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With a Camera and a Gun
Remembering my father’s sacrifices in Iceland during WWII.
Armed with his Navy-issued camera and a .45 caliber handgun, my father spent much of WWII in a place rarely linked with the conflict: Iceland. Aboard his AR5 repair ship, Vulcan, he sailed across the North Atlantic to Iceland in convoy. As the ship wove through the black-green angry sea, frequently dodging Nazi U-boats, Dad kept his camera and gun loaded. Upon that debris strewn water, he witnessed horrors beyond my comprehension. Captured many of them on the glass plates of his Speed Graphic camera.
Classified nightmares that lasted a lifetime.
Later, after it had arrived in Iceland, the Vulcan moored in a protected inlet called Hvalfjörður. Whales Bay, in English. There, the ship continued its grisly job of patching the hulls of Allied ships damaged by Nazi torpedoes. Helped return men and ships to sea with the expertise of the Vulcan’s machine and carpentry shop. The Vulcan also had a photo lab where my father developed his glass plates.
Dad’s job as a Navy photomate required him to document the war on film. I have seen some of those photos. The goofy staged ones. The official ones, showing visiting generals inspecting the men outside their drafty Quonset huts. The morale boosting shots of festive holiday dances with local Icelandic girls. But there are many other…
