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World War II Story of a British Royal Navy Sailor and His Wartime Duties in Iceland

The following script was taken from a letter my late father sent to an Icelandic gentleman in June 1999.
The man was carrying out some private research into wartime in Iceland and had made contact with my father through relatives of my mother still living in Iceland.

I joined the Navy on my 19th birthday and was called up on the 15th September 1941.
After my initial training at HMS Ganges at Shotley, near Ipswich in Suffolk, I went to Chatham to await posting.
Training in the navy was a real eye opener. What with the marches with full pack over the marshes near Shotley, the PT, swimming and good food, I put on a bit of weight and had never felt so fit in my life.
What a contrast from the previous year with my Mum, Dad and sister. Living in London during the blitz was a bit of a nightmare, I used to work 12 hours a day and at night I used to do 2 hours fire watching every night.
I saw things during those hours that I do not wish to see again. I saw two of my friends killed who were waiting at a bus stop after spending an evening at the cinema. The war and the blitz made me grow up very quickly.
Anyway, my posting came through, I was being sent to Iceland. Finding an atlas I soon found out that Iceland was a small island near Greenland. The lads said ‘’sounds fine, not much going on up there’’.
After travelling by train from London to Glasgow, which was the worst journey I can ever recall in my life. I was sitting between the two biggest Indians on earth. They never spoke one word all the way. We stopped at Crewe and were fed and watered, which was welcome.
We duly arrived in Glasgow on Christmas Eve 1941 and was told we could go out in Glasgow and have a drink. We found a pub and went inside. It was full up with people enjoying themselves. As soon as the locals saw us in uniform that was it. ‘’Hallo Jack, what will you have to drink?’’ we never spent a penny all night and we all finished up p****d. Who said Scotsmen were tight?
The next day we spent in some kind of hostel and a couple of days later we were off. We arrived at Greenock docks to await embarkation.
In the harbour was the Queen Mary (I think it was the Queen Mary) . While waiting, two boats ferrying troops out to the May collided and there was a bit of a panic. We finally boarded our troopship, a Polish cruise ship before the war, and we set sail.
The next morning we were on open sea and being escorted by a Dutch destroyer. It was snowing!
We arrived in Reykjavik about three days later and were taken to a camp of Nissan huts not far from the football stadium. It was cold, muddy and very uninviting. We were issued with extra blankets, thick winter coats, hats and boots. I remember two of the lads fell in a ditch half full of mud and slush. Getting their clothes dry and clean was a major operation.
It turned out that the camp was HMS Balder II. Balder I was a ship moored down in the harbour.
You mention Camp Atlantic, I believe that Balder II became Camp Atlantic right at the end of the war. A friend of mine named Walter Morgan, a very brainy man, stayed behind after the war. His job was to auction off all the surplus stores as he spoke Icelandic like a native.
I have a recollection from him that Balder became Camp Atlantic. I could be wrong.
I remember a fire down near the harbour (I believe it to be a grain store and all the fire engines, including the Americans, had a real job to put the fire out. Reminds me of the blitz.
Life in the camp was very uneventful, we used to play Housey Housey, what is called Bingo today, in the old Ice House near the lake. Sometimes we would go to the cinema to see a film. The cinemas were called Gamla Bio and Nyr Bio. We would go to a small café that served egg and chips with bread and a cup of tea for Kr. 2.50. Great value until the Americas found the place and the price went up to Kr. 6.50. We used to buy American cigarettes from our duty free store for 3 Kr. for 200, and then sell them to the locals for 3 Kr. for 20, a nice little earner.
One or two of the lads were a bit out of order. They used to fill empty whiskey bottles with cold tea, carefully refit the seal, and sell them on to unsuspecting Icelanders as whiskey. I thought that was terrible and one night on our way ashore I knocked a bottle out of one sailors hand and broke it. Then out of the blue I was sent to Thingeyri on board the ?????.
We got as far as Sandur and we had to stay there a day or two because of bad weather. That was my first sight of real Iceland. Tiny houses built of wood and iron roofs, oil lamps in the windows.
People were curious about us, not surprisingly really, we were different, could have been from another planet. Having said that, when I got to meet and know the people, most were very friendly, kindly people who treated us as friends.
The people in Thingeyri were great. They used to give us fish and we used to swap large tins of corned beef for sacks of potatoes. We used to give the local baker our sack of flour and he used to bake us bread free of charge. There were a couple of people in Thingeyri , their names were Inga and her husband Dude Proppl. They were Germans, lived in Iceland for years. Invited us to dinner several times, but they did like to tell us how many British planes had been shot down the previous night. They were harmless enough.
Then there was Oscar, he was the local sheriff. He used to come to visit every day, and his favourite game was ludo. I played so many games of ludo with Oscar, I could enter them in the Guinness book of records. He was also the agent for British trawlers and when one berthed at the pier we would go aboard and do the business, or whatever was needed, and then have a few beers.
A trawler came in one day and the skipper told us he had a dead body aboard. One of the trawler men had died. He asked if we would arrange a burial. The strange thing was that one of the lads with me was named Bill Good, and when we got the dead trawlerman ashore Bill recognised him as his neighbour who lived two doors away back home in Grimsby. Anyway, we gave him a Christian burial, fired a volley of shots over his grave and went about our business.
Oscar had a small fishing boat and two of the local lads used to work it for him. One day they did not return, all we found washed up was the name board full of bullet holes.
One other thing about Oscar, he only had one arm. Never did find out how he lost it.
After about a year in Thingeyri I came back to England on leave. Before I left Iceland I was asked if I was prepared to serve another year. I said yes, it beat getting shot at. My next posting, after one or two false starts, was Vopnafjordur. First I was going to Patricksfjordur, then a change to Dalatongi, finally I made it to Vopnafjordur. When I left Thingeyri to come home we went to Isafjordur to pick up a ship to Reykjavik. While at Isafjordur we stayed in a Salvation Army hostel. It was very comfortable, the people running the hostel treated us like royalty.
Vopnafjordur holds many special memories for me, it was where I met my wife, we have been together now for 55 years this coming 26th December (1999)
My wife’s Dad told her about a plane which crashed in the sea just off shore from his home in Vopnafjordur. He said it was burning and as it passed over head you could smell the burning oil. The next morning part of the wing was visible above the water just beyond a big rock which stuck out from the sea. The wing slowly disappeared over a few days. He did not recall any wing markings.
As far as I can find out this happened about the middle of 1940. He contacted the authorities in Reykjavik, and was told that there no planes that they knew of in that area at that time.
Before I met my wife she was staying in Seydisfjordur with friends, and the Germans bombed the place. There were warships moored in the fjord, and all hell broke loose when they opened fire on the planes. The damage was minor except for one little boy of nine years who lost a leg. He was treated by British doctors and they promised they would fix him up with an artificial leg. This was at the beginning of September 1942.
Another time my wife was staying with her sister in Mjoafjordur, near Neskaupstadur, when a German submarine surfaced just a few hundred yards from her house. They were so frightened they ran indoors. The next time they looked he submerged and disappeared.
I belonged to what was called the Coast Watchers. Our immediate boss was an American, I believe he was based in Raufarhofn, and our duties were to send weather reports and any other sightings of ships or planes, in fact anything that was suspicious.
There were three of us based in each town or village all round the island and we kept a 24 hour watch, seven days a week. We were in touch with H.Q. in Reykjavik once a day unless something important turned up.
Round about midsummer in 1943 we spotted a small boat entering Vopnafjordur . Slowly it made its way in and when it finally arrived it turned out to be a motor launch full of Americans on a day trip. They had fouled their propeller on some old rope and could not make a lot of way. The American in charge asked if we could arrange to have the offending rope removed. The local lads agreed to do what was necessary, so the Americans had to stay over night. We managed to put twelve of them up in our tiny billet. We gave them an evening meal and breakfast the next morning and off they went.
About a week later a boat came to Vopnafjordur to deliver a large box to us. Inside the box was food, cigarettes, beer and a note thanking us for our hospitality and would we accept the food parcel. We lived like lords for a few weeks.
At the end of my time in Vopnafjordur, that was around Christmas 1943, I went to England and came back after about a month. But instead of going back up the coast I was kept in Reykjavik at Balder II. By now Balder II was a reasonable place to be. A decent toilet block had been added with showers and hot water. A nice big mess hall and leisure facilities and the roads had been made up from red lava. I was taken sick one day and I had my appendix removed.
My wife to be came to Reykjavik and worked as a housekeeper for some friends. We got married in Reykjavik Cathedral on 26th December 1944 and came to England together in June 1945. I was demobbed in January 1946, the rest is history.
I have tried to give you a run down of my time in Iceland. Age and time dims the memory a bit. Just one thing I can tell you that has just come to mind. Whilst in Reykjavik around about 1944, there was a very bad storm and an American boat foundered on shore somewhere near Reykjavik. We were sent next day to do what we could and found 15 bodies lying on the beach. We brought them back to Balder II and they were all laid out in the drill hall. A very sad sight, young lives gone forever. They were picked up by some Americans and taken away. I found on the beach an American Navy jacket with the name ZEKE inside. I took it back to the camp and I was told to keep it. I wore it to work after the war and it finally wore out. It lasted a lot longer than its owner.
I have been back to Iceland a few times on holiday. The place has changed from the war days. I think the war did Iceland a favour. You declared your independence from Denmark. You were nudged into the 20th century and you have taken full advantage of everything that came your way. I can only say thank you for the kindness shown to me during my stay in Iceland by most of your citizens.
I hope the forgoing is of interest to you.

Yours sincerely

Thomas Henry Payne

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