The way Don McLauchlin recalls the moment, he was huddled over, with his arms crossed in front of him, wearing a pair of thick military goggles and a protective hood. Still, when the experimental H-bomb from Operation Castle detonated off Bikini atoll in the South Pacific, the blast exploded beyond imagination.

Don McLauchlin was a medical corpsman in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines and is the only remaining survivor of the first hydrogen bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll in 1954. He lives in Chugiak with his daughter. PHOTO BY ANDY HALL

"When that shot went off, there was so much light, it looked like an X-ray of my hands and arms," said McLauchlin, perhaps the only survivor left of the detachment he was assigned to during the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Defense testing operation. The blast from that test, to this day, remains the largest detonation ever conducted by the United States.

"It was 10,000 times more powerful than the A-bomb they dropped on Hiroshima," said McLauchlin Oct. 29, as he sat finishing lunch at the Chugiak Senior Center, where he often comes to eat. "We were 85 miles away, but the light was so intense, it was like it was right there."

McLauchlin is one of the 23.4 million veterans across the country who is recognized on Veteran's Day. An estimated 76,000 of these men and women live in Alaska, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and McLauchlin is one of them. He said he much prefers fishing for giant halibut to crouching against an H-bomb in the South Pacific.

Now 84 and living with his daughter and son-in-law in Chugiak, McLauchlin takes it easier. He stops by the senior center almost daily, eating lunch and watching television until the urge hits him to head home. He likes to dance, and is a regular at the VFW Friday night steak dinners and dance parties. In his wallet is the photo of a beautiful woman, looking half his age, and whom he calls one of his favorite dance partners.

"He's still having fun, that's my dad," said daughter Zulene Simmons. "He used to win jitterbug contests. People don't believe it, but he really can dance."

McLauchlin, from Hopewell, Va., began his career in the military as a 20-something Navy hospital corpsman. The Navy also provided the Marines with its medical personnel, so depending upon where he was stationed or what he was asked to do, McLauchlin was sometimes Navy, sometimes Marines.

No matter where he went, though, there never seemed to be a dull moment.

"We were in Japan," McLauchlin recalled. "We had to set up a medical tent and I had 84 beds at the foot of Mount Fuji."

While beautiful to look at, Fuji was an active volcano - it still is - so making camp was not quite as simple as it appeared.

"Everything was covered in lava ash and I had to bury the tent stays 6 feet in the ground and cover them with sandbags because of the ash," he said. On the windward side, he used guy lines to lash the tent to military jeeps.

"When the rain and winds came, mine was the only one to withstand the storm," he said, with a satisfied smirk.

Another time, McLauchlin noticed that faulty ventilation in the tents was making the men sick. He went to his sergeant major and said, "We have a problem." His superior said, "What is it, Doc?" - a nickname eventually became used to - and McLauchlin said, "Those boys have carbon monoxide poisoning."

McLauchlin was right, and received a medal of commendation for saving 270 lives. "Fortunately, we didn't lose anybody."

McLauchlin eventually returned to the United States, moving his family to Las Vegas, "when there was hardly anything," according to Simmons, his daughter.

Still a corpsman and medic there, McLauchlin was again exposed to radiation when above and below ground waste vented into the atmosphere.

"That radiation blew over to Utah and killed crops and cattle," he said. "I had to drive around that site ... three different exposures a week at a time."

Simmons is convinced her family's proximity to the site affected their health.

"As a kid my sister said she could remember going outside to watch the mushroom clouds out the window," she said.

Her mother had breast cancer twice; the second time it killed her. And one of her sisters was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 20s.

As for McLauchlin?: "I've had lymphatic cancer and colon cancer, but outside of that everything's OK," he said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

Simmons said she is proud of her father, but as a retired military woman herself, she knows it takes an army - literally - to defend a nation.

"Every day is a day of pause for us, not just Veterans Day," she said. "We pray every day for our veterans and our soldiers."