Iceland: the turning point of World War II? Sure, why not.
REYKJAVIK OR BUST
The Royal Regiment of Canada got its shiny new name after World War II broke out, but the Toronto-based company had established itself as an elite force as far back as the 1860s, fending off an invasion by Irish-Catholic militants. As the British Empire geared for battle in late 1939, Canadians were eager to join the cause—and soon enough they would be called. The Royal Regiment set sail from Halifax on the Empress of Australia the following June, and after a journey across the North Atlantic they saw their first “action”. . . about 1,000 miles north of mainland Europe.
Of all the things that concerned Winston Churchill in 1940, you’d think Iceland wouldn’t have made the list—a peaceful, neutral nation of 120,000, with no standing army. Yet Churchill feared that if Iceland fell to the Nazis, it could lead to them ruling the Atlantic Ocean, so he hatched an invasion plan. And once the British navy had done the dirty work of…well, landing on the island, and mollifying the outraged (if unarmed) locals, Churchill assigned Canadians to maintain the occupation.
TOPS IN SCHNAPPS
And so it was that a few hundred of Toronto’s finest—many of whom had never left the city before the war—found themselves hunkered down in drafty huts around places like Reykjavik, Hvalfjörður, and Sandskeið. Eventually joined by soldiers from Ottawa and Montreal—about 2,500 in all—the Royal Regiment spent its first year of duty building airfields and encampments, and keeping warm with shots of a Scandinavian, caraway-flavored schnapps called Brennivin, otherwise known as the “Black Death.” Cold and isolated as they were, the Canadians had no idea how good they had it.
They would learn, sadly, when their adventure in Iceland was over—the same regiment suffered brutal casualties during an assault on the French port of Dieppe in 1942.
Dr. Cluny Macpherson, from St. John’s, NF, invented the gas mask in WWI.