Barrett Rainey: Memories of icy Greenland belie the renewed interest

Wikicommons image##The city of Nuuk, against the backdrop of Mount Sermitsiaq.

Wikicommons image##The Thule/Pituffik base.

About the writer: Barrett Rainey is an Air Force veteran, longtime pilot and former reporter for radio and TV stations from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Washington, D.C. After previous stints in Oregon, Idaho and Arizona, he retired to McMinnville with his wife, Barbara. He’s a regular contributor to the Carlton-based Ridenbaugh Press, where this column originated.

Thanks to our president, Greenland has been in the news a lot lately.

For me, the mention of that name brings back mixed memories. That’s because I spent 11 months and 14 days there some 65 years ago.

It was a time before satellites or cell phones, and I spent nearly a year on a mountaintop about 12 miles from the nearest civilization. What’s more, that would have been Thule Air Base, which hardly qualified as “civilization.”

According to Wikipedia, Greenland is “an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark.”

At the time, there were about 50,000 Greenlanders, and then as now, almost all lived on the far southeast coast. We were stationed on the far northwest coast, above the Arctic Circle.

In those somewhat primitive days, our main year-round connections with the rest of the world consisted of twice-a-week flights by the Military Air Transport Service, out of New Jersey. They dropped off food and other supplies.

It stunned new arrivals when they caught site of their new duty station for the first time.

Those on my crew worked 12 miles up a mountain. Our water supply emerged by gravity from a large tank replenished once a week by truck.

I was a USAF noncom. I shared our quarters with an Army Nike Hercules outfit on the lee side of the mountain.

To get from the barracks to the station, or vice versa, often involved hooking yourself to a large hawser rope and pulling yourself up or down the 100 unprotected yards with your legs flying in the air behind you. That’s because wind speeds were clocked at times between 150 and 190 mph.

I landed at Thule on Dec. 15, 1959. That was during the “dark season,” so I didn’t see the sun again until around Valentine’s Day.

Gradually, we moved to the “light season.” By July, it remained light 24 hours a day, and stayed that way until late August.

That really messed with your head.

A family dog would be hard put to find a tree for hundreds of miles. The landscape was limited to permafrost, rocks and desolation.

Winds could hit 200 mph. Wherever you were when they struck, you just hunkered down as best you could and stayed put.

My Arctic pants had pockets down both legs. I kept a supply of candy bars, crackers and unshelled peanuts in them for times you couldn’t move.

I relate all this because our president talks like he’d like to make Greenland our 51st state. Either Greenland or Canada.

Of the two, I’d go with Canada. One has roads, cars, trains and regular food; the other, not so much.

As you may have gathered by my description of the place, Greenland is not for sissies Still, I seriously doubt Denmark is in the mood to sell its stake.

There was a time, long ago, when Greenland offered an excellent location for huge radar systems to “look” over the North Pole to see what the Ruskies were up to. The territory served a valuable role in our national defense.

But that’s over now.

With today’s satellite technology, we live in safer times, so our need for Greenland is not so great. As a result, our investment there has been significantly reduced.

But I gotta admit, after spending nearly a year of my life “on the rock,” I never figured Greenland would come up in a presidential campaign 65 years later. Who’d a thunk it?