<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As explained in last week\u2019s <\/span>FTV<\/span><\/i>, the saber rattling over Greenland sent us back into our archives to 2018 when we shared the story of the last invasion of that landmass.\u00a0 The loud protests from Greenlanders, Denmark, and other European members of NATO indicate any attempt by the United States to purchase or annex Greenland from Denmark would be ill advised.\u00a0 Historically, Greenland has a unique population and culture that would not benefit by becoming \u2018Americanized\u2019 and the people there are very vocal in their opposition to any moves to make it happen.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In our continuing tale from World War II, we found that Denmark\u2019s King had been advised by the United Kingdom that they would not be able to aid them against German invasion during WWII.\u00a0 The King announced Denmark would submit to Nazi occupation, not because they agreed with Hitler, but because it was the only way their under-protected country could avoid massive loss of life.\u00a0 The King\u2019s announcement didn\u2019t mention the country’s other protectorates, one of which was Greenland\u00a0 Greenland\u2019s governor, Eske Brun, rightly surmised they would not be going against the King\u2019s proclamation if they resisted Germany as they waited for America to enter WWII.\u00a0 Brun interpreted that the King made the announcement about submission without including the other protectorates on purpose;\u00a0 if it was possible for them to resist, they should resist.\u00a0 We resume the story after a group from the NE Greenland Sledge Patrol discovered a newly installed German weather installation on the eastern coast at Sabine Island:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Marius Jensen and two Eskimo* sledge drivers, Mikael and William, surprised two German hunters at a wayside hut at Germania Harbor on Sabine Island (*The term \u2018Eskimo\u2019 is no longer favored but it was in common use when the book about this event was printed).\u00a0 The surprised Germans fled on foot to their secret weather station at Hansa Bay, some five miles away.\u00a0 After a quick examination of the hunter\u2019s hut, Jensen knew that the situation on Greenland\u2019s east coast had just taken a turn for the worse.\u00a0 His two Eskimo companions had been raised in Scoresby Sound hundreds of miles from contact with other cultures.\u00a0 Their Christian upbringing had left them with no concept of war or humans killing each other.\u00a0 The Bible says \u2018Thou shall not kill\u2019 and in this secluded part of the world, it was inconceivable to them that men would kill other men.\u00a0 Jensen rousted Mikael and William and insisted they evacuate before the Germans returned.\u00a0 They were tired and their dogs were tired, but Jensen got them to at least cross the open ice to the nearest hunting hut to the south at Cape Wynn.\u00a0 Surely they could rest the night there before heading the fifty miles back to Eskimoness to report what they had found.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the arctic, sledge dogs are the early warning system that alerts sledge drivers of other teams, musk ox, or polar bears approaching.\u00a0 When the dogs began barking furiously just past midnight, Jensen knew that he had been wrong about the Germans.\u00a0 They had followed their tracks across the bay and were now approaching the hut.\u00a0 Jensen and the two Eskimos instinctively grabbed their rifles and made a futile attempt to harness at least some of the dogs.\u00a0 It was too late and they were forced to scramble up the hill behind the hut.\u00a0 Jensen sent Mikael and William on toward the next hunting hut 12 miles to the south while he waited, shivering in the dark to see what the Germans would do.\u00a0 At 2 AM, with the Germans enjoying the bread, jam, and coffee Jensen and his sledge drivers had left behind, Marius reluctantly set off toward Eskimoness leaving his gear, sledges, dogs, and journal behind.\u00a0 The Germans now had more intel on the Sledge Patrol than the Sledge Patrol had on the Germans.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By 11 AM on March 13th, Poulson had spotted Marius approaching Eskimoness on foot while he was still some three miles away.\u00a0 He sent out Eli Knudson with a sledge to pick him up.\u00a0 Knudson was from the Ella Island detachment and had come north for a few weeks to learn more about Morse Code and how to operate the radio.\u00a0 Once he grasped how serious the situation was becoming, Poulson sent two dispatches to governor Eske Brun via radio transmissions through Scoresby Sound (Brun and the rest of the population were on the other side of the ice capped island on the southwestern coast).\u00a0 In turn, he received instructions to gather as much information about the German party as possible.\u00a0 The Germans were inexperienced dog handlers so they spent the next days learning how to handle their captured sledge teams.\u00a0 Poulson rightly figured they would mount an expedition to disable their radio transmitter so he formulated a multi-step plan.\u00a0 First, he dispatched Eskimos Aparte and William to Scoresby Sound – they were not going to be of any help if it became a fire fight because Poulson had been told to keep the Eskimos out of any combat.\u00a0 Peter Nielsen was still on a solo patrol to the far north so Poulson\u00a0 dispatched Marias Jensen and Eli Knudson up the coast to find him before he stumbled upon the Germans and was captured.\u00a0 Poulson himself went north with the Eskimo Evald on a reconnaissance mission to see if the Germans were heading toward Eskimoness yet. \u00a0 This left Henri Rudi, Kurt Olsen and William the Eskimo to man the Eskimoness station and continue the weather broadcasts.\u00a0 By March 21, Poulson and Evald had returned to Eskimoness.\u00a0 The group set up three action stations outside in the event of an assault by the Germans.\u00a0 If Poulson had thought that the Germans might just stay put on Sabine Island, the ruckus the dogs put up on March 23 proved him wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Through the darkness, Poulson hailed the Germains as they reached the shoreline below the house.\u00a0 He was greatly disturbed that Lt. Ritter asked to talk to him by name.\u00a0 Poulson played blind man\u2019s poker with his unseen enemy and told Ritter that Poulson was not there.\u00a0 Ritter then asked if he could speak to Herr Rudi.\u00a0 Finally, Ritter asked if the Sledge Patrol meant to resist with force.\u00a0 When Poulson said yes, a hail of tracer bullets lit up the night and the Eskimoness detachment went into survival mode.\u00a0 They had all made caches of survival gear away from the house and being hopelessly outgunned, they scattered.\u00a0 Poulson found one of the caches opened as he escaped so he knew that at least one of the others had also survived the attack.\u00a0 Utilizing the hunting huts, Poulson made a 150 mile trek on foot surviving on his meager supplies.\u00a0 He arrived in rough physical shape but still managed to make his report to Brun from the Ella Island station via radio through Scoresby Sound.\u00a0 He wondered if Rudi and Olsen were dead but unknown to him, he had overtaken and passed them while they slept in one of the hunter\u2019s huts enroute.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Olsen and Rudi made slower progress than Poulson because at age 55, Rudi tired more quickly than Olsen.\u00a0 Rudi tried to get Olsen to leave him behind, but Olsen would have none of that.\u00a0 Resting in a hunter\u2019s hut one morning, they heard a dog sledge approach but instead of hearing German voices, they heard, \u201cKurt, don\u2019t shoot.\u00a0 It\u2019s Peter.\u201d\u00a0 The tale he told them made their hearts sink.\u00a0 Eli Knudson and Marius Jensen had indeed found Nielson and the three of them had headed back south toward Eskimoness.\u00a0 As they approached Eli Knudson\u2019s old hunting hut at Sadodden, they were surprised to find the German party encamped there on their way back to Hansa Bay after they had burned down the Eskimoness station.\u00a0 Knudson had arrived first and tried to make a break for an ice ridge.\u00a0 Ritter commanded his men to shoot the dogs but in the process, Knudson was also killed.\u00a0 When Olson and Jensen arrived a few hours later, they walked into the same trap and were taken prisoner.\u00a0 Knudson\u2019s body was laid to rest in a low sod structure that he himself built to store food while Nielssen and Jensen were taken back to Hansa Bay.\u00a0 Ritter had spent time in the north at Spitsbergen, Norway and felt an affinity for these rustic sledge drivers from Greenland.\u00a0 He never quite forgave himself for what he felt had been the useless killing of Knudson.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0To the dismay of Ritter\u2019s pro-Nazi comrades, Jensen convinced Ritter that Olsen\u2019s sledge driving skills were so poor that he could be trusted to return to Sadodden and give Knudson a proper burial without fear of him escaping.\u00a0 Olsen was ordered to do so but to return when he was finished.\u00a0 Of course, the plan all along had been to keep right on going to warn Eskimoness station, which they had no way of knowing had already been destroyed.\u00a0 Jensen agreed to teach the Germans how to manage the captured dog sledges while he plotted his escape.\u00a0 Ritter took Jensen farther north to inspect other places they could relocate should the Americans come to bomb the weather station at Hansa Bay.\u00a0 The longer they were separated from the rest of the Germans, the less guarded Ritter became.\u00a0 Jensen then gave the German raiding party advice on a route to Ella Island that would purposely slow them down.\u00a0 After the party left, he turned the tables on Ritter and was able to take a dog sledge on a quicker route to warn the Sledge Patrol who had retreated to Ella Island.\u00a0 Jensen had no way of knowing that a radio man named Ziebell and eight Eskimo dog sledge teams had already arrived at Ella Island to help Poulson and the remaining Sledge Patrol retreat to Scoresby Sound.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With the Germans wallowing in deep snow on the longer route to Ella Island, Jensen got there in plenty of time to warn the patrol, only to find they were already gone.\u00a0 The three circles drawn on the door of the station told him they had gone south. \u00a0 Then, in a move that would surprise none of the other men of the Sledge Patrol, he went back the 70 miles to where he had left Lt. Ritter.\u00a0 Together they retraced their steps back to Ella Island hoping they would not run into the German raiding party.\u00a0 They passed within five miles of the Ella Island post unseen and proceeded to make due haste to Scoresby Sound to be reunited with the rest of the Sledge Patrol.\u00a0 Ritter realized that in coming back for him, Jensen had saved his life, something he doubted the German party would have done.\u00a0 For him the war was over, but the Sledge Patrol fully expected the Germans to pursue them all the way to Scoresby Sound.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Instead of risking the Germans bringing the fight into a village of peaceful Eskimos, Poulson moved his men farther north where they could intercept the raiding party.\u00a0 While they were awaiting the German invaders (who never arrived at Scoresby Sound), Poulson and his men were pleasantly surprised when Marius and Ritter did.\u00a0 Remarkably, Marius had first left Sabine Island with Ritter on April 5th\u00a0 and by the time he had abandoned Ritter, returned for him after finding Ella Island empty and then returned to Scoresby Sound on May 13th, he had traveled nearly 800 miles in 38 days.\u00a0 Most remarkable of all – most of the trip was accomplished with a team of only eight dogs.\u00a0 Imagine traveling the frozen Lake Superior shoreline from Little Girl\u2019s Point to Sault Ste, Marie and back again in a little over five weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Poulson decided that he would send Ziebell, Marius, and Olsen back to Ella Island before the spring breakup so they could assess any further German threat.\u00a0 They found Ella Island station just as they had left it, the Germans having retreated back to Hansa Bay.\u00a0 The Germans had left pictures of Hitler and Mussolini on the walls and the inscription \u201cWe are the greatest soldiers in the world.\u201d\u00a0 When the weather and conditions improved, an amphibious aircraft had picked up the remaining troops and returned them to Germany.\u00a0 When an American icebreaker finally made it to Hansa Bay, they found one survivor of the German occupation – the expedition doctor named Sensse.\u00a0 He was wearing a tattered anorak with the name \u201cEli Knudson\u201d on it and a bullet hole in the shoulder.\u00a0 The doctor was listening to records on a wind up player when they found him.\u00a0 He told the Americans that he had made one last attempt to try and locate Lt. Ritter and had lost his team when they went through the ice.\u00a0 He had survived on what he could scrounge from the hunting huts, including Knudson\u2019s clothing.\u00a0 By the time he got back to Sabine Island, the rest of the Germans had already left, thinking he was probably dead.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This certainly wasn\u2019t a skirmish that decided the outcome of World War II, but it is a testimony to a few brave souls who were asked to do the impossible in a land where merely living is an everyday battle.\u00a0 If these men had been Finns, we would certainly say they had \u2018Sissu\u2019.\u00a0 (Author\u2019s notes:\u00a0 One can only imagine the distances they had to travel by dog sled or on foot during these events.\u00a0 Can you see hiking from Ontonagon to Munising on foot in the winter?\u00a0 As stated in the introduction to Part 1, the rugged people who inhabit Greenland today have a lifestyle that they cherish and a social structure that Americans would be good to emulate.\u00a0 It is no surprise that they have no interest in becoming part of the United States.\u00a0 Perhaps we could get Greenland to adopt Upper Michigan).<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Of course, we all think about WAR the same way . . . at least I hope so!\u00a0 Let Edwin Starr lead the way!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As explained in last week\u2019s FTV, the saber rattling over Greenland sent us back into our archives to 2018 when we shared the story of the last invasion of that landmass.\u00a0 The loud protests from Greenlanders, Denmark, and other European members of NATO indicate any attempt by the United States to purchase or annex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3762"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3765,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762\/revisions\/3765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}