Christina Chowaniec

Wind, Gravel and Ice Christina Chowaniec

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 official records in the National Archives in Ottawa to the windswept plains of Iceland, Christina follows the trail and crafts her Opa's story in his voice. This is the story of the ten months, from July 1940 to April 1941, that her Opa spent in Iceland with the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa building an airfield and installing machine guns to protect the island from German invasion. 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 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 those moments changed the course of the war.