I was stationed at Thule during the period: 2/58'-2/59'. Dr. (Capt.) George
Congram MD and I flew to Nord in a C47 during the month of November in order to
bring back one of the Danish personnel who was sporting a nasty ulcer on his
leg; the result of a dog bite. I was a lab technician attached to the 4083rd
USAF Hospital and George -- a good friend who passed away a few years ago -- was
probably the finrst medical doctor we had there.
We didn't really have to go. The patient could simply have been flown to Thule,
but George told me that it would be an experience I'd probably never have a
chance to repeat... It didn't take any more convincing than that. I was twenty
years old and the prospect of flying across the Greenland icecap at night in an
obsolete aircraft really appealed to me then --- Not sure it would today.
At Nord our aircraft offloaded some 55 gallon drums of fish for the dogs -- we'd
sensed that presence during the flight -- and a bunch of other supplies. Some
Nord personnel had come out to meet us on a tractor drawn sledge and towed us,
sitting on the sledge along with the dog food, back to their quarters where we
were made very welcome.
The Dane we'd come to get -- I think his name may have been Sven -- invited us
to tour their little installation with him. I remember a large windy barnlike
building with some Polar Bear skins nailed up on one of the walls inside. In
order to get there though we had first to pass through a double row of
Malemutes, each chained to a metal stake driven into the permafrost. These dogs
were not household pets -- for sure -- and were lunging at each other the length
of their chains leaving just enough room for us to walk between them. Sven
marched fearlessly into the fray while George and I hesitated.
"Don't vorry!" he called to us, "Ze Dugs vont bite you. Zey dunt
bite."
That was good enough for us and we followed after Sven with renewed confidence
until -- about halfway through the gauntlet -- it occurred to each of us, at
about the same time, that we'd actually made the trip in order to pick up Sven
because he had been bitten by one of these very same dogs.
We stayed, as I recall, for a couple of days. Ate a lot of great Danish pastry
and played a lot of chess (I'm a lousy player but so were most of them so it was
interesting all around).
On the return trip Sven began to cough a lot and George decided that I should
test him for TB when we got back to Thule. Sven's Ziehl Nielson stain came up
positive for Tubercle Bacilli and so we sent back to get some samples from the
other guys at Nord. Naturally almost all had TB and so we had a whole bunch of
them flown in to Thule and popped them into the hospital.
To this day, whenever I'm given a TB skin test, it always comes up +3 (doesn't
get any better -- worse actually -- than that). I don't have the organism inside
of me, but I've sure got the antibodies --- a little souvenir from the days when
I played chess sitting across from Sven and his friends.
Much later I learned that the personnel at Nord were all CIA emplloyees, and
that they were collecting Soviet radio transmissions along with corresponding
directional data for purposes of position determination through triangulation by
collection stations to whom they retransmitted on a daily basis.
Wild Dogs, Polar Bear skins, and a bunch of Danish TB ridden 'ditty-boppers'
employed by the CIA...
It was a great experience for a young and adventurous kid.
Congram MD and I flew to Nord in a C47 during the month of November in order to
bring back one of the Danish personnel who was sporting a nasty ulcer on his
leg; the result of a dog bite. I was a lab technician attached to the 4083rd
USAF Hospital and George -- a good friend who passed away a few years ago -- was
probably the finrst medical doctor we had there.
We didn't really have to go. The patient could simply have been flown to Thule,
but George told me that it would be an experience I'd probably never have a
chance to repeat... It didn't take any more convincing than that. I was twenty
years old and the prospect of flying across the Greenland icecap at night in an
obsolete aircraft really appealed to me then --- Not sure it would today.
At Nord our aircraft offloaded some 55 gallon drums of fish for the dogs -- we'd
sensed that presence during the flight -- and a bunch of other supplies. Some
Nord personnel had come out to meet us on a tractor drawn sledge and towed us,
sitting on the sledge along with the dog food, back to their quarters where we
were made very welcome.
The Dane we'd come to get -- I think his name may have been Sven -- invited us
to tour their little installation with him. I remember a large windy barnlike
building with some Polar Bear skins nailed up on one of the walls inside. In
order to get there though we had first to pass through a double row of
Malemutes, each chained to a metal stake driven into the permafrost. These dogs
were not household pets -- for sure -- and were lunging at each other the length
of their chains leaving just enough room for us to walk between them. Sven
marched fearlessly into the fray while George and I hesitated.
"Don't vorry!" he called to us, "Ze Dugs vont bite you. Zey dunt
bite."
That was good enough for us and we followed after Sven with renewed confidence
until -- about halfway through the gauntlet -- it occurred to each of us, at
about the same time, that we'd actually made the trip in order to pick up Sven
because he had been bitten by one of these very same dogs.
We stayed, as I recall, for a couple of days. Ate a lot of great Danish pastry
and played a lot of chess (I'm a lousy player but so were most of them so it was
interesting all around).
On the return trip Sven began to cough a lot and George decided that I should
test him for TB when we got back to Thule. Sven's Ziehl Nielson stain came up
positive for Tubercle Bacilli and so we sent back to get some samples from the
other guys at Nord. Naturally almost all had TB and so we had a whole bunch of
them flown in to Thule and popped them into the hospital.
To this day, whenever I'm given a TB skin test, it always comes up +3 (doesn't
get any better -- worse actually -- than that). I don't have the organism inside
of me, but I've sure got the antibodies --- a little souvenir from the days when
I played chess sitting across from Sven and his friends.
Much later I learned that the personnel at Nord were all CIA emplloyees, and
that they were collecting Soviet radio transmissions along with corresponding
directional data for purposes of position determination through triangulation by
collection stations to whom they retransmitted on a daily basis.
Wild Dogs, Polar Bear skins, and a bunch of Danish TB ridden 'ditty-boppers'
employed by the CIA...
It was a great experience for a young and adventurous kid.
