Memories of St. Anthony
I was stationed at St. Anthony between March 1956 and January 1957. The orders included a move for myself, A/1c Robert Snellings Jr. and A/2c Lynn C King. We had been in St. John’s and we all departed on the same day for St. Anthony. To get to St. Anthony, we proceeded by air to Goose Bay and we then waited for an available flight to St. Anthony. In my case, I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could proceed to my new base.
While in Goose Bay I remember the Scorpion aircraft that had 52 rockets on their wingtips. They would practice somewhere near Goose, firing their rockets. They also made quite a racket while they were warming up near the runway.
Finally, the weather permitted a flight to St. Anthony and we were on our way. We landed in the Bay and were met by a boat. It was hard to forget as the Base Commander came out to meet us and of all things he was standing up in this small boat. Sort of like George Washington.
I was a radio ground repairman so most of my on duty time was spent at a radio receiver site maintaining the radio air to ground communications equipment.
The food was pretty good and well prepared. There was a dance every Saturday and all of 5 of 6 women would show up at the site. We did consume a lot of alcohol and sometimes this became a problem. There was a lot of gambling when I first got there and a lot of money was exchanged. We would play craps a lot on one of the pool tables. Too much money and bad feelings came about from this as you can imagine and the Base Commander put a stop to it in a permanent way. A few of the guys went into working with leather and they could make wallets and belts. We could order a lot of things through the base exchange.
We had a movie theater and watched any movie we could. There was also a movie theater in town if you could really call it that. There were chairs all nailed together on one board. They ran such things as Tarzan. There was a place where we went a lot and get together with the local people and have coffee. We would have a truck take us to town about once a day or sometimes we would walk, but it was quite a way to walk.
Some of the kids there wanted to challenge us to a hockey game but it never came about during my tour. They would have trounced us as most Americans knew nothing about hockey in those days.
One of most memorable things was the Northern Lights. The sky turned white and then would you believe it turned to a red color. I have not seen anything like that since my days at St. Anthony. To this day, I regret not having had a camera ready to take some photos.
This detail was provided by Ted Sweger for use on the Pinetree Line web site. Ted served a year in St. Anthony between 1956 and 1957.