HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Last Day"The Last Day"
by
William T. Harper
4752 Tiffany Park Circle
Bryan, TX 77802
979/776-9424
979/774-1625 FAX
harpersferry_2000@yahoo.com
(3,005 words)
"I can't tell you where I'm going or what I'll be doing," I had told my puzzled wife some
months earlier as I prepared to ship out. "But, I guarantee you, it'll be in all the newspapers."
I didn't know it the time, but what I was telling my wife was that I was leaving to take
part in a military mission that might end up as The Last Day on earth for all of us.
I was a corporal then in the Army Security Agency (a predecessor branch of today's
Central Intelligence Agency). It was August of 1952. I was leaving my wife and our two-
month-old first-born to go on what was classified as a Top Secret mission - a mission that
astounded and irrevocably changed the world 45 years ago.
As it turned out, the military's 24-hour clocks were working to perfection on that
following crystal-clear November morning out on the blue Pacific Ocean. Even without the
sonorous tones of Walter Cronkite's reassuring voice reporting to a then nonexistent worldwide
television audience, the countdown that day went off without a hitch. If it hadn't, you probably
wouldn't be reading this now
A Military Air Transport Service C-47 (cum Douglas DC-3) was the starting point
enroute to my Top Secret destination. For most of us GIs, it was our first airplane ride and some
of us were airsick even before the plane's wheels rumbled down the tarmac and lifted off the
runway.
We flew out of Washington, DC's National Airport. (Note: Outbound, we flew across
the country; inbound, atrans-continental troop train was considered fast enough.) Thirty hours
later, with fuel-stops in Evansville, Indiana; St. Louis, Missouri, and Prescott, Arizona, we
finally arrived in San Francisco, California -with no first class seating nor Frequent Flyer points,
either. (Air travel was slightly different in 1952!)
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From the City by the Bay, we transferred to nearby Fort Stockton for our overseas shots
and some more indoctrination. Then we boarded the Navy troop ship USS David C. Shanks and
headed west on what turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant (if anything about a troop ship
could be called "pleasant"), trans-Pacific crossing. We even had a 24-hour layover in Honolulu.
(At that time, Oahu's majestic Royal Hawaiian Hotel with its red-tiled verandahs and
multi-level roofs stood almost alone on the sun-drenched beach of Waikiki as our ship sailed by;
now, you can hardly find it!) We pulled into the docks at Pearl City and gazed longingly at the
opulence of a Matson cruise ship tied up there. Lining the ship's rails were lei-draped
passengers in multi-hued Hawaiian shirts and ankle-length moo-moos tossing garlands of
gardenias and brightly colored paper streamers to their well-wishers on shore. None of those
sea-farers would be stacked up in steel bunks five-high, like cordwood in the bowels of a
troopship.
Onboard the Shanks and back at sea, we had the traditional "Domain of the Golden
Dragon" initiation ceremonies for the "polliwogs" -those of us who were making our first
crossing of the International Date Line.
That was, however, not quite so "delightful" -unless you're into kissing the mustard-
catsup-molasses-mayonnaise-lacquered hairy belly of the ship's fattest cook -which was part of
the ceremonies! Considering what was ahead of us, however, we would have all voted for a
lengthy continuation of those comical antics, rather than face the tensions and stress that was out
there waiting.
In mid-September, we arrived at our Top Secret destination: a tiny, coral atoll about 10
degrees north of the Equator in the Marshall Islands. Our base island was a mere five miles long,
600 yards wide, and six feet above sea-level at its lofty "peak." We were assigned to four-man
tents and given our job responsibilities aboard the USS Estes, a Navy communications ship
anchored just a few hundred yards out in the lagoon. For the first month or so, it was a
monotonously boring existence. We worked eight-hour shifts around the clock, seven days a
week, on the ship.
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Our off-duty time was spent playing poker, watching G.I. movies at the outdoor
"theater", getting rained on, spearing sharks swimming off the garbage dump, and - in the
absence of anything much stronger than 3.2 beer -learning to stomach vermouth on the rocks.
That odious concoction was introduced to me there by another character from my home
town, an NCO Club bartender named George M Cauto. (How do I remember that name from
almost 50 years ago? Well, put his first two initials in front of his last name and you'll see why.
As another aside, when George knew I was going home at the end of our mission, he gave me
the face side of cone-dollar bill that he had painstakingly peeled apart. He wanted me to visit
his wife when I got back home, identify myself via the half-bill -she had the other half -and
assure her that her George was doing fine. I never did get to see her. But George, if you happen
to read this, I still have the facing side of that dollar bill. Maybe we can get together in some bar
again in Austin, Texas and see if your half matches! And this time, we'll imbibe in something
more tasteful than sweet and/or dry vermouth on the rocks!)
Other diversions brought us the inevitable fights on the dock and at the ship's boarding
ladders as the Navy guys battled with the Army and Air Force guys and among themselves as to
who had first "dibs" on space aboard the LCMs (Landing Craft Miscellaneous) that ferried us
back and forth from ship to shore. Many a battler got an unplanned bath in the lagoon. All in
all, it was a trip from Boredom to Tedium to Apathy - an inter-service pre-cursor to the "Mr.
Roberts" play/movie that was to come out three years later.
There were hundreds of military personnel from the Army, Navy and Air Force who were
already at work on the project, jammed together on this tiny speck of coral. There were some
civilians there too -engineers and scientists - and a guy by the name of Teller: Dr. Edward
Teller, the eminent physicist who left Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s, protesting
Der Fuhrer's policies, and who came to the United States where he worked on America's
development of the Atomic Bomb. After our Pacific project was successfully completed, he
became known at "the father of the Hydrogen Bomb."
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We were at the Eniwetok Proving Grounds, a ring of 40 small islands, the remnants of a
series of volcanic peaks that had blown their tops eons ago. We were about 2,400 miles
southwest of Hawaii - in a spot that later became known as the "atomic wonderland". Our
mission, as Task Force 132 (otherwise known as "Operation Ivy") was to do what no one had
ever done before -detonate the world's first Hydrogen Bomb!
Atomic bombs were, by then, passe. In had been seven years since the first ones were
triggered over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in early August, 1945 -thereby ending World
War II. Engineers, scientists and the military had since been popping off A-bombs like corks in
champagne bottles on New Year's Eve in a New York night club. One of those many shots even
had a bathing suit named for it (the "Bikini").
There was little the world didn't know about atomic weaponry. But no one, not even the
renowned Dr. Teller, was absolutely sure what was going to happen when this new, unknown,
untested, and a thousand times more powerful, thermonuclear device known as the H-bomb was
detonated.
"Little Boy," the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima, and "Fat Man," the device that
devastated Nagasaki, killed between 120,000 and 140,000 Japanese. Those two bombs were in
the 19-kiloton range (with one kiloton equaling about 1,000 short tons of TNT).
The program we were about to launch was a 10.4-megaton bomb -with one megaton
equaling about 1,000,000 short tons of TNT. It was no wonder why so many of us were, to say
the least, apprehensive.
To compound our fears, wild rumors were pouring like spilled water from an overturned
glass, all up and down the tiny island and among the armada of service and supply ships
anchored in the placid blue-water lagoon.
We heard stories that the Russians were getting ready to "kidnap some of the scientists"
working on the project. Soviet "military raids" to capture or destroy test installations and
weapons components were "coming." Personnel evacuation plans were being developed, should
we be "invaded"!
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We heard (some even "saw") that Russian submarines were operating in the area, spying
on us through periscope cameras. Furthermore, President Harry S. Truman reportedly was
considering a deal with the Soviet Union that would halt all nuclear testing (which he ultimately
rejected while ordering our test to proceed).
But the topper, the "Mother of All Rumors," was the one that was buzzing from the
admirals' quarters on flag deck to the enlisted men's berths in the steamy bilges on the command
ship in the lagoon and from the generals' quarters to the GIs' tents on the island:
This monstrous thing we were about to detonate could, could set off an uncontrollable
thermonuclear chain reaction. It could, could envelop and vaporize the entire planet Earth!
Even absent that nuclear holocaust, we were told that the device could, could cause a monstrous
tsunami, a giant tidal wave with a wall of water 50 feet high that might sweep across the vast
Pacific Ocean and engulf the entire West Coast of the United States, from San Diego to Seattle.
The lengthy litany of rumors notwithstanding, the fateful day finally did arrive. All of
our countless drills, all of our detailed planning, all of our monotonous training was over. The
Last Day had come.
On November 1, 1952 -just as I had promised my wife those few months back (it now
seemed like many years) - "Operation Ivy" detonated mankind's first hydrogen device. What an
awe-inspiring sight it was (and I do mean "awe" inspiring).
My Army intelligence unit was there to monitor our "enemy" counterparts. The Estes had
dropped its hook just a few miles away from Ground Zero -another evacuated island in the chain
and on which stood a 100-foot steel tower with the "device" wired and secured on top.
The countdown process seemed longer to us than anything that Alan Shepard or John
Glenn could have ever experienced as they sat on the launching pad at Cape Canaveral a decade
later. We were waiting for what could be The End of the entire World.
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Our 10-9-8-7-count seemed like hours instead of seconds. We were watching and
waiting for the greatest fireball humanity had ever seen since the day the sun first warmed the
Earth. Would this, we wondered and worried, be the last day, the end of the world, the biblical
fiery Armageddon?
Most of the military officers watching (and all the civilian VIPs, of course) had their
requisite smoked glasses on to protect their eyes, just like industrial welders. The rest of us were
going to witness the Big Bang in an optically unprotected state. We were ordered to turn our
backs to Ground Zero, open our mouths wide (to relieve the blast's pressure on our inner ears),
and bury our eyes in the crook of our arm.
However, unbridled curiosity made all of us -the unwashed and the unshielded -guilty of
disobeying direct orders; maybe even eligible for a military court martial. But, if this was to be
the Earth's last day, who cared about getting busted? There was no way we were going to miss
seeing this thing.
We warily turned toward the target island and, peeking over those crooked elbows, faced
Ground Zero, head on, our unprotected eyes squinting in fear of the unknown. After all, we
reasoned, if the whole world is going to be blown to smithereens, so what if we're blinded in the
process.
At precisely the scheduled second in the countdown, a giant fireball -measuring a
reported 27,000,000 deg. F at its core -erupted on the watery horizon across from our ship. It
was a hundred, a thousand times brighter than the brilliant sun that was shining on us, on the
ships' steel gray decks, and on the sparkling blue Pacific Ocean.
We didn't hear anything at first. No boom. No bang. No nothing. It was an unexpected,
strange, and eerie silence, especially since we were witnessing a force equal to ten million tons
of TNT exploding right in front of our eyes. We heard nothing, except the ocean waves lapping
gently against the hull of the USS Estes.
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Then, we saw a dirty brownish-green geyser-like column of earth, ashes and gases
starting to rise above that now molten steel tower. What we were seeing was a whole island -
palm trees, sand, dirt, coral -about the size of Manhattan island (with its 2,000,000 defenseless,
incinerated souls) going up in nuclear smoke! The island was disappearing from the face of the
earth. It was gone. Like it never existed. It was no more. The physical maps of the world had
changed. "Manhattan" was gone! In its place was a crater 17 stories deep, filled with the warm
salty waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Only a few stunning moments passed before we noticed a widening ripple in the water
coming across the lagoon from where the tower and the island had been. It was heading directly
for our ship. On one side of the ripple, closest to us, the water was a light, calm blue.
On the other side, closest to the bomb, the water was a dark, mottled blue - with a sharp,
circular line of demarcation arcing in between.
What we saw bearing down on us - as we stood there stupefied by the awesome sights
before us -was the sound wave; the terrifying shock wave formed by the expanding gases as
they barreled right at us like a runaway locomotive on a steep downhill grade. It was like
looking down the rifled barrel of a battleship's loaded 16-inch naval cannon, waiting for it to
explode in our face.
If the island of "Manhattan" disappeared, would the rest of the world be next? Would we
be next? Was this the price of the Cold War? And what about my family? Would I never see
my wife and son again? Would we all turn into radiated little green men who glowed in the
dark? Most of us didn't know an alpha ray from a gamma ray from a Martha Raye. We had
seen the newsreels from Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the A-bomb drops there in 1945. We
knew what could happen to humans; what radiation could do.
But now, had the scientists gone too far? Were Dr. Teller's mathematical calculations
correct or was he just another "mad" scientist out of Mary Shelley's mind and Dr, Frankenstein's
laboratory? Would there be a tomorrow? Or was this, indeed, the last day? Did anybody know?
Was anyone really sure?
I don't know if I was the first GI that morning who had a premonition of what a powerful
force was rumbling straight at us. But I'll bet I yelled louder than ahog-caller at slop time for
everybody to grab a rail or any fixed part of the ship and hang on. What was roaring down on
us, moving steadily, swiftly and inexorably across that bi-colored ocean, could be the
Armageddon. In less than a minute, it would crash down on us. Was this to be the End of the
World?
It wasn't (obviously, as you read this). But it sure was like that scientific theory about the
Beginning of the World -the Big Bang Theory. Our ship floated there, right on the outer edge of
a tiny circle. Inside that circle, we would have been close enough to suffer severe personal
injury, such as second-degree burns at least, or worse, life-altering radiation.
The blast wave was so strong that when it hit us head-on, it slammed every one of us
right down on our knees, even if we were clinging with whitened knuckles to the ship's railing
and other parts of its superstructure. The tornado-like wind force drove some of us backwards,
crashing against the ship's bulkheads. The deafening roar that went with it was like a thousand
New York City subway trains screaming through a single tunnel, blasting and blowing past a
shaking 42°d Street station without ever slowing down.
In a matter of seconds, 90 at most, it was all over. "Manhattan" was vaporized. It was
gone. But we weren't. The huge boiling, brown cloud, now tinged with the multi-colors of land
and sea, was billowing higher and higher into the heavens.
It started taking on the familiar mushroom shape, almost blocking out its nuclear
forefather, the sun. The ships of the "Ivy" fleet slowly settled back on an even keel after their
violent rocking and rolling caused by the force of the shock wave. Those of us thrown to the
ship's decks got up and looked at each other in amazement, awe and disbelief. The preview of
Armageddon had come and gone in an instant. Doomsday would have to wait. The world didn't
end. It was still there. We were still there. It wasn't The Last Day.
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Even though the worldwide newspaper accounts that followed didn't mention the Army
corporal with the loudest scream of warning, when my wife read all about the H-bomb blast at
Eniwetok Atoll she knew then - as I had promised her she would - where I was and what I was
doing. And with a sigh of relief that no casualties were reported, she looked down on the
dreaming infant and she knew that the earth had not ended with a bang. It had, for him at least,
just begun with a whimper. Both my son and the H-bomb celebrate their fiftieth birthday this
year and neither one of them has harmed humanity!
-30-
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