Death of a Wooden Shoe

U.S. Coast Guard Oral History Program Death of a Wooden Shoe A Sailor’s Diary of Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942 by Thaddeus D. Novak edited by P.J. Capelotti This true story is dedicated to the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard vessel Natsek, whose lives were claimed by the sea, and to the crew of the U.S.C.G. vessel Nanok and it's one-of-a-kind skipper Magnus G. Magnusson and, finally, to all others who comprised the Greenland Patrol during World War Editor’s Note When war brings a young man to a cold and remote place, and his youthful longings lead him to record his experiences in a forbidden diary, what might that diary, if it ever surfaced after the war, reveal? When great opposing forces train their weaponry, their local tactics and global strategy, on an Arctic shoreline thousands of miles long and populated by unconnected hamlets sheltering at best perhaps a few thousand people, what events transpire? When the young seamen and old Chiefs of a small naval force come into contact with the natives of an alien Arctic landscape, what memories do they take with them? Such questions are considered almost daily in the small fourth floor office at United States Coast Guard Headquarters at Buzzard Point in Washington , D.C. , where the Coast Guard Historian is located. Throughout its polyglot history, an almost bewildering variety of Coast Guard roles and missions have taken its petty officer and chiefs, its officers and seamen, through all of those ‘locked drawers and hideaways’ that Melville wrote awaited them in the 19th century. Only occasionally have glimpses of what these men saw and felt during these 1 times away from their homeland emerged, and even less frequently do such accounts find their way to Buzzard Point. Thaddeus D. Nowakowski, "’ski," diligently kept a diary during his six crucial months as a seaman on board the Nanok, a small fishing trawler converted to wartime Arctic cutter on the Greenland Patrol. That such a diary has surfaced half a century after the conclusion of the war is little short of remarkable. No other such diary, kept by an enlisted man, has survived this Arctic war, and with good reason. Nowakowski kept his diary in almost unforgivable ignorance of standing orders forbidding such memorials. In fact, six months of loyalty to a seaman’s memories was almost wiped out in a trice when his Chief discovered the diary’s existence in December of 1942. (Such was the least of his worries, however, since the very existence of the diary could have led directly to Nowakowski’s court-martial.) But the Chief—as Chief’s are want to do—only flew into a temporary rage, then turned his back and spared both the seaman and his transgressive diary of a Coast Guard wartime patrol in Greenland. So the diary exists, and beyond the expected undercurrents of fisticuffs, foul language, sexual humor, obsession with nicknames, gambling, and almost universal homesickness and crude loneliness of men at war and men without women, the diary goes much deeper. It offers a striking account of the wartime encounters between native Greenlanders and enlisted sailors, between various branches of American services in the far north, and between enlisted men and their Chiefs and officers. The latter clashes are rarely recorded, and when they are the incidents are invariably stated from the viewpoint of the officer. There is herein little mention of geopolitical strategy, great military maneuvers, or pivotal naval engagements; the diary instead is a young man’s attempt to make sense of his immediate surroundings. This is a sailor caught amid storms he can barely comprehend, wishing, at base, for peace, for an end to all injustice within the hearts of his fellows and, at the end of his cold Greenlandic rainbow, for the golden promotion to Petty Officer and the loving and welcoming arms of his bride. Evincing every bit of the fable of the adaptability of the American enlisted man, Nowakowski learns more from his first brief encounter with a Greenlander than all the Viking, Danish, British, and American officers had learned in a thousand years of exploration, exploitation, and colonization: "No longer must I wonder what I may teach these uneducated natives, but what they will teach me." That he could shed his previously unquestioned cultural superiority so rapidly and strikingly is a testament, if in miniature, to the open-mindedness of the enlisted soldiers and sailors that the United States sent to every corner of the globe during the World War II. The open-mindedness is extended to revealing glimpses of a solitary seaman in Greenland , a newly-married man suddenly and 2 harshly separated from his bride, a stranger in a strange land if ever there was one. At one point Nowakowski yearns to communicate with the Eskimo if for no other reason than to attain some rationale in his otherwise completely alien surroundings. He ponders, thinking: "I would like to tell them how very lonely their land and environment makes me feel. I would like to ask them how they manage to tolerate loneliness if indeed they do." To add to this burden, fate conspired to place Nowakowski and the Nanok side by side for six months in Greenland with the Natsek, the only one of the ten Arctic trawlers lost during the course of the Greenland Patrol. The Natsek drifts briefly into and out of Nowakowski’s diary, as if reminding him subconsciously that they share a fateful rendezvous. Nowakowski and Captain Magnus Magnusson, half a century ago, shared the bridge of the Nanok during that long December night and day in the Strait of Belle Isle when the Natsek’s lights vanished in the swirling snow, never to be seen again. In fact, Nowakowski’s account of those horrendous seventeen hours on December 17, 1942, provides the only glimpse extant of what might have transpired on the bridge of the Natsek before that vessel went down. To this day no trace of the vessel or its crew has ever been found. My feeling of kinship with the young Nowakowski (now Novak), stems in part from my own service as a Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, head of a minute staff of enlisted reservists who perform their national service at the Coast Guard Historian’s Office. This affinity was also prompted by my having, in 1992, written an anniversary article on artist and Natsek skipper Lieutenant Thomas Sargent La Farge and the sinking of the Natsek, and a compelling desire that took me to St. Matthew’s Cathedral in downtown Washington to see La Farge’s mosaic there. An archaeological expedition to Svalbard also gave me some experience in the Arctic (not to mention an incapacitating bout of seasickness as our small icebreaker was pounded by rough seas for twelve miserable hours), as well as with the prevailing style of command on board Norwegian merchant vessels, the same tradition which nurtured Magnus Magnussson. Thus when Death of a Wooden Shoe made its way to the Coast Guard Historian’s Office in early 1994, I felt drawn to undertaking the task of editing Novak’s diary and bringing it to publication. This I have done with much encouragement and support from Dr. Robert Browning, Coast Guard Historian, Scott Price, Assistant Coast Guard Historian, Dr. William N. Still, Jr., former Director of the Program in Maritime History and Underwater Archaeology at East Carolina University, and Dr. Susan Barr of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Professor Wynne Caldwell once again came to my aid during the exacting editing process. Ted Novak himself has been gracious in responding to and answering numerous requests. 3 The diary that follows is one of the few first-hand accounts that survives from the early crisis period of the Greenland Patrol, and the only such first-hand account from the perspective of an involved young enlisted seaman. Therefore, it occupies a unique place in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard, of U.S. naval operations in the Arctic , and of the Second World War. P.J. Capelotti Washington , D.C. October, 1995 Historical Background On April 9, 1940, Germany invaded neighboring Denmark , a nation of four million compared to Germany ’s eighty millions. It is unlikely that Adolf Hitler was unaware of the strategic value of Denmark's colony Greenland, especially the cryolite mines located at Ivigtut on the island's southwest coast, which mine produced the world’s greatest amount of the quartz like fluoride of sodium, a substance used in the electrolytic production of aluminum, essential for construction of military aircraft. The mine’s production quantity dwarfed the total production of the only two other known mines in the world, one in Colorado and the other in the Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union. Greenland cryolite had been a cornerstone of the U.S. aircraft industry since the 1920s, and accounted for practically all of Greenland ’s exports. The Ivigtut mines are less than a mile up a fjord from the sea, and vulnerable to enemy attack. Vessels transporting cryolite from Greenland to the U.S. were also in grave danger, particularly when southbound through the narrow Strait of Belle Isle . In addition to it’s cryolite, Greenland was quickly transformed by the war into a strategically desirable island. It provided a refueling stepping stone for short- range, England-bound U.S. military aircraft, and served as weather observation outpost for North Atlantic convoys. As war threatened to engulf the world, U.S.

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