Attu, 29 January 1945 -- weather report

 

My delectable dinosaur...

Gene has what seems to me to be the best description of the local weather. "When you open the door and the wind is not blowing," he says, "you fall flat on your face." It is only a slight overstatement. The gales here make the old Riverside Drive blows seem like zephyrs, gentle and enjoyable. The other day on the walk up to the mess hall the wind knocked me down and threw things at me: a quick gust caught me on an icy slope, spun me around, threw my feet out from under me, and as I lay on the crusted drift, digging in with my elbows and heels, egg-sized chunks of ice came skipping by. 

 

The same afternoon I was racing between the latrine and the operations building. Just as I started down the far side of a drift a gust caught me. At the same moment my foot broke through the crust. I turned a complete somersault and lit on my knees, unhurt but quite surprised. 

For the first time I am making use of my winter issue. My regulation dress now includes knee-high, heavy, wool stockings, greased boots, kersey-lined pants (I still avoid the longhandle drawers), t-shirt, sweat-shirt, suntan shirt and wool sweater, light field jacket and parka cover, wool mittens and wool cap. It takes about twenty minutes just to put all the stuff on in the morning and for a short trip outside -- in army terminology, piss-call -- it takes at least five minutes to get bundled up. 

 

Getting dressed is not the only problem. It is sometimes difficult to get out of the hut at all. This morning is one such time. The drifting snow piled so high against the door of our storm porch that it forced it off one hinge. And through the crack it kept blowing in until, when I opened the door this morning the storm shelter was hip deep. Since I am changing shifts and moving over to swing from days I have a bit of extra time. So I spent it shoveling out the vestibule and making some rudimentary steps in the huge drift outside the door. Then I came back in and read the final chapter of "My Antonia," the first Willa Cather book I have tried. A little later one of the fellows started out, to attend to some personal business, and when he opened the inner door found the snow chest high! He had to crawl out on hands and knees. And now Gene, bundled up so that there is no skin showing on him at all, is trying his hand with the shovel. I'll relieve him a little later. 

I don't know how much of our trouble is caused by new snow. There is a crust on the old fall and particles of ice broken from it by the wind and new snow run along seeking openings -- like the entrances to huts and the sides of huts. That is another shoveling assignment, by the way -- keeping the roofs clear. The Pacific people, you'll recall from the Hut-Sut article, test the huts with tons of sand. But if you get a few tons of snow on a hut and then light a fire inside, the place leaks. I spent part of my second day here in clearing the roof of the operations building. Living up here is rather a full time occupation. 

 

The biggest problem is getting to and from mess, which is about a quarter of a mile from where we work. Actually once I get started, I enjoy the work. But when the wind is howling and the flying ice drumming against the sides of the building, it is hard to get up the will power to go to chow. Fortunately we have a rather good stock of canned goods in the hut and it is possible to get by comfortably on one real chow a day at the hall.

...

An hour later. We have been digging steadily and the wind has been blowing steadily. When we started we could not close the outer door and now we still can't close it. Except for some healthful exercise I do not believe that we accomplished much but Gene, who is hut chief and extremely conscientious, seems to feel that the effort itself was worthwhile. ...