Occupied St John's

In January 1941, the hulking twenty-one thousand ton troopship Edmund B. Alexander docked in St John''s harbor, carrying a thousand American soldiers sent to join the thousands of Canadian troops protecting Newfoundland against attack by Germany. France had fallen, Great Britain was fighting for its survival, and Newfoundland - then a dominion of Britain - was North America''s first line of defence. Although the German invasion never came, St John''s found itself occupied by both Allied Canadian and American forces.