SITKA, ALASKA
We’re onboard the Esther G off the southern tip of Kruzof Island.
Bob Vollmer is standing in the cabin, barefoot, as he rolls up his blue jeans. He ties his brown workboots together and throws them over his shoulder.
“Just like MacArthur, wading ashore,” Bob shouts. “MacArthur said, ‘I shall return.’ I didn’t like that guy, though.”
He’s talking about General Douglas MacArthur, of course, although Bob says during the war they called him “Dugout Doug.”
MacArthur famously said that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. And fading away might have been fine for MacArthur, but it’s clearly not for Bob, who at age 93 still works full-time as a civil engineer for the state of Indiana.
“This is the first vacation I’ve taken in maybe 20 years,” Bob says. “There’s just so much work to do. I just hated to take off and leave the work.”
But he’s here now, and with his boots back on his feet, he trudges up the beach toward the woods. Bob, his three daughters, and his granddaughter are following Davey Lubin up a loose pile of rocks that lead from the beach, up to the forest floor.
He starts bushwhacking further into the forest, staring up at the giant spruce and hemlock trees surrounding us on all sides.
“This is a neat place,” he says. “Spooky.”
Further in we go, and in a small clearing, Bob finds a piece of forest debris that looks like a brown, ceramic mushroom. He recognizes it instantly.
“We ran a power line down here from camp,” he tells Lubin, holding the debris. “We stepped up the voltage to 2200 volts, so we wouldn’t lose any. Then when we got down here we cut it back down to 440, then 440 to 220 to 110. And that’s one of the insulators that came off our power line.”
We press onward until the brush gets too thick, and we have to turn around and head back toward the beach. But we’re far from finished with the day’s discoveries. One of his daughters draws his attention to a spotted a cast iron pipe Lubin is holding up.
“That’s a sewer line going back into the ocean,” Bob says. “That’s a sewer line from the crapper, yeah. I’ll be damned! That’s the second piece of cast iron pipe we’ve found!”
The cast iron is everywhere. Pieces of pipe, as well as two pyramid-shaped pieces about the size of a person’s head.
We start walking toward the inflatable dinghy that will take us back to the boat, and then back to town. Bob says he thought there would be more left of the camp where he spent most of 1943, but also that after 67 years, he’s just happy he made the journey.
“I’ve been dreaming about this for years and years and years,” Bob says. “I really didn’t think I’d ever get back here, and I thought I would actually see more than I did, but with the influx of people moving in and the cities and the towns spreading, I’ve got to accept this. It’s a little bit hard to swallow, but I’ve done it, and I’ve accepted it and I’m real happy about it. And I’m real happy to know that places like this are still environmentally sound.”
On the way back, the Esther G follows the Kruzof shoreline a little more, to the concrete shelter where Bob stood watch nearly 70 years ago. He takes some pictures, and one last, long look, before heading back to town, back to the airport, back to Indiana, and back to work.
“I just wanted to see what it looked like, see what I could find, and this is what we found,” he says. “It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I love it, I love it.”
EXTRA AUDIO: Bob, on the baker who couldn’t.
EXTRA AUDIO: Bob, on occupational hazards.
EXTRA AUDIO: Bob, on ‘creative’ fishing.
© Copyright 1970, Raven Radio Foundation Inc.
