All these years after the war, when the subject comes up the focus is apt to be on Normandy or The Bulge, or Iwo Jima or Okinawa. You don't hear much about Murmansk or Archangel. Yet it's doubtful that the war could have taken a man to a place where he was more likely to be killed. Apart from the weather -- the angry sea and frigid temperatures -- there was just about every killing machine the Germans could throw into the battle: capital ships and submarines and mines and aircraft of every sort. No one, as far as I know, volunteered for duty on a ship chosen to carry vital war material to that place where the odds were very much against making the return voyage. But a handful of old sailors who sign on here from time to time made the round trip, some of them more than once. I was never so unlucky as to be one of them. My hat is off to them, all of them. There ought to be a special decoration for them.
-- Fran