 Proudly we hail. New York City, where the American stage begins, here is another program with a cast of outstanding players. Public service time has been made available by this station for your Army and your Air Force to bring you this story. As proudly we hail, the United States Army Signal Corps. Our story is entitled Icebound. It's the story of the Alaska communication system, the only Army-operated telephone and radio system to commercial uses in the world. The system that was built and is today maintained by American officers and enlisted men who never learn the meaning of impossible. Our first act will rise in just a moment. But first, the Army offers unlimited opportunities for thousands of young men. As one of the world's greatest training schools, the Army teaches every man to do his job well. Every man becomes a specialist. So if you're young and intelligent, find out what the Army has to offer you and what you have to offer the Army. Your local Army and Air Force recruiting station can tell you how you can work with other bright young men to help make America strong in Army uniform. And now your Army and your Air Force present the proudly we hail production, Icebound. February 1953, a lonely outstation in Alaska. Two single-core technicians trudged through the snow toward their communications shack. I feel better, Bob. My stomach feels better. Well, then what's bothering you? You've been grumpy all morning. Well, I just can't help wondering if our being stationed up here at the end of nowhere is really necessary. How long have you been here, Bob? Six days. You'll know the answer when you've been here six weeks. Every man, woman, and child in Alaska, 150,000 people. You and I and the other signal men have the difference between life and death. If we don't keep the lines open, they can't keep in touch with each other. Well, maybe I'm just homesick. Are all the stations as isolated as this one, Speck? We're not isolated. We got our radio and our phone and our jeep. 50 years ago, when the line was first opened, signal men traveled by dog sled and got their rations once a year. How do you know what things were like 50 years ago? One of my relatives helped open the territory. Oh, tell me about it, Speck. Well, it's a long story. And a heroic one. Jack London's in it. So are Billy Mitchell and Will Rogers and Wiley Post. It begins really in the 19th century when the United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. Things went along pretty well until the gold rush of the late 1890s. Men gamblers, thieves, and outlaws of all kinds streamed to the roaring gold camps to take advantage of the prospectures. The army had forts throughout the territory, but the only communication was by foot or a dog sled or water. It took as long as a year to send a letter to the states and get an answer. In 1900, our American Congress appropriated funds for military telegraph and cable lines in Alaska. The lines were to be used for commercial as well as military business. A few months later, a steamer from Seattle sailed into the Alaskan port of Valdez with one of the first signal corps construction crews assigned to string the new wire across the wilderness. You better jump out, Joe. I'll give you a hand. Thanks. I can make it. I guess the dinghy or whatever it's called goes back to the big boat for the others. Okay, sailor. Thanks for the buggy ride. Yeah, this is it, Joe. What do you think of Alaska? After that boat ride, I'd like Siberia. Yeah, I gotta admit I agree with you for once. My mother brought me up to be a soldier, not a sailor. The land doesn't roll, though. I was afraid it would. Well, what do we do now? Wait till the sailors bring the rest of our gang and that Jack London fella in the little boat. You know the one I mean, Joey. Says he's a rider, but I never heard of him. Do you think there'll be any mail? Joe, the boat ride affected your brain. How could there be mail, no other ships past us or anything? When do you think there'll be mail? You're worried about your wife, aren't you? I told you, Murph, she wasn't feeling good when we left. I don't know what's wrong with her. Maybe it's just a headache or something she ate, Joe. I always say that. We only got married this spring, Murph. I'll go crazy if I don't hear soon. You'll hear all right. Hey, Joe, look out at the big ship. Somebody's lowering a horse over the side. It's that crazy Jack London. He's in the water with a horse. He's tying the halter rope around himself. Heading the horse for the beach. Let's get on there, Joe. I don't know what a horse will do. He's been cooped up in a ship for a month and then's asked to swim to shore pulling a rider behind him. Corporal Murphy, Private Panelli. If the book I'm up here to write turns out to be a good one, you can go to your graves with the knowledge you have retrieved a classic from the mud. The book Jack London was up there to write turned out to be a very good one. It was The Call of the Wild. But Private Joe Panelli had already forgotten Jack London when next day he visited the Valdez General Store. He had something more important on his mind. Can I help you, son? I'm just looking. Something for a lady friend. Something for my wife. We got a special on seal skins. I couldn't afford them. You haven't heard what my prices are. Tell me, son, you're one of them signal fellas who's going to string a phone wire across the last, ain't ya? We are when our lieutenant gets here. You got any perfume or toilet water? Ain't nothing up here to use it on. You get that line through and get it through fast, here, son. Why? Not having a signal system is bad business. It takes me two months to let my trappers know the furs I want and by the time they get my message, the animals are out of season. It costs me up to a thousand dollars a month having to wait a year for supplies because there's no way to order them except by a slow boat mail. Mealy Moth here's right, soldier. My name's Harris. How do you do? Yeah. Whole territory is slow to a walk because we can't get messages to the states or even to each other. Yeah, remember the time the Indians nearly got us before the fort could get a man across to anchorage and back with reinforcements? Yeah. Remember the time Lieutenant Oxford locked up six drunks and had to hold them for half a year? Had to hold them till a marshal got her from Seattle to extradite him? What's the little town like Valdez supposed to do with six drunks for six months? What's the little town like Valdez got, I can say, my wife? There's combs over on that shelf, son. I'm glad I'm not stringing that line. I can tell you that. Why? What's so difficult about putting up some wire? You must be new here, soldier. I've been stationed up here in this wilderness for over two years. You'll find out. Joe, there you are. Come on. We got a pack. We just unpacked. We got a repack. Lieutenant Mitchell's arrived. He's been on the trail ten weeks getting here. Now he wants to take off to string wire across Alaska at six o'clock tomorrow morning. No idea how far back the break is, Murph. Lieutenant Mitchell doesn't think it's far. You ask him about the mail like you promised me you would? I told you, Joe. He said he hoped there'd be mail with the next supply train. Oh, Murph, what'll I do? It's been seven months since we left Seattle. None of us has heard even one word from home yet. Maybe Maria was getting pneumonia when I left. Maybe she had a tumor or something. Maybe she's dead. Maybe she's recovered from a mile cold an hour after you walked out the door. Ho, ho, ho, I love you. Murph, Spitzer, lead him away from that thing. What is it? It's a moose, that's what it is. It's a stubborn, lop-eared fool of a bull moose who caught his antlers in our precious line and snapped it off as clean as a whistle. They got a couple of insulators in the ladder, Joe. Spitzer can keep the other dogs away from the carcass. You and I are going to find out if it's humanly possible to untangle a signal line from a dead moose and splice it back in working order at 70 below zero. Oh, I'll put BB all right. Thank the Lord we made it back to camp. End our tent. I'll build up the fire. That is, men. Oh, Lieutenant Mitchell. Been a pile these on Phinelli, Murphy. What they? They're your blankets, sir. Pile them on. I'll give you a hand. Is any better? They're still shivering, sir. I think these will warm them up. How about you? I'm a tough Irishman, Lieutenant. I want to tell you two men something. I don't like sending you out on a mission like I did this morning any better than you like going. But this line has to go through. The security of the United States demands it. We've strung nearly 100 miles already and we're going to do the rest of it and keep what we do open like you two did today. Now, nobody in Washington except General Greeley thinks we're going to do it, but we are. We are because we have men like you. You'll to do the work. You're the signal cause answer to the scoffers who say that crossing Alaska with wire is impossible. Lieutenant Mitchell and his little band who wouldn't say no struggled on. Lieutenant Mitchell was Lieutenant Billy Mitchell. The same Billy Mitchell who years later as an Air Force General attained worldwide fame because of his astounding predictions concerning the role of air power in modern warfare. But in Alaska at the turn of the century, he was just a shavetail lieutenant, leading and pleading and acting tough and kidding with Murphy and Penelli and the rest of his men to keep them driving forward another step, another mile. You're ready, Womkett? I'm ready, Womkett. All right. Heave. There's another one. Yep. How many more poles do we have to set? Eleven million, eleven hundred thousand and eleven. You know what gets me most about this job, Murph? Everything except the poles has to come in by pack train. A wire, the insulators, the tants, the food, even the forage for the animals. Now, Packers have to break their own trails. Don't forget that, Joe. Murph, look. The pack train. This is it. And this time I know they'll have mail. Joe, don't start that again. But we've been nine months without letters. I don't know whether Marie is all right or what. In all this time, a letter has to come through. That's what you said last month, Joe. And in January and in December. But it's later now. Don't rag me, Murph. Fall in! Everybody fall in! What's that mean? You never did that before? Everybody over here. Fall in for mail call. I'll be all right in a minute, Murph. What's the hurry? You have almost a year of waiting to get out of your system. I... Isn't it wonderful? It doesn't feel so good for months. Where's the jolpes? We didn't even think that might be it. I'm way ahead on my ration at Charterbacca. When you're able to tattle about again, we'll pass it out to the boys instead of cigars. You're the best pal of mine I've ever had, Murph. Nevertheless, I wouldn't name him after me if it isn't him. I'm not sure your mother would approve of a grandson called Timothy Penelli. I still can't get over it. It occurred to me, Joe. Then why'd you tell me? I suppose she hadn't been. Murph, what's the date? Uh, March 5th or 6th, something like that. She wrote this last June. I'm a father already. Murph, I don't even know whether it's a girl or a boy. You are listening to the proudly-we-hailed production Icebound. We'll return in just a moment. But first, young fellow, if you want to be the sort of man that others look up to, you'll get there fast if you can qualify to join the United States Army. You'll see a change from the very moment you put on the uniform of a United States soldier. You'll not only stand straighter and taller, you'll walk with the short tread of a man who knows where he's going. Your training in the Army will give you the confidence of a man with an important job to do. You have to pass the mental and physical examinations in order to get in this oldest military service in our country. But once you're in, you're on the way up. Visit your local United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station. There's a recruiter there who'll be very glad to tell you all about what's in it for you when you join the United States Army. You are listening to Proudly We Hail, and now we present the second act of Icebound. Well, it sounds like the fellas in Alaska had a hard time of it in the wintertime spec. I guess they could barely wait until it was summer, huh? You know, as bad as those Alaskan winters were for the Army men when they were stringing those first landlines 50 years ago, the summers were worse. After Murphy and Penelli learned that Penelli was very possibly already a father, the men drove on under Lieutenant Mitchell's stimulating leadership. In the spring, they dragged themselves through deep-thawing snow. In August, trying to hack a path for their slim line through rugged underbrush, they encountered the severest handicaps of all. My 400 for a day, Joe. I lost count an hour ago. I just figured out what they feed these Alaskan mosquitoes as an appetizer. I'll bet this is gonna be side-splitting. Irish stew. That gives them a taste for the better things of life and explains why they insist that I serve as their main course. They don't exactly leave me alone, but the noceums are worse. The dog gone at Murphy, they got up my nose again. How's a man supposed to work when fly so small he can't even see him? Blind him and choke him and make him deaf? We haven't done so bad. You mean we're still alive? I mean, we've almost licked it. Lieutenant Mitchell said this morning that we're within six or seven days of leaking the other gang that's working tortoise from the north. He's been saying that for weeks. He's been saying we'd be up closer for weeks, but today's the first time he's said how close? I'm gonna knock off for the day. I'll have it sure with you for five minutes, anyway. Joe, you've really done a job working hard on anybody in the crew when you were word-hand crazy all the time because you haven't heard about your wife and kid. I don't even know if there is a kid. How old is Tim Panelli now? Six months. I don't know exactly because I don't even know when he was born. Murphy. I don't even know when he was born. I don't even know when he was born. Murphy, I don't know if he was born or if he's a he or a she or a quadruple. You'll learn. When? Well, on a job in a line or be completed when we meet the other party. In seven days or seven weeks? And then are they gonna ask an enlisted man if he wouldn't happen to like to use the line to call Chicago? Or do you think the other party might bring mail? The other party's coming from the north and mail comes in at the south. Funny, Murphy, crack a joke about mosquitoes. It took us the better part of a year to get here from Valdez. Well, I have to find my way back alone to find out if I'm a father. Despite the treacherous muskeg, despite the mosquitoes, despite the swarms of almost invisible flies, the construction crews of Lieutenant Billy Mitchell and of Captain George C. Bernal did meet. The event took place on August 24th, 1902 and through the magic of a thin strand of iron wire linked the entire Prince William Sound Country with Canada's telephone system and through it with the United States. It marked the first time in history that a man in Anchorage of Valdez could communicate in seconds instead of months with Seattle or Cincinnati or Washington. Hello! Oh, hello, hello, Patterson and Simpson. Yeah, give me Mr. Patterson, will you? Bad? This is town in Valdez. No, no, no, mealy-mouthed town in Valdez, Alaska, and I'll... Yeah, yeah, I know I'm a long way from Seattle, but the line went through yesterday. Didn't you read about it in the newspaper? All right, now get out your pencil. Ten gross sacks of flour, 500 sides of bacon, 2,000 pounds of coffee, and all this by the next boat pattern. Two gross of bear traps, a couple dozen packages of needles with big eyes, 5,000 packages of char tobacco. In Skagway, as well as Seattle. In Vicksburg, as well as Valdez. In Sitkin, Chicago. In Newark, and Nome. Wherever Alaskans and Americans gathered in that late summer of 1902, they talked out their elation over the WOMCAT's great accomplishment. Oddly, one of the few exceptions was a tent near the very spot where the two signal-core construction crews met and joined the magic line. Answer my question. I'll ask it once again. Just exactly how do you think one man can get from here to Valdez alone? I've got to go. I've got to go, too, to find Lieutenant Mitchell. If you think I'm going to stand by and watch my godson's father kill himself... What is it, Murphy? Oh, oh, Lieutenant Mitchell, huh? I was talking to that. I didn't hear you. Corporal Murphy reporting the fool, sir. You were Penelli. Penelli, sir. Now, you better tell me what it is. Murphy. Joe wants to take off of Valdez alone. That's a foolish way to use your leave, Penelli. Better than going crazy. But why are you going crazy? I told you part of it before, sir. Joe's only had one letter from his wife all the time since we left Seattle. It was written in June. June of a year ago. Joe hasn't heard since. He doesn't know whether or not he's a father or how his wife is. Is that it? He'd drive any family man off his rocker, sir. But we did have a second mail delivery last month after the one in March. Well, Joe's letters must have been in the parts that fell in the must keg, Lieutenant. Penelli, were you trained as a lineman? No, sir. Murphy? Yes, sir. This may cost me my captain's bars, but anything Washington thinks I've done to deserve them is due to the work you two, anyway. Murphy, shinny up one of the poles and cut into the line with an extension and hook up a hand instrument on the ground. Then put in a call to... It's Chicago, isn't it, Penelli? Yes, sir. To Penelli's wife in Chicago. When you get her, let him talk to her for five minutes. But five minutes is all. You men hear that? Marie? Maria! Darling, Maria, me? Yes, yes, of course. It's just happy. Everything is fine, Maria. And? And? Murphy's a girl, a little Maria, and she's six months old today. What, what, Maria? No, no, there's nothing wrong. I just didn't happen to get your letters. The food? Oh, we eat like at the best pizzeria on Halstead Street. We live like at the Sherman House. And the work? Ha, it's boys' work, Maria. They hardly need men to do work like this at all. The line that Joe Penelli helped string and relieved his tortured worry wasn't the only wire stretched across Alaska by American Frontier Fortitude. From Fort St. Michael at the mouth of the Yukon to Fort Gibbon near Tanana. From Tanana to Fairbanks. From Fairbanks to Anchorage. By the summer of 1903, Signal crews had tied every U.S. Army post and city in Alaska into a communications network. But great and successful as were the efforts of those pioneer signalmen, their task remained incompleted. Their lines fed from Alaska to the United States through Canada, friendly but still a foreign country. To make the system literally all-American, Congress in 1903 authorized a submarine cable to connect Juno with Seattle. Oh, Johnny. Oh, hi, Harmon. Any sign of the break yet? Yeah, not from up here. Wish we'd find it and get on about our business of laying a cable to Seattle. Well, there's not much point of connecting Sitka with Seattle Harmon if the connection from Sitka to Juno is broken. You got any idea how many miles this tub has carried us? Hey, you aren't supposed to call a burn-sided tub and ship's travel knots, not miles. Well, how many knots, then? Oh, I don't know. I haven't added it up. We were in Shanghai when they ordered us to lay the Alaskan cable. Steamed in New Jersey to pick up the cable and then with it around Cape Horn up here, it must be at least the distance around the world, Johnny. Yeah, just to lay a cable to Seattle. And we haven't even started the job yet. Yeah, but everybody says Alaska's the coming country. What can any country come to if it can't get in touch with the rest of the world? I t... Wait a minute, Johnny. Dead whale on the starboard quarter. You imagining things? No, look over to starboard. Dead whale to starboard. Hey, I see it. Harmon, look. Snakes are eels. There's something on it. Snakes are eels, my Johnny. You know what that is? That's our cable raptor on that whale. We found more than dead whale, Johnny. We found a break in our cable too. Neither whale's an uncharted sea bottom nor weather could keep the solid old burnside from plowing its way steadily south, reeling out 1,300 miles of cable behind it. When the cable ship reached Seattle, the territory of Alaska was connected with its mother country, the United States, for the first time by an American signal system. The names changed. Wamcats, the Washington Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, became the Alaska Communication System in 1936. But the same system that was pioneered by General Greeley and Lieutenant Mitchell and Corporal Murphy and Private Penelli and the Burnside is serving Alaskans and Americans to this day. Hey, that's a wonderful story, Speck. But you forgot Will Rogers. Well, in 1935, Sergeant Stanley Morgan, he's now Captain Morgan, the ACS commanding officer in Nome, was stationed at Point Barrow, well within the Arctic Circle. On August 16th... Tanana, Point Barrow calling Tanana. Put me through to our office in Seattle. Yeah, I know it isn't customary to call Seattle. All right, cut me it. This is Sergeant Morgan at Point Barrow. Oh, hello, Sammy. Look, you better tell this to the officer in charge. I guess you want to call in the newspaper boys or something. Yeah, a plane crashed up here in the fog about two hours ago. I just got back from it. It was the one he made. Both the occupants, Will Rogers and Wiley Post, were dead when I got there. I'm sorry I reminded you of that part of the story, Speck. Well, there's a lot more about setting up signal systems for the secret canal project and for the Alaska Highway in World War II and about keeping in radio touch with Bill Odom on his record-breaking round-the-world flight in 1947. I don't feel like storytelling anymore. Well, I'm sure glad I wasn't Morgan when he had to go out to the Winnie-May. Now that you're a part of it, what do you think of the Army's part in the development of Alaska? I'm proud to be a part of it. And I like best the part about Joe Penelli and his wife. Well, I told it that way on purpose. They were my grandparents. Penelli was your grandfather? I told you one of my relatives helped open the territory. The little girl who had Joe so worried, Maria, was my mother. This message is of vital importance to every American, but it's particularly important to the young men who are listening. For today, the rapidly expanding United States Army is depending on you to do a vitally important job. Qualified technicians are needed, and the Army is prepared to train you in one of the interesting career fields necessary to its operation. You can become a radio or radar technician. You can study meteorology, mechanics, electronics, photography, and many others. Yes, the finest technical training schools in the world will be available to you when you enlist in the United States Army. Why not visit your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station today? The need is urgent. This has been another program on Proudly We Hail, presented transcribed in cooperation with this station. Proudly We Hail is produced by the Recruiting Publicity Center for the United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Service. This is Kenneth Banghart speaking and inviting you to tune in this same station next week for another interesting story on Proudly We Hail.