Wednesday, February 04, 1998
"Kagnew 1957"
by Art Adolphsen
adolphsn@mint.net
I could go on for hours about Asmara, It was one of the highlites of my
life, I arrived there in January 57, Via Germany, came from school at
Devens. I'm still working CW on 20meters mostly. Most of my off duty time
was spent traveling about the 2 countries, visiting missionies, and taking
photographs, I've got some nice pix's. I went on to make my living at it for 16 years.
The "old" Kagnew burned sometime in 1957, I can't remember the date, but we
were coming back on the bus from the eve's shift, and everthing was on fire,
most of the tricks were in their skivies fighting the fire, we all grabed
something to fight it with,the Asmara Fire Dept came up with 6-8 truck and
couldn't get one of them to pump, when the the fire got to the storeroom
where they kept the hunting guns and ammo we all headed for cover, after the
shooting was over we got back to the job of fighting the fire, the PX and 2
or 3 barracks were lost, ours was ok. We moved into the new Kagnew right
away it was not quite finished, but comfortable, the Operations Co. was west
of the mess hall, they were still building the gym I have pictures of that
under construction. We had an open house, and Haili Salassie (spelling?) was
there with Col Little the base commander at the time. You might not have
heard of the "Strike" at Operations either, It took place at the Comm site,
don't remember the date, but the gym was finished, It seems not many
signals were coming in to the operators, this went on for 4 or 5 days
and not much traffic was sent to Washington, about the 4th day a plane load
of VIP's arrived from DC and wanted to know what was going on, they had us
all meet in the gym, and ask what they could do for us, some brave ones
spoke up, nothing happened to anyone that I know of, but the whole post
command got changed, this all came about because a little infraction of the
rules, some guys lost there stripes for little or nothing, we couldn't have
motorcycles or autos, and were restricted to post often.
There were 10 to 20 Christian guys (Baptist type) there in my time, and we
use to go to the mission stations in Eritrea and some in Ethiopia, usally 3
or 4 of us on motorcycles, we would spend our time working on their
buildings or helping with kids, there was a orphanege in Decamary about 26
miles south of Asmara, Dick Newbold from the midwest got his home church to
send a 60 ft windmill, we got it thru customs and went down and set it up to
pump water, laid cement tile floors etc. Another time my wife and me
delivered an auto for the Sudan Interior Mission, a 54 Opal from Asmara to
Addis, we purchased in Asmara, it took us 10 days,
we stayed at 2 hotels 4 different missions stations, and a lepper colony at
Dessie, 12000 ft up spent 2 days horse back riding in the Mts. We came back
by MATS C47.
At the Old Kagnew, before the fire, we where restricted to post (to many
fights downtown), one night a new 2nd LT. was doing bed check at 2330, and
found a lot of beer cans on the barracks floor, he woke us all up and told
us not to drink in the barracks anymore, well thats all it took, the next
nite he came in and all the beer cans were piled on the stove in the middle
of the barracks, he just had to grab one!, It took him 2 hours to get us out
in formation, in our skivies, he marched us down to the ball field (0300)
in a short time some one started to count cadence, louder and louder, soon
all the lights on the post and all the houses around it came on, another
officer showed up and brought it to a halt, we never saw the 2 nd Lt again.
As I said I can go on and on. I have some nice pix but I've got to find a
program to edit them down to fit
a web page with out scrolling.
I noticed you mentioned the 1967 war, well we had the 1957 war and the
"Sputnic" beep beep beep, thats all there was to that one. In the old comm
center I worked in the basement automatic morse, the manual stations were up
stairs, I have an old SP600 receiver that I rebuilt, I was there when they
replaced them with the R390's, they took about 1000 SP600's down to Massawa
and deep 6ed them. We also used the Mclroy tape recorders.