Norman Vaughan, dogsled driver and member of Byrd's Antarctica Expedition, was interviewed in 1998 for the documentary Alone on the Ice.

How He Learned of the Expedition

Q: Tell me how you first learned about Byrd's expedition and what you decided you wanted to do when you read about it.
NV: I was studying at Harvard College one night and the door opened and in came the Boston Transcript, the evening paper of the city, and there with banner headlines it said, "Byrd to the South Pole." I read it and at that moment I decided I wanted to go. I said to my roommates, look at this, I've got to go. And one of them said how in the world can you go, if you don't know Byrd. I answered by saying I don't know but I'm going to go and I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. And I left right away and that very next morning I was at Admiral Byrd's house in Boston and that's how I started.

I approached Admiral Byrd's house with the expectation of meeting him and this buxom gal came to the door, and when I asked for an appointment she put her arms akimbo and said, if you don't have an appointment nobody gets by me. And she really meant it and so she blew right there, all the thoughts I had the previous evening and night about going across the tundra of Antarctica and I just thought I'd never make it. But I turned around and started down the sidewalk and had a new idea and that was to find the journalist who had written that story about Admiral Byrd because I know he could get back to see him and I found him. I asked him to help me reach my message to Commander Byrd. And with some interest first, and a great deal of interest later, he said he would do that.

His First Impression of Admiral Byrd

Q: Tell me about what was your first impression of Admiral Byrd when you met him?
NV: I met him 11 months after I'd been working for him. He came to New Hampshire to see us and I was excited, of course, and we met under very favorable conditions outdoors and we had lunch and then he left.

Q: What was your impression of him?
NV: Liked him very much. He was my hero and then I had a chance to have shaken his hand, talked with him and he complimented us on our year's work. It was eleven months after we'd started. And when I say use the word "we", let me say that after I had started working at his dog kennel in New Hampshire, I telephoned Edward Goodale, and said, Ed, this is wonderful. I drive dogs all day. You've got to come. Gamble with me and if we don't make it we'll go back to college and he did come right away and together we worked about two weeks, when we telephoned Freddy Crockett and asked him to come and gamble with us and we'd go back to college if we didn't make it. But there was no need of that because when Admiral Byrd came up to see us he took us all. 

Trouble with the Dogs

Q: What happened with your dogs? Did your dogs become very sick on this trip?
NV: The dogs wouldn't eat the food for one thing and those that did became sick at once and we didn't know why. And we supposedly had the same food with the same formula that we'd been working on for a whole year. But the company didn't produce what was requested and what they said they would do. And it turned out that they had asked their suppliers for donations and the suppliers that gave the donations gave floor sweepings. But the main company just received the volume of food and prepared the biscuits because that's what they were. They were a form of dog food biscuits and the biscuits contained wire and glass and hay and some straw and a string. I remember the string in the pieces of food. Very disastrous. And it meant that we couldn't feed this food to the dogs and yet we were at a stage where the dogs had already started for the Antarctic. It was the first night on board the boat that we found this situation to exist.

Q: What would have happened if the dogs hadn't made it?
NV: The expedition wouldn't have been successful. It would not have been able to establish a camp. The dogs were a key to Admiral Byrd's success. Firstly that they, the dogs brought all our equipment. Six hundred and fifty tons of it into the site at Little America and then the dogs were the basis of internal travel for the scientists and for Admiral Byrd's rescue, should he have needed one out on the trail.

Q: What did you have to do in New Zealand?
NV: Well we had to solve this food problem. So I volunteered among Goodale, Crockett and myself. I said I'll go in to Duneaton and you stay with the dogs and take care of them, and I'll try to get some food in there and make it up ourselves. So I went to a chocolate factory and got permission from them to mix food during the night provided I would so sterilize those machines that I used, the paddle machines in mixing, that there would be no question about dog food being in the candy mix of the next day, which I did very thoroughly. And I lived right at that factory for about three weeks making up the dog food which was made up from a formula that just Goodale, Crockett and I created. It was meat meal, fish meal, tallow and vitamins. Just those four ingredients. 

Unloading the Equipment

Q: Can you describe a typical day hauling equipment and you're running by the sleds. Two or three round trips, nine miles. What was it like hauling equipment from the ships to the Antarctica up to Little America?
NV: The hauling of equipment from the boats to the site of Little America was a distance of nine miles. We dog drivers slept in tents at the site of Little America. The first thing that happened in the morning was we'd get up and harness our dogs and while we were harnessing our dogs and getting dressed ourselves out of caribou sleeping bags, we went into the mess tent, which was right there near the dogs and had nothing but coffee. Now we were dressed in fur parkas and all our winter clothing and our dogs as I said, were harnessed. We went back to our dogs, pulled the line and away we went toward the ship, nine miles. We were so tired from working everyday all the time that we would sleep by putting our head on our arm and laying on the sled, and we actually slept during those nine miles. The dogs took an hour and a half to do that and we had a good sleep. They didn't get off trail. There was no place to go. They wanted to get there because they got a snack when they got to the boat so that was good for them. But when the motion on the sled stopped we woke up because we were used to this motion that we've had as the sled went along over the ice. Then the men at the ship would turn by hand our dog teams around, get them pointed back toward the site of Little America while we went aboard the ship, went down below decks and had a marvelous breakfast. We had everything we wanted and always there was whale meat and seal meat and penguin meat should we want it. And I had a lot of it because I love game. But we had bacon and eggs and I remember the butter was Brookfield Butter and the bread that we had had been baked on the boat two or three times a week. Fresh bread was made. So after this wonderful breakfast we'd come out, lash down our loads and start for Little America. 

Now one thinks of a dog driver as getting on the back of his sled and riding along but we couldn't do that. Our dogs were loaded right to the brim and Admiral Byrd got the most out of his dog teams by having a big blackboard with each of our names written on the blackboard and beside our names was the total number of pounds we had moved to Little America and then there was a space of the number of pounds on our sled that minute before we took off for Little America, for everything that came off the boat passed over the scales, and that's how it was recorded. And by doing that we were loaded right to the capacity of every dog team. We couldn't ride. We had to jog and we did so. Either ski or jog and most of it going to the site was jogging because it wasn't long enough even though nine miles you want to think... oh why couldn't they in nine miles use their skis but there was enough roughness to the trail that skiing would have been, was interrupted for we tried it, by climbing over this little, tiny, small pressure ridges because they were broken with, broken ice and it wasn't very comfortable. So we stuck right to jogging and we would jog out nine miles. Have lunch out there. Turn our sleds around and go back to the sled for the afternoon. Now one round trip was 18 miles you see and so we did 36 every single day and once in a while Admiral Byrd said we're under pressure can you do another extra trip, and we did. 

Conditions at Little America

Q: Can you describe Little America? What was the living situation like? How much individual room did everybody have?
NV: The living space was cramped as it could be. I lived on a second tier of a bunk, of a two tiered bunk and had no mattress. I lived on boards. There were 41 mattresses and I was the one without a mattress. Forty-two of us spent the winter night but I had my sleeping bag down on slats and slept very comfortably after you learned how do it. For my hip bone I had the slats open a little bit.

Q: Was it very, very crowded?
NV: Oh yes of course it was.

Q: Was it like living in the same place?
NV: In the house where I was, it was a very small quarters and two tiered bunks on four walls and just a stove and that's all there was in that room. Very crowded. 

Protecting Themselves from the Cold

Q: And how cold was it in Little America? What did you wear to protect yourself?
NV: Well we had the, the lowest temperature of either thermometer was 73 degrees below zero and what did we wear to protect ourselves was clothing and of course furs was a key at that time. Admiral Byrd asked Goodale and me to test something one night. Would we sleep out with the two kinds of clothing he was prepared to give us for our next summer. One was to be dressed in furs as Amundsen did and the other was to dress in furs like Peary did. Peary would travel with furs and lay down and sleep in the same clothing and Amundsen would take off his parka and put on another one and sleep in a sleeping bag so there was quite a difference. Goodale and I tried it and we were so cold both of us that night that when we got all through we didn't know which one had been warmer. It was a very rudimentary test but we told Admiral Byrd that and he went ahead and gave us the Norwegian system of traveling during the day with as light a weight as you could and sleeping in a caribou bag and being in a tent. 

Q: What did you wear on your hands and your feet?
NV: We had caribou gloves on our hands and that was good and we had cloth for our glove. That was good. In the day when it was warm we'd take off our caribou gloves and we would have just mittens on and that was fine. And of course we had to take our mittens off all the time for our dogs and we were putting them on, taking them off all the time trying to keep our hands warm when we had a lot of handwork to do. But fortunately our teams by the time we went on that long trip they were so well trained that we didn't have any trouble. No fights or anything like that.

Q: What did you wear on your feet?
NV: Same things except while we were skiing we had ski boots on that was specially made of kangaroo hide. Hard sole and soft upper and they didn't get frosted, they didn't get stiff as most ski boots normally would do under those conditions.

Q: Didn't you have to wear some goggles on your eyes and didn't you sometimes tear your skin.
NV: Yes we had snow goggles on and my remembrance of tearing skin was that my face froze underneath that rim of the glass and it got a little infected and that wasn't fun but because I had to put my glasses on just the same. And one man, Freddy Crockett, one day took his glasses off thinking because the sun wasn't out that it was perfectly all right. But he became snow blind and for three days he went with bandaged eyes but he had to ski just the same. We would put him in his skiing equipment bind into the bindings and he would hold the G pole with one hand and ski along just as if he was able to see. 

Keeping Busy at Little America

Q: What did you all do during the week? What kept you busy?
NV: We were, the dog drivers were busy preparing for the next year. At least Goodale, Crockett and I were for the next season for we had been appointed to the geological team, the geological survey team. And we had equipment and food and ourselves to get ready for that trip and we were busy every single day.

Q: What was the effect on months of confinement on all the men at Little America? Did people grate on each other?
NV: Of course but Byrd was clever about that. He would spot something like that quickly and in one case a man became very homesick for his wife and for his home and nobody seemed to know what to do about it. I'll tell you his conduct was as follows. He didn't want to get up to eat. He'd stay in bed and get probably one meal a day and as soon as he got up he eat and as soon as finished he'd eat and go back to bed. He read a little but it was always isolated and always in bed. Well Byrd took that situation under control and called him aside and said, I have something very secretive. Who can I get in camp to help me with a secret that I've got to have a job done and nobody should know what's going on. Who can I choose in camp and he was talking to the very man he wanted, and the fella said well, so and so and so and so. And Byrd said, as I talked to you maybe you could do that job. Would you take it on for me? The fellow was enthusiastic and the job was to dig a tunnel to hide something to be brought back at the time we left the ice. And so the tunnel was being built by this man day in and day out he'd start and work on this tunnel underground and it worked. He worked hard. He got back on his feet. He got up in the morning and had three meals a day and worked and that's how Byrd got him to do it. 

Drinking on the Expedition

Q: Clearly there were reports there was a lot of drinking on the expedition. Were you aware?
NV: Well I was aware of a lot of drinking about one group. When the boat went through the Panama Canal a 55 gallon drum of alcohol was given to the expedition. Of course for medical purposes. The drum of alcohol was put into the warehouse and somebody got a long tube and would siphon alcohol out of the barrel. And the habit was to siphon it out into a pitcher and then take this pitcher into what was called the Norwegian House where there were eight people living. And the group that were drinking were all assembled there every night and they would drink very heavily. And one night there was some alcohol left in the pitcher and the next night when they started to drink they consumed that first before sending one of them out to get more alcohol. That man that went out to get more alcohol was pretty intoxicated because he was a lone drinker before anybody else started and he didn't know he was going out to get it but he did go out and when he inhaled through the tube he was supposed to feel the solidity of the liquid in the tube as it went by his fingers and then he would turn the tube and make the tube into a siphon and get all the alcohol he wanted but he didn't feel the alcohol in the tube. And took a great inhale for another breath and pulled this cold alcohol into his mouth and throat and the result of that was exactly the same as if he'd taken a blow torch and put it in his mouth, for the temperature of that alcohol was 50 and 60 degrees below zero. I don't know, just extremely cold because it was packed in the ice, been there all winter. And when it got into his mouth and burned every part of his mouth his mouth swelled up and he couldn't eat, couldn't swallow, couldn't do anything about it and the Doctor Coleman thought that he might lose him but he worked on it and got a passage way through to his throat and then fed liquid through it, through the throat and pulled him around out of it but that was a drastic experience.

Q: How big an issue was drinking on the expedition? Was it a big problem?
NV: Oh I don't think it was a big problem at all. I think these fellas were drinking. It was all during the winter. They had nothing more to do and they were stealing the alcohol. What could you say. Of course they were drinking but I didn't think it caused any trouble in camp. It was just jealousy more than anything else that they were getting away with it and so other people, some people didn't want to drink at all and those that did finally drank. But Byrd himself never was apart of that party that I knew nothing about.

Q: Did you see Byrd drinking a lot?
NV: I never saw Byrd drinking at any time.

Keeping Clean While on the Ice

Q: Can you tell me about what it was like to be on the geological expedition? Did you ever bathe? Could you bathe? Were you out for three months? What was it like for a typical day?
NV: Doctor Gould had a great way for us to keep clean. Before we left he gave us two suits of underwear. We naturally wore one. Put the other on the sled. After we'd been out a couple of weeks I said to Doctor Gould one night, gee, I feel a little crummy. I think I'll change my underwear. It was beautiful day, night, and he said, no, you won't. You're an explorer. You can't change your underwear every two weeks. And I said, yes sir, and I went out and took care of my dogs. Didn't think anymore about it till another week went by and he said the moon is out, the sun is out, the wind is down. It's only 20 degrees above zero. A wonderful night. We'll all change our underwear. So we went out each to our own sled and if you could imagine after hunting for the underwear we got it out and all of us took our clothes off and put on this fresh underwear. Can you imagine six people naked in the Antarctic standing beside their sleds. Well if you can't imagine that let me tell you it was true, because I saw it. And we were there and it was great that clean suit of underwear made us feel just fine. We even made five extra miles on our odometer the next night. I'd like to tell you it was just because of the underwear but it wasn't. It was because the ice trail was icy that day and our dogs slipped along. The loads pulled easier and we went five extra miles. And so Gould kept us with that second new fresh underwear. Had us keep it on just twice as long as we had the first on, and by then he said, we'll now put our first back on, and by comparison it was clean, and that's the way we had clean clothes the whole trip. 

The Danger of Crevasses

Q: Did you have a sense of crevasses?
NV: That's the most dangerous thing we faced in the Antarctica besides getting lost but we had a constant fear of dropping through a bridge into a crevasse. Because if you do that, it's your death. So in some cases we were roped up. But we had a false sense of security because we weren't trained for that at first. And we just tied ropes around our waist and thought we were secure but we wouldn't have been had we had a real serious break in falling into a crevasse very far. We've often all of us fell a little way. Meaning to our armpits sometimes, and sometimes no more than ten feet but that wasn't really falling in a crevasse. When we fell ten feet we were roped but really falling into a crevasse is when you go down beyond 30, 40 feet and endless. And you were, as you fall the ice crevasse gets narrower and narrower and finally with your effort of falling you wedge yourself right in. Nothing can move you out of there. You're never vertical when that happens. You could be sideways or upside down or anyway. You wedge yourself right in.

Q: You had a close call yourself?

NV: On one of our expeditions into the mountains itself, we climbed with all the teams up to quite a high altitude. On the way down we were going to retrace the same route as going up, but Mike Thorn our navigator on skis, went ahead. He got to one place and turned around and raised both hands which was a signal at all costs that we shouldn't go down as far as he was. So I turned my sled and broke one part of the sled but it tipped it over and we pulled up short of a very wide crevasse that had developed in the last 24 hours, and had he not done that I would have just piled in dogs, sled, myself. Couldn't have stopped. 

The Welcome Home

Q: Can you tell me about being in the ticker tape parade where Admiral Byrd, Byrd was an admiral back then, right.
NV: Oh the ticker tape parade is a matter of the whole celebration and it was very exciting because I was in the car right behind Admiral Byrd. And it was just a little, veritable snowstorm going on in especially Wall Street, of course, that's where it was remembered as. And I remember it very well. Goodale, and Crockett and I were all in the same car right behind Byrd.

Q: How were people responding to Byrd at the time.
NV: Just cheering as he went along. It was wonderful.

Admiral Byrd had terrific popularity. I did go around with him when he invited me too. He'd call up and say if you're free tomorrow, will you come with me to such and such a place and he had to go and give a lecture. One was at the ah, large convention area in Boston. I've forgotten the name of the program but that was his Boston show. And ah, just prior to that we had a opening of the first emperor penguins that were ever shown on land and that was at the Statler Hotel. He had a lecture there and Goodale, Crockett and I had ice brought in by the local Boston ice company and put on the stage. And then the penguins are brought in and put on the ice. The curtain was over and Admiral Byrd announced that he would view. The people would now see for the first time emperor penguins on land, for we had taken them off the ship to get them up to the stage. There they were just cackling away. We didn't feed them, because they were force feeding the penguins at that time so we couldn't feed that in front of the people but they were there.