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  • Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942
  • John A. Tilley
Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942. By Thaddeus D. Novak. Edited by P. J. Capelotti. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN 0-8130-2912-0. Maps. Photographs. Appendix. Notes. References. Index. Pp. xx, 205. $59.95.

When "Ski" Novak was in Coast Guard boot camp he bought a diary at the base exchange. Nobody told him there was a regulation against keeping a diary in wartime. In June of 1942 he was assigned to the cutter Nanok, a converted trawler whose mission was to haul supplies and occasional passengers to the various American military bases in Greenland. During the next six months Novak worked on his diary almost every day. Near the end of the cruise his chief petty officer caught him in the act and ordered him (p. 166) to "get rid of that damn thing." The little book stayed in a drawer until 1994, when Novak mailed it to the Coast Guard Historian's Office. He died three years later.

Life on the Greenland Patrolwas a grueling routine in which long days of hard labor alternated with interminable periods of boredom, amid some of the most inhospitable surroundings on earth. The Nanok never sighted an enemy, but the sea and the weather were more than enough to make the duty both exhausting and frightening.

Novak is a good narrator. He seems to have been a perceptive young man, with a slightly cynical sense of humor, a quiet sense of religion, a perpetual ache for his new wife back in Detroit, and a keen eye for the foibles of his shipmates. The Nanok's commanding officer was one of the Coast Guard's more colorful characters, Lt. Magnus G. Magnusson. A former Danish merchant mariner who had resigned his post as his country's consul in Boston to join the Coast Guard, Magnusson, in Novak's eyes, was a fine seaman with an odd attitude toward military decorum and procedures. One diary entry describes how "Maggie" ordered the ship's single 3-inch gun to fire on an iceberg, because he wanted to see what would happen.

Novak dutifully records the Nanok's trips back and forth among the fjords and the military installations, lugging unspectacular but essential cargoes ranging from machinery to civilian contractors to sled dogs. The crew, having only the vaguest conception of where all this fits in the American war effort, spends its time griping about the officers and chiefs, nursing minor injuries (the nearest doctor usually is a hundred miles away, but Captain Magnusson knows some interesting cures involving seaweed), fighting off homesickness, and, when the Nanok contends with the Arctic storms, hanging on for dear life. The story ends when, after a harrowing trip through a December gale, the [End Page 863] ship gets home to Boston, Magnusson literally forces her way into the harbor in defiance of the Navy tugboats who want him to wait outside for another night, and Novak is reunited with his wife in time for Christmas.

Novak tells the sort of war story that rarely makes it into the history books but deserves to be remembered. The editor provides a preface and epilogue that put the narrative in its context, along with a series of useful endnotes. We seem to be experiencing a wave of World War II memoirs, many of them dealing with topics that have received little coverage previously. This book is a fine example of the genre.

John A. Tilley
East Carolina University
Greenville, North Carolina
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