Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - December 28, 1979, Winnipeg, Manitoba By Michael Stephenson first prizewinner in the free press nonfiction writers contest in the operations building the first warning of a possible storm rattles out of the the information is routinely circulated As a just another says the duty an hour later it is con firmed heavy snows carried by winds up to 40 Miles an moving in fast from Lincoln the combined with an average Winter temperature of 35 will whip up a deadly chill Factor of 115 degrees below yet the As the storm is casually referred draws no More concern than a Rainy Day in this is Canadian forces station the most permanently inhabited Community on by air plane Only manned by some 200 military per Alert sits near the ice pack of the Arctic less than 500 Miles from the North pole and Over Miles from the nearest City because Alert is solidly locked in by the permanent Polar ice and the obvious absence of roads leading it is serviced exclusively by once a a Hercules transport plane leaves Tren on a ponderous eight hour the passengers strapped into the Canvas Sling generally with tons of life support cargo piled High and jammed in against their Knees the length of the for the men going in to Start their tour of there is no return flight for six at one Oclock in the the Arctic Sun Hast and wont for another two and seen from the Alf As the plane circles into the wind and then sluggishly Alert is a tight group of red buildings clustered alone on a unending plate of Snow that stretches into manent darkness beyond the electric looking at it through the air plane there is a Swift and clutching sensation of the absolute isolation that feeling is intensified when you the plane depart a few hours later v time to Button up s now the storm the icy Lin Coln sea has veered and is making a run at the commanding officer is advised he makes several phone All of which re lease into motion a rehearsed Flash flow of action known As Button designed to secure the Small station stored equipment is shuffled about to make indoor room for vehicles fur Nace fuel tanks in each building Are checked and topped up a tracked vehicle is dispatched to collect personnel from the water pump House a mile from the Home mounted outside each building is a Coil of remeasured and within thirty minutes of the cd a six Man team called the hangmen have the ropes Strung from door to without the ropes its too easy for a Man to walk Between buildings in the Snow driven darkness and wander off to a Frozen death on the Arctic the storm hits As in less than an hour the land is White and Alert has faded away under the whip Ping within the work goes some men creep along the ropes like heavily bundled bears and vanish into some one operating alerts Small 40watt pm radio station gives a weather report and plays some hawaiian shift workers Are relieved without nothing stops by morning the storm has moved left behind in the silence Are the drifts the wind has packed like Concrete in great Mounds Over the buildings and Down the streets and now must be shaved away with Bull layer by crusted and preparations Are made for the next Alert has bred a six lifestyle aimed directly at mental sur the men absorb new concepts and a major part of which is the exclusion the rest of the they refer to it As the and View it with an agonizingly confused mixture of disdain and in effectively shielded from the worries and calamities of the weekly Call Home newspapers Are almost a week old when the Hercules lands each As Are letters from and on closed circuit they watch in dullness a videotaped world or a Stanley that has already been played and once a week they can talk with their wives Over a Ham radio if there is a Ham operator near their Home who is willing to be on the air at a specific Day and time for the next six months if he has the equipment to Patch through to a private Telephone if Arctic weather conditions and atmospheric disturbances dont scramble the and if the Alert equipment is working at the each Small detail of separation accumulates and and before Long the men find their free of All responsibilities and concerns other than those directly related with the station but its a grisly kind of Freedom that never lets the is their and Doest survive outside a size is a sleep and a pit is what you sleep when a Man decides to go on a hell be drunk for several and when Hes hungry he goes to the dining Hall for the Herkie Bird is the plane that brings his mail and my Herkie Bird is the plane that will come for no other reason but to take him Home at the end of six a Short time is anyone who comes to Alert for any thing less than six Short timers Are avoid excluded with any Luck at sneered is at least1 a1 recognition of no malice there is no malice in any of its like when you sell your said a lanky Young Corporal known As the Jolly Green you have to put up with All those people going Over the in the touching remarking stupidly about All the time knowing nothing about what the place is to and you feel like an oddity on display Weil that what Short timers there not helped or there simply invisible when they walk through my another is More Damn it was the Short timers sent us Here and now they just better stay out of our lives i whiskers has been growing a Beard for three months without much Suc thus the in almost everyone and everything acquire an appropriate nickname which is selected with great care and Smokey is the station fire As will be his successor in two the with a strip of Beard around his looks like an r impish balloon is the Chubby sheepdog works in the operations building and refuses while the Modican carefully maintains a dark Patch of hair Down the Centre of his shaved no one escapes the Wrath and the the a major with an enviously full is and the strict chief warrant officer responsible for station discipline is the officers bar is known As the bridal the senior cos is the old folks Home and the Junior cos bar is club 183 named for the number of Days in a tour of club 183 is the gathering the station watering although officially out of Bounds to All other during the dark months the regulation is not rigid and anyone interested in a party ultimately ends up there some time during the Friday the Hercules has Long since returned South and left the men of Alert to themselves for another the cloakroom of club 180 is jammed with parkas and thick outer storm pants and and the inside is basically shirts and theres always a joker the club is crowded and be Hind the balloon hurries to keep up with a steady flow of he is naked from the Waist with a set of plastic breasts taped to his the Arctic Only topless someone leaning unsteadily on the bar in a Grey jogging suit has had the elasticized pants yanked to his Knees by a passing he Hast bothered to recover Valentine appears in the and floats silently through the his eyes darting about clock ing the action for get those drawers he tapping the Jogger without looking at him and moves through the evening the noise level increases the smoke thick falling behind at the enlisted a fully clothed waiter to help slow Eddie weaves from table to table doing his John Wayne As the night wears switches to a More listless Cary someone begins to play on the Bunny clears a space slow Eddie his on the floor amidst again performs his famous and skate less double Sowkow with a half twist to the music of the in the never ending darkness me Day slides unnoticed into men who must work in the morning Drift away and Are replaced afresh by others coming off sunday Day of rest its difficult knowing when to Down with no Sunrise As an and saturday is an almost uninterrupted copy of this the station is quiet it is Day of recovery of sleep and and late sunday Stow Eddie and the Leprechaun have a final snack the dining Hall and return to passing the hallway they Are halted by a muffled sobbing behind a locked they know the voice a Bare the Leprechaun they go into their rooms and lock the but from that will be watched Over by his they awake monday morning to the dark another week behind and another week the locked in tour of is a boiler with too few Relief valves and seems to keep them always on the Brink of something strange and that has no single name and can be fully its evident group when one of men turns imperceptibly away and the eyes film Over for shorty Hes not there any most of them learn to somehow Abs sorb the do their time with a minimum of internal a for reasons rentals physical or Are evacuated before their and take toy one of these men and walk All Arouth and youll find Hes dedicated every the Job has to be done they do Marie of Echo Winnie Peg won second prize with her Eritrfa nothing of won third prize for Story there was an old agent Orange from to praying by Marlene Cir Nons Washington in when Michael Nuzzi was s 19yearold Marine in he and his friends used to get into Spray playfully Dous ing etch other from head to foot with the Amber coloured chemical defoliant that they had been assigned to Spray on Jungle undergrowth suspected of concealing enemy the Young marines were unaware that the known As agent contained a highly toxic sub stance called which has been linked to cancer and birth defects g substance More thin to years would become the Centre of g growing and increasingly successful Campaign to Force the Federal govern ment and private Industry to face up to the consequences of exposing thou Sand of persons to a potentially a i the agent Orange Story first was a adj Public in october when the los Angeles times reported that unpublished scientific studies indicated that the of were half Tadj to exposure to contaminant produced in the manufacture of a eat Orange 104 other it wit i Ipp Wei is to american society of thousands of inadequately understood chemical for six the United states military dumped an Esti mated million Gallons of agent Orange onto the Jungles of the use of the herbicide was stopped in february nearly two years after the first reports circulated that a byproduct present in one of the components of agent was capable of cawing birth Oregon indictment on March j of this the Environ mental Protection Agency suspended most Domestic uses of after studies showed High rates of miscarriages among Oregon women living in an area where the chemical had been used in the Timber Corei of Vietnam veterans Are known to blame exposure to agent Orange for staggering array of medical including birth defects in their skin miscarriages and liver memory Low and personality we were Given Ham dots that said agent Orange absolutely a Jmc to human and animal said Richard of ranch the Slang name for pilots who flew spraying during demonstration missions for the i saw other pilots stick their fingers into canisters of the stuff and then lick them to show How Safe it everyone believed he King blames his exposure to agent Orange for his own medical he has suffered from dry ringing in the dry liver problems ant cancer of the for which he underwent Radi Cal surgery last i am Intonti i Wear diapers and i am he said in a recent inter in Little is known about the Long Range medic go effect of dioxin on human beings because no human Stu Dies have fiver been but James a professor of pathology at the University of Wisconsin medi Cal said that on the basis of 20 years of research on he has no doubt of its lox City for we know tint Levels As Low As 50 parts per trillion in the diet Are capable of Ebnor Malitie in inon be it fete period of of m reproductive within Pend of 24 we see Gross abnormalities eyelashes and a it has been proven to cause it government and other efforts Are finally under Way to seek the in recent actions by Congress and Federal cies to begin investigations accompanied by recent court developments have begun to give veterans Hope after a decade of Carter order study they cant avoid it said Joan who is agent Orange coordinator for the Vietnam and of for the policy was ignore it am it will go its not going to go Ciller has ordered the creation of an inter Agency working group to study the possible Lon term health effects of agent Orange and other herbicides used in in passing legislation recently signed by the also has mandated a veterans administration study of agent and Vietnam and the air apr it tint into the health of in qty ranch Bohks Luj Kyff w t voter and the primary target of a lawsuit refuel to up prove claims for benefits filed by More than 800 Vietnam veterans who attribute cur rent medical problems to agent Orange current a rules do not recognize the mens medical problems As service connected and thus they Are not entitled to Bene officials our problem is that we have no scientific proof yet that you can have symptoms from such exposure that will Manifest themselves 10 years one a official we have some we have trouble establishing a service people will have a deformed child and say i think that the result of agent even though theres plenty of evidence that pregnant women exposed to it have miscarry there is no scientific evidence that a male can genetically transmit damaged an attempt by the veterans traction to identify ill individuals who might exposed w agent of ush Fussi by the refusal of the Pentagon in it Riffe in own file for we w9p is spas Copeci of which Woff made to tilt to 4ifflil George Dlf Ify Vinu amt jul w informed a administrator Max Cleland that retrieval of those available military personnel records would be a Long and costly task and could not be justified until the term exposure to agent Orange is defined and a dose response relationship despite the pentagons Dean special assistant to said the a was determined to find himself victim and Phillips has More than g passing interest in keeping the Effort himself was Export dip agent Phillipj underwent Tab operations and chemotherapy for two Cance Puj rumours in is Throat and Lymph glands that appeared Bis return from several wits have been filed the five chemical comp aim i a fractured the defoliant to Caj Moranto Shamrock and in that suits Are i w t y far Cratin of a Trust Iund to fee fat trial he by the chemical ;