As I posted the other day, President Trump exaggerates when he writes that Greenland is essentially defenseless (“They currently have two dogsleds as protection, one added recently”):

The U.S. already has troops and an important base there. More importantly, an invasion of Greenland by Russia, China, or anyone else would trigger the collective defense provisions contained in the NATO treaty. That’s not “defenseless,” unless the president believes that Article 5 is a dead letter.

Before the current fracas, Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command amounted to 150 people (civilians and military) and, yes, it included dogsled patrols.

Trump was referring to the Sirius Patrol, which is an elite Danish naval unit (here’s a recruiting video), part of Denmark’s special forces. And yes, the Sirius Patrol was supplemented recently, but by Arctic specialists of Denmark’s Jaeger Corps. The Jaeger Corps is also analogous to special forces. The Arctic specialists themselves will be veterans of the Sirius Patrol but will use snowmobiles and high-speed boats and can be deployed by aircraft or inserted by parachute. They can move faster and will have a far wider geographical range. The Sirius Patrol is confined to Northeast Greenland and relies on a lot on frozen fjords to get around.

Somewhat ironically, under the circumstances, the origins of the Sirius Patrol are . . . American.

Once American forces assumed responsibility for Greenland’s defense in April 1941 (mainland Denmark had fallen to Germany the previous year), efforts to protect it were spearheaded by the U.S. Coast Guard. In June 1941, the Northeast Greenland Patrol was organized under the command of a Coast Guard officer, Commander Edward “Iceberg” Smith.

As ably related by retired Coast Guard Captain Bob Desh in a paper for the Foundation for Coast Guard History, Smith was concerned that the Germans would set up weather stations on Greenland’s northeastern coast, a particularly remote, particularly inaccessible area even by Greenlandic standards. Such stations could give Berlin invaluable information in its Atlantic war. Smith arranged for patrols by ice-capable ships to be supplemented by a patrol on land by what became the North–East Greenland Sledge Patrol. Manned by Danes, Norwegians, and Inuit, its job was to search for Germans along a 700-mile stretch of coastland hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle.

Desh:

Smith’s motivation was simple and straightforward. He understood that because of the extraordinarily harsh weather and ice conditions along the northeast coast, coupled with long winters of nearly continual darkness, neither his vessels, nor the Army’s aircraft and mechanized vehicles, would be capable of ensuring that the Germans would not be successful in establishing crucial weather and communication stations. Smith was well aware that several peacetime expeditions to the North Pole had proven the extreme difficulties of spotting objects from aircraft in the vast whiteness of the Arctic. His years of oceanographic research in and around Greenland had provided him with an acute familiarity with the extraordinary capabilities of an arctic hunter and the innate talents of his team of sled dogs.

It is not clear who originally came up with the idea of the patrol, whether Smith or Greenland Governor Eske Brun, but, writes Desh:

As founder and champion of the concept within the U.S. military and senior officer with control of the needed resources and logistic support, Iceberg Smith was indeed the “founding father” of the North–East Greenland Sledge Patrol. . . .

Governor Brun bestowed official military ranks and status, making the Sledge Patrol the first and only “Greenland Army.” The military status of the Sledge Patrol was further reinforced when they were also co-designated as a reserve unit of the U.S. Army.

The Sledge Patrol saw action during the war. Four of its members were awarded the Legion of Merit Medal, one posthumously.

Desh:

The North–East Greenland Sledge Patrol was disestablished at war’s end. In reality, this was more of a short-lived pause rather than a demise. In some ways, it wasn’t even much of a pause. Immediately after the war, some members of the unit stayed on, reverting to their original “police” status. They continued to patrol and hunt as they had done before, providing a visible presence of Danish sovereignty in the region.

Escalation of the Cold War and worries of Soviet claims in the Arctic soon led to a desire for improved, systematized surveillance of North and North-East Greenland. The North-East Greenland Sledge Patrol was reorganized in 1950. The name was later changed to Resolute Dog Sled Patrol and eventually to Sirius Dog Sled Patrol. . . .

As in the 1940s, patrolling is usually done in pairs, using dog sledges, sometimes for up to four months and often without additional human contact. . . .

The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol is an extraordinary legacy of the U.S. Coast Guard’s defense of Greenland during WWII. The dedicated Danish sailors who serve today can trace their roots directly to those original 15 volunteers who met with Iceberg Smith and the crew of the cutter Northland in September of 1941.

Of course, dogsled patrols alone could not defend Greenland, but they deserve to be (much) more than a punch line.