As we continued to move North, the ice seemed to surround us and the going was much slower than before. Then everything went dead silent.  The LST engines were not churning water and we were sitting solid in the frozen sea, ice everywhere now. It was like being on dry land, motionless and also helpless.

There were no other ships from our convoy in sight but by radio contact we were told to sit tight until and Ice Breaker could get to us. Later that day we were told that the closest ice breaker was somewhere in between the Naval Base at Newport, Rhode Island and Greenland so all we could do was sit and wait for it to arrive. On the third day, food was in short supply and I can remember having spaghetti for supper that night with no meatballs. We knew it was bad the next morning when we had fried spaghetti for breakfast. Our main deck of the LCU was filled with supplies and we began digging into them to see if there was any canned goods. We found cases upon cases of canned peaches and canned string beans. They were good at first but after two days, our consumption of peaches and beans slowed way down.

Finally the ice breaker showed up and went cruising through the ice breaking it up. We got supplies from them and then followed their lead until we were once again in open waters. It was not long after that until Thule, Greenland was in sight.

Greenland was anything but green.....it was very dark and drab with no vegetation whatsoever. It was here that we would spend the next three months. We were not permitted to go ashore to the town of Thule as we were told that we could very easily pass on cold viruses to the Icelanders and perhaps many of them would die. After searching the net, I found the following information about the Air Force Base in Greenland and how it came to be. "Thule Air Base was constructed in secret under the code name Operation BLUE JAY. Construction began in 1951 and was completed in 1953. The construction of Thule is said to have been compared in scale to the enormous effort required to build the Panama Canal. The Navy transported the bulk of men, supplies and equipment from the naval shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia. On June 6, 1951 an armada of 120 shipments carried 12,000 men and 300,000 tons of cargo. They arrived Thule July 9th. The Kiewit Company had the contract for doing the construction work for the SAC Air Base."  This armada of ships was us and all the others that sailed with us on June 6, 1961.  We returned to Thule the following year as well.