THE ARMY OUTWITS ARCTIC WEATHER
Neuberger, Richard L.
The Army Outwits Arctic Weather By RICHARD L NEUBERGER PEOPLE have a general idea how a soldier in India or the Southwest Pacific attempts to keep cool. He simply takes off as many clothes as...
...Once a part of the body commences to freeze at 65° below zero, paralysis and immobility follow fast...
...The seal and caribou herds would have been depleted garbing 180,000 soldiers...
...For five successive days it was 61 ' below...
...The Mounties also discard their tight-fitting breeches in cold weather...
...Leather is a refrigerator when it gets extremely cold...
...In the Mounted Police our men seldom wear leather when it gets colder than zero...
...The Army has given most attention to protection of the feet...
...Soldiers in the North also receive extra rations of food in winter...
...But the supply of furs is limited...
...The inspector eyed, them skeptically...
...Neuberger's Leather Boots Cold-weather clothing must be loose...
...they also included the air base and quartermaster depot at Tanana Crossing, which each Winter is invariably the coldest spot in Alaska...
...With the exception of salt tablets and iced drinks (when and if available), not much else can be done in temperatures of 130° above in the shade...
...How did they do it ? Were there any ill effects ? Did any of these soldiers freeze to death or lose limbs...
...The severe cold burns up the extra energy," Army doctors told him...
...It was not a cold day for Whitehorse but it was 22° below...
...I decided he wouldn't understand and that perhaps there are two worlds, after all...
...Then he showed me that the proper footwear was a. very loose goulash or rubber shoe pac, with a felt insole and two or three layers of socks...
...I say, lieutenant," he asked, "were those shoes designed for you or for the enemy...
...The Eskimos have always worn two-ply fur tunics this way, and few Eskimos ever froze to death in their icy domain...
...This provides camouflage protection in either snow or deep woods...
...Paul Siple, veteran of many Arctic expeditions who as a Boy Scout went to the South Pole with Admiral Richard E. Byrd many years ago...
...The only colder temperatures were recorded along the Donjek, White, and Tanana Rivers where it touched 67° below, which is approximately 100° below the freezing point...
...A draw string brings the hood together to cover virtually the entire face...
...A Russian Didn't Understand Admiral Perry found out that in the Arctic the feet were the first portion of the body to suffer from freezing...
...Siple also helped design the reversible parka, white on one side and forest-green on-the other...
...Our installations were scattered along the Yukon and Mackenzie Rivers in the coldest region of Canada...
...Only one soldier froze to death during the Winter of 1942-'43 when thousands of troops were living in temporary barracks, and this was the coldest Winter in the sub-Arctic since 1913...
...I came out of the barracks in my brand new leather boots...
...The Royal Mounties wear their fur mittens on lanyards, so they always will be conveniently available...
...So the Army has relied on pile fabrics, which are alpaca or mohair woven into a cotten back...
...One brutal morning it was 65° below...
...So does the American Army now...
...The American Army in the Far North' has been excellently equipped—not so well, perhaps, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but there are approximately 129 Mounties on Arctic patrol, compared with several hundred thousand U. S. soldiers on duty at one time or another in the Alaskan theater of war...
...The trick is to provide a maximum of dead air space within the clothing...
...Here, again, the principle of air space applies...
...The practice of "layering" ¦garments is vital in the Arctic...
...Eskimos in the Far North wear furs...
...Feet and hands are particularly vulnerable to frostbite...
...Air Space Is Vital At our headquarters in Whitehorse the temperature never rose above 50° below zero for three consecutive weeks during the Winter of 1942-'43...
...But I didn't...
...We requisitioned the furs of.the civilians at Moscow, Stalingrad, and other Russian cities," he said to me...
...Clothing which pinches may cost him an arm or perhaps his life...
...These men are Bradford Washburn, noted mountaineer and director of the New England Museum of Natural History...
...Quartermaster sergeants are instructed to garb soldiers with Arctic clothing several sizes too large...
...Why are these fur coats not requisitioned to keep you American soldiers warm during these cold Alaskan nights ?" I might have read my Soviet acquaintance a long dissertation on private enterprise and not taking property without due process of law...
...When two pile fabric garments are worn, the first is put on with the pile or hairy side toward the skin and the second with the pile away from the skin...
...If the fire failed, their fingers were too stiff to pick up the gloves again...
...I have been asked these questions a hundred times since I returned from nearly two years of duty with American troops who constructed the Alaska Highway and the military airfields leading to Fairbanks and Nome...
...It must be loose," the inspector emphasized...
...Three men working with the Quartermaster Corps of the U. S. Army have been instrumental in designing the excellent clothing worn by American soldiers in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, and other Northern regions...
...This acts as insulation...
...Yet one of my Russian friends at Fairbanks failed to understand why we in the American Army did not have fur garments...
...Mukluks made of walrus hide are the newest footwear for Northern patrols...
...A man can survive garments far too big for him...
...After moving north from Indio in the hottest part of California, Col...
...These provide the insulating air space common to fur...
...But they also do not permit the formation of frost and perspiration will pass off into the atmosphere, condensing as water vapor rather than forming frost in the boot or socks...
...Can men keep warm in the coldest temperatures recorded anywhere on the North American mainland...
...Mukluk is the Eskimo word for boot, and the Army mukluks are refinements on the Eskimo variety...
...Leather pinches and invites frostbite...
...One heavy pair of socks is not nearly so adequate as two or three very light pairs...
...Absence of circulation reduces the body heat and lowers resistance to freezing...
...He simply takes off as many clothes as decency and the insects will allow...
...Mukluks are seldom worn when it is above 20° below zero...
...I remember the November morning at Whitehorse that I commenced a trip with Inspector William Grennan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...
...Yet in such fierce temperatures men flew planes, drove trucks, chopped wood, erected Quonset huts, and started bulldozers...
...I think readers of The Progressive may be interested in learning how our men kept warm while snowshoe rabbits froze in their lairs...
...Food is heat, and in the Arctic heat is imperative...
...Kenneth B. Bush said he could eat twice as much and yet lose weight...
...Major Siple personally designed the parka hood and the cloth sock-cap inside the hood, which our soldiers wear in the Arctic...
...Your women wear many fur coats, do they not...
...But what do our soldiers do when it is not 130° above but 75° below—when Scotch whisky freezes in the bottle and anti-freeze solution hardens in the containers...
...This is cruel, grim weather...
...The distance between garments gives more protection from the piercing cold than an extra thickness of wool or fabric...
...Tight clothing cuts off circulation...
...Since they are not waterproof, they are useful only in extremely cold and dry temperatures...
...Cheechakoes lost their lives on the Yukon trails in '98 when they took off their gloves for two minutes to start a fire...
...Sir Hubert Wilkins, British explorer, and Maj...
...Furs and buffalo skins for 200,000 are out of the question, unless our great herds are to be annihilated...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 51
