In the Ruins of the Cold War Bunker
Page 16
AT THE BUNKER … AGAIN
I have now taken five Greenbrier bunker tours since I moved with my family to West Virginia in June 2012 to take up a post-doc at West Virginia University’s Department of Geology and Geography. The first visit was, in fact, less than a week after our cross-country move. I waved a no regrets good-bye to the boxes piled in our small rental and drove south for three and a half hours to the small town of Lewisburg, a third of that drive along meandering mountain roads worthy of the John Denver musical tribute. The purpose of the trip was to attend the 2012 National Speleological Society Annual Convention. This is a week-long event in which cavers from all over the country and beyond gather to learn about the latest on cave science and exploration. These venues are wonderful opportunities for me to advance my anthropological study of the caving community and its practices. What motivates these individuals to explore and survey caves together? How do their practices vary across time and space? And, what do these practices tell us about our changing and varied relations to our earth, namely, its underground? It is always with caves and cavers in mind, then, that I approach this last question (see, e.g. Pérez 2013, 2015).
This last visit to the Greenbrier bunker was somewhat different from the previous ones. Before this trip, I contacted Linda Walls, who has been the Greenbrier bunker tour manager since 2006. I explained to her my participation in this edited volume and my plans for writing a chapter that situated the bunker within the broader regional Cold War landscape. Specifically, I told her, I would compare my experience on the tour in the bunker with the one at Organ Cave located a short drive south of White Sulphur Springs. My co-option of the bunker as a site of analysis made explicit (to others and myself, now that I made the serious commitment to my editor to get this chapter done), I returned to the Greenbrier Resort not as a tourist but as an investigator. Linda Walls pressed me on my purpose, methods and objectives. Was I to evaluate the guides? A previous experience with an undisclosed West Virginia University investigator had turned sour when his class offered non-constructive critique of their tour experience. After assurances that my objectives were different, she kindly scheduled me to take the Greenbrier bunker tour with two guides of two different generations, the younger Adam Bailey and the elder Frank Houghton. They are both fabulous, Walls assured me, but each has his own take on the bunker and Cold War history.
And so, on the morning of Saturday, 3 October, I drove southeast to Lewisburg, West Virginia. Before the start of my first tour of the day, I went up to Bailey, the tour guide, to introduce myself and to make sure that he was okay with me taking notes. We immediately recognized each other from a few weeks back when I had been to the Greenbrier with a Cuban caver friend. Bailey had remembered me asking about caves in the area.
Since 2009, bunker tours begin in the Trellis Lobby of the Greenbrier Hotel (prior to this, visitors gathered in front of the north entrance of the hotel and from there took a bus to the west entrance of the bunker). Indeed, on all tours I have been on, guests are first gathered in the south side of this room with views of Copeland Hill upon which sits the massive West Virginia wing. Beneath it is the bunker. I am immediately captivated by the ways the layout of this vertical geography challenges our intuitions. With this experience I recall recent work in vertical geographies, and in particular Peter Adey’s suggestion that we think of the role of bodily experience in the construction of such geographies (Adey 2013). To go to the bunker, we were to go up the elevator located at the end of a long hallway, and not down. But I get ahead of myself, because the approach to its opening is as interesting to me as the bunker itself. After leaving the Trellis Lobby, we walked along a long hallway that, Bailey explained, marks a seamless timeline of subsequent additions of the hotel. This fact helped make the Greenbrier a convenient site to build the bunker, part of the ‘hidden in plain site’ philosophy that characterized the congressional bunker project (Conte 2000, 200). The Greenbrier had always been growing so people would not have been especially curious about yet another project (the bunker). Thinking of the ways cave passages form, I took Bailey’s evocative metaphor more explicitly than he may have intended. Of course, buildings grow, as well. From growing cave passages I move to think of changes in light and the shadows they cast (Bille & Sørensen 2007). Along this timeline, I am fascinated by the different lighting fixtures, starting with the spectacular crystal chandelier in the Lobby Bar that was used in the set of Gone with the Wind. And so, along that long hallway, flanked to the right by floor-to-ceiling high windows, the different lamps offered beautiful contrasting hues of light that refracted from intricate glass, crystal of metal designs.
APPROACHING THE BUNKER … APPROACHING THE CAVE
This approach to the bunker, the thought of the building’s growth and the shifting lightscapes evoked my experience of nearing and entering caves. It is difficult to generalize the comparison, however. Caves are incredibly varied in form, and although not part of the built environment, most attempts at defining them involve the capacity for human entry. How else to categorically distinguish between a small crack in the ground, no matter how long, from a passage the height of small building? As Ukrainian speleologist Alexander Klimchouk notes, a cave’s definition is necessarily
anthropocentric, [since it] relies on the ambiguous criterion of accessibility by man, has no genetic meaning, and is therefore non-scientific. It also implies that a cavity is connected to the surface through entrances. Caves can be distinguished from surface landforms by morphometric criteria: caves are forms in which the long dimension (length or depth) is greater than the cross-sectional dimensions at the entrance. The anthropocentrism of the above definition of a cave implies that it is largely air-filled, but advances in underwater cave exploration during the second half of the 20th century have dramatically relaxed this limitation. The concept of a cave, is, rather, an exploration notion. (Klimchouk 2004, 203)
Like the approach to this bunker, some of the most spectacular cave entrances are a long and protracted affair, with multiple entrances and skylights piercing the encroaching darkness. But that darkness must eventually come, and when it comes, it is usually absolute. If not, then, based on Klimchouk’s definition, we are likely not dealing with a cave but a shelter in which the long dimension is smaller than the cross-section of the entrance. Often in cave trips I have heard fellow cavers express their love of that the protracted entry, when the outside is left behind. More impactful still is the trip out. After hours underground in dark passages except for the caver lights, that process of slow reacquaintance with familiar temperatures, openness and vegetation always overwhelms the senses.
CONTAINMENT
While in a cave the twilight might extend for hundreds of metres, in the bunker, the point of entry is discreet. With this I begin to examine that distinguishing character of bunkers in contrast with caves: containment. But the way this plays out at the Greenbrier is intriguing. Once we completed the ride up the elevator, we stepped out into a hallway with a busy wallpaper designed by Carleton Varney. The purpose of the busy wallpaper in the Elevator Lobby was to hide the edges of a false wall that covered the 18-tonne door to the bunker that hung, in a constant state of readiness, in a niche within the wall. When the bunker was inactive, much of the bunker space was actually operational, accessible to hotel staff and guests. The large room that we entered was used as an exhibit hall for many years. (Currently, this large room is a popular place to play laser tag. The week prior to our tour, the place had been transformed into the locker room of the Saints, the football team of the city of New Orleans.) At this point, feeling the cold weight of this door, the bunker would be sealed off from the outside world, only to be opened again by those inside. The door was never closed, and thus, the bunker was always there, in constant state of readiness but never activated. How intriguing to think that several of the spaces of the bunker were familiar spaces to hotel staff and guests. They routinely walked by hidden massive doors, doors tucked away in their niches in the wa
ll, unperturbed, ready to be sealed in the case of an emergency that warranted activating the bunker. But this never happened. The bunker never actualized its engineered potential of perfect containment. Yet, it was maintained in constant state of readiness. In the event of an emergency or even power failure, back-up diesel generators located within the bunker would provide power to the facility. The bunker also counted on its own source of water from a well within the Greenbrier’s property. In other words, the site was designed to be completely self-sufficient: a complete containment.
This very project to experience caves and bunkers in counterpoint forged these insights on containment. It is precisely on this score of containment that caves fail miserably. Caves, by definition, are leaky systems formed by the solution by mildly acidic water of stone, usually limestone. Rain seeping through the ground picks up acidity and then slowly dissolves passages and chambers within limestone layers. Some of the longest caves of eastern United States are located in the Greenbrier limestone (Dasher 2012). Curious, I asked a mining engineer and caver friend who lives in the area if there are any caves under or immediately near the Greenbrier hotel. He said no. And yet, it is highly probable that caves were impacted or perhaps totally destroyed at the local quarries that provided the limestone necessary to produce the 50,000 tonnes of concrete necessary for the bunker’s construction (Conte 2000, 201).
Back in the large exhibit hall, Bailey asked us, ‘So who feels underground? You can be honest!’ Several of us in the group admitted we could have been fooled (recall that elevator ride up). All bunker tour guides huddle their group in front of a coloured artists’ rendition of the bunker. This was not so much an exercise in orienteering but an aid to help us visualize the structure within which we stood. I appreciated its verticality, and also its massive concreteness: Beyond the high ceiling, another bunker floor that we would not access on the tour, then five feet of poured concrete, then earth, then a three-storey building, that West Virginia Wing. Below us again, five feet of poured concrete, and earth. ‘Here is a simple way to think about it’, Bailey explained. ‘You dig a big hole, put a box inside, cover it up with dirt, and put a building on top. That’s the bunker’. Evoking insights on vertical geographies that Stuart Elden examines from a political perspective (Elden 2013), I also appreciate its angularity, its straight angularity. No meandering tunnels, no rounded corners. Boxes within the large box.
CONTAINMENT … BREACHED? MATERIAL (TRANS)FORMATIONS IN BUNKER AND CAVE
Our next stop in the bunker tour was the east tunnel, one of four entry points into the bunker. Had the bunker been activated, this would have been one of two major entry points, conveniently located across from the train station that connects White Sulphur Springs to Washington, D.C. and the road. Here, the largest and most impressive door of the bunker, a 30-tonne hulk of steel that, we were told, was perfectly balanced so that an average human being could close the door. It is now suspended, partly out of its niche in the wall, so that we could appreciate both of its sides. We were also encouraged to touch it. Looking around the tunnel, something else caught my attention, however. In the ceiling, there was active leaking at what looks like a contact point. Water had found a way through into this East tunnel, and, as Linda Walls explained, also the West tunnel. Were these leaks a threat to the bunker? Walls clarified that no, ‘these leaks are at connection locations and do not affect the building. The building is not vulnerable due to leaks’.
Indeed, within a bunker, signs of a leak would spell serious signs of its vulnerability, its eventual ruination. In a cave, they are a sign that it is alive. Drips within a cave passage remind us that these spaces continue to morph, to grow. In some cases, the rates of change are so fast that in a matter of just a few years highly soluble calcite from the limestone reconfigures itself as stalactites, stalagmites and a myriad other intriguing forms. In the presence of many of these forms, cavers delight at uncovering a highly decorated passage. Stalagmites forming in a bunker would be reasons for serious concern, signs of a breach in an otherwise-unbreachable container.
I have been mulling over the dynamics and impacts involved in the transformation of limestone into concrete for some time. But it was on that October trip to Greenbrier County, with two bunker visits back to back and then followed by an Organ Cave tour, that I pondered on the dramatic mobilization of earthy substances more generally, mobilizations and transformations both shrouded in secrecy. Surely I must have been told in a previous visit that over 70 per cent of the saltpetre used to produce gunpowder for the Confederate Army during the US Civil War originated from Organ Cave. Indeed, this cave, currently the ninth-longest cave in the United States at 38.45 miles in length, is also believed to have been an important saltpetre production site during the war of 1812 (Stevens 1998; Dasher 2012, 207). But it was in this last visit, with my focus on comparative materialities and histories, with the bunker tours fresh in my mind, that this fact both astonished and intrigued me. Bat guano is typically rich in potassium nitrate, thus making caves potential sources of the prized saltpetre. The process of collecting potassium nitrate crystals from guano is an extremely labour-intensive process requiring the creation of large vats in which water would be run through the guano, and then collecting the remaining potassium nitrate crystals. Many caves in the southeastern United States help major saltpetre operations. For the Confederate Army, Organ Cave was the main one. Interestingly, much of this operation took place in complete secrecy. Indeed, Organ Cave guides never fail to point out that while such massive operation was under way, the Union army often camped just above the cave, unbeknownst to the presence of the enemy and its machinations deep below the earth. Caves and bunkers then have common attributes: their propensity for secrecy, and their quiet co-option in military projects.
AT ORGAN CAVE … AGAIN
Organ Cave visitors who chose the historic tour arrive at the Hopper Room that contains the wooden vats that Confederate Army soldiers used to produce saltpetre. According to the attraction’s website (http://www.organcave.com/civil-war/), there are 37 of the original 52 wooden vats, benefitting from the cave environment that has favoured their preservation for over 150 years. One of them is a reproduction used to actually illustrate the practice to leaching the nitrates from the guano collected in the cave. The cave manager also enhances visitors’ experience by lighting the passages that the labourers transited back and forth with heavy bags, with water, guano or collected saltpetre, with period-appropriate lights. Mannequins wearing Confederate uniforms stand next to some of the vats. I had remembered the presence of the mannequins from my previous times on this tour, but I had not stopped to detail them as close as I did this last time in October. This last time, being the only person on the tour, my guide pointed out that the mannequins were all of women, their gender cleverly concealed. Their long hair had been cut and repasted as facial hair.
As in the case of my arrangements with the bunker tours earlier that day, I had spoken with the cave manager on the phone ahead of time, explaining to her that I was further pursuing the comparison of my experiences in the Greenbrier bunker and Organ Cave. On my previous visit, I had focused on the Chapel Room where the wooden shed was built in 1958 to store the fallout shelter provisions. This time, I told the manager, I wanted to do the normal historic ‘Civil War’ tour, down past the provisions shelter down half a mile to the Hopper Room containing the saltpetre vats and back. Upon my arrival, she was waiting for me with a young man, Lucas Hughes, who she explained would be my guide. ‘You just do the normal tour, Lucas’, I told him, as we started down the long flight of stairs that descended into the beautiful mouth of Organ. Again, that transition from the vegetation, sunlight and heat of this warm early October day to the rockiness, darkness and coolness of the cave. Our first room, part of which is still awash in twilight, is the large Chapel Room, which Confederate soldiers occupied on Sundays for religious service during the Civil War years. Service must have offered a brief respite from the backbreaking work of c
arrying cloth sacks of niter-rich cave soil from this room down half a mile to the vats constructed for the process of saltpetre production. The Organ Cave website focuses its history on the role of the cave not just during the Civil War, but also during the War of 1812, in both cases as a site of saltpetre production. It notes as well that the cave may have been known to settlers to the area by the 1740s. Yet earlier still, Native Americans used the cave as an important source of flint for arrowheads. The cave’s brochure mentions the role of the cave as a designated fallout shelter, but the website does not. Without a doubt, Organ Cave’s important role in the Civil War overshadows other historical references to the place. Regardless, every participant on any of the various tours in Organ will learn, shortly after descending into the mouth of the cave and walking just a few metres into the Chapel Room, that the cave was part of the National Civil Defense Fallout Shelter Program. Indeed, the cave manager proudly displays the recognizable black and yellow trefoil sign on one of the walls of her gift shop and tour office.
Tucked into the western wall of the Chapel Room, Army Corps of Engineers workers built a wooden shack to store provisions that could be used for civilians in the case of a nuclear war. The structure is approximately 10 feet wide, 6 feet high at the highest point and 8 feet deep. A door on its left side was meant to be kept locked, but has since been left open granting cave visitors walking on the trail right next to the shack a glimpse of what is now inside: dozens of rusting water and cracker containers that at one point where especially designed and formulated to ensure the extended survival of 500 plus civilians for two weeks, presumably as long as it might take for the radiation in the air to dissipate before returning to the surface? This was the project of the Office of Civil Defense, as is clearly noted with white letters on the dark green drums. According to a website dedicated to the labours of the Division of Civil Defense, these drums in Organ Cave are examples of the