How Greenland's Dog-Sled Patrol Became Unsung Heroes of World War II

“Germans called [Greenland] the ‘weather kitchen,’ the place where weather was made, to be served the following day in Europe,” says Peter Harmsen, a Copenhagen-based journalist and the author of Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II. “In that large expanse of snow and ice, where men can scarcely be recognized at a little distance, only the natives covering the territory on sleds and well-acquainted with the regular inhabitants could detect a stranger,” the U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters wrote after the war. As they waited for the U.S. Army Air Force to attack the German weather base at Sabine Island (which happened in May 1943), Governor Brun urged the sledge patrol to “obtain [the] fullest, most reliable information and, if possible, without prejudice…to eliminate enemy forces by capture or shooting.” Brun called the sledge patrol the “Greenland army” and bestowed military ranks on its members.

Author: Jordan Friedman

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