A Visit To Wendover Airfield

The Wendover Base Operations Building with restored Control Tower. Today a sleepy airport, 80 years ago a very busy place

I have always enjoyed seeing places of historical importance, with their evidence of importance hidden in plain sight. Virginia City, Nevada is such a place. To most of the visitors, it is simply an old western town whose shops now sell ice cream and T Shirts.

For those who know the history, it’s where Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain. It’s a place that produced so much silver that it built San Francisco, and was the beginning of a few major corporations today.

The Wendover Airfield is another such place. My curiosity about it was built over some years. On a past cross country trip of some years ago, I stopped there and saw dozens of old wooden buildings whose condition reminded me of the Bodie State Historic Park, which is kept in “arrested decay”. And there was a huge hanger just to the east of the main facility. It looked a bit different from a typical hanger, as it has offices or workshops all along the sides.

Hidden in plain sight.

A Poem From Wendover Army Airfield

“WENDOVER FIELD”

We are the boys from Wendover Field,
Earning our meager pay
Guarding the folks with millions
For one sixty five a day.

Out in the wind swept desert.
Wendover is the spot,
Fighting the terrible dust storms
In the land that God forgot.

Out in the brush with rifles
Eating and drinking the dust
Doing the work of a chain gang
and to damn tired to cuss.

Out with the snakes and lizards
Heres where the boys get blue
Out in the wind swept desert
Two thousand miles from you.

No one cares if we are living
No one gives a damn
Back home we are soon forgotten
cause we are loaned to Uncle Sam.

All night the wind keeps howling
Its more than one can stand
Hell folks, we’re not convicts
We’re defenders of the land.

For the duration we must stand it
Many years of life we’ll miss
Don’t let the draft board get you
and for hell’s sake don’t enlist.

Out on this Utah desert
Its one helluva spot
Fighting in a terrific heat wave
In the land that God forgot.

But we are the men from the U.S.A.
and we’ll go without green grass
and some day we’ll catch Hitler
And shove Wendover up his —-.

We’re up at six each morning
Digging in the sand
No, we’re not convicts
We’re defenders of this land.

We spend our leisure hours writing to the gals
Hoping when we return again
They’re not married to our pals.

We have washed a million dishes
and have peeled as many spuds
We have our hands all blistered
From washing dirty duds.

All the inspections we have had
are worse than we can tell
and I hope its nice in heaven
For I know what its like in hell.

When this old life is over
and we work no more
We’ll do our final dress parade
On the Bright Golden Shore.

Then St. Peter will greet us
and suddenly he’ll yell
“Come in my boys from Wendover,
You’ve served your time in HELL.”

Movie Review: The Lost King

Correcting History, Near and Distant

I have written from time to time of my distain for screenwriters who play fast and lose with the facts when they tell of historical events on the screen. To the viewer who knows nothing of the actual events, they are left to assume that the largely fictional Hollywood version is the “truth”.

Fortunately, this movie has kept the important facts intact, and presented them in both an educational and entertaining way.

It is a story – and an affirmation – of one ordinary woman’s obsession with finding the remains of King Richard III, who was killed in battle in 1485. Philippa Langley was a divorced woman with 2 sons and a mundane job living in Edinburgh. It was after she saw Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, with her sons that this obsession started to consume her. It was a drive that either brings one to madness and bitterness, or takes one to great things.