Argosy (UK), January 1955 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

7 Mi © ee, a a) dat Ch COM @ ere ye “ 4 ‘ —* rit J Wickes we babes sf iy y. 0 30 TOM HOPKINSON Ey tae hs John Garrod was a determined young man, and an ambitious one. Working almost without a break all through the war, he had made a name for himself in his own line and built up a | considerable position inside his firm. Success had made him over-confident and pushful, but of this he was happily unaware. - Having good control over his temper and an easy manner, he found it hard to realize that not everyone he met took to him as readily as he felt they should. Garrod arrived in Rovaniemi early in November, and by the beginning of December the main part of his work was done. However, there remained one further possibility which he’d been asked “just to look into, if you get the chance;”’ and, having fought for the opportunity of coming out here, Garrod meant to make the most of it. He was determined, not only to carry out his instructions, but to accomplish more than anyone could reasonably expect. Up in the north-east corner of Lapland, within a hundred miles of the Arctic Ocean and only about forty from the Russian border, a new road was projected. Estimates were likely to be asked for in the spring, and if Garrod could get a close look at the country in the meantime, his firm would be in a better position to secure another important contract to follow on after the first. His immediate problem was to get there. In summer there’s a good deal going on in the far north, but in winter the land lies under the hand of death. Getting across country is never easy, but at that time it was like a game of snakes-and-ladders. By mid-December Garrod was about ready to pack it all in. But just then the Government in Helsinki happened to send up three tracked vehicles with a party of engineers, to take supplies through to Ivalo, a little town at the end of the Arctic highway, and the officer in charge made no difficulty about taking Garrod along. By now the rivers were frozen hard and the vehicles could run straight over. When a place has its name in black letters on a map, it’s hard not to expect something like a town to correspond. Not much perhaps, just a few streets, a church, an open square, and a store or two. In Ivalo at that time there were three houses, bursting at the seams with all the people who packed into them each night for shelter. ‘The rest were simply chimneys, row after row of blackened chimney-places. Being built of brick, they stuck up like gaunt memorials, after the wooden houses they once warmed had gone up in smoke all around them. Faced with this forbidding scene, in which even daylight was comiclbooks.comn)