Chapter Four
Pine Tree #1 task force then resumed its northward course along the coast of Labrador, but its next destination was not yet known. After another day of steaming slowly northward, they were abruptly ordered by headquarters at Goose Bay to turn into Saglek Bay, which was some 225 miles north of Hopedale, Labrador.
This they did and found themselves passing up a narrow channel or fiord with granite walls of the Canadian Shield extending upward about 2,000 feet on either side. They proceeded very slowly in single file, with the Captain of each ship personally directing their passage from the bridge. At the end of the fiord the walls melted away and they saw the rather small Saglek Bay with a narrow beach on each side and the Torngat Mountains ahead and to the north.
The ships dropped anchor, and Major John Pane, who had taken over command from Major McCoy at Hopedale, assembled all Officers for briefing. He told them that cargo and equipment had already been unloaded by the Pine Tree #2 task force on the north side of the bay as ordered by headquarters at Goose Bay. Yes, Pine Tree #2 task force had not gone directly to Greenland as they had been informed, but had been leapfrogging up the Labrador coast with Pine Tree #1.
And headquarters had mistakenly ordered the cargo to be unloaded on the north side of the bay, when it should have been the south side. The civilian contractor had tried to build a road from the north to the south side of the bay but the Torngat Mountains prevented it, so Pine Tree #1 was going to have to transfer all cargo and equipment from the north beach to the south beach by the DUKWs and landing craft.
Everyone was fit to be tied! This error by headquarters would put Pine Tree #1 weeks behind schedule, which they had to complete before the cold subarctic winter set in. To make matters worse, General Stinchcomb and his staff flew in on a PBY flying boat to see what had gone wrong, and he took the opportunity to chew out all the Officers present, when it was his own staff that had issued the wrong order, and he had signed it.
Lieutenant Comber, the navy beachmaster, was particularly upset because he had personnel to cover only one beach, and not both beaches in this situation. But the General rode roughshod over him, told him to improvise, and get on with it, and quickly.
Luke thought to himself how much this Army snafu was going to cost the taxpayers. How did American military ever win World War II? Perhaps they made less mistakes than their enemies. He thought of complaining to his Senator and Congressman, but decided he better wait until he was discharged from the Army.
Luke had to set up two aid stations, one on each beach manned by one corpsman, in rotating twelve hour shifts. It was not easy for him to extend his command to both stations and also take sick call on the Latimer, but he did it.
Major Pane asked Luke if he would like to take a Jeep tour behind the south beach, and he jumped at the opportunity, after getting the Navy doctor to hold the fort for him.
It was now late in July, and they had about nineteen hours of sunshine daily. Even at midnight they could see the afterglow of the sun on the northern horizon. They were getting pretty far north, almost up to the 60th parallel. Trees could not grow here because of the cold from the Labrador Current and the absence of deep soil on the rocky ground. However, there were myriads of beautiful wild flowers everywhere, which Luke found breathtaking. And there were swarms of ubiquitous king-sized mosquitoes. Although it was still summer, the Torngat Mountains to the north and west of them had a good dusting of white snow.
They took two jeeps, Luke driving his with Major Pane as a passenger, and Navy Captain Archer chauffeured Commodore Donner, although the two naval officers did not like each other very well, especially since the Commodore had sided with Luke against Archer over the shower dispute.
There were no Eskimos living at Saglek Bay, although there was a small village at Hebron Fiord, some thirty miles to the south. There were also no fishermen here. It was indeed a wild and remote place.
They drove south from the south side of the bay, up a large field strewn with rocks and boulders, and covered with grass and wild flowers. It was slow going, with no road or path. After progressing a mile or so, they saw the glint of sunlight reflecting off metal. As the neared the object they were surprised and excited to see that it was an airplane that had crash-landed there!
It turned out to be a B-25 bomber, that was pretty much intact except that the landing gear had been torn off on impact. Inside there was a gruesome finding, the skeletons of the pilot and copilot in their sleeping bags, and still wearing the rotting Army Air Corps uniforms they landed in.
Luke checked the skeletons and found no sign of fractures of the bones. He found a log book near the pilot which detailed their tragic story. Apparently they were ferrying the bomber from New York to England, but had become lost in a heavy storm in the spring of 1944, and were forced to land as they were running out of fuel. Two of the crew took the rubber life raft to Saglek Bay intending to go for help, but they never returned.
The daily log chillingly detailed the struggle of the pilot and copilot for survival. They were only slightly injured in the landing. They soon ate all their rations, and tried to hunt and fish, but were not very successful. Finally they were reduced to eating plants and roots. Several times planes flew over them at high altitudes, but they were unable to attract attention, even with flares.
The copilot died of starvation and pneumonia after about two months. The pilot lived on for another month. He painfully wrote, "The end is near. I have lost much weight, and am too weak to get out of the sleeping bag. This is my last entry in the log, July 4, 1944.
The Commodore took the log book, and asked Luke to arrange for removal of the remains to the Latimer. He also ordered the wheels of the plane to be returned to the ship, but Luke could not imagine why. Their dog tags were taken by the Commodore for military identification purposes and notification of next of kin, as was the log book.
If the pilots had only known that there was an Eskimo village just thirty miles south at Hebron!
They were all grim and silent as they returned to the ships. However, a spectacular show awaited them as they neared Saglek Bay at 10:00 pm. Huge curtains of red, green and white lights danced in the northern sky! It was a tremendous show of the northern lights, the aurora borealis. Luke could not help but feel that this display was a fitting memorial to the dead airmen.
The following day the Commodore radioed headquarters in Goose Bay, and gave them the identity of the two pilots and the identification numbers on the downed B-25 bomber.
Luke ordered two of his corpsmen to take the ambulance to pick up the skeletons of the two dead airmen. They grumbled about the unpleasant task, but he admonished them by saying, "Get on with it! It’s not the dead ones you have to worry about. It’s the living ones!"
When the corpsmen returned about two hours later with the skeletons loaded into the ambulance, still in their sleeping bags, the Catholic chaplain gave them the last rites of the church, and arranged for a brief funeral ceremony the next day. It was decided that the remains would be held in a makeshift morgue on the Latimer until the wishes of their families regarding final disposition could be determined.
The next day Major Pane asked Luke if he would like to accompany him and two engineering officers on a jeep trip along the road the construction company had started to try to connect the original landing area on the north side of the bay with the area on the south side where the radar installation was to be built, and where the building materials and equipment should have been unloaded.
They took two jeeps and proceeded around the west end of the bay for about seven miles. Sure enough, they entered a mountainous area that rose up right from the water’s edge. And the road ended at a cliff with a five hundred foot drop-off, and solid granite mountains on both sides. It would have taken weeks of blasting with dynamite to build a road down that cliff. It was small wonder that the construction people had given up!
The Major muttered, "I can well understand the problem, but why did someone not think to reconnoitre the area before they unloaded everything on the north beach, which was on the opposite side of the bay from the site of the radar installation? We shall just have to finish the job with Mike boats and DUKWs."
By August 5, they finished the transfer of all the equipment and material across the bay. The ships were re-loaded, but their departure was delayed for a day by a strong gale that blew in from the west. The wind was strong enough to require the ships to keep their engines running at slow speed heading into the wind to prevent the vessels from slipping their anchors. The Captain was on the bridge for 24 hours straight without sleep as a result.
Luke’s admiration of these naval commanders increased. They indeed bore a heavy responsibility for the welfare of their ships and their men.
The following day the wind abated. The task force weighed anchor and slowly headed east down the fiord. The Captain remained on the bridge of the Latimer until they had safely cleared the dangerous, narrow passageway back to the Labrador Sea. They then headed northward again towards Davis Strait, which separate Baffin Island from Greenland.
Soon the seas became very heavy with monstrous waves that were twenty to thirty feet high. Luke tried to have lunch in the Officers’ mess, but his food slid off the table as the ship pitched and rolled. When he looked out the porthole he could either look high into the sky, or down into the raging sea, depending on the roll of the ship. The Captain announced that the heavy seas were due to a large hurricane, which had come up the east coast of the United States, and was now situated between the southern tip of Greenland and Labrador. It was unusual for a hurricane to come this far north, but Luke remembered a large one that had crossed Long Island into Connecticut in 1945 when he was a student at Yale.
Luke gave up trying to eat, and went down into the enlisted men’s quarters. It was a real mess there. Many of the men were seasick, and there was vomitus all over the deck. Some of the men really looked green. Luke liberally dispensed dimenhydrinate to counteract the seasickness, and made the men as comfortable as possible.
A call came over the loud speaker requesting Luke to report to sick bay immediately. When he arrived there, the Navy doctor, Lt. Ben Small, asked him to check a soldier with severe abdominal pain. Luke found that his pain was situated in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen, and it was quite severe. He also had a low grade fever, and had been unable to keep anything on his stomach since the day before.
Luke ordered his corpsmen to start intravenous fluids, and ordered a blood count. The white blood cell count was elevated. Both doctors suspected acute appendicitis. They had a difficult decision to make. Should they operate in these very rough seas, or put an ice bag on his abdomen and give the patient penicillin injections? The decided to follow the latter course, and to watch the patient closely.
After two hours, the soldier’s pain was worse, and his white blood cell count had risen still higher. Both physicians agreed that surgery was imperative despite the rough seas. They requested a conference with Captain Archer on the bridge. He looked exhausted, but saw them immediately. They appraised him of the situation, and he radioed Commodore Donner on the LSD.
The Commodore ordered the whole task force to slow their speed to five knots and to head into the wind which was coming out of the hurricane from the southeast. He urged the doctors to finish the surgery as speedily as possible, but said that this maneuver might also help the LST 601 which was in danger of capsizing in the large waves because of its flat bottom and the large steel piers lashed to its sides. These large, rectangular masses of steel tended to catch the full force of the waves when the LST travelled across the wind, causing the ship to roll dangerously, and nearly to tip over. Heading directly into the wind and waves overcame the danger considerably.
The doctors prepared for surgery. They had to strap the patient to the operating table, and it still took two corpsmen to keep him from sliding as the ship rolled and pitched. Fortunately the two physicians were not bothered by seasickness. Luke gave drip ether anesthesia, and Dr. Small, who had been trained in surgery began the operation. It was a difficult business because of the unsteadiness of the ship; however, it did not take the surgeon long to isolate the appendix and remove it.
And it was just in time, as the appendix was acutely inflamed, and ready to rupture at any minute. The surgeons then sutured the incision, and the patient was returned to a bunk in sick bay. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief!
Lt. Small called the bridge and notified the Captain of the successful conclusion of surgery. Captain Archer was pleased. He commented that the hurricane was swinging eastwards towards the lower tip of Greenland, and that the winds and waves in their area were abating. He notified the Commodore, who soon ordered the task force to do an about face, and again head in a northwesterly direction.
As they proceeded the force of the hurricane gradually receded, and the journey returned to normalcy. They were about to enter Davis Strait, which separates lower Greenland from Baffin Island. The strait was named after a 16th century English navigator named John Davis or Davys, who explored this area while trying to find a northwest passage to the Pacific. They were heading more towards Baffin Island that Greenland, so everyone surmised that they were Baffin bound, rather than Greenland, even though no formal announcement of their destination had been made.
Luke got out his map and noted that the island is almost one thousand miles long, and shaped like a Scotch terrier standing on its head. It has many inlets and bays around its coast. It was named after another early English explorer named Baffin. The arctic circle crosses the island about 350 miles above its southern tip. It is situated just north of Labrador and the Ungava Peninsula, from which it is separated by Hudson Strait. It is largely uninhabited except for a few Eskimo villages, and is very cold and barren.
The next morning they saw Resolution Island off the port bow, and then knew they were heading into Frobisher Bay on the southeast end of Baffin Island. The bay was named after Sir Martin Frobisher, another 16th century English explorer, who searched in vain for the northwest passage, and even attempted to colonize Baffin Island, albeit unsuccessfully.
The task force proceeded slowly northwest up Baffin Bay for at least one hundred miles. Finally on August 7, they dropped anchor at the head of the bay, and Major Pane asked Luke to accompany his group of Officers ashore to survey the lay of the land, and to plan their course of operation. They gathered in a Mike boat, and headed for shore.
As they headed for the beach, Luke got his first view of the tremendous tidal action at Frobisher Bay. At high tide the waters covering the beach were up to fifty feet deep! And when the waters receded, they withdrew about 6,000 feet! This huge tidal action is second only to that occurring in the Bay of Fundy between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which is the greatest in the entire world!
As they progressed, they could see the tents of the Eskimo village just above the high water mark of the tides. They would be replaced by snow igloos when winter came, which would be soon this far north.
The tide was out so the Mike boat ran out of water and had to lower its ramp over a mile from the Eskimo settlement and military base. They were met by trucks and jeeps from the base, and were greeted by Captain John Cane, Royal Canadian Air Force, commandant of the RCAF air base at Frobisher Bay, and 1st Lieutenant William Brewster, United States Air force, commander of American personnel stationed at the base.
They were whisked away in a small bus for a quick tour of the facility. They saw permanent barracks and the bachelor Officers’ quarters, which were heavily insulated against the winter’s cold. There was a large dining hall, with a separate area for Officers. They would be served one and a half rations daily to fortify them against the coming cold weather.
Nearby they saw one paved runway, that was in need of repair, and a large heated hanger for repairing or working on aircraft. At one end of the runway, they were shown a Military Air Transport Service (MATS) DC-4, which had recently run out of runway on landing, and had smashed its nose against some rocks. They were told that a repair team was on its way from Middleton, New York to repair the damage.
Company A, 973rd Engineer Construction Battalion, was already on site to repair and extend the runway, to build several fuel storage tanks, and to help the private construction company in the erection of the radar facility atop a nearby mountain. They were obviously going to strengthen this air base to play a stronger role in the Cold War. There was also a rumour that Sabre jet fighters were to be stationed here.
Several freighters were waiting to be unloaded out in the bay, and had been there several weeks waiting for the 373rd TMP to arrive. They also noted a navy tanker sitting high and dry on a huge rock out in the tidal plain. Captain Cane told them that the tanker came in too far at high tide, and was clear out of the water when the tide receded. The navy had been unable to refloat it, so a tug boat was on the way to try to dislodge it. Some Navy Captain would be beached for good because of this mistake! A Navy Captain never, never lets his ship run aground!
Major Pane knew that they really had their work cut out for them. They had been delayed two weeks at Saglek Bay, and it was going to be a race to unload the ships before the cold weather came in about three weeks. And the high tides were going to make if a difficult amphibious operation using the DUKWs.
Updated: August 1, 2002