In the absence of the medical officers (physicians) who were training elsewhere, Chief Medical Corpsman Kenneth Aldrich struggled to organize the medical departments that would be taken to Antarctica for both of the Deep Freeze I bases. With understanding of the Navy system, persistence, and, eventually, the presence of Dr. Edward Ehrlich and his officer status, he managed even to upgrade the medical supplies and equipment. Aldrich wintered over at Little America V, where he assisted the doctor in running the dispensary and providing a safe haven for men seeking counsel. Complaining of the obscene quantity of "medicinal" alcohol provided, he bartered it effectively for needed goods and services.

Newly commissioned Ensign David Baker, an experienced winter mountaineer, eagerly volunteered for Antarctica, even when assigned to be a parachuting dogsled driver (for never-used rescue service). After hurried training in both dog handling and parachuting, he became the youngest officer to winter over at McMurdo during Deep Freeze I. He conducted survival training for South Pole construction teams, including tent-camping with full polar equipment and dog sleds, one of the dogs' few uses in this mechanized expedition. He was also the camp's communications officer. For Baker, steeped in polar history, it was a thrilling, life-changing experience to live in the shadow of the heroes of the polar continent.

Aviation ordnance chief Mike Baronick was a crew member on the first R5D airplane that flew to the polar continent from New Zealand in December 1955. He wintered over at McMurdo during Deep Freeze I as the senior aviation enlisted man. The line chief for the aviation unit VX-6, he was responsible for all operations on the aircraft-fuel, arrivals and departures, maintenance, preheating. He also had charge of building and running the Beardmore auxiliary base for three spring-summer months of Deep Freeze II. Mistakenly located that year at the foot of the Liv Glacier, the small temporary camp was a weather station and refueling stop for Pole-to-McMurdo flights. Baronick served in five Deep Freeze operations in all, through Deep Freeze 60. Baronick died in 2000.

Utilitiesman, first class, Willie Beckett had charge of installing and maintaining the base utilities heating, plumbing, water-at Little America V during Deep Freeze I. After wintering over, he drove a D-8 in the tractor train to establish Byrd Station in Deep Freeze II, where he also set up the utilities. Beckett wintered over three more times: at Byrd Statopm during Deep Freeze IV, and McMurdo during Deep Freeze 61 and Deep Freeze 63. He died in 2000.

Navy pilot and then-Lieutenant Jim Bergstrom volunteered for Operation Deep Freeze I as a GCA (Ground Controlled Approach) officer to guide incoming aircraft attempting to land on the ice in poor visibility. As officer-in-charge of the advance party, he arrived at McMurdo on the icebreaker Edisto in December 1955 and helped in the building of the station. He was Executive Officer of the wintering-over party. When plowing seemed the only way to prepare an ice runway in time for the spring planes, and the prospects iffy, the leadership team reorganized the entire camp to keep snow-removal crews going around the clock. Bergstrom, like other officers, did mess cooking. He fell, shattering both elbows in April 1956, just at the onset of the winter night, but recovered sufficiently to resume his duties and, later, his naval career.

Seabee builder Charlie Bevilacqua used his expertise in erecting Quonset huts to win a place on an already filled Deep Freeze I roster. He became the chief builder for the McMurdo base when the senior chief was sent home following a tragic drowning. Wintering over, he inspected and repaired prefabricated building panels and cut trusses apart to allow for airdrop at the South Pole. At Pole, he oversaw the construction of the camp buildings on the snow, digging some in to keep the roofs at one level. McMurdo's leaders greatly impressed Bevilacqua. He took an active part in building the unplanned chapel and helped also with New Zealand's Scott Base.

Lieutenant (jg) Richard A. Bowers, a structural engineer with the United State's Navy's Mobile Construction Battalion (Special), was the Officer-in-Charge of building an air operations facility for the International Geophysical Year at McMurdo Sound during Operation Deep Freeze I (1955-56) and also the incomparably more difficult construction of South Pole Station, to be supported entirely by air-drop the following austral summer. Wintering over at McMurdo to prepare the 24-man construction crew, materials, and equipment for Pole, Bowers also had charge of developing an ice runway at McMurdo for the heavy wheeled Air Force cargo aircraft. In November 1956 he led the advance party that landed by air on the polar plateau, located the geographic Pole, and in just over one month completed the station. For this achievement he was awarded the Morrell Medal, named for the Seabees founder Admiral Ben Morrell.

Civil engineer Lynn Cavendish participated in a hastily organized Construction Battalion Base Unit (Detachment Golf) survey program in Deep Freeze I. The party investigated the Cape Royds area and the Taylor Dry Valley as potential sites for a permanent airstrip on land, but neither proved feasible. On a Glacier cruise in Vincennes Bay in March 1956, he led three others on a shore survey. They got caught unprepared in a sudden blizzard and had a frightening struggle along a steep and ice slope to return to the ship. During Deep Freeze II, Cavendish returned as construction officer for McMurdo.

Yeoman Bob Chaudoin chose Antarctica for the adventure. After serving on Admiral Byrd's staff and then Task Force 43, he transferred to the Seabee battalion MCB (Special) for Deep Freeze I and sailed south on the Glacier. Working closely with Lieutenant Commander D. W. Canham, McMurdo's officer in charge, he typed the station's daily journal (intended as a guide for later report writing) and handled other correspondence. Chaudoin was a member of the South Pole construction crew and postmarked bags of philatelic mail there. Disappointed to not winter over at South Pole, he later helped run the Navy's Antarctic office in Christchurch and accompanied Captain Edwin MacDonald on a cruise in the Bellingshausen Sea.

Paul Dalrymple wintered over at Little America V in 1957 as an International Geophysical Year micrometeorologist, which meant that he studied weather phenomena at close intervals near (above and below) the snow surface. He enjoyed the international flavor of the station, with its Weather Central and other personnel from several countries. So excited was he by the physical beauty and scientific potential of Antarctica that Dalrymple elected to spend a second year, this time at the South Pole where analysis of his data later earned him a doctorate. Dalrymple contrasted the leaders’ substance and style over the two years and noted the numerous differences in camp life and management necessitated by the widely varying sizes of the stations.

Dr. Brian Dalton had scarcely arrived in the United States from his native Ireland for additional medical studies when he was drafted for military service. Obtaining a commission as a Navy lieutenant, he quickly volunteered for Antarctic duty, to experience an adventure that few would ever know. A last-minute and inexperienced substitute, he became the physician and officer-in-charge of Byrd Station over the winter of 1957, when the International Geophysical Year began. Among Dalton's challenges were the fact that numerous building and food supplies and, especially, beer never arrived at the tiny inland outpost. Despite the spartan conditions and social divisions along educational lines, the camp remained generally peaceable although news of the privation brought Admiral Dufek himself on an inspection visit in the spring. Dalton's worst medical emergency was burns to his own hands when a spirit lamp exploded.

Clinton Davis was ordered to the new icebreaker Glacier a few weeks before its commissioning in May 1955, and he remained with the ship until 1963, its longest-serving crew member. He recalled the rolling ride in rough seas, the jolting percussion of icebreaking, the twenty-four-hour daylight, the heroes welcome in home-port Boston after the first season in Antarctica. On its maiden voyage, the Glacier towed YOG-34, an oiler intended for freezing in as a fuel farm. When lesser icebreakers failed, it broke a channel to permit building McMurdo at Hut Point. As a bosuns mate Davis had responsibility for the upkeep of the ship, exterior and interior. He acknowledged the racism of the time but rose above it with an easy-going nature while meaning what he said.

Seabee Walt Davis volunteered for Antarctic duty in Deep Freeze II for the challenge of fully using his talents. Responsible for equipment maintenance, he was the only professional mechanic at Ellsworth Station. Wintering over in 1957, he assisted the International Geophysical Year scientists with their equipment problems despite the station leader's objections (though not as much as he later wished). He discussed the ongoing tensions at the station. In Deep Freeze 61, he wintered over at Byrd Station, where, as the leading chief, he essentially ran the station, and was the leading chief on the first American overland expedition to the South Pole. He wintered again as the leading chief for motor pool maintenance and public works operations at McMurdo in Deep Freeze 66.

Drawn by the mystery of the unknown, geophysicist Gilbert Dewart signed on as a seismologist for the International Geophysical Year. He wintered over at Wilkes Station where he set up the first of a network of seismograph stations for continuous earthquake coverage of the Antarctic. An elective satellite station about fifty miles inland on the icecap offered a recreational getaway and an opportunity for glaciologists to dig the deepest ice pit of the International Geophysical Year. Dewart credited scientific leader Carl Eklund for the collegiality of the station and the numerous additional scientific and exploratory activities that were pursued. He wintered again, in 1960, with the Soviets at Mirny Station, where warm friendships overcame the political divides of the time. He accompanied an over-snow traverse to far-inland Vostok Station.

Dr. Edward Ehrlich, then a drafted Navy lieutenant in the medical corps, learned from HMC Ken Aldrich when he volunteered for Deep Freeze I, that little medical planning had been done. But with his officer status and Aldrich's knowledge of Navy procedures they managed to assemble adequate supplies and equipment. Ehrlich designed his own training program. He was appalled by the huge quantities of "medicinal" alcohol that had been supplied for Little America and decided to give it out only recreationally (against Navy regulations) and equally available to all. He performed an appendectomy in camp, a scary and difficult experience. Morale suffered when a driver was killed in a crevasse and when a plane crashed. Ehrlich believed that the station's real leadership came not from the top but rather from respected chief petty officers.

Ross Hatch served on the Glacier during Operations Deep Freeze 60 and 61, just following the International Geophysical Year. Then the newest, largest, and most powerful icebreaker, the ship also carried and supported scientists. As Operations Officer, Hatch had charge of communications, radar, ham radio and other electronic systems and the technicians who maintained and operated them. The loose guidance of the mission and the opportunities for exploring and self-direction proved appealing and rewarding. Getting stuck in ice in the Bellingshausen Sea for fifteen days in 1961 brought thoughts of wintering over. Fortunately, the ship's rounded hull would probably have escaped damage. The Glacier also rescued other beset vessels.

Chief storekeeper Bill Hess had charge of supplies at McMurdo Station in Deep Freeze I. Organized and "fussy," he insisted on the orderly unloading and storage of cargo, including food and fuel, so that from the start he could locate every item in the supply dump. He ran the ship's store and, with the supply officer based at Little America, was also the agent cashier. Over the winter he organized the logistics of supplying Pole Station and worked with two Air Force sergeants to plan and pack materials for airdropping. In the summer, Deep Freeze II, he coordinated with Pole construction officer Bowers to keep supplies arriving in the order needed. Hess prided himself on motivating workers by outworking them. He died in 2002.

Rudi Honkala, a Weather Bureau meteorological observer on New Hampshire's Mount Washington and St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, volunteered to winter over at Wilkes in 1957 as an International Geophysical Year weather observer and deputy scientific leader. Numerous delays brought worries about having time to establish the yet-unsited station. Honkala credited the satisfying year to group compatibility, Carl Eklund's congenial leadership, the camp’s entertaining dog team. He promoted the auxiliary icecap station to be able to compare weather data with that of the coast. He explained the sudden storms characteristic at Wilkes, hydrogen gas manufacture for weather balloon launching, and photomicrographing snow crystals. Honkala returned to Wilkes Station by request, to winter in 1960 with the Australians who now operated the station. He wintered at Palmer Station in the mid-1960s and summered there in 1969 for a solo glaciology project.

In this impromptu interview, Conrad Jaburg talked about his Deep Freeze II-III experiences at Ellsworth Station. A descendant of Sir James Ross, discoverer of the Great Barrier now called the Ross Ice Shelf, Jaburg was a VX-6 pilot qualified to fly both single-engine Otters and helicopters. He recalled the ships' getting beset in thick ice, having to choose an alternate station site, and the rush to get everything under cover before winter. He assessed the ongoing tensions that developed with Finn Ronne, who was both the military and scientific leader of the station. Ronne's censoring of outgoing messages, thwarting of the International Geophysical Year science program, and petty actions united the base against him. Jaburg also talked about air support for the summer traverse operations.

Twenty-year-old Seabee equipment operator Kim Lett, after brief tractor training on the Greenland icecap, arrived at Little America V to winter over in Deep Freeze II-III. When an underwater projection on the high barrier prevented ship-unloading, he volunteered to help blast it free only to be nearly carried away as the bad ice cracked up. He described snow-melter and fire-watch duty, that included filling the camp stoves with diesel fuel, and having to preheat the heavy vehicles. He assisted with aurora observations and sang in a quartet with Soviet meteorologist Vladimir Rastorguev. In the spring he volunteered to help plow the essential McMurdo runway. He then spent the summer at Hallett Station, remembering the ice so slick on landing that neither he nor the plane could get traction. Lett was probably the only person to work at three International Geophysical Year stations in a single year.

Herb Levack's Air Force troop carrier squadron was chosen for air support of the inland International Geophysical Year stations beginning in Deep Freeze II because its C-124s airplanes were the largest and most suitable cargo aircraft at the time, and his unit had had experience landing materials in the Arctic for the DEW Line. Levack, a pilot and the operations officer, discussed loading and flying the planes to the Pole (and Byrd Station), the mechanics and timing of the low-altitude drops, and having to retreat to New Zealand when the ice runway deteriorated until colder weather and ice repair made the airstrip safe again. In Deep Freeze IV, four C-124s returning from Pole and Byrd Station made safe emergency landings at Hallett when weather turned foul at McMurdo. A week later a similar plane coming from Christchurch smashed into a nearby mountain with six fatalities.

Bill Littlewood, a civilian oceanographer in the Navy Hydrographic Office since 1949, had worked off an icebreaker in the Arctic when he learned about the International Geophysical Year and agreed to participate in a six-month Antarctic expedition in Deep Freeze I (1955-56). In the three subsequent seasons, Deep Freeze II, III, and IV, he was the senior oceanographer in charge of the teams on all four icebreakers operating in the Southern Ocean-one oceanographer, a chief petty officer, and four sailors per ship. Littlewood described the goals, procedures, and findings of the program; with so little data available, almost everything was new and important. He also recalled personal adventures at Capes Adare, Hallett, and Royds, and the Staten Island's difficulties in the Weddell Sea while trying to site Ellsworth Station. He traveled on three icebreakers, Edisto, Staten Island, and Glacier. An exciting professional opportunity in Sweden interrupted his sailing on Deep Freeze 60.

Yeoman Richard Lucier was assigned to MCB (Special) when he volunteered for Antarctic duty, only then learning that it meant a whole year away from family and civilization. One of the first personnel to report in at the Seabee base in Davisville, Rhode Island, he handled the administrative paperwork for personnel but also any other work that needed doing, just as he did on arriving at Little America V. He helped unload the ships and build the camp. Lucier and Chaplain Bol copied news broadcasts and prepared a weekly newsletter that they mimeographed and distributed to every bunk. During his last month on the ice he went over to McMurdo to update personnel records there.

Lieutenant Donald Mehaffey was the wintering supply officer for MCB (Special) during Deep Freeze I. Working closely with Chief Hess and other chief petty officers (whom he greatly respected), he coordinated all supplies-food, clothing, shelter, even dogs-for McMurdo, Little America, Byrd, and Pole stations, and devised a "beautiful" color-coded supply system and a supply dump "laid out in perfect coordinates." However, on arrival at Little America, in an effort to unload quickly, supplies were dumped at a temporary site on the bay ice. When weather threatened to break up the ice, all hands scrambled to move the materials onto the ice shelf. But order gave way to chaos in the rush. Then it snowed, covering up the mess. Fortunately, an aerial photograph before dark helped in the endless digging out, and nothing important was lost. Because of the relative magnitude of their supply problems, Mehaffey believed ever after that he should have been sent to McMurdo instead of Little America.

Radioman Thomas "Monty" Montgomery, who never went to radio school, was ordered to the staff of Task Force 43 as soon as he volunteered for Antarctica and, after helping to write plans and orders and select amateur radio equipment, to MCB (Special). He was a member of the advance party at McMurdo in Deep Freeze I, where he operated from a tent at first to relay communications between ship and shore. He discussed radio schedules, atmospheric radio blackouts, and fast exchanges in Morse code with Russian and French radiomen to receive their synoptic weather observations, code lingo overcoming normal language barriers. After his official Navy communications shift, Montgomery spent hours on ham radio, contacting US radio amateurs who would patch through to Antarcticans' families. The following summer he was one of two radiomen in the South Pole advance party.

Surveyor chief and navigator George Moss always claimed that he "was volunteered" for Antarctic duty in Deep Freeze I because of his Arctic experience and cold-weather survival training. He was the operations chief for Little America, the senior enlisted man, and an acknowledged, admired leader beyond official duty. A member of the trail party to find a route to inland Byrd Station, he distrusted the approach of the leader, a "hero" of the old school. On the return by Otter with six others of the party, the plane crashed in bad weather. Moss determined that they were far off-course and knew there were no operable airplanes in camp to search for them, so he insisted, contrary to conventional wisdom, that they walk back via Okuma Bay where seals could provide food. All survived. The following spring, he was a member of the first Byrd tractor train and helped survey and build that camp.

Photographer Paul Noonan rode the cargo ship Arneb in Deep Freeze II to Wilkes Station where he wintered over. En route the ship got squeezed, near-disastrously, in storm-driven ice by Cape Hallett. On the Antarctic Circle, Wilkes had "almost seasons" but ferocious winds. Noonan helped in the hurried, late-season station-building and organizing of supplies. He kept separate sets of cameras for indoor and outdoor use to avoid drastic temperature changes that would cause alternate condensation and freezing. He documented trips inland to establish and supply the satellite station on the icecap. Like others, he credited International Geophysical Year leader Carl Eklund and Navy officer-in-charge Donald Burnett for the clean and congenial camp atmosphere, their numerous off-program exploratory and scientific activities. After Wilkes, Noonan volunteered for the Task Force 43 staff, and in Deep Freeze IV he accompanied the Edisto to Ellsworth Station for its transfer to Argentina.

Captain Philip Porter, who had earlier been part of the support force for Operation Highjump in 1946-1947, commanded the icebreaker Glacier during Deep Freezes 60 and 61. He considered this a plum assignment; orders were general and dependent on conditions and the still-new ship enjoyed popular interest and press attention. The Glacier carried numerous scientists, whose itineraries he planned with National Science Foundation representative Philip Smith; what Smith wanted to do, what he felt he could do. He rescued the ice-bound Danish vessel Kista Dan, which had been chartered by Vivian Fuchs, and then, with Fuchs, visited Deception Island and the Falkland Islands, where they were royally treated. Porter explained ship operations as conducted under his supervision, and his own omni-presence on the bridge during icebreaking. Porter said breaking ice was almost instinctual with a trustworthy ship, but his men thought he was exceptionally good at it.

John Randall was a twenty-year-old construction mechanic, third class, when he volunteered for MCB (Special) in Deep Freeze I. During the winter at McMurdo he worked long hours to help maintain the overworked equipment for plowing an ice runway, only to have storms fill it up again. A member of the advance party of the Pole construction crew, he learned a great deal paying attention to polar survival training and the know-how of more senior Seabees. He repaired a weasel when it fell improperly on airdrop, leveled snow surfaces for building, retrieved dropped materials. Like others, he considered the first Deep Freeze personnel an "extraordinary collective talent." After intensive training in both nuclear engineering and power-plant operations, Randall returned to McMurdo in 1964-65, and again in 1967-68, to help run the nuclear power plant. He believed in the potential of nuclear power, but this plant was too small to be economical and was later dismantled.

Pilot Gus Shinn first saw Antarctica during Operation Highjump. He took off in an R4D from the aircraft carrier Philippine Sea, the only pilot to land at Little America IV with ski-landing experience. Shinn volunteered for Deep Freeze I, but poor weather and insufficient gasoline forced the R4Ds and Albatrosses to turn back to New Zealand. The next year, with fuselage fuel tanks, he made it, even after reversing course to escort another pilot having electrical problems affecting navigation, although the first-in P2V crashed at McMurdo, with fatalities. On 31 October 1956, he piloted the first plane to land at the South Pole. Taking off again was marginal, but later in the season when it was warmer, he made more than a dozen more Pole landings. Shinn spoke candidly about pilot skill and attitude as well as politics and his own characteristic forthrightness that, in Deep Freeze III, cost him professionally.

Following a full career as a doctor during World War II and several years in the United States Navy inactive reserves, Thomas "Dick" Slagle (1905-1971) rejoined the Navy as a captain and went to Antarctica for a year as part of Operation Deep Freeze III. Slagle was the 56th person to reach the South Pole, and rode in the first plane to land at the South Pole, the "Que Sera Sera." He provided medical care to scientists and explorers at the Little America Station.

On his own from childhood, Charles Slaton, called Slats, had mastered several trades as a civilian and in the Navy by the time he volunteered for Deep Freeze I. By then he was a chief construction mechanic whose cold-weather experience in the Arctic prompted him to insist on modifications to the heavy equipment and testing that later paid off. He supervised equipment maintenance and repair and moving offloaded cargo across the ice to the McMurdo base. During the dark winter, he kept the lone D-8 and the young runway-plowing crews going while preparing equipment for the South Pole where, in Deep Freeze II, he retrieved airdropped material, leveled building sites and a ski runway (using an abandoned tractor he had personally rebuilt), and helped in all phases of the station-building. The blunt and outspoken but tender-hearted Slaton was proud that the construction crew "beat their schedules so bad," finishing in little more than a month. He died in 2001.

Lieut. Philip Smith was a crevasse expert in an Army transportation unit in Greenland when Admiral Dufek asked him to blaze a safe trail to Marie Byrd Land. He agreed immediately. After reconnoitering a route by air, the crevasse team blasted and filled seven miles of deadly fissures where the ice sheet met the ice shelf. Smith then guided the first tractor-train through. On his return ship, he was recruited to work for the International Geophysical Year with the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. The would-be geologist returned to do ice deformation measurements on the Ross Ice Shelf in Deep Freeze III and the following summer to coordinate International Geophysical Year programs from McMurdo. Joining the US Antarctic Research Program at the National Science Foundation, he planned summer field research supported by LC-130 aircraft, promoted cooperative international scientific projects, drafted policies on tourism, and helped work out the transfer of financing Navy support to the National Science Foundation, which then purchased the Navy's services. After science policy work in other agencies, in 1981 he became executive director of the National Research Council, whose Polar Research Board he had earlier helped found to advise National Science Foundation on long-range planning.

Seabee Bill Stroup made chief petty officer the same summer he volunteered for Deep Freeze I. He was the chief electrician for Little America and building Byrd Station. Despite chaotic offloading, Stroup found all of his electrical supplies and moved them to tunnels between buildings where those bound for Byrd Station could later be broken out and sorted. He had charge of the supposedly self-regulating generators, which were a constant problem because of an uncorrectable design flaw. Stroup explained the challenges of raising antenna poles in snow, melting snow for water, and improvising equipment and repairs. He discussed the tractor train trip to Byrd Station, including walking behind the rein-driven equipment in dangerous areas. Having learned the hard way at Little America, he suggested they not disturb the snow at Byrd Station where the station was to go, so it was less work to level for foundations. He found incoming Deep Freeze II personnel uninterested in learning from the pioneers' experience, a common situation.

New Zealand-born Robert Thomson began his long Antarctic career as an International Geophysical Year radio operator and electronics technician on Campbell Island. When he applied to be an upper atmosphere physicist at jointly run (United States - New Zealand) Hallett Station, he was appointed scientific leader there for 1960, followed by a summer as leader at Scott Base, which he would do again in 1963-64. He wintered over in 1962 as scientific leader of the now-Australian station Wilkes and led an over-snow traverse to the Soviets' Vostok Station. Navigating by sunshots plotted on graph paper, he arrived precisely on target. In 1968 he established Vanda Station in the Dry Valleys. Thomson headed New Zealand's Antarctic Research Program from 1965 until 1988. During that time, he was a delegate to every Antarctic Treaty meeting, and in alternate years to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), where he was secretary chairman of the logistics working group. He made 78 trips to Antarctica and received numerous royal and other honors.

George Toney was loaned to the secretariat of the US National Committee for the International Geophysical Year as a US Weather Bureau Arctic logistics specialist. He accompanied the Antarctic reconnaissance cruise of the icebreaker Atka in 1954-55. During Deep Freeze I, he worked on preparations for the International Geophysical Year Antarctic program, recruiting personnel, training and clothing them, and transporting them and their scientific equipment. Very late, he was appointed scientific leader at inland Byrd Station. When he landed to winter over in January 1957, construction crews that came with supplies by tractor train had erected four buildings, but much outdoor work remained to be done in the waning season. Many materials and supplies never arrived, making improvisation essential and privation a fact of life (though he dismissed this). Working later for the National Science Foundation, he summered twice at McMurdo to coordinate the scientific program with Navy supply and went on the first two cruises of the laboratory ship Eltanin in the early 1960s.

Navy electrician Ken Waldron was nineteen when he volunteered for Antarctica. At Little America V in Deep Freeze I, he was first a tractor driver moving supplies to the station, which he then helped build and wire. He explained freezing antenna poles into the snow and trusting them to be climbable, planning any work to minimize time bare-handed in the cold. Waldron elected not to stay, but after a northern summer back at the Seabee base in Davisville, RI, he asked to winter over with the first group at the South Pole. Attending generator school at Peoria proved unexpectedly but critically useful when responsibility for that operation became solely his. Making up wiring connections and measurements indoors helped him complete an installation before the wire froze. He admired the ingenuity and work ethic of his peers and the leadership of Drs. Siple and Taylor and Lt. Tuck. He learned and grew at weekly lectures (scientific, medical, historical, technical) especially the one he gave on electricity.

Ed Ward's north polar flying experience brought him to Admiral Dufek's attention when the latter began organizing Operation Deep Freeze in October 1954. He became its first staff member and the acting commanding officer of the Antarctic air squadron VX-6, which he had less than a year to organize, staff, and equip with suitable, available aircraft. In Deep Freeze II, now executive officer of VX-6, he flew an R5D from New Zealand to McMurdo on 17 October 1956, landing after a harrowing fourteen-hour flight just minutes after the fatal crash of a P2V. He flew seven long-range photo missions over Antarctica, and after deterioration of the ice runway forced the wheeled R5D to return to Christchurch, he made similar but shorter-range reconnaissance flights in a ski-equipped Otter. He recalled the beauty of the polar continent, the difficulties of polar flying-the lack of normal navigational aids, whiteout conditions, radio blackouts, fierce and changeable weather.

Charles “Bucky” Wilson, was a graduate student of Internation al Geophysical Year (IGY) president Sydney Chapman at the University of Alaska. He wintered over at Little America in 1958, the second year of the IGY, as an aurora observer. He described the aurora australis phenomenon, drawing comparisons with its arctic counterpart, the aurora borealis. He helped rescue scientific leader A.P. Crary after the ice front calved off with Crary on it, for which he earned a congressional medal. He was an assistant glaciologist on Crary’s over-snow traverse up the Skelton Glacier and onto the polar plateau in 1958-1959. International politics scotched their planned visit to the Soviets’ Vostok Station. Wilson has since returned to Antarctica more than a dozen times, in 2001 to install infrasound equipment used to monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Vic Young joined the Seabee Reserve after admiring their work and attitude in World War II. Back in active duty, he was a Seabee warrant officer when he responded to the call for Antarctic volunteers in 1955. At the Caterpillar Company in Peoria he oversaw the modification of heavy D-8 tractors for use on snow. He was Little America's operations officer-in charge of getting the ships offloaded, the station built, the Byrd Trail reconnaissance party started out. A plane with half the returning trail party crashed off-course, and heading a search and rescue party along the trail, Young saw danger signs in the surface. Later, on a fuel-caching mission, they uncovered crevasses and, as driver Max Kiel was filling one chasm, his tractor fell backwards into another, killing him. Over the winter, Young organized the materials for Byrd Station on numbered sleds. In the spring, Deep Freeze II, Army crevasse experts blasted a safe trail through the crevasse zone. Young led the first tractor train to inland Byrd and directed its construction.