Alaska’s Tatalina Welcome

A TATALINA WELCOME

Steven Levi

Back in the Dark Ages of American history when I was 30 pounds lighter and 30 years younger, I worked as a traveling college instructor on remote Air Force stations in Alaska. My job was to arrive at an installation, create a class of whatever size I could manage and then teach the wonders of American history to men who were stuck in the proverbial middle of nowhere for 365 days. This was known as a remote assignment and remote it was. None of the bases were linked to the rest of America by road or railway and the only way in was by plane — or dogsled during the winter. I was one of the last instructors to teach on those bases. The twin forces of technology and the demise of the Cold War had made them obsolete. When I left after my 12 weeks of seclusion, so did most of the military personnel. My last base was Tatalina, located about 150 air miles from McGrath in Central Alaska. As I was flying out with the last of the military personnel, more than just the installation was closing. Gone too were the legendary Tatalina Welcomes and I am proud to say that I was a witness to the very last one.

Tatalina was an Air Command Warning System base (ACWS), one in a string of radar installations that stretched across the center of Alaska and extended into Canada. It was part of NORAD, the Northern Air Defense of America. Basically just a glorified radar station, the mission of the base was to scan the horizon for incoming Soviet ICBMs, (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles,) and Foxbats that strayed into American air space. It was a thankless job because there were no incoming ICBMS and the only intercepts of Soviet aircraft was over the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, 500 miles from Tatalina. Thus, for the 135 men at the air station, life was a routine of watching the radar scope for missiles that would never come and even if one did, it would be traveling so fast that there was nothing that could be done to stop it. It was estimated that if an incoming ICBM was spotted, Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage would have less than four minutes to prepare for the strike. Seattle might have had a half hour but it could take that long for the information to be checked, double-checked, forwarded up through the Air Force chain of command to the President and then to the other branches of the military and civilian preparedness personnel. For all intents and purposes, the men at Tatalina and the other ACWS installations knew they were not even on the fringes of the action. Each man was simply spending a year of his life frittering away a year of his life.

Early in the life of the station, some commander must have figured out that the mission was meaningless and decided that if he was going to have to spend a year in the Alaskan bush he might as well have some fun. Thus was the Tatalina Welcome spawned. Basically it was a way of waging psychological warfare against all incoming personnel. Whether the incoming were officers, NCOs or airmen, everyone got the treatment. The entire base gathered to ‘screw up their minds.’ The incoming personnel would arrive and stumble into bedlam. The last Tatalina Welcome was for an incoming officer, which meant that there were not limits to bizarre behavior.

Getting into Tatalina was difficult. If you came by commercial air you had to fly out of Anchorage to McGrath and then take a charter flight up into the mountains. Charter flights in the Alaskan bush are an adventure in themselves. Far from the reach of the FAA, the pilots pretty much did what they wanted. Filling the plane to the ceiling with cargo and then having the passengers crawl on top was not unusual. Also not unusual was seeing airplanes with holes in their wings patched with duct tape — the reason Alaskans call it “100-mile-an-hour tape” — tires purposely flattened so the plane can land on the tundra, communication gear that was a microphone plugged into a jack in the instrument panel that had no electronics behind the panel and landing gear strengthened with wire and rebar.

The McGrath airport was paved, sort of, but the “Tatalina International Airport” was about 30 yards of wide gravel road. You only had one chance to land. If you misjudged coming, you slammed into a mountain. If you were headed the other way, you would bounce off the landing strip and spend the next ten minutes sliding down the mountainside and into the Takotna River at the foot of the range. The last welcome was in June so the landing strip had a thick layer of dust that rose in puffs wherever a foot landed and clogged the sky whenever a plane landed.

Lt. Smith — all the real names escaped me years ago — had been traveling all night from Texas. He might have caught an hour of sleep in McGrath, IF he had been far-sighted enough to have brought eight pounds of mosquito netting. He would also have had to bring dark glasses because in June the sun is aloft for almost 24 hours a day. I don’t think he had either so he was tired and punchy by the time he got to Tatalina, exactly the way the base wanted him to be for his Welcome.

Even before the bush plane rolled to a stop, the commander of the base was ripping the passenger door open and pulling Smith out. He slammed the lieutenant onto the landing strip as the plane shimmied to a stop. (The commander wasn’t really the commander, he was a sergeant. The real commander was going to be masquerading as a one striper and working as the bartender in the base nightclub.) Two other service men, each with an M-16, painted faces and dressed in camouflage huddled over the pair laying in the dust on the landing strip and scanned the forest on all points of the compass.

The bush pilot — who loved Tatalina Welcomes — went wild pulling Smith’s luggage out of the plane and tossing the bags onto the ground. “He’s all yours!” he yelled as he jumped back into the plane. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you nuts!” Then he gunned the engine and blasted off the landing strip covering the men in thick shroud of settling dust.

“What the hell is going on?” asked Smith from underneath the commander as he spit out dust.

“We’ve had some trouble,” snapped the commander. “He always shoots at the planes when they come in.”

“Who’s he?”

Smith didn’t get an answer. In the next instant a World War II jeep exploded out of the forest and screeched to a stop beside the party.

“In! In! In!” yelled the commander at the top of his lungs. The driver of the jeep rushed to gather up the luggage bags on to the runway and tossed them in the back boot. In the same instant, the men in face paint literally lifted the lieutenant off the ground and jammed him into the back of jeep. One man got in on each side while the commander got into the dead man’s seat. The jeep roared off.

“What the hell’s going on?” shouted the lieutenant as the men on either side of him scanned the forest as it rushed alongside the jeep. The roar of the jeep was so loud that he had to shout to be heard.

“We’ve got a rogue in the bush, Sir,” yelled the man on his left.

“A what?”

“Rogue!” shouted the man his right. “Been out two weeks now. Shooting at us all the time!”

The lieutenant looked from one man to the other and then leaned forward and tapped the commander on the shoulder. “What’s going on?” he yelled.

“Rogue!” shouted the commander above the roar.

In the next instant the driver slammed on his brakes. As the jeep was sliding sideways the lieutenant saw an airman with thick glasses and a badly miss-matched uniform standing in the center of the road. He had a wild look on his face and was waving an M-16. The jeep slid to a stop and the jeep emptied of everyone but the lieutenant. By this time the man standing in the roadway was firing at the jeep and the men in camouflage was firing as they hit the ground. The commander pulled the lieutenant out of the jeep and onto the ground. When the lieutenant looked up, the two men in camouflage were running into the brush firing as they split the chest-high plants.

“First time I’ve seen him in a week,” the commander said as he stood and brushed off his uniform.

The lieutenant stood up slowly and nervously brushed off his uniform. “Who was that?”

“That was our rogue,” said the commander. “You’ll get used to it. Sometimes a man goes a little crazy. Takes a while for him to come back.”

There was suddenly a wild flurry of firing just off the road way.

“Were they trying to kill him?” The lieutenant was clearly worried.

“Only if we have to fire in self defense.”

The lieutenant was about to say something when the two men with face paint returned to the jeep.

“Got away again,” said one in anger. “This was the first time he was this close.”

“THIS close,” snapped the second man as he spaced his thumb and forefinger to indicate an inch.

“Almost got you!” said the commander snickering as he leaned back and stuck his finger in an apparent bullet hole in one of the men’s sleeve. “Maybe you got lucky and hit him!” Both men laughed. Everyone got back in the jeep and before the lieutenant could say anything, the jeep was on the move again.

The Tatalina Air Station had been built in three sections on the steep side of a mountain. There was a purpose for its location. Its twin radar domes were on the very top of the mountain while the support services were on the slope. Because of the contour of the land, the critical buildings had to be constructed where there was enough level land to accommodate their size. Since there was not that much level land in any one place, each sections stretched about a quarter of a mile and all were connected by long corridors. During the winter, when there was snow over the tops of the buildings, the halls were necessary for the men to move about the station, from the operations room to the mess deck and the nightclub and then up to their rooms.

The top section had most of the dormitories. The officers were on the eastern side and half of everyone else on the west. The middle section had the operations room on eastern side and the other half of everyone else on the west. On the bottom section were the offices, work rooms, chow hall and night club. The stairway that ran from the second to the third section was six-men wide because it entered the chow hall. Halfway down the staircase was the door to the movie theater, a 40-seater that clung like a burl to the outer wall of the stairway. The theater ran a different show every night, 365 days a year, and sometimes two or three other different films on weekends. The theater was also legendary in Alaska military history. Late one summer evening during a James Bond marathon a black bear was able to get into the station and was chased into the theater. The animals ran across the front of the darkened room just below the screen, not high enough to obscure the moving images but not so low that no one knew it was there. In the next instant the theater was full of men moving for any exit they could find.

An important tidbit of architectural information; the commander’s office had a window on the northeast corner. The window was large enough and low enough on the hillside that anyone in operations could see directly into the office if they so chose. On this day, Operations was packed with men with binoculars.

Tatalina Welcomes were, understandably, extremely popular with everyone. For incoming airmen, it was a casual event that started with a wild drunk that ended with the Tatalina nugget. (More about that later.) But when an officer can in, the whole station got in on the planning. No detail was too small to be overlooked because everyone was going to follow the poor fellow’s first hours on station.

The first thing Smith saw when the jeep pulled up to the station main door was a body bag — full — lying conspicuously between a truck and the front step. There were red droplets on the body bag, subtle enough to be noticed but not overbearing in size, consistency or pattern. Smith did a double take of the bag. The commander got out of the jeep and walked directly over to the body bag and gave it a kick.

“HA! And you thought you’d be getting out here before me!” Then he stepped in the station.

Smith followed the commander into the station looking nervously at the body bag. Twenty yards away, at every one of the south-facing windows in the hallways of the second section, men with binoculars were cheering. Then there was a mad rush to the south facing windows of the Operations Room.

As Smith’s luggage was being taken to his room and the Tatalina Nugget placed on his bed — again, more about that later — Smith was escorted into the commander’s office. From our angle in the Operations Room we would see Smith being led into the office and seated in a dented, rickety gray folding metal chair in front of a map of Alaska. All we could see of the commander was his right arm, its hand armed with wooden pointer that was dramatically jabbing the map.

“What’s he doing now?” someone asked the real commander who was chuckling as he looked through the binoculars and watched Smith staring at the map intently.

“He’s telling Smith that we don’t have a mission here. Our job is to stay here and wait for the Russians.”

“Sounds like he’s telling him the truth,” someone else said. “I didn’t know we were supposed to do that during a welcome.”

Everyone laughed.

It was now about ten o’clock. Time for the final act of the Tatalina Welcome. While Smith was still sitting in the commander’s office, everyone else on station trooped down to the nightclub. The real commander striped to his T-shirt and got behind the bar. Two airmen that were weightlifters slicked back their hair and, dressed in form-fitting athletic outfits and sat on one of the ratty couches in what could not be mistaken as anything other than a romantic embrace. A black sergeant who was famous for his break dancing began opening Alka-Seltzer packages and putting the white tablets into his breast pocket. At every Welcome he would pop a half-dozen into his mouth at once and then trash around on the floor as if he were having an epileptic seizure. Everyone else would just ignore him, or better, step over him as they got drinks.

Even I got into the act. There were some locals from just down the road, so to speak. One of them was a giant of man named Lou. Lou was a dog musher who lived in the bush so he could train his dogs to run the Iditarod dog race. He was at least 6’ 4”, had a beard that hung to the center of his chest, didn’t like haircuts and had a booming voice that would stop traffic. His participation in a Welcome was to rush into the nightclub in his fur outfit carrying a hatchet in one hand and rifle in the other looking for his sons: in this case, the doctor and me. Then he was to yell and scream how a bear had chased him up into a tree and he had been there for two hours calling for his sons to come get him. The doc and I were dressed appropriately; ripped T-shirts and jeans with holes in the knees. Both of us dribbled beer down our fronts and messed up our hair. Two men were going to stage of fight, a full garbage can was set to be tipped over and the music being played was a cacophonous mix of Sinatra, Black Sabbath, Hank Thompson, Lawrence Welk and Beach Boys.

The nightclub was serving what was affectionately known as a “Seven-Legged *&^%$#@!^$@*.” In reality it was not a drink at all. It started with an empty mayonnaise jar into which was poured the liquor that the bartender grabbed. Every *&^%$#@!^$@* was different because there was no recipe. The bartender just poured and served. It was known as “seven legged” because if the drink was allowed to sit idle on the counter each liquor would seek its own level and the drink would reveal its stratigraphic character. The *&^%$#@!^$@* were designed to put as much alcohol as possible into one drink because, at that time in Alaska military history, no one on a remote military station was ordering a drink for its quality.

Smith was escorted into the nightclub by the commander and given his first Seven-Legged *&^%$#@!^$@*. Badly shaken before he ever came through the beaded doorway, the Pandemonium in the nightclub unnerved him further. He took in the entire room with a single, nervous glance and took a sip. The drink bit him back — hard — and then the sergeant went into his epileptic fit. The doc and I stepped over the trashing body and tossed our beer toward the garbage can with promptly fell over and scattered bottles and cigarette butts all over the floor. The only people who appeared to care were the two muscle men necking on the couch who jumped up and began yelling about coffee grounds on their new shoes. Then Lou burst into the room with his foot-high fox cap, his massive rifle and fire in his eyes.

The Tatalina Welcome ended when the airman who had fired on Smith on the way into the air station came over and shook Smith’s hand. Then, as they say, all was revealed. The real commander introduced himself and as each person revealed his part in the bogus welcome, Smith’s demeanor changed from hysteria to humor. He had a sense of humor; it had just been tried mightily.

Smith was awake for at least two *&^%$#@!^$@* and then he was off to bed. After all he had been awake for almost 24 hours. Badly staggering he was escorted to his room. His escorts left him at the front door to his room and beat feet as fast as they could down the hallway where everyone else waited for the last act of the evening to be played out: the Tatalina Nugget. The Tatalina Nugget was a 300-pound boulder painted gold that had been deposited on Smith’s bed. It had taken three men to get it onto the bed so it would virtually impossible for one man to get it off. Smith couldn’t. I know because the next morning I was one of three men that helped him roll the nugget onto a dolly.

This was to be the last Tatalina Welcome so the nugget was given a funeral in the garbage dump along with the proceeds of the previous night’s festivities. Six weeks later I was gone. I had come to the Air Station on a bush plane, just me and my luggage. I left on a C-130 with about 40 men. Another C-130 was due to arrive the next day and by July 1, 1976, Tatalina Air Station was history. It had been privatized. What had once been home for 135 military personnel supporting a radar station became a ghost town for four men who reported weather patterns over the Alaskan Interior.

Tatalina was to be my last station. The demise of the entire education program was not far behind because, as station after station closed, there was no reason to send instructors into the field. By the turn of the century, the remote military station program was gone, replaced by satellite and AWACS.

During my year on remote military installations I saw more of Alaska that most Alaskans see in a lifetime. I saw brown bears larger than my mother-in-law and mosquitoes large enough to carry off small children. I’ve watched the Yukon River break and walked the battlefield on Attu where the Japanese launched a suicide attack at the end of their occupation of the Aleutians. But there was nothing to match the evening I spent slobbering beer onto the chest of my T-shirt waiting for Lou to arrive for the last Tatalina Welcome.

— 30 —

Steve Levi has more than 80 books in print or on Kindle. He specializes in books on the Alaska Gold Rush and impossible crimes. An impossible crime is one in which the detective has to solve HOW the crime was committed before he can go after the perpetrators. In the MATTER OF THE DESERTED AIRLINER, an airplane with no pilot, crew or passengers lands at Anchorage International Airport. As the authorities are pondering the circumstances of the arrival, a ransom demand is made for $25 million in diamonds and precious stones. Chief of Detectives for the Sandersonville, North Carolina, Police Department, Captain Heinz Noonan, is visiting his in-laws in Anchorage when he is called onto the case. For the next 36 hours, he pieces together the puzzle of how the crime was committed. But can he solve the crime, free the hostages and locate the perpetrators before the ransom is paid? https://www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi.