My Assignment to 934th Radar Sq., Straumnes AFS, Iceland.

September 1956 - August 1957.

My assignment to Iceland began with my reporting to Manhattan AFS, NY, and consequent bus ride to McGuire AFB, NJ. I flew to Keflavik AFB, and was sent to H-1 Radar Site, 932nd AC&W Sq., just off-base from Keflavik. I had been there a couple of days, when I was informed that I was being assigned to the 934th AC&W Sq. at H-4. No one I talked to knew where H-4 was or what the 934th AC&W Sq. was.

I was transported back to Keflavik, to an area known as “the Seaweed Area”, which I found out later was a SAC deployment area. There were only Quonset huts and a very big heater in the middle of the hut for heat. We had no orderly room, and as far as I knew, no commander. I was the sixth person in the squadron, five other guys were there scratching their heads as to what we were there for. We did have a squadron clerk, and I was checked in and told to pick out a bunk.
The next couple of weeks was spent getting all our medical problems taken care of, I didn’t know at the time that it would be a long time before we might see anyone from that profession. I think they filled every tooth in my head, but I guess it worked. Most of us were young, with a couple of old timers, “Pop”, a MSGT in the motor pool being the most notable.

After a couple of weeks we were told we would be going up to the site, so we bundled up our duffle bags and rode a shuttle bus over to Reykevik, the capitol. We were to take a PBY aircraft up to Isafjodur, then take a boat up to the site. The first try at getting to the site didn’t work out, the aircraft had something wrong with it, and wouldn’t be ready for the next day, so we rode the shuttle back to Keflavik. We made the flight the next day, and my first experience in a PBY, the landing was quite awesome, I thought the thing was going to sink, but didn’t. They picked us up in a rowboat, and took us in to the hotel in Isafjodur.
We spent the night, and got up early next morning for the boat ride to the site. When we got down to the docks, I was a little leery of the boat, but everyone else got onboard, so I did too. When we left the docks and headed out, just as soon as were turned around the breakwater, the seas really got rough. Never having been on the open ocean before, I didn’t really know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this. It was to be about a 4 hour boat ride to the site, and this trip took us over six hours to make the trip. I can’t ever remember being so scared of dying in my life, but I sure thought I wasn’t going to make it this time.
The skipper didn’t seem to mind the storm, and we kept chugging along, but there was a motor pool SSGT that doesn’t remember the trip. He was so sick, he threw up everything he had eaten for the past two weeks. He just lay on the hold cover and turned green. When we got to the site, we had a problem getting him into the rowboat to go ashore. The swells were so rough, the rowboat and the ship were never at the same elevation, so he was finally just dumped him in the bottom of the rowboat when it was close.

It was hard for us that could walk to get in the boat, and I for one was certainly glad to get back on land. Little did I know that this was just a preview of my stay at the 934th AC&W Sq. Captain William B. Smith was our commander and met us at lower camp. I had brought the mail pouch and key, which I gave to the commander. I wasn’t permitted to open the pouch. The commander was a Civil Engineer, and must have made someone really, really mad to be assigned to H-4. I never did know what I had done.

After a couple of days of getting set up in the bunkhouse at lower camp, none of us had been top camp, since the only two pickups had old flathead engines, without pressurized oil systems, and couldn’t make the trip up the hill. Pretty soon a ship would be coming in with our combat vehicles that would make the trip okay. If memory serves me right, we off-loaded a D-7 Cat, half-track, weasel, three 2 ½ ton cargo trucks, one 2 ½ ton tanker truck, a 5 ton wrecker and 5 ton dump, jeep, two 3/4 ton weapons carriers. There was lots of other equipment, but that was the jist of it. We also unloaded tons of food supplies, cigarettes and beer. We would eventually get enough supplies ashore to last us through the winter. Among the many supplies we would be unloading would be thousands of barrels of diesel fuel.

One of the funny things that I recall, almost everything we did was funny, but this had a very serious side also. When we unloaded the vehicles off the cargo ship, the 5-ton wrecker was really a prized item. When the guys got it de-pickled, they drove up to lower camp for some coffee and after a short break, got ready to drive the prize up the hill to top camp. I would guess the drive up to the lower camp was just enough to heat up the engine enough so that when they shut it off, it flooded. Well, they cranked and cranked, choked and cranked, and all of a sudden there was an explosion. Both doors on the wrecker flew open, SSGT Beech, driver, and his shot-gun, flew out of the wrecker at once.

Apparently when it flooded, and they tried to restart it, some of the gasoline leaked past the piston rings to the oil pan, and ignited, blowing the oil pan off the engine. It didn’t hurt the engine, just blew the oil pan off. The outer ring with all the bolts in it were still attached to the engine, the oil pan laying about 3' below the engine on the ground. It was about three months before we were able to get a new oil pan for that thing.

My job, being a radar maintenance repairman (303X2), was truck driving, stevedore, and seaman extrodinair. I drove my 2 ½ ton cargo truck over 7000 miles in my stay in Iceland. The road up to hilltop was about 7 miles, so I made over 500 round trip up the mountain. My truck would hold 21 barrels of fuel oil, that works out to about 10,500 barrels of fuel. That works out to over 500,000 gallons of fuel oil. And we had three trucks running most of the time.
The work was pretty routine, the Gyllir would show up with about 250+ barrels of oil, we would row out to the barge tied up at the buoy. We would off-load the Gyllir, and wait for high tide. At high tide, Chris and Benny would start up the ‘stinger’, a GMC diesel marine engine, which is one very large outboard motor. At the peak of high tide, they would steer the barge at the beach at full speed, about 2 knots, and run it aground as far up on the beach as possible. Highpockets would have the D-8 Cat on the beach waiting for us to ram ashore, and one of us would take the cable bridle and attach it to the drawbar of the Cat. Highpockets would tighten the bridle, and we would all repair to lower camp to wait for low tide.

At low tide, we would all (6-8 people) would go back to the beach and start unloading the barrels. The crane would move up close to the beach, and with barrel-hooks we would start the process of unloading the barrels on the beach. The barge was unloaded first, so it could go back out at high tide. We would then load the barrels from the beach on the trucks. The crane would pick two barrels at a time, and swing them over to the truck. We had to manhandle the barrels upright on their ends, to get 21 barrels on the truck. Each barrel weighed 401 pounds each, so we carried over 4 tons of oil on each trip.
The trip up the mountain usually took about 45 minutes, most of the time climbing up the mountain. It was not unusual to have to stop for a while at one of the switchbacks to let the engine cool down a little, I have seen the exhaust manifold turn almost white hot during the climb. When we reached top camp, the storage tank, (my guess 250,000 gallons), was to the left (west) of the main gate, and the pumping station was just west of that. After many different tries of ways to unload the trucks, we finally settled on the one where you would back up as fast as you could, slam on breaks and all the barrels would slid out the rear. There was some danger here, if your breaks failed, you could crash through the pump station and wind up 1500 feet below. This never happened, but some guys did forget to open the tailgate.

Usually a couple of guys manned the pump station, one to stand the barrel up, pop open the bung, and insert the pipe connected to the pump. It only took a few seconds for the fuel to be extracted, but it was a boring job. The round trip with the truck usually took about 1-1 ½ hour, depending if you eat anything or drank anything at hilltop or lower camp. We usually ate breakfast after beaching the barge, and sometimes was able to catch 40 winks, but lunch and supper had to be worked in with the hauling. We had a permanent cook at lower camp, and there were only about 6 of us, so it wasn’t to hard to get something to eat.
When the vehicles arrived, about 15 other G.I.’s had arrived from Keflavik, so the squadron was up to about 20-25 people. Most of them slept and eat at top camp, we stayed at lower camp. This was pretty much the way the months went, hauling oil when the Gyllir showed up, and just laying around, washing clothes, trying to keep from getting to bored. I had the one additional duty of checking the radio twice a day, morning and night, time permitting. We had the ‘big’ radio, BC-610, installed at top camp, so they handled all the message traffic for the site.

SSGT Willis “Mac/Maggie” McGhee was our radio operator. Our top camp food services supervisor was “Ma” Brown, MSGT, he thought everyone should weigh 200 pounds. He used to trap arctic fox for a pastime. He would bait a garbage can, with a rope tied to it, and when the fox went under it to get the bait, he pulled the prop from under the can, trapping the fox. I think he caught a couple like this, but released them. Monday night football was still a few years away.
Our first disaster happened in the late fall of 1956. A storm broke the barge in two and beached the end with the ‘stinger’ on it, above high tide. We spent quite a while trying to refloat it. Once it was refloated, the other part of the barge was cut loose from the buoy, and a rope attached to it and the rowboat and it was tried to tow the other half to shore. Didn’t work, the barge got away and was beached way down from where the barge normally beached, which was good that it was out of the way.

The ‘stinger’ on the barge was quite a deal, it must have been a 500 hp diesel engine and a prop on that thing that was at least 5' in diameter. The prop had to be cranked down with a hand winch, and then the engine started. The steering comprised of turning the ‘stinger’ a little left or right, which wasn’t very precise. It wasn’t unusual to take a couple of hours of maneuvering to get the barge lined up the correct way to ram it up on the beach, and more times than not, it was never perpendicular to the beach. Returning the barge to the buoy at high tide consisted of pushing the now empty barge off the beach with the Cat, and getting it close enough to the buoy to attach the anchor chain, was in itself quite a challenge. The seamanship of Benny and Chris were severely tested each time the barge was launched.

While trying to re-float part of the original barge, we used telephone poles that were greased, and a 13-shiv snatch-block. Weaving 3/4" cable through 13-shivs is no easy task in itself. Much of the cable had to be spliced, and I would sit with Benny on the barge, watching him splice the huge cable, with a marlin spike, and I have on many occasions employed this splicing technique to rope. The cat was used to push the poles under the seaward side of the barge as far as they would go, but in doing so, it scrapped the grease off them. One time, while tugging with the shiv-block, the cable snapped, and almost took the cab off the Cat that High Pockets was pulling with. That cable would have cut a person in two, instantly.
We finally managed to re-float the part of the barge with the stinger, by a combination of coffer dams, and lots of cussing and plain old common sense. The main responsibility was to a couple of civilian contractors, I never knew their official titles, I think they were with the Army Corps of Engineers, but not sure. The grunt work fell to Chris, Benny and about six of us G.I.’s. I feel like I must have pulled a million miles of cable, but probably not even half of that. Everything you did had a cable hooked to it, the barge, the cat, my truck, the barrels.

During the spring and summer of 1957, when we were hauling fuel oil almost every day, the starter broke on my truck. It was really hard to get parts for the combat vehicles, because of the electrical system, and just about everything was specially made. In the meantime, we couldn’t lose the use of the truck, so every night I would have to back the truck up a small incline, so I could get in it the next morning and let it roll so I could get it started. I think I must have used that technique for over a month until we got a new starter.

The second disaster occurred during a severe winter storm, I recall as being in January of 1957. We had worked our butts off trying to get enough fuel oil in the storage tank, and in the hurry of doing this, stacked the empty barrels west of the storage tank, on the edge of the mountain. The storm, with winds over 100 mph, blew the empty oil barrels around like match boxes. Some of the flying oil barrels struck the storage tank feed line, shattering it and all the oil was drained out and blown over the mountain and on the buildings at top camp. I would guess this was almost 100,000 gallons of oil.

The Orderly room building, on the west side of top camp, was soaked with diesel fuel, the buildings, being of slab concrete, soaked up the oil, and it came right through the walls. I don’t know if they ever got the odor out of that building or not, but it was literally running down the inside walls of the rooms. The storm also took our radio antenna, and we didn’t have enough coax cable to replace it. We managed to string a dipole down the hallway of the Orderly room building, and could just get out enough power to be received by Keflavik. The AF didn’t have any all-weather aircraft capable of carrying a roll of coax, but the Navy did have some P2V’s that were all-weather, and they could get a spool of cable in it

. The flew up and pushed the cable spool out the door of the P2V. We had filled some barrels with gasoline about ½ mile from the main gate at top camp, and when we heard the aircraft, they lit the barrels. It was so foggy you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, but they managed to see the barrels and kicked the cable spool’s out, and our people managed to locate them.

We got the antenna back up and then the real trouble began, we didn’t have enough fuel oil to run top camp. The commander shut down all but one boiler and one diesel generator, and everyone was put in one dorm. The road was still open some at this point and everyday, enough oil was pumped in the generator day tank to keep it going. Rumors abounded that they were going to pull us out for the winter, and everyone had their fingers crossed.
The heads at Keflavik got together and came up with the idea that we could use sleds to haul oil through the winter. So, they brought us two sleds up on the Gyllir so we could stay on site and haul oil all winter. The sled would hold 11 barrels of oil. It took about eight hours to make the trip with two Cats, one plowing, the other pulling the sled. Two Icelandic employees and two GI would accompany the sleds. This was a tough way to haul oil. Thankfully, it was only done for a few weeks, and the road was finally opened enough to go back to trucks. The problem with the road was drifting. The flats, the road to start the climb up the mountain, would get drifts over 5 feet deep.

Once a Cat went through, the wind would fill in behind the Cat almost immediately. I have hauled cable for the Cat’s blade, they were all cable lifts, many times and wait until Highpockets could get the new cable installed. He would have to plow me out so I could return to lower camp. The cable was supposed to be 5/8" and we could only get ½", I don’t know if this was the reason we had to replace it so much or not, but we sure did use a lot of cable. I was walking behind Highpockets one day he was plowing on the mountain road. I was walking in the outside Cat track, and stepped and went up to my hips in the snow. Highpockets had been plowing with his outside track off the road! He thought it was pretty funny.

We managed to get enough oil to top camp that winter that they didn’t have to evacuate us, but it was a pretty rough winter for those of us that hauled the oil. Almost everyone got a chance on the sleds, and those days were pretty long. A shower always felt good when we got to top camp, and a warm meal was a welcome sight. The Icelandics were not allowed to stay on the site, they had a barracks/chow hall just outside the main gate beside the fence. They had their own kitchen and bathing facilities. I used to watch them walk across the iced road from the motor pool to their barracks, the wind would blow your hair off. The had a rope stretched from the motor pool to the fence, probably kept a few from blowing away.

Every day wasn’t a work day at Latrar, we had lots of free time in between boats, so several of us would go off hiking in the hills, four of us rowed across the bay to Saebol and up the mountain to the old WWII British Radar Site. We made it up and back in a day, but getting off the beach with the herring rowboat became quite a challenge, the breakers seemed to be all aimed at our boat, but we finally made it off the beach.

After the accident with Amn Buettner, I was returned to lower camp. I had been moved up to top camp after we got some new personnel in the early spring. The CC thought that I had spent enough time at lower camp. I remained at lower camp until the late summer of 1957. I once again moved up to top camp, and enjoyed all the pleasure of home. I guess they thought I should be re-socialized before I went home.

In early Spring, three cooks from top camp hiked over the mountain to Hestryi. I don’t know if they made it or not, but they didn’t get back to lower camp when they were supposed to, and the commander notified Keflavik. They sent up a C-54 to look for them, but they couldn’t locate them and returned to Keflavik. Much later, the three were spotted coming across the flats toward lower camp. One of them had fallen through the ice and was soaking wet, almost frozen. We got them up to lower camp and got him some dry clothes and warmed up. They were no worse for the wear and tear, but the commander had some nice words for them. They never left top camp again.

When August 1957 rolled around, it was time for a few of us to pack up to leave. About 15 of us took a boat ride to Arngeroareyri (I think that was the name), at the mouth of the bay that Isafjodur is on. A shuttle bus met us and we rode back to Keflavik in style, about a 20 hour trip with brown-bag meals. Since we all had different dates (DEROS) to go home, they billeted us in the “Seaweed” area until our departure. I had about a two week wait, and nothing to do. I did manage to catch the flu about 10 days before I was due to leave. I never left the Quonset hut for about three days, living on aspirin and toast that the guys would bring me from the chow hall. I knew if I went to the dispensary, they would hold me until the flue was all gone, and I would miss my flight home. I left sick, but I was feeling a lot better than a few days before.

I learned many things during my tour of duty in Iceland. A bunch of G.I.’s can do almost anything. Hard work will prevail in almost any situation, and a can-do attitude will overcome most obstacles. I retired in 1979, after 24 years in the Air Force. I spent 21 of those years on Radar Sites, but none as educational as H-4. Almost every day of my service, I used lessons learned from that first assignment. Tours in Germany, Thailand, Viet Nam, Alaska and the ZI never matched the experiences of my first assignment to H-4.

William L. Boulineau
MSGT USAF(Ret)