 One very frosty morning in late October 1960, two young teenagers, Soren Gregerson and Kent Gering, checked the readings at a weather station on the edge of the vast sheet of solid ice, which covers most of Greenland. The barometer at Camp Tutto was rising. The wind, which had been blowing with gale force for several days, had lowered to phase one, about 25 miles per hour. This meant that in a very short while, these two Boy Scouts, one from Denmark, the other from Neodeshake, Kansas, would be crawling east across 150 miles of frozen whiteness in a slow-moving convoy of Polkatt tractors. Their destination, their headquarters for the next six months of constant winter night, would be Camp Century, a large military research center which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built deep down under the surface of the ice cap. For the next six months, Soren and Kent, selected from the pick of Boy Scouting in both countries, earned their keep as junior scientific aids in one of the world's most unusual communities. While January winds howled up above at 80 miles per hour and the thermometer sank to 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a small supply of uranium in a nuclear reactor, lighted the laboratories and the tunnel streets, warmed the library in the gymnasium, baked the biscuits in the kitchen, delivered lots of steaming hot water to the shower baths, hot showers built deep inside a glacier. The winter research program at Camp Century involves more than a hundred scientists and army men and includes important projects in civil engineering, geology, glaciology, meteorology, and polar medical problems. Both Kent and Soren proved to be very useful, hard-working members of this community. A complete credit to the Army and the Scout movement which gave them this unusual adventure and opportunity. The Army presents the Big Picture, an official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. And now to bring you part of the Big Picture, here is John Daly. In these modern times it's no longer easy for young Americans to meet nature in the roar as Kent Gering and his Danish fellow Scout Soren met it during the winter of 1960-61 way up in northern Greenland. Boy Scouting is one of the few institutions to balance the rather softening effect of our modern way of life. Sponsored by schools, business clubs, churches, and the like, the Scout program is designed to help our sons, cousins, and younger brothers develop the initiative, the resourcefulness, the character, the quick thinking, and the leadership they really need in the somewhat jittery, insecure world in which we live. Ever since the Boy Scouts of America began back in 1910, the United States Army has been one of its chief supporters. Today in the Big Picture we would like to show you a few of the things the Army has done for the Scouts and some of the things the Scouts have done for the Army. There is an excellent precedent for choosing outstanding Boy Scouts for the adventure, responsibility, and opportunity both Kent and Soren experienced up there in the frozen north. Nearly 30 years earlier in 1928, 19-year-old Paul Cyple, an Eagle Scout from Erie, Pennsylvania, was picked in a nationwide contest to accompany the first bird expedition to Antarctica, starting out as a lowly mess boy on the sailing vessel which carried the expedition towards the underside of the globe. Paul Cyple's personal qualities, plus the very useful knowledge and discipline he had gained from earning 60 Scout merit badges, soon boosted him to the rank of naturalist. Since then, Dr. Cyple, now scientific advisor to the Army Research Office, has made five other expeditions to Antarctica, spending altogether a record six and two-thirds years on the tremendous block of snow and ice which surrounds the South Pole. From 1933 to 35 he was chief biologist for the second bird expedition. From 1939 to 41 he was leader of the West base at Little America. In later years he directed the Army's environmental research program, the study of man's ability to survive all kinds of climate and weather conditions. And in 1957, the geophysical year, he organized and established the strategic permanent installation which now occupies the very pole itself. During all these busy years, Dr. Cyple has continued to play an active part in the scout movement which gave his distinguished career its initial impetus. As far as he is concerned, the story of his life could almost be written in terms of the merit badges he earned when he was 14, 15, and 16 years old. Scouts have often asked me which merit badges had the greatest effect on my decision to become a polar scientist. I have a few merit badge pamphlets here that I think will help give them an answer. Here's the merit badge for weather. A black weather vane against a khaki background. That certainly brings back a flood of memories. I vividly recall the crude weather station I set up at home more than 30 years ago to earn this badge. And then my mind leaps the many times on the first expedition with Admiral Byrd when I dashed out of the weather shelter to help take thermometer readings. That seems a part of the same story, although actually several years of study had intervened. On the second Byrd expedition, I erected the instruments for the world's then most southerly weather station named Advanced Bays, where Byrd lived alone during the long polar night. The following summer, I kept a detailed weather log on a three-month dog team journey into the newly discovered mountains of Murray Birdland. Many years later, my weather background led to the directing of the U.S. Army's Environmental Research Program. There are other merit badges that helped shape my career. One of them was seamanship. As the youngest, presumably the greenest member of the crew on the sailing vessel which took us south on the first Byrd expedition, I was assigned the lowest job available, mess boy. But the old Irish mate was surprised and pleased to discover that I knew the rigging and nomenclature of a sailing ship as well as the knots and splices, which I'd learned when I became a tenderfoot. I soon found myself assigned teaching rope work to other members of the crew, and I never went back to the mess boy job. I never actually completed all the requirements for the taxidermy merit badge, but I had learned enough to be able to assist Dr. Larry Gould, second in command of the expedition. Dr. Gould had promised to bring back specimens of seals and penguins for the American Museum of Natural History, but there was no seal skinner. I got the chance and won me a regular berth at the base. Because of my interest in nature, I derived almost entirely from such merit badges as astronomy, bird study, botany, conservation, forestry, insect life, reptile study, zoology. I was named as the official naturalist of the expedition. In later expeditions, surveying provided basic knowledge, which was both useful for navigation and mapping the areas I helped to explore. The camping merit badge was a natural training for the rugged outdoor life I was to lead in the harsh climate of Antarctica, for survival itself depended upon sound camping techniques. Cooking was another merit badge that paid off, where I suddenly found myself in a world where cooking was no longer a pleasant recreational hobby, but a major survival skill. There was no accident that I drew the job of chef when we were out on the trail. First aid to animals came in handy working with the dog teams. There were many other very helpful merit badges, like machinery, personal health, pioneering and so forth. But I think I've made my point. I wish every boy in America could be a scout. And I'm convinced that every scout who takes his rank requirements and his merit badges seriously will find as I have that such preparedness is the key to many doors. Although boy scouting is far from being military minded, our army has always appreciated the extra initiative resourcefulness and preparedness it gives young soldiers who have been through the mill as cubs, scouts or explorers. One of the very first old soldiers to recognize the values of the Boy Scout movement was Teddy Roosevelt of San Juan Hill and Oyster Bay. 50 years ago, when scouting was just getting on its feet in this country, the forceful ex-president was one of its greatest champions and promoters. And when Teddy passed away in 1919, the scouts were honor guards at his funeral. Throughout the years, scouting and the army have always helped each other. When Uncle Sam needed peach pits during the First World War for gas mask filters, the Boy Scout movement collected thousands of bushels. When Old Man River overflowed its banks in 1927, hundreds of troops from all over the Midwest and the South came to the rescue. And when our national war effort needed millions of old rubber tires during World War II, Boy Scouts from Florida to Alaska searched every city dump, every garage, every promising dark corner and brought in an impressive harvest. On Memorial Day each year, the scouts of Honolulu bring flowers to the graves of Ernie Pyle and other heroes of the South Pacific. Thousands of former Boy Scouts lie sleeping in the beautiful war cemeteries of Hawaii, Europe and North Africa. Some, like Colin Kelly, became world famous. Others were known only to their families, their friends and their platoon. Worst moments of the Second World War, General Douglas MacArthur paid the following tribute to scouting. No organization of boys has been more universally respected or more widely accepted than the Boy Scouts. Their international rallies where boys of all races used to meet on common ground have been an inspiration to all. In these dark days, when the war clouds hang so low, it is for the Boy Scouts of all nations to cling to their ideals, to trust that the teachings of honor, of clean living and of brotherly love will once again be dominant throughout the world. In the years since World War II, the great scout rallies which MacArthur praised have come back into the picture. One of the most recent of these great get-togethers was the National Boy Scout Jamboree, which was held in the summer of 1960 on a wide flat plain at the foot of the Colorado Rockies. There, within sight of Pike's Peak, nearly 60,000 scouts and scout leaders from 50 states and 26 foreign countries got together for several days of sports, songfests, contests of scouting skills, hiking in the Garden of the Gods, and in general, plenty of rugged adventure and unforgettable fun. Above all, they had the chance to meet each other, know each other, understand each other. With the Army's help, they had a city of tents to sleep in. They had kitchens, dining halls, first aid dispensaries, and hot showers to wash off the prairie dust. One of the great attractions of the Jamboree was a series of target ranges installed by the Army and monitored by 50 West Point cadets. Incidentally, all but one of these 50 cadets were former scouts, and 37 of them had achieved the rank of Eagle. The purpose behind this sort of instruction is not to make little soldiers of the scouts, but rather to show them how a 22 or any other rifle should be handled. Target shooting is a traditional, wholesome, and enjoyable sport, but it can be, of course, dangerous. By showing these boys the proper procedures, the West Pointers at the 1960 Jamboree were using their special training to teach responsibility and consideration for the other fellow's safety. Many Army posts throughout our country open their gates on holidays and other special occasions to groups of scouts. Again, there is no military axe to grind behind this sort of hospitality. Jets, helicopters, and missiles are important elements in today's world, and Army installations are convenient and logical places for young citizens like these cubs to give them the once-over. But most scouting activities at military establishments are much like they are anywhere else in the country. Lieutenant Colonel William W. Fibery is presently a student at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., one of the higher institutions of learning in the armed forces. There, he learns to apply his knowledge gained through more than 19 years in uniform in the quartermaster call, advising the Assistant Secretary of Army Logistics in the development of procurement policy, and as a specialist in military contracting for missiles, ships, tanks, and military aircraft in the office of the Secretary of Defense, where he will be assigned upon completion of his course. In his spare time, he is scoutmaster of Troop 898, one of the many scout troops in the Washington area. On Friday evenings, he and his assistants and his troop have their weekly meetings, featuring indoor activities like first aid, knot tying, signaling, and the like. With his long and varied experience in all sorts of climates and landscapes, Colonel Fiberny is a particularly well-qualified scoutmaster. At least one weekend each month, rain or shine, he takes his scouts and his explorers on an overnight camp out. And about once each year, they go to the Blue Ridge Mountains at the Shenandoah National Park for a full week camp out along the Appalachian Trail. At an altitude of three or 4,000 feet above sea level, they learn to work with the other guy and be considerate of him. There, they can learn to be comparatively comfortable no matter what the weather is like. They can learn to eat well no matter how primitive conditions are. And they begin to learn the essential scout lesson, how to be prepared, how to be resourceful, how to be ready for whatever comes along. And this is a lesson the boys will never forget. There are dozens of military scoutmasters like Colonel Fiberny, wherever army men and their families are stationed. Not only in the United States, but also overseas in places like Germany, Japan and North Africa. Being an American scout in a foreign country can be a very rich rewarding experience. These cubs and scouts in Japan for instance are helping a group of our soldiers load provisions and clothing for some orphans in Korea. Every boy who takes the scout oath has a dozen excellent adjectives to live up to. And these youthful citizens of the USA are living up to at least three of them. The very important words helpful, friendly and kind. At troop and pack meetings in the near future, they will learn more about the young underprivileged Koreans who receive their gifts. Another rewarding experience for our scouts overseas is the opportunity to meet and associate with great numbers of other boy scouts from the countries where we have military personnel. At the end of World War II, the US Army made a special effort to revive and encourage scouting for the youth of Japan. Ever since 1946, there have been frequent jamborees and other get together where young Japanese and young Americans could meet and associate in friendly competition. Not too long ago, many of our scouts in Germany had a wonderful chance to meet boys from just about every country in Western Europe and several other continents. At the International Jamboree at Bad Ischel Austria, living together, worshiping together, eating together, swimming together, working together and playing games together. They expressed a unity of spirit that might well put their elders to shame of all the experiences that our army has been able to give our boy scouts. This close contact with the young of other nationalities and other races is perhaps the richest. Ask that boy from Denmark and that lad from Kansas who spent six months together on the Greenland ice cap. International scouting is almost as widespread as the United Nations. And like the UN is a force in the present day world, a constructive force, a high hope for humanity. Many of our country's well-known citizens are former boy scouts. Five of the seven astronauts, for example. Better still, every single member of the presidential cabinet is a former scout or scout leader. And finally, we would like to present a former member of Troop 2, Bronxville, New York. John F. Kennedy, President of the United States and Honorary President of the Boy Scouts of America.