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Show VERN GLADE MAY 1, 2001 VER: But it was interesting. That's where I found my love for planes. We were at a dock and right along side of the dock, up on the land, was one of these steel runways and all these fighters, P-41 , -38s, and they'd take off all the time. But Amchitka was so foggy all the time, they get up and they come like a bunch of chickens. The fog would start coming in, boy, they'd land just like that, you know. But that's when I really loved them. And I have books on them and everything now. But we stayed there and then finally we sat so long in one place we started to get moss and stuff growing on our hull so our skipper says, "We got to go back." So we went back to Seward. BBL: What did you do during that six months that you were just parked for the general's view? VER: Well, we had little trips, but nothing. Then they decided they needed some cement so we went over to Adak and brought some cement back. They put it in sacks. We didn' t want to do it. The time we'd get in a storm, you can't believe that. It's just like a giant roller coaster. It would beat all the sacks to death and the port battalion had to go in there and put it in scoops and take it out of there. And then one time the Navy needed some more five-inch shells and powder for the guns and they were collecting it and we put them all in the hold. We'd been blown to kingdom come if we'd ever had any problem. But we took that over to Attu for them. But we just did special jobs. Then somebody found out that the Japanese, when they left Kiska, they threw a lot of their weapons into the bay. Somebody was dragging a hook on the bottom and picked it up. So the general found that out, so he and his entourage, we took them over there. It was rough and the major was beating the general on the back, he was throwing up and then when we got over there, and we were over there for a few days, and our crew got 12 |
