B Battery Crazy Ride Does anyone remember 1979, when, then President, Jimmy Carter did that big defense cut-back to save the tax-payers millions, but ended up costing the tax-payers billions? I was in Alaska at one of the ADA sites. ADA is an acronym for Air Defense Artillery. There were three such sites, A, B, and C-Batteries, as most know I was at C-Battery. All three were strategically placed around Anchorage. A-Battery was south west of Anchorage, though I’m not sure where, since I never visited it. B-Battery, sat atop a small mountain directly east of Anchorage, off of highway 1. Unlike the lower 48 states, highways were named according to their completion, highway 1 being the first completed highway. As luck would have it, also situated near the mountain, actually behind and at the base, was a ski-lodge. Called Moose lodge, and it was part of the Moose Run National Park. Though I never got the opportunity, I hear the skiing is great there. Situated such that the face of the lodge faced away from the mountain and to the south, and the ski hills were at the hills to the south also, there were no ski trails off of the mountain as it was too steep. Which would have been a great lesson for me, had I been smart enough to think, back then!!! When President Carter did the huge defense cut-back, all of the personnel had to be reassigned to other places and posts, and being MP’s, and there being only one Army base in southern Alaska, that is where we all went. Three Batteries of MP’s all moving into the MP Company on Ft. Richardson. The MP Company was already near 100% of their allotted personnel, this move made them over 300% strength. That, in turn gave us all a lot of time off, which in a city the size of the Anchorage Alaska metro-area made for some interesting ways to create things to do with that time. Now, I had purchased a beautiful Ford pickup for a mere $800.00, from a guy who was leaving Alaska, and wouldn’t be able to take it with him. It was a ‘71 model two toned, light blue-green and white. The hood, door tops, and bed, inside and top of outside were light blue-green, and the rest was white, including the top, and the bottom all around. It had oversized mudders on the rear, and regular highway treads on front. Two wheel drive, ran great, and new brakes and shocks and tires all around. I found out later that it also had a new transmission and a completely rebuilt engine. Had I been aware I would have gotten more than the $800.00 I paid for the truck when I left Alaska. Not knowing that, and not knowing the difference between a wash and a gravel road made me as out of place as a person from the Gulf Coast area of Texas could possibly get. Having never visited the Battery atop the mountain, or B-Battery, I wanted to visit it before I left Alaska. So shortly after I purchased the Ford truck I asked a couple of friends who had been at C-Battery with me, if they would like to make the short trip. It wasn’t that we wanted to see if there were any differences from our own barracks at C-Battery, but we wanted to see the view of Anchorage and the surrounding areas from the top of that mountain. Understand also that this was a mountain in every sense of the word, we had to go above the tree-line to get to the Battery. As we traversed up the road, our ears popped as we went higher and higher. We stopped for a minute to admire the city from what was called “Look-out Point” which was a wide spot in the road with a rail to keep people from going over the edge, that overlooked Anchorage, and from that vantage point the city was truly beautiful and we could only imagine how it would look after dark. Being late summer and almost fall, the gate was closed by 9:00 pm as there wasn’t any snow to ski on so the park would close at dusk, to keep kids from making it their parking spot. So on we went, up higher than any of the three of us had ever been, except in a plane. When we finally reached the top, we were a tad disappointed when the gate outside the Battery was locked, but not that disappointed as we weren’t there to see the Battery so much as to see the sights and one friend wanted to get pictures of us at various places around the site. After the pictures and the sights we decided it was time to start back down, and as we turned away from the Battery, we spotted what looked like a road that turned off the mountain road we were on, and lead down to the ski-lodge, and since we knew there was a road from the lodge to the main road, we decided to take the road. BIG, NO HUGE, NO GIANT MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!! Shortly after we turned and started down the road, we realized, IT’S A WASH, and in unison we all said, “We have to back up.” I barely got stopped and put it in reverse, and when I pushed the gas the wheels turned to go backwards but we slid forward. Realization at that point wasn’t pretty, in-fact it was scary as hell. In my head I could visualize us going straight down this WASH, disguised as a gravel road, all the way down and we would be found when the lodge opened, decaying flesh, of three dead AWOL soldiers. I could picture my family at my funeral, not able to open the casket because of the decomposed condition of my body. All these thoughts were running through my head at the very same time I was attempting keep us from going sideways and rolling that way to the bottom. Every time I would feel the truck begin to turn I would let off the brake to get it straight again then quickly hit it again, so that I could at least keep us at a slow speed and I had put the transmission in low gear to keep our speed held that way. Finally as we got about 45 feet from the bottom I saw the wash drop to straight cliff, but with a tiny shoulder of rock, and about a 115 degree turn to the left, and a rapid slope downward for about 25 feet and a near 180 degree turn in the opposite direction and another slope dropping rapidly to the base of the mountain. I had the guys get out of the truck and try to put weight on the left rear while I made the first turn, and as I turned I felt the ground under the right steering tire give way, and somehow their weight and the oversized tires on the rear kept me from going over the edge. Then when I got straight, one moved to the other side of the rear and the other came forward, he had an idea. This guy was huge, he stood about 6’6” and weighed about 250 pounds, not much of that was body fat. We called him Big Ben, because of his size and his name was Ben. He thought that he might be able to hold up on the truck and do more good than holding down on the right rear, especially since I was on the left side. The fear was that with my weight against them on the rear we would not be able to maintain the proper lift to keep it from rolling sideways. I tried to tell him that if I did roll sideways and he was trying to hold the truck it would roll on-top of him and that neither of us could walk away from that. He wouldn’t hear it but I truly feared for his life. I knew I would probably roll when I tried to turn nearly 180 degrees on that wash, and there being only enough room for him to get a stand, I knew if I did, he could never get out of the way in time. Again I pleaded with him and again he wouldn’t hear me, so I accepted his stand and eased forward into my turn. I’ve seen this on cartoons but never in real life. With the rather skinny guy on the rear bumper prepared to jump off at any second’s notice, and me behind the wheel, Big Ben Eldred stood off of the road on the only possible stoop he could find and lifted my front wheel-well as the wheel left any chance of holding on to traction, and he held it up as I got back on the road and went straight to the base of the mountain. When I got stopped I jumped from the truck and hugged my huge friend as though we were long lost brothers finding one another after years apart. Together the three of us jumped in the truck and drove out of that place and truly never looked back. Memories!!!
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 20:19:19 +0000
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