How the Colonel Got His Groove

This is a copy of a piece I just produced for another blog called "Wideawake Engineers." I thought my general readers might enjoy it, especially as a tribute to Independence Day. Men of my father's generation made this week possible. Thank you all for your service.

William Ashley Chapman on Ascension Island in 1988.

I am working on an article about my father's unit on Ascension Island during World War II and I realize the one thing I haven't written much about here is that he returned to the island in 1988. He wanted to go back in 1982--for the fortieth anniversary of the completion of Wideawake Field--and started pestering anyone and everyone he could. He had to do that, because there were no civilian flights to Ascension in the 1980s.

He was a retired officer, a "full bird Colonel" as they say in the Army, so he could get people in the military to take his calls. But after a short chat any enlisted clerk could tell this old guy didn't have the one thing needed to get him there, i.e. pull. Ascension Island wasn't for tourists. It was a priority base. I think a flight there is unlikely. Sir.

When WW II Engineers Set Down Their Slide Rules and Started Rockin' on Ascension

I just received the photo above and a note from a fellow named William Orr, principal of Hillsborough High School in Florida, whose father served on Ascension Island with the 38th Engineers at about the same time as my father. 

Orr's father was in a band some of the men formed on the island, called The Wideawakes, named after the airfield they built, Wideawake Field--still in operation today. This is the first I've heard of the band, though it makes sense, on a desert island, that men would organize something like that to while away the time.