When Paul Schumann joins the US Coast Guard during the Second World War, he is revolted by the harshness of life aboard the ice trawler Arluk. His drunken skipper, Mad Mowrey, drives the crew to exhaustion on their shakedown cruise, brutalizes the new draft of green officers and is generally loathed. Mowray soon becomes chronically alcoholic, leaving Paul, and Nathan Greenberg, his Executive Officer, in command of the Arluk. Together they scour the Greenland coastal waters, breaking through ice-floes and packed glaciers in pursuit of the Nazi armed trawlers. A deadly game of hide-and-seek ensues as a German radar and refuelling station is discovered. To destroy it, they must first run the gauntlet of the E-boats. The knot of friendship between the two men is forged by war as they train a team of hunter-killers. And when, as rivals for a beautiful Norwegian settler, Britt, they lead their sailors and Eskimo scouts into attack, not even this test of their courage on the frozen wastes can break the bond the makes them ice brothers. A novel, based on historical fact, about the Greenland patrol, which operated 1942–1945, during World War II