No One Thinks of Greenland

Rating:
Summary: Great story but it is fiction
Review: I am writing a book about the sinking of the Army Troopship Dorchester by a U-Boat on February 3, 1943, just south of Greenland. The Dorchester was headed for the Army Command base at Narsarsuaq, called BW 1, in southwestern Greenland, and the 227 survivors were taken to the 188th Station Hospital at the base. This is the hospital referred to by the name Qangattarsa in Mr. Griesmener's excellent novel. Mr. Griesemer told me that the novel grew out of a single paragraph he had read in a 1990 book by another author. I obtained the other book, contacted the author, and learned that the paragraph in question in that book, which describes his adventures through the North, was based on a story he heard some years during a conversation with "two drunken Danes."

The hospital at Narsarsuaq was closed after the war, but its buildings survived, and the hospital was reactivated in the early 1950s, as the Cold War heated up and small U.S. garrisons protected the Radar stations in the north, the DEW Line, and the airfield at Narsarsuaq, through which planes continued to fly between the U.S and Europe. More than 10,000 planes had passed through during WW II, when the hospital had grown to 200 beds of its authorized 250. The U.S involvement in Greenland in the 1950s was much smaller and only 5 - 10 doctors, nurses, dentists and others staffed the hospital until it closed in the late 1950s.

I have done extensive research in the National Archives. I have had conversations with men and women who were stationed at the base in the 1950s, and most importantly with professional men and women who worked at the hospital. Uniformly, they have been surprised when they hear how their operation is being described.
I have not found any objective evidence of the existence of the situation described in Griesemer's novel. His wonderful imagination supplied details that filled out the basic story.

The Chief Military Archivist at the National Archives has been asked about the story several times over the years and has found nothing in the record, classified or not,to even suggest it may be true. In truth, badly burned or wounded men from Korea were treated at the Army's FitzSimons Rehabiliation Hospital in Denver. Historical fiction is fun and Griesemer is a fine novelist. His novel stimulates thinking about what might have happened, but it should not be confused with history.

Rating:
Summary: Ghosts, and Goblins, and the Midnight Sun
Review: Only a few of us will ever visit Greenland for business or pleasure. None of us will be assigned to the secret military hospital at Qanattarsa like Corporal Rudy Spruance, the main protagonist of this beyond the pale tale. But a trip to the frigid island through the magic of this intriguing little novel might be an evening well spent. The author's descriptions of the landscape are foreboding-lonely, other worldly, and bizarre-and offer a tantalizing setting for the outlandish story which the author unfolds.

Anyone who has served much time in the military can recall confreres unconventional enough to become characters in a novel. John Griesemer's are a bit more curious than most. But not by much. I spent some years writing a memoir of my infantry company during World War II and some of my real life colleagues emerged, in memory, only slightly less incredible than Griesemer's fictional inhabitants of Qanattarsa. Their perverse behavior melds well with the locale and plot in which they are placed. That and the mystery surrounding the weird hospital, nay hospice, in full view of icebergs under the midnight sun and goblins roaming in round-the-clock darkness as winter seeps in kept me reading.

The only weakness is the love story. I found it a little contrived and the love scenes less than passionately luscious. But Greenland is not a tropical paradise. After an hour or two at Qanattarsa you will most likely wonder how anyone could make love to another anywhere near that depraved ward of the barely living and award Corporal Rudy and his Sergeant Irene a blue ribbon for trying.

Rating:
Summary: A nifty little read
Review: This first novel was a nifty, tightly written book that was both entertaining and revealing. What happens to the human soul in the cold, in harsh conditions, in the dark? How people snap, fall apart, and find each other... those are the themes of this book. The author has weaved a tale of love and of finding one's self. The only thing I'd complain about was that it flew by so quickly, leaving many aspects of the 'Stark Raving Dark' and the love story unexplored. Its always just out of reach, always elusive. A very good book, I look forward to Griesemer's next book.