National Affairs: Keep Antarctica Green!

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So pure and pristine is the cold air of Antarctica it has been said that no wood rots, no metal rusts, no food decays, few bugs survive. But U.S. interservice rivalry flourishes there. Most recent example: the argument over the marking of the 6,000-ft. ice landing-strip runway at McMurdo Sound. Navy ground crews insisted upon marking ends of the runway Navy-style, with oil barrels painted black, or even—as a concession to Air Force protests—by painting some of the barrels orange. The Air Force cargo pilots, who fly in from New Zealand, held out for the way the Air Force marks its ice strips in Canada, Alaska and Greenland—by planting double rows of pine trees at either end of the ice strip.

Last week Air Force Colonel Dixon J. Arnold, commander of the 53rd Troop Carrier Squadron, issued a flat order: plant the pine trees. Two thousand miles from New Zealand, by the next Douglas Globemaster, came 25 pine trees, four to six feet tall. Yielding gracefully, Navy ground crews planted 24 of them the way the Air Force wanted—even though there had never before been a pine tree in all Antarctica. To add insult to this interservice triumph, the airmen posted a sign showing Smokey the Bear pointing at the snow and a 25th tree. Beneath him was the legend—USE THAT ASHTRAY. KEEP ANTARCTICA GREEN.