© 1997 ervd@hotmail.com
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Well, life was looking pretty good aboard ship. My ship had passed the sea trials with flying colors. She was an AK (used for hauling general cargo). She looked Sharp. My crew of "misfits" had turned into a damn fine crew. It took a tremendous amount of work on everybody's part. I was feeling right smug and damn proud at the same time. I started out with a very short period of time to get her ready for sea with no crew. I was given a deadline that at the time I didn't think I could meet and here I stood, drinking a cup of java feeling pretty proud of myself and my men as I watched them loading cargo for our pending mission.
It was about that time that I started feeling a bit gloomy. No, maybe that's not the right word. For you see, as I stood and watched it came over me. I knew where we were headed and I had been there, done that before and didn't like it the first time. Besides a wide variety of heavy construction equipment including two mike boats and two smaller amphibious boats, there was a lot of deep freeze weather gear for the men. WE would be steaming North again. I had me some quick flashbacks of my first trip up there and I was in a state of "Woe is me".
So, I made my way up to the skipper's quarters and we had one of our informal chit-chats. I told him about my suspicions about the direction we would be headed and he confirmed for me that I was right. Our mission consisted of two parts. Our first leg would take us to Thule Greenland where we would take part in the building of a weather station. Once done there, we would be steaming North further to the polar ice shelf about 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The only good news I got out of our talk is that we wouldn't be plowing around the North Atlantic. For both parts of the mission, we would be docked or anchored. The second part of our mission was to assist in some type of scientific mission that no one would talk about. It was secret and everybody was hush hush about it.
Looking at the equipment, I knew that it was going to include drilling of some sort. The augers and piping gave that away. Also included in that portion were some sleds but that just raised more questions for me as there were no dogs around which realy suited me. I didn't fancy having my crew babysit a bunch of mutts along with all there other duties. I knew we would be busy enough keeping everything ship shape. When your that far North, everything had to be maintained. You could get killed real quick, for a variety of reasons. Freezing to death was just one possibility. Besides that, we would be sailing in Iceberg country. This trip tho probably considered routine had some serious conditions for danger. I knew that nothing could be considered trivial. Add that to the fact that I just plain hated being cold and you can guess why I had the sour mood. I knew ma wouldn't be to happy either.
The upper level of cargo hold #3 had been converted to living quarters and was occupied by a group of See-Bee's that would construct the weather station. The crew that was to man the weather station were already in Thule when we arrived and assist in the construction. This was my first contact with men from Denmark or Danes as they refered to themselves and I must say they were a fine group of men. It was always a pleasure for me to meet new people from different cultures and these men were a credit to their country. I always did enjoy broadening my horizons.
The trip up to Thule, Greenland was pretty uneventful and pleasant at the same time except of course, the further we sailed, the colder it got. As far as the cold goes, all you can do is grit your teeth and adapt to your surroundings. You don't have to like it, you just got to do it.
Once we arrived on station, we anchored of the coast and we were in fairly shallow water. It wasn't long and we hadput the mike boats in the water and loaded the first one with a bulldozier. This is when we ran into our first problem. Ya see, there was an Army Colonel with the Corps of Engineers and he was in overall command of the construction of the weather station. This has always confused me as we had the best construction people in the Armed Forces with us and over all command was given to an Army Colonel. The mike boat coxain came to me and explained a problem that he had allready picked up on. We were in shallow water and the water was crystal clear. The coxain advised me that the bottom consisted of small rocks. In order to get the mike boat in close enough to offload, he would have to litterally beach the mike boat and he was cocerned about tearing up the screws on his boat.
We discussed the situation for awhile because he was absolutley correct. After awhile , we came up with a solution that wouldn't take long and would save a lot of wear and tear on our boats. After all, we had a lot of heavy equipment to off load in order for the people ashore to accomplish their mission. So, off to the skipper we went. We explained the circumstances to the skipper and then provided him a solution which was very simple. We proposed to take the bull dozier ashore first and use it to push the shore gravel into the water building a ramp in the shallow water where the boats could get in, lower their ramps and offload while their screws would be protected by being above the gravel.
The skipper agreed with us and spoke to the Army Colonel. This "Individual" very quickly explained to our skipper who was in command of this operation, denied our request and ordered our skipper to get his equipment ashore ASAP. Once again, I was forced to bit my tongue and comply with and order given by a man who was an Officer and Gentleman by act of Congress. I don't know if this Colonel had an ego problem or just wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box but his decision, in the long run, damn near made our mission impossible. Our first trip ashore was by mike boat with a bulldozier aboard. The same bulldozier that would have solved all our logistic problems and as a result of having to beach the mike boat we lost a screw and shaft in the process. Our problem didn't concern him as he had a bulldozier he could put to work.
I had 2 spare shafts and four spare screws. By the end of day two, we had no spare parts. Both our mike boats were out of commission and we were down to one small amphibious boat working with a bent shaft and a chopped up screw. She could barely make headway. We had ordered more spare parts and they were scheduled to be flown in and air dropped as an emergency trip. We recieved the spare parts six months later in Brazil after we had gotten rid of the boats. Now that's what I call expedient efficiency. Anyways, we did manage, despite all our problems to get all that equipment ashore. I really did want to have a few choice words with that Colonel,,, but,,,, a Colonel is a Colonel even if he is braindead.
Anyways, after we finished up the Thule fiasco weather station which later evolved into Thule Air Base, a seaplane landed and we took on a bunch of fellows who would be involved in phase two of our mission.So we were able to bid ado to Thule and start our trip further North.
We were steaming into the land where the sun never set in the summer. The area was commonly reffered to the land of the midnite sun. TO BE CONTINUED
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