When The Engineers Started Rockin' on Ascension Island

The "Wideawakes" of Ascension Island, photo from about 1943.

It has been seventy years ago this year that the 38th Engineers landed on Ascension Island, tasked with building a secret air base in just 90 days. They didn't have enough water. They weren't resupplied nor did they get mail for months. They worked around the clock in two twelve-hour shifts until some of them dropped from exhaustion.

And they made their deadline and helped the Allies win the war. My father talked about his assignment there a lot at the end of his life. But he never mentioned the dance band!

One of my readers, William Orr, an educator from Hillsborough, Florida, in the son of man who served on Ascension at about the same time as my father. There were several thousand men on this job, so we don't know if our fathers met. But Orr is the first to tell me about The Wideawakes, the island dance band, which some of the men formed once the airstrip had been built.

Twenty-five thousand planes came through the island, ferried to battle zones all across the world. Sometimes women from the ATF flew those bombers, so women did come through Ascension. The USO came through as well. And there were movies in an open air theater.

It makes sense that some of the men, who liked music, would want to make some of their own. Thanks to William Orr for filling me in on this aspect of life on Ascension I had never heard about. He also sent a series of photos of the band, which I'm posting here in case any of my readers can identify any of the men in the band. We thank them all for their service. Many of them went on to Africa, Europe and the Pacific and some of them did not come back. 

Looking at the young faces in the photos is so sweet. Who says engineers are a bunch of nerds, eh? They all look like hep cats to me.