The Odin Mission

HISTORICAL NOTE

The Norwegian campaign, sadly, was not Britain's finest hour and, indeed, directly led to the resignation of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, on 10 May 1940 - a day that saw Winston Churchill take on the mantle in his stead and marked the start of the German blitzkrieg in the west.

The events in the Gudbrandsdal valley occurred largely as written. 148th Brigade, under Brigadier Morgan was deployed south to Lillehammer and destroyed at a series of engagements in much the way I have described it. They were short of artillery, transport, aircraft and just about everything else; and although it was not Morgan or even General Ruge's fault - and certainly not the fault of the men who fought there - the British effort in the Gudbrandsdal was an utter shambles. By the time Major General Paget and 15th Brigade arrived, there was little that could be done to stop the rot. Fortunately, the eventual evacuation at Molde and Andalsnes was one of the best pieces of organization of the entire central Norway campaign, enabling a number of men to survive.

Further north, the war in Norway continued for another month, but the writing had been on the wall almost from the outset. On 8 June, the last Allied troops were evacuated. King Hakon VII and his son, Crown Prince Olav, were among those to be shipped to Britain, where they remained until Norway was liberated at the end of the war. In their absence, Norway was left under German occupation, although Norwegian resistance remained a thorny problem for the Germans. I would like to think that Anna Rostad would have been among their number.

Reichsamtsleiter Scheidt was a real person, but I could find out very little about him after his time in Norway came to an abrupt end at the beginning of May 1940. However, he resurfaced later in the war. By 1942, he was working for one of his pre-war Nazi Party champions, the notorious Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg, one of the architects of the Final Solution. Equally real were Reichskommissar Terboven and Generalmajor Erwin Engelbrecht, the latter of whom won the Knight's Cross for his performance in the Norwegian campaign.

Professor Sandvold was not a real person, however, and neither is his claim to have discovered oil off the coast of Norway. I'm afraid that didn't happen until the early 1960s, and the first oil-rig didn't start pumping out oil until 1971. Since then it has made Norway a rich country. However, it is certainly true that had the Germans had a whiff of there being extractable oil off the Norwegian coast they would have been very determined indeed to get at it. Oil was a commodity that Germany never had quite enough of during the war, and its shortage was one

of the factors in her eventual defeat. Also true is the detail about the Norwegian gold reserves, which were successfully smuggled to Britain.

Soldier's slang and the liberal use of acronyms are as much a part of military life now as they were before and during the war. The words that Tanner uses were mostly of Indian origin, and became part of his normal vocabulary during his time in India before the war.

For those unfamiliar with them, however, here is a guide:

Basha shelter, house

Bunduck rifle

Croaker dying person, someone severely wounded

Cushy easy

Dekko to take a look

Iggery, jaldi get a move on

And here is a further glossary of the military terms used:

HE high explosive

M/T motor transport

RAP Regimental Aid Post

Sangar a small defensive position above ground

(usually built when the ground is unsuitable for excavation)

SMLE Short Magazine Lee Enfield

To those unfamiliar with military jargon and terminology, the complexities of structure and organization may be hard to grasp. An army of the Second World War - British, American, German or Italian - was divided into corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions. A force could be designated an 'army' if it consisted of two or more corps. A corps had no great significance but was a contained force within an army, usually comprising at least two divisions, i.e., no less than thirty thousand men. Next down the scale was a division. This was still a major tactical and administrative unit of an army, and within its structure contained all the various forms of arms and services necessary for sustained combat. However, different divisions had different emphases: the fighting core of an infantry division was an infantry brigade, and could, as was the case in Norway, be deployed on its own. An infantry brigade was made up of two or more infantry battalions, plus attached artillery, engineers and other units. The battalion was the basic infantry unit, usually made up of four companies of, in total, between seven hundred and nine hundred men of all ranks. A company was divided into platoons of thirty-six men, which in turn were split into three ten-man sections. The remaining six men would be the platoon commander, the platoon sergeant, and four other ranks. The size of an infantry brigade could vary enormously, but a three-battalion brigade plus additional units would be between four and six thousand men strong. An infantry division - at full establishment - usually included around seventeen thousand men.

The Norwegian campaign showed Britain that she had a lot to do if she was to keep the Germans at bay. Too many of her tactics were out of date. There was no concept of co-ordinated air power, for example, or even all-arms tactics, whereby infantry, tanks and artillery were trained and employed together. Britain would have to learn the hard way and suffer numerous bitter disappointments before the tide began to turn.

For the men of the Yorks Rangers, the end of their part in the Norway campaign marked only the beginning of their war. There was much work for them still to do over the long years to come. Jack Tanner and Stan Sykes were needed again all too soon.

I owe thanks to the following: Oliver Barnham, Robert Boyle, Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, Trevor Chaytor-Norris, Rob Dinsdale, Richard Dixon, Professor Rick Hillum, Steve Lamonby, Peta Nightingale, Hazel Orme, Dr Hugh Pelly, Michael Ridpath, Bill Scott-Kerr and everyone at Transworld, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Lt-Col. John Starling, Patrick Walsh, Guy Walters, Susan Watt, Rowland White, Major Steve White, Bro, Rachel, Ned and Daisy. Thank you.