The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is a ship. A ship with a crew that sits atop nearly two miles of moving ice. The ship, the ice that holds it, and its crew are on a voyage. A voyage that will take several hundred thousand years before whatever is left of the ship along with the ice that held it will arrive at its final destination, the Southern Ocean. Its winter crew will change out annually and are on a voyage of their own. That voyage will test some of them to their limits, and all, to various degrees, will be forever changed by the experience. While their icy voyage will not yield views of distant lands, it will give some crewmembers remarkable insight into unfamiliar places. Those places will include who they really are as people and how their being impacts others. The crew will reside in their ship in nearly complete physical isolation from the world they knew. While inside, it will protect them from unearthly cold that few on the planet will ever experience. They will lose the sun and experience darkness that will last for nearly half the year they are there. The ship and its crew will supply the light. I had the great honor of being the captain of that ship for three Antarctic winters.
At the South Pole, at around minus 80 Fahrenheit, a strong exhalation will result in a strange whooshing noise from a very visible cloud coming from your mouth. At first, this noise surprises you as you have breathed many thousands of times and never heard anything like it. The sound’s origin is the fact that the water vapor from your breath is freezing incredibly rapidly and hurtling through the air. While out walking across the ice, you are startled by a loud cracking noise that sounds as if things are collapsing and you will fall into oblivion. The cause of the noise is a small horizontal void of air collapsing within the ice. Much to your relief, you do not disappear below the ice and walk on. When you are walking into the wind and not wearing goggles, you start to develop icicles dangling from your eyebrows and eyelashes. If you are out long enough, these may need periodic removal as vision can be obscured. From time to time, especially when facing into the wind, your eyelids may temporarily freeze shut. Squinting hard, shutting your eyes tighter will break the tiny ice seal, and much to your relief your eyes can be opened. You can see again. I experienced those things while at the South Pole and became used to them. I have heard of another phenomenon that occurs when ice crystals are in the air in a certain configuration. When this happens, it increases acoustics to the point where you can hear normal conversations from long distances. I never experienced that. Outside, I was always alone.
The ice and beauty of Antarctica did not call out to me. I never liked the cold, but during my time at the South Pole, with much exposure to unimaginable cold, I would eventually love it. I would love it while still never liking it. Given any thought, cold is the opposite of life. When things die, they cool. Life for humans is about warmth, and it is abnormal to seek the cold. I learned to love and to embrace the cold, but it took time and the ability to recognize what it gave me. In the Midwest, where I grew up, there were very distinct seasons, and I well remember after the muggy heat of summer the euphoria of a chilly autumn with sweaters and jackets. Then came the onset of winter and most years the wonders of a white Christmas. After New Year’s, the novelty of the snow, ice, and cold wore off and months of bleakness followed. Most birds, other animals, and humans took refuge to await the spring, and the white and icy world, to me, was cold and sterile.
Initially, my life took me to warmer places, starting with leaving the Midwest for sunny California and the brutal experience of USMC boot camp. I never returned to the Midwest and called California home for several years before leaving for the warm tropical climate of Diego Garcia British Indian Ocean Territory, where I spent over five years living and working. This led to further foreign overseas or U.S. remote site adventures and another fifteen years in places such as Midway Atoll, Iraq, Kuwait, Wake Island, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and finally, Ascension Island South Atlantic. The only anomaly in these mostly warm weather places where I lived and worked was the nearly four years I spent on rugged Shemya Island, Alaska, near the end of the Aleutian chain. While certainly not tropical, Shemya did not have the frigid conditions of Alaska’s interior. It was about as cold as I wanted it to be.
As a boy I was fascinated by geographical exploration and dreamed of travels to exotic places such as jungles, deserts, and tropical islands. I did not dream of cold places. As an adult, I was able to travel the globe and even launch my own minor expeditions in tropical places such as New Guinea, the Amazon, and Africa. Historic expeditions of the past had always intrigued me. I was drawn to anything that had to do with the search for the source of the Nile, the crossing of equatorial Africa, and expeditions into remote parts of the Amazon basin. Physical struggle itself attracted me, along with the great dangers that had been faced by men to penetrate the unknown. I always had a strong sense of adventure and a love of history, to which I added a physical fitness regimen and an outlook that ensured there was no place on the planet that I could not go. During my own travels and minor expeditions, I began collecting ethnic- and exploration-related artifacts, and over the years I amassed quite a collection in my home in coastal Texas. While doing this, I became aware of another great exploration struggle, and that involved ice.
The great race to the South Pole that occurred in 1910–12 very much intrigued me. In that epic struggle, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, his tough men, and their tough and edible dogs had won the race to the South Pole, but in that race, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his men had become immortal. In order to become immortal, Captain Scott and his polar party had to perish on their return from the South Pole. This was after the realization that Amundsen had arrived there first. Being first to the South Pole was a major goal at that time in history and no one wanted to be second. During what must have been an incredibly depressing march back to their Cape Evans hut, which was over eight hundred miles away, Scott and his men died due to lack of food, fuel, and the colder-than-normal temperatures that occurred during that year. Before dying with his two remaining comrades in his frozen tent, Captain Scott wrote extremely poignant letters to various wives, now to be widows; a mother soon to be without her son; his financial backers; and the British public. This epic drama that occurred in what has been termed “the heroic age” of Antarctic exploration was my real attraction to the cold.
After Captain Scott departed the South Pole on January 19, 1912, no one saw the need to return to a place that he had described in his diary with the words “great God this is an awful place!” He then perished with his polar party on the return journey, and man did not again visit the South Pole until October of 1956. On that date, the U.S. Navy landed a R4D-5 Skytrain aircraft that spent forty-nine minutes on the ice. This opened the South Pole to a new type of explorer quite different from those that visited during the earlier heroic age of exploration. The new explorers were also heroic but had modern technology and a new scientific mission. Now the United States National Science Foundation, NSF, manages the United States Antarctic Program, USAP, which was founded in 1959. The USAP is responsible for the upkeep of three Antarctic stations, numerous field camps and ships. It is responsible for coordinating all the science conducted by several agencies and educational institutions. It also administers the Antarctic Support Contract, ASC, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, as the USAP is heavily dependent on contractors to conduct its mission. This was my route to the ice.
My gateway to the ice came by way of the tropics. While serving as the station manager on a United States Air Force contract on Ascension Island, South Atlantic, one day I noted an employment advertisement seeking a winter site manager, WSM, at the South Pole. Several years earlier, I had applied for that position and been selected as an alternate. I remembered the past interview at the Denver ASC office and how I had made an impassioned attempt to be considered for the primary role. Unfortunately, I was up against someone who had already been there and could not compete against such experience. I was then offered the alternate role, which I accepted, but I did not deploy as the primary candidate did. Going through that process gave me a solid understanding of the program and how, with my education and experience, I thought I could fit. The WSM serves as the station’s leader during winter, which at the South Pole is most of the year. At the South Pole, summer runs from the beginning of November to mid-February and the winter is everything else.
Thinking back, I cannot remember why I had even seen that advertisement. I had no reason to look for another position. I had wanted the Ascension Island position very badly and waited over two years for the government to award the contract. During the bidding process, I had been listed in Alaska Native Corporation’s proposal, stating that in the event they won the new contract, I would be the island’s station manager. I had previously worked for that company on Midway Atoll, Shemya Island, Aleutians, and Wake Island. Over a two-year period, I would periodically be informed of the contract’s award status. There had been several setbacks as contract extensions for the existing contractor were awarded. As the process dragged on, I was viewing the opportunity as quite a longshot and was then somewhat shocked and immensely thrilled when we won it. The attractiveness of the Ascension Island contract was, for me, immense. It had everything I wanted in a project: it qualified for the U.S. federal tax exemption, as it was an overseas assignment; travel there from my home in Texas was relatively easy, flying out of Patrick Air Force Base in Florida on a contractor flight; and most importantly, the island was beautiful and had an amazing history. After other places I had been in the world, including two wars, it was truly paradise. Now, I had that great job, had lived and worked there for over eight months, and loved the place. There was absolutely no reason for me to leave—and yet, I did.
One of the things I told myself to justify my applying for the South Pole WSM position was that my application would probably go nowhere as someone had probably already been informally selected, as had happened last time. I had nothing to lose and probably was not going anywhere. Thinking that, I was somewhat surprised with an almost immediate contact by people from the Denver ASC office who asked a few questions and then very rapidly set up a face-to-face interview. At that point, I realized that this was serious and that I might have to commit. Thinking of departing the beautiful island I had waited so long for was slightly sickening. Even so, I was very aware this could be an adventure that would not come my way again. My career up to that point had included several changes where I left great island assignments to experience new things, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had been bold and seldom sentimental in making these changes. So far, that had worked for me.
One of the things that motivated me to make the radical change from known paradise to the unknowns of the ice was my collection in my house in Rockport Texas. The collection started with ethnic artifacts brought back from my first expeditions to New Guinea, the Amazon, and Africa. Through the years, with all my travels, it had grown to include other areas of the world and exploration-related items that I found interesting. By this time, I owned several items from the estate of the great African explorer Henry Morton Stanley, including furniture, weapons, and his personal ring commemorating his 1874–77 Anglo-American expedition across Africa. The collection also featured a small piece of an African tree from central Africa, beneath which the great missionary explorer Dr. David Livingstone had his heart buried. The house was packed with such things, and they were on open display, hung on walls, or residing in glass cabinets. A full-size bronze museum bust of my guide in life, Richard Francis Burton, resided in a prominent place looking down upon it all. I filled my house with these treasures to the point that it was a minor spectacle to most people upon entry. Most of the items I had an affinity for or connection with as I had traveled to the locations, and with that had a better understanding and appreciation of the objects. In the back of the house, I had a “polar room” dedicated to the great deeds of polar explorers in both the north and the south. While I had some minor experience in Alaska, I had never been to Antarctica. Over time that began to bother me more and more, and at one point, thinking I would never go, I considered removing that part of the collection to make room for items from places I had been. Fortunately, I did not and now could fix that.
While at Ascension Island there were many things to do, from exploring the island’s early history to hiking to the Green Mountain summit. Charles Darwin had been there and wrote about its biology. In the 1800s it had served as a place to convalesce for sailors who were exposed to tropical diseases in Africa. Many times, they died and were buried there. One of the activities I always enjoyed was reading, and at Ascension I read Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick. That novel and its message about an obsessed and isolated sea captain would loom large in my future.
I was at my eight-month point on the Ascension Island project and was due a home leave of a couple of weeks. My plan was to fly to Denver first and do the South Pole interview. I told no one on the Ascension project that I was doing this and planned to take it one step at a time. This would start with completing the face-to-face interview in Denver and a hiring decision by the ASC. If not selected for the position, no one would ever need to know. If selected, I would finish my leave, return to the island, and give a one-month notice. It was an unsettling departure from that beautiful island, as my future, which had seemed so solid, now might face a major change. My flight from Ascension Island to Patrick Air Force Base ran late and led to an extremely tight connection with my commercial flight to Houston departing from Melbourne, Florida. I barely made that flight, and my day was far from over. After a late arrival in Houston, I had a few hours of fitful sleep in an airport hotel and an early morning flight to Denver.
Exhausted upon arrival in Denver, I checked into a hotel that I barely remember. The next morning was the interview, and although exhausted, I did my best to represent what I was. By this time in life, I had come to the point that I would not deceive or hold back my being from any prospective employer. Interviews can be episodes in deception with candidates who strongly desire a position and try to present themselves as the perfect fit. I was way past that point. I wanted a prospective employer to fully understand and consider what I was and how I would or would not be what they were seeking. I had worked over twenty years as a U.S. Defense Department contractor at mostly remote locations where the relationship among a leader and employees is far different from a standard U.S. job. I had been involved with tough projects, adversarial relationships with contract customers, had people die, and had thousands of incredible experiences far from the U.S. eight-to-five norm. This along with several other extreme undertakings in life had made me what I was and there was no need to hide it. While I always respected my company superiors, I found I worked best when they were thousands of miles away and provided minimal to no direction. I worked alone. I did not hold anything back during the interview and had prepared myself for a rejection, as by this time my fit in most of civilized society was a bit of a stretch. If there was one thing I did want to come across in my interview, it was that my employees and what they needed came first. I was not soft with employees and was ruthless with malignant personnel who could infect others, but I found most of the people who had worked for me were good people and deserved my best. I do not remember a lot of the Denver office or the interview except for the question about why I wanted to do it, and my answer was “because I can’t go to Mars.” I will always remember the kindness I received during my interview and the short time I was in that office. I was then given an incredibly priceless gift, my selection for the position.
I returned to Ascension Island, resigned my station manager position, and prepared for my departure. Interestingly, the management at the Alaska Native Corporation I was working for quite understood my early departure from the project and the significance of the South Pole position. Leaving beautiful Ascension Island and the wonderful people I had met while there was not easy. Making it harder was leaving around the nine-month point in my contract and not fulfilling a year overseas; I would lose what would have been a sizeable federal tax refund. These were both strong reasons to stay, but not strong enough for me. I had been on several fascinating islands over the years and had been on Ascension long enough to explore most of it and gain a good understanding of its wonderful people and history. I had spent many years living, working, and exploring the tropics and felt it a natural environment for me. That was well and good, but I felt I was deficient in my experience and understanding of the ice. I wanted to more fully understand the conditions that my great heroes Amundsen, Scott, and Shackleton had faced. The polar room in my Texas home was impressive, but I had not been to the areas on display; I did not understand the ice. It was foreign to me. I would now understand the ice and what extreme cold felt like. I would also get a chance to use my leadership style in the closed, frigid environment at the South Pole.
At that point, my leadership style was a combination of three things. The first and most minor component was what I had learned during my single enlistment in the U.S. Marines many years earlier. During those years I had seen few of what I would describe as great leaders. What I saw was a system with blind obedience to rank. During my enlistment, I witnessed a few idiotic officers and, at times, thuggish and somewhat dim enlisted personal being obeyed simply due to the rank structure. For the Marines, with its mission, it worked. In a crisis, when time is of the essence, the system has its merits. I learned two valuable life lessons while in the Marines. The first was that I would never again allow myself to be in a situation where anyone or any organization had the type of life-and-death power over me that I experienced while under Marine command. The second was that I would be a Marine until the day I died and would always be extremely proud of my service. While I greatly respected the Marines as an organization and was proud of the time I served, I knew that leadership style was not what worked in the civilian world, except in the direst of situations. If I found myself in a dire situation, it was good to know I could revert to that style of leadership.
Next, I had studied the world’s great explorers, focusing mostly on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A trait that most of those explorers shared was that they were egomaniacs hell-bent on fame and fortune. How they were able to motivate others to assist them in that quest is where they differed. With Antarctica, my main interest was “the heroic age of exploration,” where the leadership styles and results could be studied between the three greats: Roald Amundsen, Captain Scott, and Ernest Shackleton. All great men with vastly different styles of leadership. The cold, distant, and precise Amundsen. The virtuous, steady, and brave Captain Scott. The gregarious, likable, and caring Ernest Shackleton. I loved them all for what they were and felt some combination of the three would probably be a perfect leader. One challenge in using them as guides for leadership was that people have changed since their days. What motivated someone to follow a leader in the early 1900s might be quite different today.
The last and probably most important facet of leadership was what I had gained from more than twenty years working for various bosses at U.S. Defense Department assignments around the globe. I had been extremely fortunate to work for many great men, and I had watched closely how they interacted with the various work forces and customers. I took note of what worked and what did not. I was fortunate to have so many great men who tolerated me and taught me what they did. I never forgot what they had done for me and now owed them my undying loyalty. I also owed it to them to do my best to someday do the same for people who worked for me. By the time I joined the USAP, I had made many mistakes through the years at projects I had worked on, but I had gained priceless experience. I felt I was ready, but I wanted to proceed cautiously and was not overconfident. I did not yet know the ice.