13747-300x17Faroes D Day 2014
On June 6th 70 years have passed since the infamous D-day. The day when Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, took place. In the early hours of the morning of June 6th 1944, allied forces launched a violent attack on the coast of the Bay of Seine, between Cherbourg and Le Havre. The purpose of the attack was to establish a beachhead in Normandy, in which they could transport soldiers and the huge quantities of equipment to be used for the liberation of Western Europe.
The invasion of Normandy is the largest and most complex military operation ever. It required meticulous planning and enormous logistical resources, where all wheels, large and small, had to work in sync.
Several Faroese were involved in the complicated and dangerous game. For this stamp issue we have chosen to focus on the most enigmatic of them, Captain Vilhelm Reinert-Joensen (1891-1949) – and in order to do so, we have to start in a completely different place.
Captain Joensen
On 28 January 1941 the enormous troop carrier “Edmund B. Alexander” passed The Narrows, at the entrance to St John’s in Newfoundland. The 669 ft. long and 22,225 ton heavy cruiser had less than 2 ft. clearance between keel and the bottom. People came from far and wide to see the giant grey painted ship arrive, the largest that had ever entered St. John’s harbour. The carrier brought about 1,000 soldiers, who should build the first U.S. “Land & Lease” military base outside the United States, although US still had managed to stay out of the war in Europe.
Edmund B Alexander stayed in St. John’s until June 20 and served as floating barracks for the soldiers, while the land base was built.
The ship’s captain was the Faroese Vilhelm R. Joensen, or, as most U.S. sources call him, William Joensen, from the Army Transport Service (ATS) .
Assumed he was dead
Hans Christoffer Vihelm Reinert-Joensen was born March 17, 1891 in Godthaab, Greenland, where his father was a servant of the colonial administration. In 1902 the family moved back to the Faroe Islands and settled in Tórshavn.
Already at the age of 14, Vilhelm Reinert-Joensen went to sea. A few years later he received navigational training in Denmark and started to sail with merchant ships around the world. The contact with the family on the Faroes became more and more sporadic and at the end of World War I it stopped altogether. No more letters arrived – and the family assumed that he had died out there in some foreign country.
U.S. Citizen
But William was very much alive. He sailed on cargo ships all over the World. In 1928 he became U.S. citizen and shortly thereafter he was employed by ATS (Army Transport Service). He advanced in the ranks until he became captain – and in 1941 he stood as master of the bridge on one of the largest troop-transports the world has seen.
Iceland
In 1941 the United States took over the British occupation of Iceland. Great Britain needed the troops elsewhere and convinced the Americans to take over, even though USA still was not engaged in the war.
An operation of such magnitude requires massive action in the transportation area, but the primitive harbour in Reykjavík turned out to be a bit of a logistical nightmare for the Americans. The task to solve the transportation problems fell on Major, later Colonel Richard S. Whitcomb from the US Transportation Corps. During the next couple of years he assembled a team of logistics experts and got to grips with the difficulties. One of these was Captain Vilhelm R. Joensen.
Rumours soon reached the Faroe Islands, that a senior Faroese officer was stationed in Reykjavik. Several Faroese sailors had met the weathered captain, who turned out to be a jovial gentleman in his fifties – and people started to realize that this had to be Villy, Greenland-Johan’s long lost son.
“Show me your ears”
In the spring of 1943, an American destroyer brought Captain Joensen to Tórshavn, where he reunited with the family. But when he, for the first time in over 30 years, appeared before his mother Amalie, she did not recognize him. The stout old lady demanded that the naval officer should take off his cap and show her his ear. Vilhelm had damaged one of his ears in the childhood, and only when Amalie saw the scar, she was convinced that this really was her Vilhelm.
Omaha Beach
In the fall of 1943, transports in Reykjavik were scaled down, and most of the officers and men from the Transportation Corps went to England to start preparations for the invasion of Normandy. They took over the transport unit “11th Port”, which was planned to operate at the soon so infamous Omaha Beach. It is not quite clear what Captain Joensen actually did in the months prior to the invasion, but from the military archives, we can see that he frequently arrived and departed from ETOUSA’s Assault Training headquarters.
One of the days just after the invasion, a Faroese freighter mate, Martin í Kvidni, met Vilhelm on Omaha Beach. According to Martin, Capt. Joensen organized the army tugs at the bridgehead.
Back to the Big Ships
At the end of the war, Vilhelm Reinert-Joensen returned to his original task as master on the main troop carriers. From 1946-49, he was Captain on ships like George W. Goethals, George Washington, General ML Hersey and Greenville Victory, which carried U.S. troops home from Europe and German prisoners of war back to Germany.
Captain Joensen was a bit of a local celebrity in the Brooklyn area, where the army naval base was located. He appeared frequently in the newspaper’s society pages as the rugged and jolly sea Captain, whose only home was on the sea.
Unfortunately, Vilhelm R. Joensen did not become an old man. In august 1949, he was found dead in his hotel room in Brooklyn, only 58 years old.
There will be more detailed description of Captain Joensen’s life and work in connection with the stamp issue in September.
Source: WOPA Stamps
Released September 27, 2014