Getting cross-wise with the US Army (sort of)...

After first being drafted then 6 weeks later rejected by the US Army, my father Bill Bowman returned home to Reno. Thanks to my mother's boss at Bell of Nevada my father was able to find employment right away. But that job required some training. The telephone company taught him how to climb telephone poles without falling off, how to repair telephone lines and how to fix lead-sheathed telephone cables. 

When training finished he was assigned to work with a guy name Max Goodman as a splicer's helper. One spring day in probably 1944 Max and my father got a trouble call to repair a transcontinental telephone cable. Those cables were a really big deal because it was one of very few communication links between east coast and west coast during war time. That made it vitally important to national security. The cable was buried and apparently followed the route from Reno to Sacramento through the Sierra Nevada Mountains via what is named Donner Pass.

Not remotely associated with buried telephone cable in a mountain pass, but maybe it sets the mood!

 

Buried cable at that time was lead sheathed and had many pairs of wires inside each cable. Lead-sheathed cables are water tight and somewhat flexible, but if the sheathing is damaged moisture can intrude which interferes with voice communication. Another crew had already done the emergency repair by inserting a hose from a large nitrogen bottle into the cable sheath (the "bottles" are cast steel tanks about 4 ft tall, 8 inches in diameter and painted light blue; the color designates the type gas inside). That nitrogen gas, connected at low pressure through a pressure regulator, then pressurized the cable so there was positive pressure inside the lead sheathing. With more pressure inside than outside, the nitrogen pushed out thru the damaged sheath preventing water from entering. The side benefit is that the leaking nitrogen also dries the wires to temporarily fix the communication problem. 

By measuring the electrical resistance from both sides of the damage in the cable they could calculate the location of the leak within a few feet. That calculation had been done ahead of time, so their job (Max and my father) was to go to the estimated location of the leak, dig down through about 12 feet of snow pack, then dig through another 6 or so feet of frozen earth to locate the cable. After that they had to find the leak, repair it, then fill everything back in. After all, they didn't want to make it easy for any bad guys to get to the cable and do lethal damage!

That stretch of buried cable was very important to communication during WW-II. Since that cable was so important to national safety, the military flew surveillance over the route to be sure no one tried to damage or destroy the cable. Imagine the pilot's surprise when he looked down and saw 2 idiots digging thru the 10-15 feet of snow to do something to the cable! Yeah there was a telephone service truck parked nearby, but that could be a prop. The issue was that while Bell of Nevada had told Max to take his helper and also told the Army they were ready to go fix the cable, no one in the Army told the Army detachment responsible for guarding coast-to-coast telephone communication and keeping it safe. Oops!

About 2 hours into the dig through the snow, a platoon of the Army's finest showed up with loaded weapons aimed at the two evil-doers- they were ready to blow their heads off at the slightest excuse. It took a few minutes of conversation plus some radio communication between the Army and Bell of Nevada to get things sorted. My father and Max went back to digging and eventually got the damage repaired.

One reason I recall the event so vividly is that my father had gotten a horrible sun burn. He had removed his shirt while digging through the snow because, once he got down a few feet into the snow, there was no air moving and he was still in the direct sun. He was getting soaked with perspiration. What he hadn't planned on, though, was that he was also getting a severe sun burn. When he finally made it home and had told his tale, my mother had to get to work with a thick concoction of baking soda and water (telephone call to a local friend, Mona Singer, who was a nurse). She dabbed the paste onto my father's back and shoulders. It was extremely painful but apparently that treatment was effective as he was back to work the following Monday.

Of course my recollections of WW-II kinda mush together with similar events associated with the Korean War. I was a little older for that 1951-1953 conflict and recall stories about the war in the Reno Evening Gazette. The fighting in that war ended later in the same year we moved from Reno back to Stockton, California.