Wind, Gravel and Ice

When Christina discovers her Grandfather’s diary years after his death, she is surprised to learn he had been stationed in Iceland as a young Canadian soldier in the early days of the Second World War. Intrigued, she sets out on a decade-long journey to unravel his story and fill in a little-known piece of the Canadian war story.

From the National Archives in Ottawa to the windswept plains of Iceland, Christina follows the trail and crafts her Opa’s story in his voice. She vividly recreates the daily rigours of camp life experienced by her Opa, his childhood best friend and their platoon, as they struggle to carry out orders as new soldiers in a strange land, and to break down barriers with local Icelanders who resent the Occupation.

Then on February 9, 1941, a lone German Heinkel HE 111 bomber traded its bombs for extra fuel, set a course for the remote island and strafed an airfield 1,000 miles from the front lines of the war. This strange act, one plane attacking one obscure outpost, manned by her Opa’s platoon, is a story few will be familiar with, and yet that moment changed the course of the war.