Dashiell Hammet was stationed in the Aleutians. I know he had to leave early, but I can’t remember if it was because of his TB.
A base in the Aleutians? I’ve been to one! 
In January 2020 I visited Eareckson Air Station on tiny Shemya Island to do some work on the Cobra Dane radar. It was unlike any place I had ever visited. It was cold, but not terribly cold. What I remember most was the wind: very strong bursts of wind about every 10 seconds or so. When you walk between buildings, you have to wear a bright safety vest and hold on to the railing, else the wind will knock you over.
The place was pretty desolate, with not much to do. And they banned alcohol sales a couple years before.
I was supposed to be there for a week, but I got my work done in a shorter time. I really wanted to get off that island, and kept trying to get an earlier flight out. A vacant seat was finally available on the sixth day.
So yea, that was probably the worst Air Force installation I have ever visited. But at the same time I’m glad I got to go there. It was once a very active Air Force Base, and now just a shell of it remains. I roamed around the large athletic & entertainment facility, and I was the only person in the place. Just eerie. Like walking around a ghost town.
It must have been worse in the early 20th century.
From Wikipedia: " Hammett enlisted in the United States Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps. He was afflicted during that time with the Spanish flu and later contracted tuberculosis. He spent most of his time in the Army as a patient at Cushman Hospital in Tacoma, Washington, where he met a nurse, Josephine Dolan, whom he married on July 7, 1921, in San Francisco"
From his obituary in the NYT:"“the dean of the… ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective fiction.”
Seeing a bunch of 20-something US military types in Tokyo bars, I strongly suspect that most of that demographics are not that interested in either of those attractions.
At any rate, there are only so many times someone would want to travel 11 hours to see Mt. Rushmore.
Stay frosty!
Different people want different things. There is no “best”.
A person raised in a Midwestern small town may be horrified at the thought of living in anything other than another Midwestern small town, or may have a deep desire to be posted to exotic Japan or interesting Europe.
A hard-core outdoorsperson may love the idea of Alaska. Somebody like me loves the idea of warm sunny beaches. Ref @TokyoBayer two posts up, young single people may be mostly interested in nightlife and locals of their preferred sex. While married folks with kids may be much more interested in cheap housing and good schools than nightlife they’ll never see.
At least back in my era there are many correspondence schools available. And ICBM launch control officers often ate that stuff up for reasons you suggest.
But they are a small fraction of the total staffing at Minot. Lots more folks fix them, do personnel administration, make food, drive trucks, guard facilities, etc., than actually sit there watching and waiting to turn their keys.
Minot also hosts half the B-52s in USAF. So that’s pilots, navs, bombardiers, EW specialists, and the 50 other sorts of workers it takes to support each of the very few flyers.
DoD does have “hardship pay” for especially shitty assignments. But that’s reserved mostly for the ones that are truly “F” jobs/places. Minot is much more of a “D+” in the broad spectrum of USAF’s various “garden spots” as we called them. It gets a LOT worse than Minot.
As mentioned by others above, compared to the early Cold War era, automation and increasing tech has removed a lot of the need to station small garrisons of people up in the Arctic in isolated facilities guarded mostly by their extreme remoteness and ghastly weather. Those jobs / places were the real "F"s in my era, and even then they were being obsoleted and shut down left and right.
Having been on numerous MMIII projects and even visiting a silo, I can attest that the movies have it wrong. 99.99% of the work is pretty mundane: routine maintenance, equipment upgrades, testing, calibrations, repairs, training, audits - lather, rinse, repeat. They take this stuff very seriously in the nuclear community, as personnel can and will be fired on the spot when an audit discovers a problem.
For those who don’t check out the Wikipedia entry: Dashiell Hammett re-enlisted during WWII when he was nearly 50 years old, and wound up serving on Adak in the Aleutians.
Thanks, Jackmannii, I missed that in Wikipedia.
This is a snap shot my father took of his PBY on Adak in June 1942. They were flying recon and bombing Atu and Kiska. There are two 500 lb bombs under the left wing and one 1000 lb bomb under the right.
He said it was difficult, but you knew what to do and you felt like what you did made a difference.
Seems to me that Shemya would be far worse than Minot. It’s one of the most remote of the Aleutian Islands, and it’s a long plane ride to Anchorage. I was stationed on Adak for a year, which wasn’t too bad, other than the fact that at that time no Navy women were allowed there. My former father-in-law was Civil Service on Shemya. He drank heavily.
Very likely. See Post 22.
Missed that. The Aleutians are certainly bleak, hence the motto of Adak: Birthplace Of The Winds. Add volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis to that and you’ve got a trifecta of misery. But AF food is usually top notch.
Yes, this is what I was referring to. Apparently, he was valuable doing a lot of organizational and administrative stuff. He was an interesting guy.
Lillian Hellman thought so, too.
He apparently co-wrote an account of the battle against the Japanese for the Aleutians. Here’s a pdf:
The Battle for the Aleutians - A Graphic History 1942-1943 (nps.gov)
I didn’t stay on base at FE Warren or visit the base housing but its facilities seemed really run down after Peacekeeper defielding, and nearby Cheyenne, Wy is one of the worst cities in terms of crime for its size. I just remember not being able to get a hotel room that didn’t reek of stale tobacco smoke, and the hotel clerk recommending “This really great steakhouse, best in the state!”, which turned out to be an Outback Steakhouse. I like Wyoming a lot, but not that part of it. As for Elmendorf, if being near Anchorage is the main appeal, I’ll take immolation or defenestration instead, thank you. Minot at least as a quaint downtown, although it is a mind-numbing drive to get there.
Stranger
The scary thing was that not only was the desk clerk telling you his honest opinion, it was highly likely to also have been factually correct.
IME/IMO a lot of rural America just has no idea what civilization has to offer.
A friend of mine works for a defense contractor; she and her husband both served in the Marines, and that’s where they met. She had been working in suburban D.C., and got an offer of an assignment based at Elmendorf; even though relocating was a pain, they jumped at the opportunity, as they are, indeed, very outdoorsy, and loved the idea of being able to live somewhere with actual scenery, and no longer being in a congested urban area.
Even though they’ve had occasional wildlife-based adventures, like the young moose who sparred with their daughters’ swingset in their backyard, they’ve felt that it was the perfect choice for them.
I guarantee that isn’t true. There is good food to be had in Wyoming; just not in the lower Eastern corner.
Stranger
Honestly, why can’t the USAF just consolidate its bombers at, say, Whiteman AFB in Missouri (with some base expansion) and shut down Minot.