I Was Stationed at a Radar Base in Alaska. One Night Still HAUNTS Me.

"My forehead is against the window of the twin otter, and the glass is so cold it aches. Below me the world is black. It is twenty to one in the afternoon." Jim Little was twenty years old, an airman first class with a radar ticket from Biloxi, Mississippi, when his orders sent him to Palmane, a remote radar station on the Arctic coast of Alaska. He is sixty-one now. Forty years later, he still won't open his front door after dark on December 21st. His wife stopped asking why years ago.

The Station at the Top of the World

The pilot, Douglas King, flew for Ween Air Alaska and had been chewing the same piece of gum since Fairbanks. Somewhere over the Brooks Range he turned and grinned: "Sun went down on the 18th of November. Won't be back till the 23rd of January, so I'd get used to the dark, son." When Little said he was headed for Palmane, King stopped chewing—only for a second—then looked out at the nothing ahead. "Radar boys keep to themselves out there," he said. That was all.