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Close to 900 British, Canadian, and American men lost their lives in and around Iceland during WWII. This number represents those whose bodies were retrieved for burial and those who lost their lives in aircrafts that went missing. It does not include the hundreds more who were lost on sinking ships in the North Atlantic near Iceland. It also excludes the 150 Icelandic citizens, mostly fishermen and merchant seamen, who were victims of that war.
Of that number, 238 Americans were laid to rest in Iceland's Fossvogur cemetery, overlooking Camp Kwitcherbelliakin. After the war, their bodies were exhumed and brought home.
If you go down to the shore in Reykjavik where Camp Kwitcherbelliakin once stood, you can still see ruts in the dirt marking the placement of the Quonset huts. Occasionally, a spent shell will work its way up through the mud and rock. Little else remains of America's time in Iceland.
But the collective sacrifice of the Allies is still visible in the cemetery above the camp. When I was there I saw the graves of some of the boys who never made it home after the war. British boys, mostly, clumped together under the low branches of tall evergreen trees.
In a separate part of the cemetery there also lie 17 German boys.
In terms of numbers, the loss of American life in and around Iceland during the war pales to the number lost in the Pacific and Europe. Yet their sacrifice was just as great.
On October 8, 2004, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts chose to return to Iceland to honor the Americans who fought and died there. In a ceremony attended by the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, and ambassadors from several nations, the Ancients, as they are called, placed a monument to the fallen Americans in the cemetery overlooking the abandoned camp.
The words on the monument read, "To all Americans who served in Iceland during World War Two. They gave their today for our tomorrow."
If you go down to the shore in Reykjavik where Camp Kwitcherbelliakin once stood, you can still see ruts in the dirt marking the placement of the Quonset huts. Occasionally, a spent shell will work its way up through the mud and rock. Little else remains of America's time in Iceland.
But the collective sacrifice of the Allies is still visible in the cemetery above the camp. When I was there I saw the graves of some of the boys who never made it home after the war. British boys, mostly, clumped together under the low branches of tall evergreen trees.
In a separate part of the cemetery there also lie 17 German boys.
In terms of numbers, the loss of American life in and around Iceland during the war pales to the number lost in the Pacific and Europe. Yet their sacrifice was just as great.
On October 8, 2004, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts chose to return to Iceland to honor the Americans who fought and died there. In a ceremony attended by the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, and ambassadors from several nations, the Ancients, as they are called, placed a monument to the fallen Americans in the cemetery overlooking the abandoned camp.
The words on the monument read, "To all Americans who served in Iceland during World War Two. They gave their today for our tomorrow."
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