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Show Rugged Duty Witnessed At Outposts NOTE The following article was taken from the "Outlook", official coast guard newspaper published in Alaska, dated August Aug-ust 28, 1944, and sent by Chief Pharmicist Mate Preston Arnold to his father, George Arnold of Gusher. Chief Arnold enlisted in March, 1941 at San Jose, California Cali-fornia and visited his father here February 12, 1942: "After traveling well over ten thousand miles in a tour of our outlying units to the westward, Doctor F. V. Brown and Chief Pharmicist's mate Preston Arnold Arn-old have returned to the Base. This trip is made every year and is for the purpose of checking check-ing on the general health, medical med-ical supplies and equipment, and living conditions of the men at the outposts. I Morale Excellent 1 1 Men at these isolated stations are really having some rugged duty, said the Chief, but their morale is excellent and they make the best of it. Due to adverse ad-verse weather conditions some of the men had been without i mail for from six to eight months. Entertainment facilities are scarce, but nearly everyone had a hobby, usually ivory-carving. The men take to this age-old eskimo art work with a ven-, ven-, gance and some fine pieces are turned out. A great deal of their leisure time is spent searching for ivory washed up on the beach. Then too, there's always a mascot or two around the camp. ( In addition to the usual array of dogs and cats, one station actually act-ually had a lamb for its mascot. To make up for their lack of movies, the men played recordings record-ings of the various net-work radio shows, including Bob Hope and Jack Benny and many oth- ' ers. A total of over 700 such records re-cords is owned by one unit the party visited. J Practically every means of - transportation, with the excep- tion of dog teams, was used on the trip. Arnold stated that the men were more than glad to see ? new faces and in one instance V even took off their shoes and v waded through the icy surf to aid with the landing. j) Strange Happenings ? Many strange and exciting 5 happenings took place on the j) tour. At one time they flew past p an active volcano, erupting h smoke and ashes they were tj fortunate enough to view the i sealing industry in full swing k and learned how the Coast jv Guard protects these wards of c the government. ? Theirs was the first ship to ? land at one tiny island in the ! North Pacific since the begin- i) ning of the war. The natives ) there were suspicious and re- ) fused to come down to the beach ) until they were convinced the men of the landing party weren't Japs. More than an inspection tour, the trip proved to be of real benefit ben-efit more times than one. The doctor arrived at one place in ) the nick of time and succeeded ) in extracatlng a splinter of steel I lodged in a man's eye, thereby i saving his sight. I All in all, it was a very successful suc-cessful trip and, according to the Chief, one he will long remember. remem-ber. Tunneling through the snow between Quonset huts and doing without things that are generally taken for granted is not fun for those men, but they're they'-re doing their job, and more. Yankee Ingenuity Good spirits and Yankee ingenuity in-genuity in the form of self-made self-made easy chairs and indirect lighting helps the situation some what, but these men on the isolated iso-lated stations and units still have the kind of duty "than which there is no ruggeder", Chief Arnold will give a talk soon at the local USO on his experiences ex-periences while on the trip and it promises to be interesting". |