Sioux Cityan Returns Following a Desolate Year at the Tip of Alaska
Only Injury Was Received While on Basketball Floor
Twice the Japs bombed a desolate spot of rock and ice at the frigid tip of Alaska that Maynard S. Ahrendt of Sioux City helped guard for a lonely year. Men nearby were killed or wounded, but no bomb splinter scratched Private Ahrendt.
In August the young coast artilleryman transferred to army aviation. During months of training at an aviation center in California and at Thunderbird field, Phoenix, Arizona, Cadet Ahrendt survived unscathed. Then recently, on the comparatively safe floor of a basketball court, Maynard suffered a fractured right arm.
Meanwhile the future air force lieutenant is enjoying his first furlough since he left law study at Valpariso University in June, 1941, to serve his country. He is spending that 15-day vacation visiting his parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Ahrendt, 5111 Stone Avenue.
Many times during that year in the barren arctic Maynard looked forward to the opportunity he now enjoys.
“Lonesome? You bet it was lonesome,” he recalled. “Nothing to do but watch for the Japs who only came twice. No entertainment but a makeshift little theater that held about 300 men and ran old movies. No sport except what we soldiers could make up for ourselves – when the wind wasn’t blowing a gale or it wasn’t too cold. Not even a girl—except a few army nurses that enlisted men could not visit. The only thing good about that place was the fishing. Even the sun stayed away; we only saw it about 30 days out of the year.”
The wind often attained speed of 110 miles an hour, Ahrendt said. Snow and particles of sand were dangerous as bullets then. Soldiers on guard duty throughout the island could only burrow into dugouts for protection. Whatever ship lay in the harbor put hastily out to sea before the shrieking wind could shatter it against ragged rocks.
“We had one consolation at those times,” Maynard remarked. “If we couldn’t stay above ground we knew no Jap would try to brave the skies above us.”
Source: The Sioux City Journal, March 5, 1943
