JUNE 3, 2016
My grandpa was in the air force during World War II. He always said that the scariest story he had wasn’t from his days dodging German Messerschmitts over Europe, but on our own home turf. Early in the war, he was stationed at an airstrip on a tiny Alaskan island. They dubbed it “Fort Bird Shit.” It was a boring assignment. The Japanese threat was farther west, so the biggest problem they had to deal with was the salt water in the air corroding the metal on the planes.
Some weird things happened, but nothing that couldn’t be chalked up to men being drunk, bored, and isolated. Seeing people who weren’t there, hearing weird noises, that sort of thing. One man insisted that someone was speaking Russian to him whenever he started drifting off to sleep. Then one day my grandpa gets the job of taking the ranking officer back to the mainland. There was a thick mist that night. They headed back the next day—and everyone was gone. Everyone.
Whatever happened, it was just after dinner, because the dishes were being washed. They were abandoned in the tubs. Some boots and rifles were missing, but not all of them, which meant that some of the men were barefoot and unarmed. One of the planes was crashed in a ditch, like someone had tried to take off. A wall nearby was riddled with bullet holes.
They never found out what happened. The official report said a storm killed everyone, but Grandpa insisted the night was calm. Not even a breeze. Just fog.
I would say he was pulling my leg, but I have to be honest—my grandpa didn’t have a sense of humor. At all. And when he told me the story, he seemed terrified. Whatever happened, he was still scared seventy years later.