Brian Shoemaker Interviewer
(Begin Tape 1 - Side A)
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BS: This is an oral interview with Dr. George Doumani, taken as part of the Polar Oral
History Project of the American Polar Society and the Byrd Polar Research Center on a grant provided by the National Science Foundation. The interview was conducted by Brian Shoemaker at Dr. Doumani's office at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC on the 26th of October, 2001.
Well, George, it's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to know something about you and where you're headed. I know that you got a knighthood for your work from Lebanon and I know that you've had extensive experience, particularly in the early days of the
International Geophysical Year in the Antarctic, but your career has extended much beyond that. So, wherever you think you should begin as to what affected it, who were your mentors and who influenced you when you were young before IGY and whatever you think contributes.
GD: Well, thanks for coming and welcome to Washington at this time of hardship, so to speak. I did my Bachelor's Degree in the geological sciences at Berkeley with a
Master's Degree started as geology, but I found so much fossils that they gave me a degree in paleontology - estratographic.
BS: Berkeley?
GD: Yes.
BS: When were you there?
GD: In the '50s. I got my Master's in '57.
BS: Do you remember me? I was there.
GD: Were you really?
BS: Yeah. '54-'58.
GD: My gosh, and I was there '52-'57.
BS: I was a geography major.
GD: And I was in the geology building.
BS: Carl [Sauer.]
BS: Started grad school.
GD: Isn't that something. Well, my first job after my graduate work was with an
engineering outfit doing sub-surface work, stratographic work, mainly for buildings and stuff like that - foundations, airports, railroad tracks, stuff like that. After that, I wanted to get back into the oil business and I found a position available to do Antarctic work. That was published in the Geotimes Magazine. So, I responded and George Toney, at the time, was responsible for this. So, I sent him my resume and, to make the long story short, he said, "You're on." And I was, actually, scheduled to be a geophysicist. So, it was quick and the IGY was coming to an end, so that's how I got interested. I actually wanted to do Arctic work, but this came up and I thought it was fascinating. So, to make the long story short, we came to Washington for training. We went to Davisville, Rhode Island.
BS: What kind of training did you do in Washington?
GD: Just at the National Science Foundation and then they sent us to the Rand Corporation to study the gyrocompass.
BS: At Rand.
GD: Yes. Myself and Bill Chapman, who was supposed to be our cartographer.
BS: This is so you could navigate across the . . .
GD: That's right. I can interrupt here to tell you that the $4,000 gyrocompass never did work and one time, we scrounged one from an R4D which was an immersed compass - a $9 compass - and that worked perfectly.
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BS: Did you use a sextant or octant?
GD: Oh, yes.
BS: It was the sextant.
GD: Yes.
BS: Didn't need an octant.
GD: Well, we used a you-know, sun compass and . . . it'll come to me. See that's a problem now. I'm glad you're doing this because the instant recall . . .
BS: I understand.
GD: Anyway, and then we went up to Davisville, Rhode Island, in order to do our packing and we packed everything there. And then I went back to Berkeley, California, and we packed our things and left.
BS: There were probably only about 50 guys in Davisville that could have showed you
how to use the compass and everything without having to go to Rand.
BS: All those sailors, they know it cold there.
GD: Well, we used our compass and everything and Chapman always used the zenith transoceanic in order to get the time, and then we fixed it that way. Again, I won't interrupt the train of things.
BS: I want to back you up and little.
GD: OK.
BS: You went to Berkeley to study geology. Why?
GD: Because I had worked for Aranco - the Arabian-American Oil Co. - in Saudi Arabia, and I was a lead lab tester as a child, literally I was in my teens, in [Rostenurov.]
BS: You were in Rostenurov.
GD: And there, I met everybody from people from Texas, Oklahoma, the most people . . .
BS: You were from Lebanon, though.
GD: Yes.
GD: At the time, I was in boarding school. I had graduated from [Devera] Santa College which is the College of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, with a London matriculation
certificate from the University of London and a Palestine matriculation certificate. And actually, my aim at the time was to study law and become a statesman at one time.
BS: Where was your home in Lebanon?
GD: Beirut.
BS: You were from Beirut.
GD: Yes. Then Aranco came into Beirut after Israel was established and they said, until then, in 1950, they were having problems communicating with the Arab Saudis. There was the American on one side, the Arab on one side. There was no in between. And somebody told them, go to Beirut, recruit all these Arab refugees - the Palestinians - because they were British educated under the British mandate. And sure enough, they came in and they just wanted to recruit - they opened an office and recruited everybody. And my matriculation, I had a distinction in chemistry and they said, "OK, you go to the laboratory."
BS: You went to school in Jerusalem.
GD: Yes.
BS: But, you were from Lebanon.
BS: You went south and then back home.
GD: Yes. So, I was too young, but they recruited my brother and finally after arguments with my mother and all that, my father said, "Well, his brother will take care of him." So, we both went to Rotenurov.
BS: How old were you?
GD: I was 18 or 19. They said, "Oh, OK, you're older brother will take care of you." Well, it was very interesting.
BS: Are you a Muslim?
GD: I became . . . no.
BS: Christian?
GD: Orthodox . . . Christian.
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BS: I was surprised to learn the other night that there are 3 million Arabs in the United
States and 2,700,000 thousand are Christians. Most are Christians.
BS: 2,700,000 out of 3,000,000. I kind of knew that. I've done a lot of work over there, by
the way, out of Omar.
GD: Oh, yeah. So, anyway, I went there. I was a lead lab tester and on the docks and one of my jobs was a petroleum inspector. I had to inspect tankers and I went through from '50 to '52, inspecting tankers that were in the transition period, especially the Japanese tankers from the old klunkers to brand new sleek-looking fantastic stuff.
Well, there, I came in touch with the Americans and most of them, when they learned about our education, they said, "Well, why don't you go to college and finish?" I said, "Well, I can't." In those days, our custom was that I go to college, my father pays, and everything, and we were refugees from Palestine, so they said, "Oh, hell. In the United States, you go to college and you work and you pay for all your . . . "
BS: I didn't have a cent when I went to Berkeley.
GD: That's right.
BS: Just that summer. Whatever I made that summer.
GD: So, they talked me into it. Everyone of them had gone to college and they paid their own way. And when my period was finished, I went back to Beirut and I told my folks. I had already applied at Berkeley and I was accepted because of my matriculation level, I was accepted as a sophomore - not a freshman. And I went down to the port of [Saidon] where the Transarabian pipeline was ending and there I looked at the shipping thing and there was the African Queen, which was a Swedish ship, and I knew the mate there. So, I took a ride out there to the anchorage and I said, "Hey," he said, "I know who you are," and everything. "What would you like to do?" I said, "I need a ride to America and your
destination is America. I need to see the Captain." He said, "You are talking to him." The chief mate had become the Captain and he said, "You're in luck. I just left my wife from the board room. She's in Marseilles and she won't be joining us to America, so you're welcome." I went to Beirut, and in 24 hours, I was back on the ship and in two weeks, October 6th, 1952, I arrived in the United States.
BS: Which port?
GD: I arrived in New Jersey. I forgot what the name of the port is.
BS: It was a tanker?
GD: It was a tanker.
BS: OK. I know where it is. There's a tanker terminal for New York.
GD: So, the next day, I left to Los Angeles. There was my great uncle. I had never been to Los Angeles and that's another story. He said, "And you've been in this country so long," and I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, you speak English so." I said, "I just arrived yesterday." He couldn't believe it. He had been here 35 years and he still had an accent. Anyway, they wanted to get me married, took me to church, showed me all the nice girls there in church. I said, "Hey, hold it, hold it. I'm going to Berkeley and I've been
accepted."
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GD: Yes.
BS: Is it the same as the Greeks or a little bit different?
GD: Same thing.
BS: I didn't know if there were like Presbyterians and Methodists, or whatever.
GD: No, it's the same thing.
BS: I had a roommate, Nick [Nucklas] who was Greek and boy, they put pressure on him
to get married.
GD: Yeah. They wanted me. . . they were showing me this girl and that girl and how much money her father has and you, all that kind of thing. They still had the old country thing. I said, "No. I came here to study." And, of course, after my experience in the oil business and I knew there from the time you refined it to the time you shipped it, I felt that's my destiny. Now, the Director of the laboratory before I left, he said, "George, why geology? Why don't you go into petroleum engineering or something?" I said, "No, I like to explore. I like to find it." He said, "Well, there's a lot of air in geology, but it's not air conditioned." So, you watch out. Anyway, I came to Berkeley, did my geology in three years and then my Master's degree and I always kept in touch with . . .not Richfield, but the old company.
GD: Chevron.
BS: They were the ones that discovered the oil at [Dahran] originally, and then they and
Texaco formed Aranco. Did they help you out financially?
GD: No, but they said, as soon as you graduate, you come here and we have a job for you back there. Well, after I did my Master's degree and I had a job during the summer with Shell Oil in California at Bakersfield. And there I discovered a field and they wanted me to stay with the company. I said, "No, summer's over, I got to go and finish my thesis at Berkeley." They came out to Berkeley to convince me to come on in. I said, "OK, what happens for me here." "Well, you develop the field. This is your own discovery and eventually, you will be in the management in Los Angeles." I thought to myself, big deal, from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. I came to this country to do exploration and now I'm here, I said, "No, thank you." And the professor who was supervising my thesis said to me, "Don't do it. They always come here and they take the graduate students and promise you the world and you wouldn't finish that thesis for a long time." And sure enough, two or three of my colleagues, years later, said, "We're still working on it, but there's no time." That kind of thing.
So, I went back to Berkeley to finish and then I got this job with the engineering company to do sub-surface work and then I saw that ad and I thought, 'That's the
exploration I was looking for. Something different.'
BS: It was really different.
GD: Yeah. And in those days, of course, I had a wife and I had a baby girl, and it was a hard decision to make.
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BS: Oh, you kowtowed to your family, eh? Where did you meet her? In Berkeley?
GD: Well, I met her in Berkeley.
BS: Family didn't line it up then.
GD: No. This was after I finished school there.
BS: OK.
GD: And then I got a phone call from George Toney and he said, "You're on." And I said, "OK, well let me consult with my wife first and see." Well, she sensed that I really wanted it and I was very excited about it. The pay was kind of minimal. I think it was a GS-9 level.
BS: Starving grad student.
GD: Something like that. It was ridiculous, but I mean compared to oil companies. I could have gone, but . . . I really wanted to go explore. And it was like a drive. I couldn't stop it. So, that's how we started. And we went the usual route from Travis Air Force Base to Hickum in Hawaii and from Hickum, we went to a Canton Island. We had propeller aircraft.
GD: The trip to McMurdo took 42 hours from Washington to Travis to Hickum to Canton Island.
BS: You didn't get to stop off in New Zealand to rest up?
GD: To New Zealand, yeah.
BS: Forty-two hours to New Zealand.
GD: No, total. In pieces.
BS: Total. That's how much air time you had. But, you got to rest up in New Zealand for
a couple of days, I hope.
GD: Oh yeah. Well, I hope this is not a reflection on the Navy, but . . .
BS: You can reflect on the Navy all you want. I'm a civilian.
GD: OK. The VX-6, we always . . . somehow there was an understanding that we always had a breakdown going and coming in Hawaii, New Zealand, and so . . . we had a good one week or ten days in Hawaii. And that was great. We had no complaints. So, every trip . . .
BS: I've done that. I've landed and said, "Chief, you know this engine's sounding a little .
. . You'd better check it out." "Well, yessir, it's going to take a couple of days." I'd say, "Oh, son of a gun, that disappoints me. Well, you call me when you're done."
GD: And one day it's the fluid, another day something else. We'd go back to the officer's quarters and say, "Are we leaving? Nah, it looks like we're going to stay another day." And it went on and on.
BS: So anyway, 42 hours to get down there. So, you went in through McMurdo. Flew to
McMurdo
GD: We went through McMurdo and McMurdo was a sight to see.
BS: And this was which year?
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GD: That was 1958. By the way, the orientation that we had here, we had Sir Hubert Wilkins come in and give us a lecture and he showed some pictures and I still have not forgotten his final statement about isolation. He said, "It goes like this. When you first get there and people pass by, you say 'Good morning, good morning.' And then when
isolation sets in, you say, 'Hi, hi.' And then you pass by and there is a nod. A few days later and that's it." He says, "But, the worst time comes when you pass yourself by and you don't say 'Good morning.'" Then you've had it.
BS: He died shortly after that.
GD: I know. We were, I think, the last group to hear him.
BS: He went down there on a book tour for that. Eddie Frankowitz flew him around and
GD: So would Charles White.
BS: Charles Percy Wright, too. He's around a long time.
GD: We were at Byrd Station and he refused to come down. And we were, of course, at the old Byrd Station. We were underground, buried in the you-know, falling down huts, but as many times as we told him to go down there, he only went down there to go to the mess hall. That's it. He had a tent up there and he said, "I'm going to stay here." And I think he was in his 70s in 1958 or '59.
BS: '58, he was 22 or so in 1912, probably 1890, you're talking 70s, yeah.
GD: And he was just as active. And he went around and everything.
BS: Fascinating career. I read . . .do you know Colin Bull?
GD: Yeah.
BS: I proofread the book that he and his daughter wrote and wrote a book report on it
before he died. Fascinating.
GD: Yeah.
GD: OK, so . . . we got to McMurdo and after all the slides and the things that we saw from Hubert Wilkins, it was like nothing that you had heard or experienced in your life when you got out of the airplane. I mean, you felt your ears were going to drop. And we had changed on the way in, but still, it was unbelievable. And the brightness when you emerged into it. And then we had an old Weasel come in and take us in. And we went to the church - there was a chapel there - and we went in and instead of pews, they had Army cots and the chapel said, "Holy, holy, holy," but there was nothing holy about our being there.
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BS: Who was the station leader then? Barnes still there?
GD: I've forgotten who it was. I was mainly in touch with the meteorologists. And they said, "Just dump your stuff here, grab a cot and then go to the mess hall because it's right there." So, I was walking to the mess hall and this man in front of us - we caught up with him - and he turned around and he said, "Howdy," and I said, "Howdy." And we shook hands and he said, "My name's Dufek. George Dufek." And I said, "Oh, my name is George, too. George Doumani. So, my initials are GD, also." He said, "You a geologist?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Wintering over?" I said, "Yes." It was a very brief encounter.
BS: He was interested in the science, wasn't he?
GD: Yes. And we went and got to the final Jamesway where the mess hall was and there was a lectern out there with a microphone and everything and we had just gotten in with the ceremony of relief by Tyree.
BS: Oh, the relief between the two of them.
GD: Yeah.
BS: Where did they relieve one another?
GD: Right there in front of . . .
BS: At Byrd Station.
GD: No, at McMurdo. Right in front of the mess hall was a podium. It was snowing and still, Tyree took over from Dufek.
BS: This was early '59?
GD: '58. That was the end of the IGY, towards the end of the IGY. And then we met with Tyree after that and we were flown to Little America. And Little America was something else. I mean, we had never seen anything like it. We went in there. It was underground, but it was very nice. I still remember they had a fantastic baker and there, there was, from the National Science Foundation, the chief. Well, there was Wexler from . . . Harry Wexler from - oh God, what's the matter with me. I'm beginning to forget. Anyway. . .
BS: Don't worry about it. Incidentally, when I send these things back - a hard copy for
you to take a look at - guys sometimes remember pages and pages that they forgot and we can insert it. Was it Gould? Gould was still president.
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GD: No. NSF person . . .
BS: Tom Jones?
GD: Tom Jones, of course. And I remember Little America had a nice bamboo bar and everybody said, "OK, what's your choice here?" And I describe here how many times we were awakened that evening with the warning, "Fire, fire, fire," and there was no fire and then we'd go back to sleep and they showed us their nice hothouse - so to speak.
Apparently, they had a whole bunch of volcanic rocks and they would pour water on it, and then you'd sit there and steam and then the ultimate would be, somebody will carry you and just open the door and out in the snow, and you looked like a lobster - red.
BS: Or they'd come in and surprise you. Once you got warmed up, they'd fling you out.
GD: Yeah.
BS: That's become a tradition for new guys.
GD: Well, it was like an initiation.
BS: To see how you took it. If you got bent out of shape, it would happen again.
GD: We went out with Bert Crary and Ned Ostenso at the time they were there, and we went out to the shelf. They were doing some seismic work so we could see what was
happening and I remember Bert fell in the cold water and he came out. Anyway, it was the first time I had met Bert Crary.
BS: Did you know Buck Wilson?
GD: Yeah.
BS: Buck is still going down to the Antarctic.
GD: Is that right?
BS: The last one left from IGY. He's still doing field research down there, going another
season.
GD: My god.
BS: And there's a couple of enlisted men who retired from the Navy who are down there
working for the contractor. Buck's the last scientist. Charley Bentley quit in '97.
GD: Yeah, I know Charlie.
BS: He quit. He's not going back anyway, by choice. He says, "It's time to quit." Charlie
and I are really good friends.
GD: A recent anecdote is - and I don't know whether this is related to this or not - was, I always take my wife, Ann, someplace for travel on Valentine's Day. And one year, two years ago or so, I had located from the computer, the places to stay in St. Thomas and finally we went down to at least two of them, and one of them was called the Admiral Inn. So, Sunday, she's on the phone and I'm on the phone talking to the person there and he said, "I am the proprietor because it's Sunday and the help is out. What can I do for you?" and so on. My wife was asking very detailed questions, and then she said, "I'm sorry if that bothers you. My husband is a scientist and he wants to be very precise." And he said, to me, "Are you a scientist? What are you?" I said, "I'm a geologist." He said, "So am I." I said, "Oh, what's your name?" He said, "Hal Borns." I said, "Excuse me? Are you the Hal Borns that was with me in Antarctica?" He says, "That's my father. And who are you?" I said, "My name is George Doumani." He said, "Oh my god, he's been looking for you. He wants you to go with him to the Antarctic. He's discovered the same thing you discovered someplace else," and he went on. Next day, I get this call from Hal Borns, Sr. and he says, "Where the hell are you?" So, I told him in 1996, I had a quadruple by-pass and I don't think I would qualify, although I'm dying to go, and I'm still in good shape. He says, "Oh, hell, what do you mean? I'm 72 years old, I still go, and I have heart fibrillation and all." So, I go home and I say to my wife, "Guess what? I have another expedition coming." She looked at me and she said, "There was one victim of that career and I don't want to be the second." She said, "You go to the Antarctic, you stay!"
Anyway, I had discovered something very interesting, that previous glaciation. And then on Mt. Sidley, I discovered grooves and striations, very conspicuous ones and deep grooves showing ice movement from south to north, but that was thousands of feet above today's ice cap. And I thought, hey, you mean this ice cap was that much thicker? Well, I wrote it up and everything and he goes to Mt. Hampton, and this is in more recent years, and he discovers the same thing.
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So, he said, "I want George Doumani to come with me and we'll go on an expedition and so on." So, when I told him, "Hey, I can't . . . " He says, "It's not like your days. You know we have GPS, we have laptop computers."
BS: Satellites, communications.
GD: Well, let me remind you, when I was lecturing at Ohio State, remember? And one young man says, "Well, didn't you have a laptop?" And then another person says, "Didn't you have a GPS?" I was trying to show them how we were navigating. We'd go out to a mountain peak and then flash a mirror down to Bill Chapman who was at the camp so he could take a triangulation fix. And I said, "No, I'm sorry. I wish we had."
BS: You could talk to one another.
GD: Yeah. It's a different age.
BS: We had nine trips picking up Pete Rowley at the English coast because he'd travel
around like a lunatic. His navigation wasn't precise, it was cloudy, and basically, it was a search. We couldn't plot it. We'd run out of gas and have to go back, gas up, and go look the next day. It took us about a week and a half to find him, to pull him out. This is 1982, and that's when I said, "This is bullshit. We've got GPS." Not GPS, but we've got better navs than this. We at least had radios by then that were better, but still it wasn't the best. They weren't powerful enough to - it was testy. But, now, it's different. My son-in-law had first-hand experience. He's in charge.
GD: People come in here and ask me when they hear about this evacuation from the South Pole and a scan to see if the guy has whatever . . . and I say, "In my days . . .
BS: He'd die.
GD: You go down there and that's it. You're on your own. So now, when I lecture, the title of my lecture is, these are vintage slides. They are not today's Antarctica.
BS: Well, let me take you back. You just showed up at Byrd Station.
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GD: And, well, at Byrd Station, I couldn't believe that this was a station. I had a completely different view or imagination of what it is, but we went down and all these huts were collapsing. The tunnels were - they used empty fuel drums welded together to make columns from one place to another. It was an experience just being there. But, at that time, we had two things to do. One was to get out and relieve Charlie Bentley, Bill Long and their crew because the VX-6 wanted to go home. And that was the primary objective. After many trials and failures and so on, finally, we made it out there. I was on the aircraft and . . .
BS: It was an R4D?
GD: Oh, R4D, all the way. Even from Little America, we were R4D. We had R4Ds working all the time and we crashed about once or twice, as I recall. And it wasn't until the time when I was doing - we were on the way home, I think, on one traverse, that they
were introducing the C-130 aircraft and at the time, I was doing weather observations from the trail for our resupply flights. Then George Toney and somebody else called me and I said, "We'd like you, now, to make weather observations every 4 hours because we have C-130 aircraft being introduced here. They will be supplying the South Pole station and we need the weather from your direction."
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So, I did that and that was a very successful thing. They delivered something like 700 tons, as I recall, of food safely.
BS: They're flying a whole new Pole Station in.
GD: And after that, the subsequent expedition, I became very good friends with Lon Carlson and in fact, it was by accident. He used to fly the R4D and also another guy who flew the R4D for us, we really became good friends with Joe Walker. And I can't locate any of the three.
BS: I might be able to help you.
GD: I hope so. I've talked with Billy Ace.
BS: Well, if he can't help you, then I can't help you.
GD: You know, there really are people that I would like to send them the book. The names are there.
BS: Well, Billy Ace. I turn to him when I need some stuff.
GD: Oh, he's now busy with a new organization. Did you see his new web site?
BS: Oh yeah. Well, that's ours. I commissioned that. The one for the Polar Society?
GD: The OAE.
BS: Oh, he's got the OAE one, and then he's got the one for the American Polar Society.
GD: The OAE . . .
BS: He's put a lot of time in on that. They want a Herc for the museum in Rhode Island.
So anyway, here you are, you're going out to relieve Bill Long and Charlie Bentley. What year was this?
GD: This was '58.
BS: Late '58? December?
GD: Yeah. December. At the tail end.
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BS: You were an Iggie, then?
(End of Tape 1 - Side A)
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(Begin Tape 1 - Side B)
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GD: So, I joined the traverse and with us was [Emil Shophless] who was a Swiss photographer. Eventually, he published a book, pictorial book. We went out there. Bill Long had cracked a tooth eating a jellybean and they couldn't get anybody to get to him. And finally, after several trials, we finally made it. So, Bill Long and Darling were - well, actually Darling was a meteorologist, but he went out.
BS: Darling. That was his last name?
GD: Yeah.
BS: He didn't take much crap out there, huh? We had a lot of Darlings in Antarctica in
the '80s because they were women. As the Commander at Deepfreeze, guess who was the father of the bride?
GD: Oh, really?
BS: Married at McMurdo. Yeah, McMurdo, Christchurch. Even one . . . we got all
GD: Fred Darling. He was the meteorologist at the station during winter time, but then he accompanied Bill Long as a glaciologist. And then I joined them and, of course, they didn't have a place in the Snow Cat, so I slept on the floor. And I learned a few things there which I describe in my thing about how to go out there and wash your face with just snow and how to do your daily constitutional outside when Mother Nature calls, and all that kind of thing. And we wanted to continue. Charlie Bentley was determined to finish that for worse. But, VX-6 says, "No way, we've gotta get back."
BS: He'd already been out two winters.
GD: So, they were actually picked up right in the field. And . . .
BS: Taken right back to McMurdo.
GD: Taken right back to McMurdo. I tell in my book a lot of the personal things. How we ate, what we did and a very amusing and humorous stuff on the trail. That was our first traverse. And then one day, we were evacuated, of course. It was our problem to get back. With Bill Chapman and myself and . . . We were waiting for a glaciologist - a Scottish person - Jock Pirritt.
BS: He came over from Ellsworth.
GD: Ellsworth. He had wintered over once and was coming to Byrd Station to winter over again, and at Byrd Station, he became our chief scientist.
GD: He was a glaciologist. And he had done a lot of work in the Arctic and had actually lived with Eskimos and things like that.
BS: Didn't he get killed?
GD: He died, after all his adventures everywhere in the world, he got caught in a squall in the North Sea.
BS: I remember that.
GD: He was desperate to have a sailing boat. He loved to sail.
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BS: Anyway, so he joined you in the field? No, he joined you at Byrd Station.
GD: He went to Byrd Station and then he came back when we came back.
BS: But, you had to get all the equipment back that Bentley left you.
GD: Oh yes. He joined us in the field. Yes.
BS: He made observations all the way back?
GD: Right. We had to finish and there was no two ways about it.
GD: We're talking January, because officially, December 31, IGY was finished. And now we were working . . . we didn't know who was in charge, so to speak, or what the organization is. And that transition period between the two - most of the facts I put here are not really documented anywhere. What happened during the transition stage, who was responsible . . . we were just doing it on our own.
BS: I understand.
GD: We came back sooner than expected and there was time to go out and do another traverse immediately, mainly to put a fuel cache somewhere on our next traverse so that on the route, we will find it the next time we go.
BS: How far out was that?
GD: That was . . . Army-Navy drive mile 400 or 480 or something like that. I have it
here.
BS: So, you were hoping to get a traverse, but you weren't sure you would be going out
the next year.
GD: Everything was iffy.
BS: Yeah. NSF Office of Polar Programs hadn't been organized by then.
BS: So, who were you working for?
GD: The Arctic Institute.
BS: Oh, your money came through the Arctic Institute.
GD: But, the selection was done by the National Academy of Sciences. Hugh Audeshaw was the Chairman of the committee, of the Antarctic Committee.
BS: AINA was a conduit for the money. The government couldn't spend it. They had to
give it to a private organization to spend it.
GD: That's right. That's right.
BS: I learned that yesterday from John Sader who headed AINA for many years.
GD: Oh, yeah.
BS: I interviewed John.
GD: We didn't know, then, the Arctic Institute, in a way, they didn't do a good job.
BS: They didn't have any staff.
GD: There were times when a big box comes in and we'd reach for our tents and they are African tents with mosquito nets and all that kind of thing, which was ridiculous.
BS: So, AINA handled the equipment?
GD: Yeah, the logistics, yeah. They bought the stuff. They sent it to us.
BS: The Navy didn't help out with any of this stuff?
GD: No. The Navy helped us only on Naval logistics kind of things. Took care of the . . . these were private stuff that we wanted to be bought. They helped us at Davisville, Rhode Island. There were the CBs there and everything was just correct.
BS: Running the camp at Byrd Station.
GD: Then after that, Pirritt decided, "Hey, we still have some sunshine - some daylight. Let's go out on another one."
BS: This was after the fuel cache was put out. After you came back with their equipment.
GD: Right. So, we wanted to do the fuel cache, and we went out and he said, "Well, since we're doing this, we might as well make observations." So, it turned out to be another traverse. Then, we had our problems.
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Everything began to break down. It was nip and tuck. Finally, everybody decided we'd better head home. That's the only way we can do it. Which we did and then I describe here how the feelings were when we got home. The aircraft had all left. Everybody was in isolation. The morale was below zero, literally. I mean, nobody even smiled and I
thought they would say, "Hey, welcome home," and all this. Nothing. I mean everybody's faces were just unbelievable. And, it turned out to be that a lot of things had happened.
BS: So, Hubert Wilkins was right, huh?
GD: Yeah. And this went Navy on one side, a scientist on another side, and then they wanted us to do KP duty because the chef designate, so to speak, at the last minute, the last aircraft - he just psychologically couldn't take it. When they told him this was the last one leaving, he just grabbed his duffel bag, rushed over and said, "Good-bye," just like that. And we were left without a cook.
BS: Was he the Navy cook?
GD: Yeah. Navy cook. So, Doc Galla, Edward Galla, he was the . . . Lieutenant Galla was a doctor.
BS: G-a-l-l-o.
GD: G-a-l-l-a.
BS: MD.
GD: Yes. MD. Young man. And very pleasant. But, apparently, there became a . . . Jock Pirritt said, "You can't have the scientists wash dishes and all this. We've got work to do." And arguments ensued. We were doing KP duty and I did KP duty and I describe it here which is funny because the guy who took over eventually would sit at a chair and just make sure that I'm mopping the floor correctly. It's all here.
BS: Oh, I read it, I read it.
GD: Anyway, I didn't mind really. Except that then they started applying some rules. They went into a cave or a tunnel in the ice which was in the back of the kitchen and they brought out all the meat and everything else and they had to throw it out because that was Navy regulations. Hey, you can't do that. We wound up with boxes of ground beef which read on it, "Beef, ground, grade F." Even the dog that we had, Suzie, would sniff it and go away. Wouldn't eat it. Anyway, so we lived practically on hamburgers and hot dogs for a while and it wasn't easy. That winter at Byrd Station was really undescribable. The Station leaked. Everything leaked and we had to improvise with tin foil and make things from one and then drill in the hole and drainage in the floor and then you'd be asleep and you'd hear crack when the hut cracks under the weight of the ice. It was, you know, unbelievable.
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BS: What kind of science did you do during the winter?
GD: I helped with the glaciology because then we had a Frank Chang came and he became, he's a geophysicist and after doing the work with Bill Long, I didn't want to do geophysical work. I was more interested in the glaciological part, because I was a
stratigrapher by profession and I could apply my stratigraphy to the layering and studying the stratigraphy of the ice. So, I found out that that is more, right up my alley.
GD: Yep.
BS: How deep?
GD: Well, usually it was 2 x 2 meters, 2 meters deep. No, more than that. But, then they wanted to do longshot. So, we drilled to 20 meters and took the cores out. Of course, we kept the cores. But, that pit was graduated, kind of. You'd come down from 4 meters, down to less than that with a bench and then you'd go to the other side and you had another bench and so on and so forth. The problem is, this is all shoveling and when you get down to the lowest part, it's hard for larger people. Bill Long, well you know Bill is big. So, I would up in the smallest part of the ____ because I was the smallest guy.
BS: The mole.
GD: And I had to dig and then have to throw it out all the way up and well, I had my exercise anyway. So, we wintered over. Wintering over was . . . we helped with the aurora people. Observed aurora and the weather. Jock and I had a snow stake farm with stakes and then we would go up periodically and measure snow accumulation and
direction and so on. I also did studies of snow surface features like the sastrugi and things like that and how they formed. And I published a paper on that, actually, and I presented it at Okaida University in Japan on the physics of snow and ice.
BS: So, this was after you came back, you wrote the paper? Or did you write it there?
GD: Oh yeah. No, no. Everything . . . I kept a diary, but it was all, everything was in it. But, this book does not put the scientific part. The scientific part was all the stuff that I did at Ohio State University and at the Library of Congress later in later years.
BS: OK. Physics Snow and Ice - Okaida. You went on a traverse the next spring.
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GD: Yes. Next spring we went out. First, we did a reconnaissance flight to determine where we were going and everything else. And that was fine.
BS: You mean the Navy flew out and you looked at it from the air.
GD: Yeah, we told them we're going this way to where we're going to be and so on and so forth. So we would determine our correct traverse directions.
BS: Did you see the crevasse fields?
GD: Yes.
BS: Help you plot your route?
GD: Plenty. Crevasse fields all over, especially in places where you couldn't really see the relief in the snow and then you suddenly come at them like you're climbing a mountain. And because of the absence of shadow and things like that, one time we literally descended the side of a mountain in Sno Cats. We had done over vast fields of crevasses. The biggest was our rush in December. We were close to the Amundsen Sea and nobody had seen the Amundsen Sea because until then, it had been just blocked by ice floes and frozen ice almost year round. But, we were so close, we decided we'll get there. And we really drove like crazy. Finally, we got there and there was open water.
And I remember this because there was a controversy over who saw the Amundsen Sea first. Captain McDonald or us on the traverse?
BS: How about flyers? Didn't they overfly that?
GD: No, they never flew. It was too far north out of the paths of where the work was.
BS: I was thinking of High Jump. They did most of the coast.
GD: I don't know.
BS: I don't either.
GD: I mean on the ground. And there you are. It was just blue as blue can be - almost black. Calm, open water with icebergs floating away. And it was an ice show. And we came over and looked down and there was an ice floe with seals on it. And one seal pup was active and you could tell the mother from the father because the mother was tolerant of the pups jumping around, but the father wasn't. He kicked them two or three times until they'd sit down.
BS: That's a long way from Byrd Station. How far away?
GD: We were a few thousand miles, actually .We were there December 22, in the morning.
GD: I'm not sure. I'm not positive.
BS: Seven, eight hundred miles, you think?
GD: Oh, more than that. Well, what we did is Chang made a shot at the thickness of the ice where we were standing and it was elating, actually. Fourteen months on the ice and then suddenly there was open water and you hadn't seen open water in ages. I can't even describe to you. We were kicking, playing soccer with empty tin cans, and I have pictures of us - Jock Pirritt and I and everybody else kicking it up in the air. We had driven
uninterrupted for something like 16 hours headed straight to the ____ and then back. On the way back, then we discovered the crevasse fields that we had run over. And we opened them up without caring because we didn't care to stop. I must say about Jock Pirritt , he had a very adventuresome spirit. Jock wanted to make a discovery no matter what and it didn't matter to him whether scientifically it was worth it or not. He wanted to get to the Amundsen Sea.
BS: Geographic.
GD: That's right. We really drove like crazy. I mean those Sno Cats were bumping up and down, but we did some work there. And then we turned back to Byrd Station at the end of the season. Again, like Charlie Bentley, when we got there, they were just ready to go.
BS: You mean the planes.
BS: They wanted to go right away.
GD: Hey, you guys, let's go. But, we have turnover. Well, they'll figure it out. They'll figure it out.
BS: Everybody's ready to go home. This was what, about February?
GD: Yes.
BS: February of '59.
GD: February of '60.
BS: And where'd you go from there? McMurdo?
GD: Yeah, we went to McMurdo.
BS: Did you get to stay there?
GD: Just a few days, and then off to New Zealand. We were in New Zealand a week or two. I'm not sure. A week, I think. We stayed at that hotel - McKenzie's Hotel.
Remember? And they were very tolerant of our idiosyncrasies and everything.
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GD: Yeah, they even had storage where we left our luggage and everything.
BS: They were wonderful. Well, you know the New Zealanders are rowdier than we are,
but anyway, they didn't mind it.
GD: Oh, they loved it.
BS: So, here you are. You're back. Where did you go from there?
GD: Well, we had a surprise to begin with. First of all, we went back on a ship and they had put in the vehicles and things that needed to be repaired and everything, but they didn't drain the gasoline out of them.
BS: Which ship was it?
GD: The Arneb.
BS: Oh, you were on the Arneb, uh-huh.
GD: And every hour on the hour, you couldn't even sleep with the guy yelling on the microphone - "No smoking on the something or other."
BS: Deck.
GD: Deck. No, forward of the superstructure. And he would stretch the last word - superstructuuuuuure. And you just barely . . . "Smoking's out forward of the
the fumes or whatever and we got all sick. We were sleeping on Army cots - nothing else. And then we had to go on topside just to get some fresh air and as soon as we approached New Zealand, somebody was yelling, "Skirts ahoy!" And everybody went up on the deck and you could see that on the dock the New Zealanders had a "Welcome Back," a brass band and women and children standing there and it was a delight to see human beings.
BS: Women. You know my girlfriend saw me off to Antarctica in New Zealand and I
wintered over and I came back a year and a half later and she's standing in the exact same spot with the same clothes on and my buddies who had come south had arranged that. She was right there and she looked pretty good, so I married her.
GD: I told my wife, I said, you know when Barnes made me the offer, I said, "I'll take you with me. You stay in New Zealand."
BS: Barnes?
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GD: I mean Born. I said, "I'll take you to New Zealand. You stay in New Zealand. Enjoy yourself and we'll go. This is a very brief thing that we want to go to the Executive Committee Range and I will verify the same thing that he - and then we'll come back." "No way," she said. "I'm going to stay in New Zealand all by myself? I don't know anybody there."
BS: My wife was living there. I had only dated her a couple days. And she's Dutch. She
had emigrated to New Zealand. She was becoming a New Zealander so this is not to short-change that. Off spring, grandkids, everything right here. Second generation,
daughter went to Antarctica. My son wasn't interested. She married a guy who is running the program now. He runs the field program now. Brian Stone.
GD: How about that.
BS: I may get a third generation. But, she sure was good. I never thought when I went
south that I'd ever see her again. So, anyway, you got off the ship. The New Zealanders treated you like kings.
GD: Like kings, and then we flew back and low and behold, we discovered that there was something called a jet-propelled aircraft - a passenger jet-propelled aircraft - which we had never seen. On the way down, we flew propeller aircraft.
BS: Was it a 707?
GD: And all of a sudden somebody said, "There's a jet aircraft." And you know, when you are like you were, in another world, and suddenly . . . people don't appreciate things like that when you see it.
BS: You had only heard about jets. Germans flew them in World War II and both sides
had them in Korea.
GD: But, to have a passenger aircraft for the first time and everybody was reassuring us that on your way back, on your next expedition, it will be a lot shorter. Everybody was saying, "There is never going to BE another expedition. That's it." Well, that was the famous last words that never held up.
BS: So, you flew back and did you say you went to Ohio State?
GD: No, I went back to Berkeley where my wife was. I left her there and in the meantime, while I was on the ice, my son was born. So, we had a boy and a girl. And then, I think it was Dick Cameron. He called and he said, "Look, we're establishing something here called the Institute of Polar Studies. Would you like to participate? I mean what are you going to do with the material that you collected?" I said, "Where is that?" And he said, "In Columbus, Ohio."
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"There is a glacial geologist by the name of Dick Goldthwaite and we're getting an NSF grant and it's an institutional grant to establish this with partial funding by the Marchand Foundation." I didn't know anything about the Marchand Foundation and I really loved Berkeley, but he was right. I mean, what do I do with all the stuff that we collected? I mean, it had to be somewhere. And that began a whole new career. I finally came to Columbus. We got the Institute running.
BS: Colin Bull there?
GD: Colin Bull was there. Art Mersky was there. I don't think Art was ever in Antarctica, but he was sort of like a director.
BS: He was an Arctic guy wasn't he?
GD: Dick Cameron, of course, was the assistant director, or deputy director. And Bill Long went there and all of us. There was just no place to go. And we had to - of course,
Bill Long enrolled for the doctorate program. And he was preparing another proposal, so he came over and I said, "I've done enough glaciology. What I really want to do is geology." He says, "This is a geology thing. You come with us." After we had known each other and we had lived with each other and so on, it was very pleasant camaraderie, so to speak. So, I went to my wife and I said, "Well, we're writing another proposal, but not wintering over this time. It's just for summer time. I mean austral summer time." Well, she had no choice. So, we did that. And then we made really the real discovery at that time because that was the first time we actually established a hut, we built a Jamesway hut, and we had these new machines that we tested for the first time.
BS: What machines were those?
GD: These are what is called today, snowmobiles. They gave us two of those.
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BS: You were the first to use them down there?
GD: Yeah. And I have pictures.
BS: Very first snow mobiles, huh? Pioneers. That's something significant.
GD: Yes. It was made by Four-Wheel Drive in Canada. And we called it the Put-Put. It had a Briggs and Stratton engine on the back. I think 9 horsepower, you know, like your power mower.
GD: Did you? And Admiral Tyree wanted to try one, so Bill Long put him on one and he put-putted around McMurdo before we put it on the aircraft and he was elated.
BS: Hundreds of them down there now.
GD: Oh yeah. But, in our days we had the first two and they were red.
BS: Yep. The one Ohio State's got, I returned it. But this is what year you went back?
GD: '60.
BS: Oh, the next season.
GD: Yeah, the next season. And then it was '60, '61-'62, '62-'63 and then '64-'65.
BS: And where was your work centered?
GD: Well, we wanted to go into west Antarctica, but we had done most of that and most of west Antarctica was really the Executive Committee Range and it's all volcanic. And for all practical purposes, it was done. We wanted to go after where the fossils were. Bill Long had found fossils on his first traverse near the Discovery Ridge there in the Ohio Range, but he wasn't really sure what the rest of the sequence was. So, we went there, but we camped . . .well, first of all, we crashed. And then, you know, you had to put the balloons under one wing and they air-dropped us new propellers and things like that. I tell that story. Anyway, and then we went as far as the put-puts could take us, as close to the mountains. And that was '61-'62, and then we made another one '62-'63 in the same place,
because we had discovered coal beds and things like that. There was a professor, Jim Schopf. He was the head of the Ohio Geological Survey and his interest was paleobotany and coal. And it was under him that Bill Long worked. So, he had instructed Bill Long to get a full sample from the bottom to the top of the bed, but don't get it from the outcrop as you see it. You've got to put like a mine adit in there.
BS: Now this was where?
GD: In the Ohio Range.
BS: OK. I know where the Ohio Range is.
GD: And there's the Discovery Ridge there. There's Mt. Glossopteris and that mountain held a lot of fossilized trees, fossil leaves. I even discovered one tree trunk with it's roots there. In other words, this was not just swept by some storm or something. It grew there.
BS: It was there in the rock.
GD: Yes. And Bill came equipped with a drill and blasting equipment and whatever and he opened an adit in the mountainside and then we wrote on a little piece of plywood, "The Dirty Diamond Mine."
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BS: Courtney Skinner was with you?
BS: Famous photo. They even have it in the CIA manual.
GD: Is that right?
BS: Yes. Have you seen the CIA map book. It's a very good map book of the polar
regions and a synopsis of it for the general reader. They went out of a . . . the CIA printed it. It's unclassified. I got my photos in it from the Arctic. They didn't ask me. They were mine. I should have gotten to them and got them.
GD: The other pictures that came from when they were digging up the coal and sampling it back to the hut and they were all black. And I have a picture of them all black. I think I have one here. I'm not sure.
BS: I've seen a lot of photographs of that.
GD: It's a remarkable picture. Well, anyway, here's the "Dirty Diamond Mine," coal mine. But you can't read what it says here, "William E. Long, Proprietor."
BS: That's when we got the Hueys in there. An Army first.
GD: OK. And that's another first.
BS: First to fly the Hueys in the field?
BS: Yeah. That's Courtney.
GD: The Hueys were '62-'63. When I decided that I want to follow earth outcrops as far as they go to the South Pole, we wanted a cache for the expedition and all that and Jim Schopf said, "I have an idea," and he used a Latin name.
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I said, "I don't know Latin. What do I call it? The farthest camp or the farthest rock?" And he said, "Exactly, call it saxum ultimum. The farthest rock."
BS: Saxum is?
GD: Saxum is rock. Saxum ultimum. And that was the farthest rock. By the way, every time I lecture, I take some of these specimens and I tell the people, "Here, you want to touch the farthest rock on earth?" And people just swarm around.
(End of Tape 1 - Side B)
___________________________
(Begin Tape 2 - Side A)
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GD: This time, Long didn't come with me. It was myself, Skinner, Larry Lackey. We all had been together before. The only one that wasn't with us was Tex Minchew. He was new. By then, Admiral Reedy was in charge and while we were in McMurdo, two or
three times while we were waiting for the aircraft, the Admiral would say, "Come on up to my quarters, we'll have dinner together." He was very interested in the continental drift. Well, Reedy was very interested in the continental drift and he had read my article which I published in 1962, in the Scientific American.
You know Scientific American, every year, devotes the September issue to one subject. That year it was Antarctica. And they had meteorology, they had everything, and my article with Bill Long was "The Ancient Life of Antarctica," in which I describe the fossils that we got and that they were so identical to South America and South Africa in the same geological horizons in the rocks that there is no such thing as contesting the continental drift. And, in the article, at the end, I say, "You don't have to be a geologist to ask the question that here is a continent that at one time was green with lush vegetation and running brooks and everything and all of a sudden there is a two mile ice cap on top of it. Now, anybody would say, well, either the continent wasn't there if the pole has been always there, or the pole wasn't there if the continent has been always there. They can't co-exist. It's a simple question. Well, years later, of course, it turned out to be both - the poles had wandered and the Antarctic had wandered.
And I came that year and when the National Academy of Sciences was holding a meeting at the time and I remember one lecturer said, I think it was the president - I've forgotten what his name was at the time -"Well, now there is no such thing as the
continental drift theory. We have proof from Antarctica that there was Gondwana Land." And since then, they went into what became today the tectonic plates and tectonic
movements.
Another thing I proposed when I described the geology of the Executive
Committee Range, I didn't have ground proof, but I did show that there is a trend in the formation of these volcanoes and how they formed and everything that indicates that Antarctica not only moved laterally, but it also rotated while it was moving. In other words, like this.
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And that's where the Antarctic peninsula comes up there with the mantle cracked up into pieces around the Drake Passage to join with South America. It split, it came down and as it rotated, all this was cut off. This was all in one piece, and that's why the Antarctic Peninsula is like that.
I hadn't pursued that. I put it in there and I said there was rotation and then 10 years later, a geophysicist from the US Geological Survey was doing some work and said that they had found evidence that there was rotation in the Antarctic continent. He didn't know me from . . .
BS: Who was that? Pete Rowley?
GD: No. Crane?
BS: John Behrendt, possibly?
GD: No, no, no, not John Behrendt. I knew John there. John was my generation. This guy was ten years later. But, they were on a ship doing the work in the Drake Passage. And I sent him a letter. I was already at the __ner Library of Congress, and I said, "Let me remind you that I proposed this a long time ago. Of course, I had no data to prove it, but it was obvious."
BS: "The Ancient Life of Antarctica," was published where?
BS: Scientific American.
GD: September, 1962. And that shows the correlation and Bill Long was the co-author with me. But, the last one, I wanted to follow, so we wanted to land at Mt. Weaver. The Scott Glacier comes down actually, from the polar plateau and comes down this way. It's wide and . . . and every time, the R4D would go and come back and they say, "No go." Finally, it was about November, and I was having dinner with Reedy and I was really disappointed. I said, "Look, it's already November and the season's almost finished. We've got to get out there." Reedy said, "You know, I'll fly that R4D and I'll put you out there." And his staff looked at him and said, "Excuse me, Sir, but over my dead body." Then he explained to me that this was always his hobby, flying the R4D. He loved that aircraft.
BS: He loved flying anything.
GD: Yeah. And I told him we called it the workhorse of Antarctica. And he said, "I love it and by golly, I'll put you out there." And the staff said, "No Sir, you won't do that." Well, finally after a third go, I said, "Look, please, let's get out there. I don't care what the weather is, you drop us off and then you guys leave." "OK." So, we packed and left. When we got on the plateau, the drift was about maybe 6 ft high or 10 ft high.
BS: This is after you landed?
GD: No, before. We couldn't actually see the sastrugi - the surface. And I was sitting in the co-pilot's seat to tell them where to go.
BS: Who was the pilot? This was which year?
GD: Not Early. '62.
BS: It doesn't matter.
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GD: OK. So, I said, "I want you to approach Mt. Weaver as much as possible because that's where we want to do most of our work." I was sitting in the co-pilots seat and I couldn't see the snow surface. And he was heading straight into the mountain slope. He said, "Well, this is as far as I can go. How about here?" I said, "OK, we have these Put-Puts, and we can use them from here on." He said, "OK." He landed, literally. We had two aircraft - one after the other. They literally opened the door and dumped our stuff on the snow, just like that. He said, "I can't shut it down and I can't give you a hand. Sorry. You're on your own," and they both turned around and left. It was so bad. Now there we were, about 40 degrees below zero and wind blowing and I said, "OK, men, first thing, let's put up a tent at least to work out of. And then we have to put up the Jamesway hut. That was the first requirement. Everything was scattered on the snow. We left it as is and by midnight that day, we had the Jamesway hut up and everybody was saying, "Yea! Now we can at least go to sleep!" And the second project was the outhouse. I said, "We need an outhouse." So, the next morning, the tents were still up and we started cutting blocks and building an outhouse and when that was finished, we raised the flag on it and called it "The Ice Palace." And inside was a throne, all nice. Well, it's all here in the book. And then from there on, we started to survey all the neighboring areas.
GD: Yes. From Saxum Ultimum - the south side of Mt. Weaver.
BS: That's what you call Saxum Ultimum, the south side of Mt. Weaver.
GD: That's right. Again, here, we discovered coal, fossils, plants, everything. The coal bed, I discovered in this area, was 25 ft. thick. You know, in Pennsylvania, a 6 inch seam is pay dirt. Six inch seam is pay dirt. That was 25 feet thick! But, in geology, the first thing they teach you is the definition of an ore body. An ore body is a formation that can be mined at a profit. It's as simple as that. So, Mt. Weaver was three degrees from the South Pole. So, forget the mining of the coal and oil on Mt. Weaver.
BS: Couldn't be mined at a profit, even if it's 25 feet thick.
GD: Yes. But, one of the more important discoveries was the tree trunk that I show here which was about 2 feet in diameter, standing upright with it's roots buried. No way can anybody dispute the fact that here, within three degrees from the South Pole, Antarctica was green.
BS: And that is the southernmost land.
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GD: That's correct. No, there is Mt. Howe beyond that. South of that.
GD: There were glossopteris flora there.
BS: There, and Mt. Howe's the southernmost mountain that sticks up - nunatek. It's a
nunatek?
GD: No, it's a huge mountain. A huge mountain.
BS: But, it sticks up through the . . . ice all around it?
GD: No, it has terraces of coal, terraces . . . everything. But, we did Mt. Weaver and the mountains next to it and everywhere else and then I got this call that the Army was testing the UH1B turbine powered helicopters and they were passing by us because the US Geological Survey was doing topographic mapping. "Would you like to use them for geology?" I said, "My god, that's a dream come true. Of course!" Here come these three beautiful helicopters. Captain Frank Radspinner in charge. Well, I located him and I sent him a copy of the book.
BS: If you have his address, I'd like to get that from you.
GD: Oh yeah. All right. They came in. Our hut is 16 ft by 16 ft. and we're four people. And he had a contingency of 10 people or something. I said, "Excuse me, Frank, but we have no place for these people. You'd better put up tents outside." "Well, we can't use this?" I said, "You can all come in here during the day, but when we want to sleep, we can't sleep all of you here." Then they came in and they ran out of cigarettes. We had a can of tobacco, pipe tobacco. I said, "If you guys won't mind pack tobacco, I'll show you how to roll a cigarette." So, I attached a piece of paper - my father used to do that - and you fill it up and then you do like this and it rolls up.
BS: I used to roll my own.
GD: "Well, where is the paper?" "Here.We've got toilet paper." So, they used the toilet paper and one day we're sitting there and suddenly there's an explosion in the hut and a hole in the ceiling. One of them put a paint can in order to thaw it out, on the heater, right in the center of the hut. When it got hot , it was like a bomb. It actually went right
through the ceiling and tore the . . . I said, "You guys stay out." But, the guy who helped us most was, first of all Captain Early. He was in charge.
BS: Captain Early, he was Army?
(200)
GD: Yes, they were all Army. Radspinner was sort of the overall field person. And there was Dee DiAngelo. We called him Dee, and I, for the life of me, can't locate him. And I asked Billy Ace, and he said, "We'll look for him. We'll see if we can find him." Anyway, he said, "OK, where do you want to go?" So, I showed him on the photograph. I said, "Here's our hut and there's Mt. Howe. We want to reach Mt. Howe and if we do it with the Put-Puts, between us and Mt. Howe is an enormous field of glacial moraines and rocks and crevasses. It is impossible for us to reach there except, if we can, maybe you can figure on two to three weeks." He says, "What the hell do you think this machine is for?"
GD: No. This is Dee - DiAngelo. I said, "Can you take me there?" He says, "Right now." I said, "OK, you guys hop in." We hopped in. I was in the co-pilot's seat. He was co-piloting and zoom, zoom, zoom and off we go. You wouldn't believe this. We visited every rock outcrop and we reached the top and we were back in four hours. Four hours. Now, of course, we did things different. First of all, when he landed us and I had a picture of the aircraft between the moraines and the slope of the mountain.
BS: Now, this is from Mt. Weaver to Mt. Howe.
GD: Yes. And it looks like a little speck like this. The boulders were the size of a house. I mean, it was unbelievable. We couldn't have possibly done it that year. Impossible. And when we set down, it was nice and sunny and the men jumped out and I said OK. The horizons are very similar to Mt. Weaver. And let's start from the beginning and then we'll go up and you'll measure the thickness as we go up. We had an altimeter. And they got out and they started roping up and putting their cramp-ons on and he says, "What are they doing?" I said, "Well, they want to climb." He says, "Look, what the hell is this thing for? I'll fly you up and you tell me where to stop and we'll take an altimeter reading and I'll give you the thickness of the thing." And my god, we did . . . we sampled every one of them. There were ledges where we could land. Vast ledges of . . . some of them so black with coal, until we got to the top of the mountain. And then we put in a register with Army on it and everything.
(250)
BS: Were you at the top of Mt. Howe?
BS: First on top of Mt. Howe, huh?
GD: And when it was published in the New Zealand newsletter and I have a copy of it, it said, "Ohio State team led by George Doumani reached the top of Mt. Howe, the
southernmost mountain on earth, and so on, by helicopter." Now, to mountain climbers, that was . . .
BS: Oh, a slap in the face. Bill Long would have turned . . .
GD: I said, "Look, it was the only way to do it. And I don't care what they say."
BS: I've got 23 mountains, first landing on. I'm a helo pilot.
GD: Are you really?
BS: Primarily. I flew R4Ds, helos. But, primarily it was helos.
GD: But, you know, we had no alternatives. We were pressed for time. Here were these guys.
BS: You're not out there to prove that you're mountain climbers. You're there to collect
science. That's hard to . . .
GD: And then when we finished and Dee wasn't even ready to go back to camp, he said, "OK, what now?" I said, "Well, I want to fly around and follow these outcrops, the little rock outcrops, and see how far they are." He says, "Don't you want to show me what
you're looking for?" I said, "Sure, come on out." We went out and with one blow with the hammer, I got a nice fossil leaf. I said, 'What does this . . .?" He says, "Oh my god, that's a leaf!" I says, "Yeah, that's a fossil leaf." "Oh my god, can I take this home? They won't believe it," he kept saying.
Then in the hut, we wanted to sort of snow them down. I told Skinner, "You want to remember now, about succession of formation. Here's . . . this is a [bernitic] rock shot full of [ziniliths], overlain by sandstone formation" - witih this and that. And he says, "I remember that now." So, he says, "What is it the geology looks like?" So, I said, "Well, I'll let Skinner tell you." So, Skinner started repeating this thing that I taught him and Dee said, "My god, you guys ought to teach me some of this so I can snow everybody else and tell them I was doing geology in Antarctica!" So, he started memorizing! He was so pleasant. Except one time he scared us. We were on a mountain, an escarpment way back across from Mt. Weaver, across the Scott Glacier. And we went down the mountain and when we landed, he shut it down. I said, "Hold it. What? You're shutting it down. It's 20 below zero." He said, "That's what we're here for. We are testing these vehicles." I said, "You are testing this vehicle and we are miles away and we may not even survive to get back if this doesn't work."
(300)
BS: You had back-up didn't you? You had three of them, didn't you?
GD: No, the other two left. They were with the US Geological Survey. And he said, "Trust me, it'll work. You guys go." So, we split into two parties of two and I was saying, finally after . . . we hurried and we really hurried up. And we came in and I said, "OK, we're ready to go." But, I was scared. So help me god, I was scared. He said, "You all get in." We got in, he turned the ignition on, turned the key and voom, voom, voom . . . It
