Ready for Trouble

During World War II, the old gold-rush town of Nome, Alaska had echoed to the roar of aircraft and bulldozers, the bustle of 10,000 U.S. troops. But last week, though gold dredges still clanked on its outskirts, the dusty, ramshackle little subarctic settlement looked almost lifeless again. At the Air Force's Marks Field, 500 miles beyond the main U.S. defense lines, trucks and crates stood ready for the barges which would carry them south to Anchorage. As the jet plane flies, Siberian airfields were only half an hour away; by the time next month's snows came the Air Force would be gone from Nome for good.

The exodus from Nome was only part of a process by which Alaskan military commanders were getting ready for trouble. The command had taken great pains to rehearse the evacuation of wives & children of servicemen. At Kodiak, women & children had been tagged, checked off big lists, and marched to the waterfront in a driving rain to test the evacuation plan. At Fairbanks, Big Delta, Shemya and Adak, they had hurried to airfields with their baggage.

Blankets & C-Rations. At Anchorage, where thousands of service wives & children are based, the evacuation drill was even more realistic. Buses took women with small babies to Elmendorf Field where Army clerks speedily checked them through to planes. A special train stood by to take other priority passengers to the Army port at Whittier, 60 miles to the southeast. Meanwhile, the bulk of Anchorage's dependents jumped into automobiles and drove a full 50 miles down the road which connects with the Alaska Highway.

Cars were halted in two half-mile-long lines at the Matanuska Valley town of Palmer. Blankets and C-rations were assigned, though not actually issued. But mechanics inspected every gas tank, oil gauge, transmission, differential, battery, oil filter, radiator and tire to make sure everything was in working order. Soldiers handed out dummy orders and authorized mock money allotments, and women were instructed on driving in convoys for the sake of safety.

The drivers were then allowed to turn back. Had they gone on they would have found special gasoline stores, ambulances, doctors and truck-borne patrols of mechanics waiting along 2,000 miles of highway. As they drove homeward, most wives had only one complaint--the Army had forgotten to set up latrines for women at Palmer.

Slit Trenches & Antiaircraft. As soon as the evacuation rehearsal was finished, platoons of U.S. "aggressor" troops began making simulated attacks on the runways at Fairbanks. Every mechanic, clerk and mess sergeant was called for a three-day defense of the field. The commissary was closed tight and the families who had only pretended to evacuate actually began to run low on food. Last week similar mock battles were being fought at other bases.

Slit trenches and new antiaircraft batteries were appearing at many an Alaskan airfield. The Air Force was about to put a dozen men adrift on the ice, 200 miles north of Point Barrow, and leave them there for two months to study the tricks of keeping alive after bailing out.

After five years of uncertain peace, a wartime atmosphere of tension and expectancy had descended on Alaska again.

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