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Show U. S. Active in Newfoundland j American Workmen Make ; Rapid Strides on Naval j Plane Station. AR GENUA, NEWFOUNDLAND. ' A huge United States naval air ! station has begun to emerge in the last two months on this lonely shore, a third of the way from New York to London. A corps of more than i 1,000 American engineers and work- j men is rapidly building the base, one of the eight in the Western hemisphere hem-isphere which the British leased to i the United States for 99 years. The base already is the center of , extensive United States naval op- erations. On one day this summer there were 60 war craft in the har- j bor. Three were troopships, and submarines and supply ships were 1 among the rest. American freighters freight-ers and airplanes also were present in large numbers. ! Recreation for the Men. j Work of building the base began in earnest ight months ago, but the ; greater part of the 'ttrsi six months ; had to be given over to housing , and otherwise providing for the workmen and to preparations for permanent construction. Barracks had to be erected. Mess halls, laundry, shoe shop, food refrigeration re-frigeration plant, bank, newspaper, compressed air-power plant and even a post office had to be put up. A theater, too, was built. Recreation Recrea-tion for the men in this far-away spot was a serious problem. Dredging and the removal of the layer of peat which covers this part of the Newfoundland coast also were necessary preliminaries. In some places the peat is 20 feet deep, and there were times when the great shovels removing it were out of sight in the holes they were excavating. ex-cavating. As the base begins to take shape, more measures of secrecy are being be-ing taken. Now Part of U. S. Under the agreement with Great Britain this little part of the Newfoundland New-foundland coast has become a part of United States territory for all but a year of the next century. The American flag flies here, and American Amer-ican stamps are used at the American Amer-ican post office. Imported materials materi-als from continental United States come in duty free. Despite this, many of the workmen work-men have become homesick for the States and have left, to be replaced by others from the United States or, in a few cases, by Canadians. The weather has been one cause of grumbling. It was still snowing in mid-June and not until mid-August mid-August did the temperature creep above 60. Cabbage appears to be the only vegetable that grows on these peaty shores. Flowers are scarce, too, although al-though one workman found seven or eight varieties, including white and deep-pink mountain laurel, but- i tercups, moss tulips, wild pansics, : dandelions and rush flowers. These were put on display in a beer bottle, the first flowers many of the workmen work-men hod seen since leaving the United States. Balancing such drawbacks is the fact that there are no mosquitoes, black deerflics, snakes or reptiles of any kind. The climate is supposed to be good, too, for sinus trouble and hay fever. Salmon fishing also is good here. |