

But not for much longer.

The maintenance and operation of historic Lighthouses and signals are a major drain on the budget and manpower of the Coast Guard and eat up a significant amount of assets that could be better used to protect the public. This year both the lighthouse and the signal building are up for sale under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. When a buyer is found, the Light will finally go dark and the foghorn will sound for the last time. The pier with its light and signal will pass into private hands to be preserved for future generations. Oh, there will still be a Coast Guard Light and Signal where the Grand River empties into Lake Michigan, but they will be modern automated technology and far easier and cheaper to maintain and operate.

It was good to see the place one last time before it becomes nothing more than a historic landmark.

It saddens me that it should be so. It makes me feel old.

But truthfully, as sad as it is to see this piece of the Great Lakes pass into history, it is for the the best.

I’m hoping that someone, the city of Grand Haven itself, or more likely a historic preservation group, will buy the Light and the Signal Building and turn them into a museum – and finally open them for tours to the public. Because in all the years I’ve been coming here, the one thing I’ve always wanted to do was see the inside of both buildings.

Working signals are national assets and are rarely open to the public, the Coast Guard has never allowed the public inside the Grand Haven Light.

That may be about to change.

The Alaska Territorial Guard: A Debt of Honor Unpaid (Updated)

ATTENTION BLOGGERS, PUNDITS, AND NEWS MEDIA

This article is the intellectual property of Jim Wright and Stonekettle Station, it is protected by copyright.

I explicitly do not give permission to quote this article solely in order to attack the President of the United States or to make any other rightwing political point. Period and no exceptions. And I explicitly do NOT give permission to use my words to praise former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin in any way whatsoever.

Let's be honest here, not one of you conservative pundits gave a good Goddamn about these people either, none of you did a damn thing to bring this matter to the attention of the American people, and none of you actually care now - you're only using this to attack the current administration. So save your outrage and self-righteous indignation and leave my words out of it. You're welcome to your hypocrisy, but you can do it without quoting me. Clear?

You may quote me, providing you quote only a brief passage (one or two lines), give a link to this article, AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA DID NOT CREATE THIS MESS.

While I absolutely DO NOT agree with Obama's current veto of this bill and I find it unacceptable, the plight of the ATG is the result of 70 years of bad policy by both republicans and democrats. I.e. There's plenty of blame to go around. Laying it at the feet of the current president or claiming that it's part of some greater anti-military liberal agenda only clouds the issue further. And it should be noted that one of the principle people leading the fight to restore full benefits to the members of the Alaskan Territorial Guard is Senator Mark Begich, a liberal, and a member of the Democratic Party.

Acknowledge the actual situation as it exists and don't use my words to further your agenda, and you may quote me in accordance with fair usage as defined by US copyright law. Otherwise, don't.

This applies to both liberals and conservatives and any damned body else. This means you.

If you feel that you should be granted some kind of exemption or you have questions regarding exactly what you can quote or not quote, you may email me at the address on the main page of Stonekettle Station and we'll discuss it.

- Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station.

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In 1937, US Army Chief of Staff, General Malin Craig, said “The mainland of Alaska is so remote from the strategic areas of the Pacific that it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which air operations from there would contribute materially to the national defense.”

Less than five years later, General Craig was proved rather obviously and painfully wrong.

General Craig retired in 1939, relieved by General George Marshal, and while Craig’s attitude towards the Alaskan territory was significantly shortsighted, he can be forgiven for it. Craig was by no means a fool, instead he was a highly decorated and experienced soldier who demonstrated commendable courage and leadership during the St. Mihiel and Argonne-Meuse Offensives in World War I . He was recalled to active duty in September of 1941 and served honorably until his death on July 25th, 1945. He was buried with honors in section 30 of Arlington National Cemetery where he rests to this day.

Craig’s military assessment of the Alaskan Territory was typical for his time, i.e. the intra war period of the 1930’s. The territory was remote and by and large inaccessible (there were no roads to Alaska then and damn few roads inside Alaska, and few ports - none of which were deep water). Alaska’s vast resources were mostly unknown then, the easy gold deposits were long gone and little else mattered except maybe a small amount of platinum and some silver. General Craig was also a product of the so called Mahan Doctrine – the military philosophy adopted by all major powers of the time and named for Naval Academy strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, which basically said that a nation’s ability to define its own destiny was vested in sea power, or more specifically in capital ships, i.e. Battlewagons. Nations of the time were embarked in a race to see who could build the biggest and most powerful fleet of battleships without going bankrupt. WWI had also taught men like General Craig that if you didn’t want to get bogged down in the trenches of France and Belgium, you’d better have a big, powerful mechanized army – i.e. tanks, and lots of them – and this also was part of the Mahan Doctrine, because in order to move those tanks and the rest of your troops and equipment and supplies, you needed a powerful fleet to protect the transport ships. If you’re paying attention, you should now understand why Germany built all those U-boats and why Craig himself was responsible for the single largest modernization effort in US Army history (which led in no small part to US military superiority during WWII).

However, what Craig and the other Western military men of the time didn’t know, was that the Mahan Doctrine was utterly obsolete – and had been since 11:02 on the morning of January 18, 1911. On that cold, crisp winter morning in San Francisco harbor, a tall skinny daredevil named Eugene Burton Ely, a pilot with the Curtiss Aircraft Company, landed a Curtis #2 Pusher on the deck of the heavy armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania AC-4. Fifty-four minutes later, he took off again (scared shitless - he wasn’t afraid of crashing, but rather of drowning - Ely couldn’t swim and was terrified of water) and changed the world. Naval aviation was born. It took thirty years of development, thirty years to train the pilots, build the planes, build the aircraft carriers, and to work out the techniques. During most of that time, General Craig’s time, aviation was regarded as a military support function by Western militaries and not a combat function – the term “Air Superiority” and the concept it embodies hadn’t been conceived of yet – in the West.

All of that changed on the morning of December 7th, 1941, when the Japanese, striking from ships steaming hundreds of miles away, dealt a devastating blow to the US Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. In that single moment the military philosophies of Alfred Thayer Mahan and General Malin Craig were violently demonstrated to be long obsolete. The weapon of the modern age would be airpower, long range airpower – and suddenly, Alaska was was very, very important indeed. Not to just the US, but to the Japanese who invaded the Aleutians and began pushing toward the mainland.

The US military suddenly found itself fighting on a dozen fronts, the Marines and Navy in the Pacific, the Army in Europe, and the Navy and Coast Guard in the North Atlantic (it would be five years before the US Army Air Corps would become the new US Air Force). There was little to spare for Alaska, but the territory had to be defended. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the Alaskan Canadian Highway, a muddy rutted jeep track built by Buffalo Soldiers and other units of the USACE. A deepwater protected port, Whittier, was constructed on a shelf blasted out the solid granite mountains on the western edge of Prince William Sound and a 2.5 mile long tunnel was blasted straight through the base of the mountains to connect the new port to the growing military city of Anchorage. Island fortresses were built on Kodiak and on Adak and Shemya in the Aleutians. New airfields were blasted from the wilderness at Richardson Field, Greely, Delta, King Salmon, Cold Bay, and a hundred other places so remote that most Americans had never even heard of them. That vast effort and the heroism of that long ago time is part of the history of Alaska – it changed the very fabric of the territory and led directly to statehood in 1959. All of us Alaskans today benefit from those efforts, from the Alcan, and Whittier, and the railroads and airfields and the roads.

But it wasn’t enough, not back then.

See, despite all – there was still Alaska itself. It is a vast and powerful land, rugged and unforgiving. The troops who came to defend the territory in 1941 were in large part unprepared. Their equipment was ill-suited for the harsh environment, much of it failed or was simply overwhelmed by conditions that can freeze 80-weight differential oil solid as amber. Their training in cold weather survival was inadequate, many suffered serious cold related injuries. Veterans of the Bulge speak of that horrible winter in the black forests of the Ardennes, but the troops who braved Alaska’s brutal winters to fight in the Aleutians often had it far worse – though their tribulations are largely forgotten today.

And so the Army set out to find a solution – something to protect the vital Alaskan coastline and patrol the remote areas, something to give early warning in the event of a Japanese threat to the critical Lend/Lease corridor to Russia, something to train the troops in arctic survival and operations.

And they found it.

They found their solution in the remote and isolated villages of the Aleut, the Yupik, the Athabaskan, the Inupiaq, the Tlingit, the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Eyak, and the other native Alaskan peoples. Incorrectly called Eskimo Scouts, the Alaska Territorial Guard was formed from mostly native Alaskan volunteers. Both men and women, the oldest 80 and the youngest 12. From 1942 to 1947 these unpaid volunteers from 107 native communities patrolled Alaska. Officially there were 6,368 of them, unofficially it was more like 20,000. These men and woman rallied to a flag and a cause that was largely not their own. They learned to fight and to shoot and to operate Army equipment and they did it so well that battle hardened veterans from Outside were often left in awe of their abilities, dedication, and perseverance under some of the harshest conditions on Earth. The members of the Alaskan Territorial Guard, the ATG, managed weapons and ammunition stores for the Army, trained themselves in drill and firearms and tactics, managed communications and transported equipment under conditions that no others could function in, constructed buildings and support facilities including airstrips and ports, conducted coastal surveillance and long range extended patrols on foot, broke hundreds of miles of wilderness trails, cached emergency stores and ammunition for the Navy, performed land and sea search and rescue of downed airmen and shipwrecked sailors, and directly fought against the enemy in the Aleutians. The ATG was commended for shooting down a number of Japanese bomb balloons and remote surveillance radiosondes and for the difficult rescue of downed airmen from planes that crashed on the arduous journey to Siberia in the Russian Lend Lease program. Members of the ATG also performed medical care for wounded soldiers at a field hospital in remote Kotzebue. And above all, the ATG provided training to the regular army in cold weather operations – training that saved thousands of lives and who’s legacy continues to this day for the troops who guard Alaska and its vital resources.

Though heroic, the efforts of the ATG are long forgotten by history, just another footnote in a time of chaos and war. The bases they built molder on the shores and in the interior, I’ve walked through the ruins of many and marveled that men could carve such places from the wilderness. I’ve stood before the monument at Soldier Summit in the Yukon, the Military Memorial on the Parks Highway just south of Denali National Park, and before the monument on Attu at the far end of the Aleutians – and stood in awe of those who rallied to a banner not their own and swore to give their lives in defense of a desperate nation that barely even acknowledged their existence and called them Eskimos instead of by the true name of their peoples.

But because they were volunteers, and because they were natives and members of the ATG – the Army did not recognize them as true soldiers. After the war they were largely forgotten by the outside world, and many returned to their homes. But some, some continued to serve and they didn’t forget us, in 1959 many former members of the ATG were the driving force behind Alaskan Statehood. And former native members of the ATG were instrumental in the implementation of racial equality within the ranks of the army and within Alaskan communities.

In 2000, largely due to efforts by former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, a bill was signed into law ordering the Secretary of Defense to issue Honorable Discharges to all members of the Alaska Territorial Guard. The bill was intended to repay the debt of honor we as a nation owe these people, these Americans, and provided many of the surviving members (now in their 80’s and many living far below the poverty line) with retirement pay and survivor’s benefits and medial care. However history views Ted Stevens it must be noted that he was largely responsible for righting a dishonorable and inexcusable injustice. However, the story of the ATG doesn’t end there – most of the elderly surviving members of the ATG live in remote and inaccessible locations. Finding them was long and difficult. In 2003 Colonel Bob Goodman USA(ret), undertook the effort to find and assist the remaining members of the ATG, at first funded by the state and later out of his own pocket. So far he and his people have located over 150 former members of the ATG, and they estimate there are several hundred more – and they continue their efforts to this very day. Many of those located in the last five years have since died of old age. For those who remain, the benefits provided aren’t much, some medical care and a couple hundred dollars a month, but for folks who now live far below the poverty line in villages where gasoline costs more than $10 per gallon – those benefits mean the difference between life and death.

Those benefits, that mere pittance in retirement pay, would seem to be the least we can do for those forgotten veterans of that long ago conflict.

It would seem to be the very least we could do.

But it’s not.

It turns out we could actually do less.

It turns out that the Army could suddenly decide, say yesterday in fact, to reinterpret the law to read that these men and women of the Alaska Territorial Guard, these men and woman who came to defend our nation in its time of need, these men and women who fought bravely for a flag not even their own, who built the roads and the airfields and the hospitals and the bridges and who rescued downed airmen and stranded sailors and braved the cold and the isolation and the horror of war – these men and women – are not, in fact, entitled to even that small effort.

That’s right. The Army has decided to cut off retirement pay for the twenty-six surviving members of the ATG. Twenty-six, and applications from thirty-seven more identified by Colonel Bob Goodwin and his people have been suspended. Apparently we can not afford to take care of even this small handful of people, this small handful of veterans, this small handful of Alaskans, this small handful of Americans.

However, in a good hearted move, the Army will not seek to recoup past payments.

Big of them, wouldn’t you say?

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Update: In response to some seriously bad publicity in the press and on the net, and following a visit by an Alaskan congressional delegation, Army Secretary Pete Geren has decided to do the honorable thing. Because that's just the kind of guy he is, apparently. Secretary Geren has ordered the Army to dip into emergency funds and issue a one time only payment, equal to two months retirement pay, to the ATG members who had their retirement pay cut off last week.

No mention of why it took a congressional demand, letters to the President, and a shitload of bad press to get the Army to behave in accordance with their professed core values of honor and duty. Funny how the funds were found to pay this debt only after it looked like it might negatively impact unpopular wartime recruiting efforts. Oopsy, should have seen that one coming. Also funny how this emergency payout costs less in total than the new furniture and carpeting the Secretary and Joint Chiefs get in their offices every two years, or the cost of those motivational posters they think are so fucking inspiring, or the gardening bill for one flower bed outside the Pentagon, or the cost of fuel to fly the Admiral's private Gulfstream III over to this year's Tail & Hookers convention, or one of those spiffy static displays in front of every Air Force Base in the world, or one paycheck to the average Haliburton contractor washing towels in Bagram, or...oh, fuck it, nevermind. I suppose I should be glad that it happened, even sullenly and under duress.

Supposedly this one time payment, gives Congress time to fix the law permanently. We'll see.

Meanwhile? Meanwhile there's still 300 hundred surviving members of the ATG out there.

Army honor does't seem to extend that far though.

Forgive me if I'm somewhat less than impressed.

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* Alaskan Senators Lisa Murkowski (R) and Mark Begich (D) are preparing legislation to restore full retirement pay to the surviving members of the ATG who qualify, and they have sent a letter to President Obama asking him to directly intervene. The fact that this should be necessary is a disgusting travesty. The nation, and the Army in particular, owe a debt of personal honor to these men and women – and an apology. I strongly urge you to write to your congressional representative and demand that Congress clearly amend the law and require the Army to repay this debt

Update: Additionally, I think the CINC should order the Army to search out and contact every surviving member of the ATG and inform them of their rights in person. There's plenty of Army in Alaska, plenty of helicopters and plenty of uniformed bean counters. Cost? Sure it'll cost, look's like the Generals don't get new carpet this year. Too fucking bad, maybe we should cut off the heat in their offices too.

** The Army is legally correct in its actions, so far as I can tell. Once the discrepancy was identified, HRC is required to take action and suspend payments. Morally, however, well I'll leave that up to you. Personally, in my military opinion, honor demands that this debt be paid.

Update: while legally correct, it is obvious at this point that the Army does have the discretion to pay these men. Secretary Geran's action proves that. It should have been the Army who went to Congress about this matter and demanded that Congress fix the law and plus up the retirement account. Again, Army honor seems to be in short supply these days.

*** Where is our Governor in all this you ask? Busy, apparently, signing a $3 million book deal, and preparing for her run at the White House in 2012.

Update: Correction, apparently, Palin also signed the letter to President Obama. One wonders where she found the time, at least she didn't blame this failure on Tina Fey.

- CWO Jim Wright, USN(ret)

Arthur C. Clarke R.I.P.

Ah, hell and sunfire.

The last of the big three, Arthur C. Clarke, has died.

The world has lost one of its truly great minds today.