TO ARCHANGEL

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3248, 5 April 1943, Page 6

TO ARCHANGEL

1» UNTOLD TALE OF BATTLE GRAND MEN OF THE SEA REC lON OF THICK-RIBBED ICE Behind the stencilled words,” “Archangel, via Murmansk,” carried by the great crates forming house-high piles on British wharves lies many an untold tale of battle against the Hun and the Arctic. The latter supports the former; and the grand men who sail arms-laden ships through the Polar lane to Murmansk know this from literally “bitter” experience (writes Frank Illingworth in the Sydney Morning Herald).

Cold is the bugbear of the men “gun-running to Russia.” Cold so intense that spray flops on to decks in the form of ice; so penetrating that the lookout man peering through the winter-long Polar night for a sight of the Hun or the silently advancing ice-bowls cannot stand- more than half an hour in the crow’s nest at a stretch. “You’ll find no worse sailing this side of the whaling grounds,” he’ll c n Ice Gravel , It gets chillier as the convoy draws nearer to Norway’s riven shoulder. Darker and colder. From blue kitbags lining fo’c’sle walls men dray fleece-lined duffle jackets, Eskimo “parkas,” two extra pairs of thigh stockings, two more jerseys and gloves, two scarves. They bundle themselves up. But still they’re cold. “Cookie” draws on the extra rations carried 'by all Arctic convoy ships—-anti-cold foods such as butter, lard, bacon, sugar—and some of the men, emulating Tibetan i and 'Lapp, dollop butter into their tea. But they remain cold!

Ice begins to grate against the ship’s sides. It curls away from the escorts’ bows. It can’t always be seen', because of fog or darkness, but it can be heard slipping by. Fog, born in the clash 'between Gulf Stream and Polar drifts, driven through twilight days of a few hours’ length, coats the convoy with ice. ■Spray -flops on to decks like fine gravel. And by the time the ships have rounded the North Gape they’re usually as white as the. ice pans themselves.

Ice, ice, everywhere. It festoons the rigging and covers decks, fouls deck machinery and A.A. guns to such an extent that ships have been •forced to drop out of convoy, despite attendant risks, so that all hands can turn to with picks and shovels. “We soon learned that steam, hoses are next to useless,” says a skipper on the Arctic run. Sure, sure steam melts ice. But the water solidifies before it reaches ice-blocked scuppers, and you still have to get cracking with pick and shovel. Electric heaters keep ice from clogging vital parts of the A.A. guns. But it is the pick that chips the white mantle from gun platforms, etc., and shovels that send the ice clattering on to the sea’s frozen surface. Arctic Trap At times the Arctic prepares a neat little trap for our merchantmen. During the long, pitch dark night it creeps round a ship, and dawn, arriving with the late morning, tells the skipper that he’s hemmed in. Caught! And the ship trapped in an ice-bowl is a sitting bull for those Nazi bombers constantly dodging from fog bank to fog bank. For a distance of about 400 miles the convoys, pressed close to the Norse-Finnish coast by Polar ice, sail within easy range of Hun aerodromes and naval bases. To,the south, as they round Narvik’s humped back, lie Trondheim, Narvik, Tromso, Hitler’s U-boat and battleship bases; and dotting the* coast flanking, the Polar lane to Russia, 'Once peaceful little Hammerfest, Alta, Vardo, IPetsamo, air and naval bases, lurk behind fog banks born in the constant tussle between the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and Arctic currents. I know this coast to be ideal for the construction of , air bases, and there s many a deep fiord suitable for U-boat lairs. . Listen to the hum of enemy wings. It’s dark, but the capering, fiery flickerings of the flaming Aurora Borealis and the strangely brilliant stars of the Arctic winter night send a strange glow across desolate Ice Sea wastes. Suddenly brilliantly yellow flares burst aglow overhead. engines roar. -So do A.A. guns their belching flames adding colour to the brilliant Northern. Lights. A convoy is being attacked. Allied ships gun-running to Russia haye been attacked for hours at a time, attacked again and again by waves of bombers and surface naval craft and U-boats from the time they round Norway’s humped back, right along the 400 miles Polar Highway to Mur-

mansk, while unloading and reloading at Russia’s Arctic docks, and . all the way along their lonely homeward trail, too.

The men who sail those heavily laden ships know that cramp comes quickly to those who flounder in Polar waters, that the Arctic Ocean’s icy bosom is no place for a man in a lifeboat or adrift on a Carley float. But they stick to their guns; they continue to plough the Arctic' Marine Highway to deliver vital goods bearing those tell-tale words, “Archangel via Murmansk.” Oh, yes, ships have foundered, lurched beneath the ice with their cargoes and their men; but there are others to take their place l —from British yards, from America, Norway, Canada, .Poland, from every country which has Democracy as its ideal.

Soviet ice-breakers meet the convoys as much as 20 miles from Murmansk. Round about this point the Gulf Stream’s warm breath loses its influence, and the Arctic coats the sea with a white mantle. Still attacks materialise from the air. Bomb “craters” in the ics show the convoy’s route along those last few miles to Murmansk. ! And not even while Soviet men and women stevedores labour to effect a quick turn about are the ships free from attack, for enemy bombers lurk at Petsamo’s aerodrome, but 30 miles distant. Head For Home Reloaded with Rusisan produce, the convoys turn for home waters. Afyead of them lies a long, hazardous journey; across the narrow lane U-boats lurk; destroyers scurry through the ice-pans; bombers drone from fogbank to cloud—seeking quarry for their bombs. And there’s the Arctic itself, its seering cold, floating ice, it blackness, its storms, to ba beaten.

The men who sail our convoys through the Polar Lane to Russia meet and beat all these They freeze, shiver and sometimes die. But the ships keep sailing. For no sooner has one cargo been delivered than further house-high piles of crates dot British wharves. They bear the now well-known words, “Archangel, via Murmansk.” And they must be delivered.