My father served in North Africa then Italy in WWII. Since the vast majority of convoys were sailing across the north Atlantic to England (and the Mediterranean was under Axis control), his troop ship had to sail alone south to their first port of call at Rio de Janeiro, then across the south Atlantic to Cape Town, then finally up the east coast of Africa to the Red Sea, arriving in Egypt months after leaving the US (a ship traveling by itself had to use a zigzag course as a “defense” against German submarines).
I learned later in life that my parents met after the war, and my mother had previously been engaged to another man who was killed when his troop ship was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic. Which begs the existential question about whether it would still be me here typing this today had that other man’s luck been different.
Spud had better not assume the block of ice is an automatic domination.