The Coast Guard’s C-130 Hercules flies 1,500 miles out on Alaska’s Aleutian chain to Attu island every two weeks, weather permitting. Lt. Cmdr. Todd Schimdt, a pilot, is not optimistic about his chances of taking off one morning in late September from Kodiak Air Station, Alaska. A low-pressure front has just passed Attu and is heading east, packing wind gusts to 80 knots and dumping heavy rain.
 
“There is no room for error. Even in good weather, you have to get [overhead] Attu with 25,000 pounds of fuel remaining in order to divert,” says another squadron pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Mike Tanner. The runway has no tower and no approved instrument approach, and Coast Guard members know all too well the danger of testing the Bering Sea fog and the “wind devils,” as the Aleuts call them. One C-130 crew pushed its luck in 1982 and a fiery crash resulted, killing two. This time the decision is easy: a 24-hour delay.

By next morning, the storm has moved east toward Kodiak, but the weather at Attu has improved. A new crew, headed by Lt. Cmdr. Tim Tobiasz and Cmdr. Harl Romine, lifts the Hercules into the air and heads west. The four-engine turboprop is crammed with supplies and mail for the 20 Coast Guard personnel assigned to one-year tours on “the lonesomest place on Earth.” Two Navy veterans plus the son of an Army officer who fought on the island during World War II, his history-buff neighbor, and I have arranged to ride on the C-130 and visit the island.

The C-130 slips gingerly into the storm. The plane bucks and sways in response to a light chop, while 20,000 feet below unseen mayhem rules. When we come out the southwest side, a look down reveals what force-11 winds (56–63 knots) can do. Huge waves sweep across a churning surface, spawning rollers 60 or more feet high. They don’t crest like surf, but avalanche down the lee sides, creating dense streaks of white foam. The movie The Perfect Storm comes to mind.

After a refueling stop at Shemya Island, we continue to Attu and a smooth landing.

Attu, the westernmost of the Aleu-tians, is a fog- and snowbound volcanic island 46 miles long and 17 miles wide, located close to both Russia and northern Japan. In June 1942, the Japanese occupied the island, landing at Chichagof Harbor and Holtz Bay in the north. Forty-two Attuans, plus Bureau of Indian Affairs teachers Charles Foster and his wife, Etta Foster Jones, lived in a small village at Chichagof. Foster’s death the day after the Japanese invaded remains a mystery, though legend has it he either committed suicide or was executed. The rest of the inhabitants were kept under house arrest for three months, then transported as POWs to Japan, where 17 died from disease and maltreatment.

On May 11, 1943, the U.S. Army stormed ashore on the northern and southern beaches. The 2,634-man Japanese garrison put up a determined fight in one of the bloodiest combat actions of the Pacific war. After 18 days of fighting, word reached Col. Yasuyo Yamazaki, the Japanese commander, that reinforcements were not coming. Yamazaki ordered a banzai attack on the American lines, and those Japanese not killed in hand-to-hand combat committed suicide almost to a man. Only 29 prisoners were taken. American casualties included more than 500 killed in action and 1,200 wounded.

The Army Air Force then built an airfield at Alexai Point, and the Navy moved into Casco Field, where they began bombing missions in 1943 against Japan’s northern Kurile Islands.

Life on Attu

These days, the sole purpose for the Attu station is the loran transmitter known as Station X-Ray and its 600-foot-tall antenna, which emits a 470,000-watt radio navigation signal used by ships and planes transiting the Bering Sea. Designed during World War II with a quarter-mile accuracy, loran now is considered obsolete with the advent of the gps system and its 10-meter accuracy.

The station’s shutdown was scheduled for 1998, then postponed to 2000, and again to 2002. With the increased threat to homeland security, its status now is indefinite. The loran may provide a needed backup in the event the GPS system is degraded or jammed.

Coast Guard personnel on Attu live and work in a white three-story building nestled atop a knoll beside the runway. The commander is CWO Steven Pfister, a 22-year veteran.

His senior NCO is Chief Petty Officer Eugene Kachuck. They serve as mayor, police chief, chaplain, and civil engineer—anything it takes to operate a small city.

With regard to keeping tabs on the personnel stationed there, Kachuck remarks, “I can’t be a mom to them, but I can be a dad.” Kachuck’s penchant for cleanliness and time spent in the kitchen making sure the meals are hearty would suggest he is good at both.

One of the first Coast Guard crewmembers we meet is Petty Officer 1st Class Raymond Pagan, an electronics technician from warm and sunny Puerto Rico, no less. He supervises the maintenance of the loran-C transmitter equipment.

Asked how long he has been here, Pagan replies, “Six months,” then pauses. “Actually, I can tell you to the minute.” He pulls out a Palm personal digital assistant, taps the instrument twice with a stylus, and then announces, “171 days, 17 hours, and 10 minutes.” All Coast Guard personnel assigned here know the day they arrived and the day they’ll leave.

The mess is the center of life at the station. In addition to mealtime activity, morning muster occurs there after breakfast at 8 a.m. sharp. Station morale lives or dies by the quality of the chow, prepared by two food service specialists. Six-month veteran Petty Officer 3rd Class Justen Kilpatrick is the junior cook and comments that his is “one of the most pressure-packed jobs on the station. We work three to five hours a day longer than everyone else.”

Because the assignees each get 30 days’ leave during their one-year tour, each cook works solo for at least four weeks of that time. Kilpatrick already has logged eight weeks alone, yet is only six months into his tour. The senior cook, Petty Officer 1st Class Todd Root, broke his shoulder recently while on leave. Meanwhile, Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Neil, a health services technician from Stowe, Vt., performs weekly no-notice inspections in addition to his duties checking the safety of drinking water, treating minor injuries, and keeping the pay books straight.

To give the cooks a break, Friday evening is “guest cook” night, featuring station volunteers. In addition, “morale” dinners include locally caught salmon, trout, ptarmigan, ducks, and geese, which can be taken in season but because of Coast Guard regulations cannot be served as regular mess meals. They often are prepared later in the evening and served as tasty hors d’oeuvres in the third-deck game room.

The Exchange is run as an additional duty by Petty Officer 1st Class Adam Pruss, an electronics technician, and is housed in an 8-by-10-foot space on the mess deck. The stocks are limited but include T-shirts, baseball caps, shaving gear, candy bars, potato chips, film, Zippo lighters, and even military rank insignia for those promoted while here. The Zippo company doesn’t produce too many lighters with the Attu unit logo, so they are a prized rarity, especially when a commercial cruise liner makes an infrequent stop. “They clean us out,” Pruss says.

The cook, Kilpatrick, has volunteered to be the station barber even though he had no formal training. He gets $30-a-month extra pay for this duty. “He’s not too bad,” claims Kachuck. Because the majority of the crew wear their hair boot-camp short, Kilpatrick’s skill is not severely tested.

Smoking is not allowed anywhere inside the facility, and satisfying the habit can be a challenge. “The wind can blow steady at 80 miles an hour routinely here,” Kachuck notes as he takes a smoke break outside during a squall. Called williwaws by the locals, storms shake the building, making the occupants feel like they are aboard ship. “We get 2-foot seas in the toilet,” adds Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin Madison, an electrician’s mate from Sandston, Va.

Close quarters

The Coast Guard tries to simulate familiar sea life on Attu. “All hands reveille” is announced over the intercom each morning, and if there is a fire or an error is detected in the loran signal or the power equipment, a battle-stations-like Klaxon horn signals throughout the building. Firefighting and prevention are taken seriously here, as the loss of the main building in winter would create a dire emergency.

What is it like living in close quarters for long periods of time? Pagan remarks, “Two things you don’t want to do here: get mad at anyone or make anyone mad.”

Pruss adds, “Yeah, cause you’re going to be living within 270 feet of the person for a year.”

It doesn’t always work out that way. The chief of the engineering department had been relieved for undisclosed reasons the week prior and boarded the C-130 back to Kodiak the day we arrived. The seven-man engineering department is critical to running the station and is responsible for maintaining nine different vehicles from the eight-ton Oshkosh snow blower to pickup trucks to atvs, along with operating water and sewage treatment plants, the fuel tank farm, and the primary and two backup diesel engines that provide electrical power.

The long year away from home is especially tough on married personnel. “My youngest daughter really misses me,” says Pruss, who has three girls in his family. “I call home and talk to my 6-year-old just about every night.” Phone cards and a microwave link that connects to a satellite have solved the communication problem in an affordable way.

Others find life on Attu pretty easy. Petty Officer 3rd Class Mike Gallager of Cape May, N.J., is single. “I have virtually no bills at all. No rent, sold my car, dropped my insurance, and our Internet server is free. Only have to pay for beer and Exchange items.” The beer locker is open only in the evenings, and no hard liquor is allowed on Attu. Gallager, a storekeeper, likes the assignment. “Everything is convenient. I work right down the hall and don’t have to fight traffic.”

Pfister and Kachuck try to avoid an over-familiarity between boss and subordinates that might lead to a lowering of standards. They sit at their own table in the mess and generally call crewmembers by their last names. Regarding Coast Guard women assigned to Attu, Pfister says, “No blue on blue,” meaning no intimacy between the sexes, even if single. “I can’t prevent people from falling in love, but they have to come and tell me first, so I can take action to have them reassigned.” If he finds out before they tell him, bad career things happen.

Fireman Apprentice Rachel Wyss, of Spillville, Iowa, came here a month ago, straight from boot camp. Coast Guard practice is to have at least two women assigned at isolated stations, but Wyss has been the only woman here since her arrival. Another female is expected in four weeks, but Wyss is making do.

“I’m a bit of a tomboy,” she says. “[Even so], in another month I’ll probably be out of my mind.” Wyss keeps busy, not only working in the loran operations section but also serving on the crash crew, standing by in firefighting gear for aircraft arrivals and departures. She also performs mess duties; is the movie petty officer, selecting movies that are shown on the station TV channel; and takes on rotating duty cleaning the common facilities.

Wyss has a boyfriend in the “lower 48,” who isn’t delighted about her assignment. She quips, “I told him that Malori, the dog, is also a female, so he’s happier that I’m not the only gal here.” Rat Dog 3rd Class Malori has been the station mascot for more than a year and has official duties as rat catcher. The retriever’s 100-pound girth attests to her acumen at the task—and to the quantity of excess mess food she can beg.

Winter blues

During weekends and off-time, the crew uses ATVs, mountain bikes, or a small motor launch to fish, hunt, and search for World War II souvenirs. But the toughest part of the tour is during winter, when it snows and the land becomes featureless. The roads disappear, and travel is restricted to the area around the station and the runway.

“We can walk right off the roof onto the snow,” says Petty Officer 3rd Class Tyler Henderson, a machinery technician. “The gullies fill in, and everything becomes flat and white.” The runway must stay open 24 hours a day, which usually means a 3 a.m. Klaxon horn to plow. “You can’t let it build up,” Kachuck warns, “because you’ll never get it cleared if you do.”

The cold season brings on boredom, but the crew can snowboard on a nearby hill. A Sno-Cat tracked vehicle makes getting up the hill possible.

Moving around the station in winter is complicated by a wind chill that quickly can cause frostbite. “We don’t put the flag up after next week [mid-October],” Kachuck notes, “because we’ve already broken two flag poles. The flags get wet and heavy with ice, then the winds come at 80 [mph] and knock the poles down.”

Scouting the island

While on Attu, I join my fellow travelers on mountain bikes to scout the island. Chuck Pierce is the son of Army Capt. Charles W. Murphy II, who fought on Attu in 1943 then was killed in action on Kwajalein a year later. W.E. “Skip” Schott is his history-buff neighbor.

We cross Attu’s rugged tundra, covered in thick moss and lichen and ablaze in autumn red. We pass the only standing Quonset hut from World War II days, the brig. Its tight confines and sturdy walls are the reason for its longevity, though water stands 3 inches deep inside. We spot the hulks of rusting jeeps, tracked vehicles, and trucks before climbing toward Point Able, some 1,200 feet above the valley floor.

As we near the summit, we come across foxholes from which the Japanese fired down on the ascending American troops. The peak itself is shrouded in fog as it was during the invasion when a furious small-arms battle occurred there. Japanese live bayonet-type ammo clips and spent shell casings lie untouched where they fell beside American rounds marked “den-42” (Denver manufacture, 1942). You almost can hear the crack of the rifles, the cries of the wounded, and the shouts of men engaged in close combat.

Pierce’s father was a company commander who helped take the mountain. I ask him his thoughts. “We got here the easy way,” he says, still drawing in great gulps of air after the exertion of the climb.

Once back at the Coast Guard station, we learn that one of the benefits of the year-long stay at Station x-Ray is that each assignee gets first choice at his next assignment. On the day we prepare to leave, Kachuck announces that Pagan and Pruss both have new assignments to Hawaii. A soft cheer goes up among the crew.

Meanwhile another low front has moved in, with rain battering the windows and winds bending the flag pole and the high-frequency radio antenna. An hour later word comes from Kodiak. We will have to wait another day for the C-130 to lift us off the rock—weather permitting.