Welcome To Iceland
Iceland is a beautiful country with a very proud heritage. But more on that in another post. This post takes a look back at my first few weeks on that special island. Nothing, and I mean nothing was what I’d expected. Nothing.
My background…small town boy from South Dakota trained to fly in West Texas with a brief sojourn in Florida so there is nothing exotic or continental about my upbringing. I had a lot to learn. I flew from Dover AFB, Delaware (my first time on the east coast) to Keflavik, Iceland (my first time away from North America) on a military transport C-141. We flew in jump seats on the side of the cargo bay. The time was mid-July, 1976, middle of the summer in the land of the endless sun.
The only possessions I had were in my deployment bag, a couple of uniforms, flight suits, flight helmet, you know, just regular stuff you’d pack for a trip. A couple of days before I left, my wife had said “Adios forever” (I no doubt deserved it) and so I had no “household” items except for the 600 pounds of stuff I’d shipped from Florida. When I hit the island, I had my carryon bag and a shipping receipt for my hold baggage. Nothing else. But wait.
Also assigned to the island was my Weapons Controller training partner, John. He was supposed to go to Rockville Air Force Station (The Rock, more about Rockville in a later post) to be a Weapons Controller and I was to go to the USAF Operations Center on the main base at Keflavik which was actually a combined Icelandic airport and a US Navy base with a USAF contingent of F-4Cs. John outranked me by a year or so.
We reported together to the USAF HQ. I wasn’t unhappy about the base, it was modern, populated with lots of people, and not “remote” at all. John was called in to the commander’s office first and then me. Turns out they were having a personnel problem in the Ops Center and needed a more senior captain (how is that possible?) and so decided to switch assignments between John and I. I’d lost my assignment. YGBSM.
I needed a place for the USAF to send my my salary, I didn’t want it going to Texas anymore. Fortunately, American Express had a bank on base. I went to the bank, opened an account and then went to personnel to make the formal change. Back in those days, most things were done with paper so I filled out the forms and took a copy back to the bank. Pay day came and went, no deposit. I visited the payroll office. They didn’t have a clue why it wasn’t deposited, they showed that it had been. The bank was clueless, too, but they were kind enough to lend me the amount of my allocation. And MY DEPOSIT went missing for THREE MONTHS. Thank God AMEX kept lending me money. How am I doing so far…no relationship, only carry-on luggage, different job, and no pay from the USAF.
I’d found a golf course in Iceland, all I needed was my hold baggage to show up because my new golf clubs would be perfect. And I waited. And waited. And waited. I finally gave up and started buying clothes and stuff. December rolled around and I received a phone call, my hold bag shipment had arrived, I should come down and get it. That was puzzling, it was two huge boxes around 600 pounds, but I had a 1970 Volkswagen Squareback and so off I went. There was one box. Three feet by three feet by three feet. How can this be? I opened the box and almost puked; the rotting, putrid smell of mold and rotting was overpowering. It turned out that the shipping company in Florida had been broken into, the thieves dragged boxes onto the loading dock and then went through them looking for good stuff. Most of mine was not. It rained. The moving people packed some stuff into a box, taped it up and put it in the corner. Months later, someone noticed it and sent it to me. In the meantime, the mold and rot had a field day. So, no hold baggage. New job. No paycheck. No relationship.
And then, the Navy called. Since I was no longer assigned to an on-base job I had to give up my room in the Officers’ Quarters. Fortunately, the tin quonset hut barracks out at The Rock had a vacancy.
So indeed. I rebaselined my life from almost zero when I got to Iceland. I was glad that my ex in-laws cared for my basset hound and my MGB.
The image above is taken from a clifftop in Iceland in the springtime of 1977. From the left, Buff-Buff, Hutch (me), Crazy Lady, Fred (spouse of Crazy Lady), and my good bud Starsky (Rocky).