Norvegian SF in WWII

[mack pl]

No 5 Troop 10 Interallied Commando

From 1942 to 1945 around 120 Norwegian soldiers were attached to 10 Interallied Commando. This article attempts to give a short summary of their history. Sources and suggestions for further reading are listed at bottom of the page.

1942
10 Interallied Commando company was formed in 1942 and based at Fort Wiliam, Nevin in South Wales. The company was under British command and made up of soldiers from German occupied countries:

No 1 Troop - French
No 2 Troop - Dutch
No 3 Troop - Refugees from Axis countries (also known as "X Troop")
No 4 Troop - Belgian
No 5 Troop - Norwegian
No 6 Troop - Polish
No 7 Troop - Yugoslavian
Later three more troops were added, one French and two Belgian. Troop size varied, due to difficulties in organizing enough personnell from the different nationalities. On average one troop numbered four officers and 84 other ranks, while i.e. the Yugoslavian troop never mustered more than two officers and fourteen other ranks. Around 120 Norwegians were attached to No 5 Troop in the period 1942-1945.

The decision to contruibute a Norwegian force was made following an inquiry from War Office to the Norwegian High Command in the spring of 1942. Basis for No 5 Troop was two platoons from the newly formed 4th Mountain Company of The Norwegian Brigade, commanding officer captain Rolf Hauge. The two platoons were selected because they had recently completed "Shock Assault Course" at Fort William. They were supplemented with volunteers from the Brigade's other companies. 4th Mountain Company was subsequently dissolved, and the remaining personnell distributed among 1st, 2nd and 3rd Mountain Company. The Norwegian commandos differed widely with regards to age and background, from young refugees to mature whalers stranded abroad by the outbreak of war.

No 5 Troop entered active duty immediatedly after compleating a three-week "Commando Hardening Course" at Achnacarry near Spean Bridge, Scotland.

12 men led by Lieutenant Harald Risnes were attached to No 12 Commando, and transported to Shetland where they participated in raids on the Norwegian coast by 30th (Norwegian) MTB Flotilla (later designated 54th (N) MTB Flotilla).

In December 1942, a detachment of 8 men under command of second lieutenant Kaspar Gudmundseth was transfered to Special Commando Boating Group, No 14 Commando. SCBG was made up of Canadians and Norwegians led by British polar explorers (Sir Peter Scott, David Haig-Thomas, Andrew Croft, Andrew Courtland and others). They specialised in using canoes and kayaks for limpet attacks in arctic waters. One team of seven was eventually sent into Karmøysundet; they were all captured and executed. No Norwegians participated in this operation.

1943
In January 1943 the pyrite mines in Sagvåg on Stord were raided. One of the Norwegian commandos, corporal Ivar Haga, was killed during the operation. This was to be the last of the landing operations on the coast of Norway.

16 men led by lieutenant Daniel Rommetvedt was attached to No 12 Commando at Shetland. In the period February - April 1943 they participated in several raids on the Norwegian coast. The commandos apparantly functioned mostly as scouts for the MTBs, which could spend a week or more at a time camouflaged by the shore in Norwegian fjords while waiting for opportunities to attack German shipping.

From May 1943 No 5 Troop was stationed in Eastbourne for specialised training in close combat, physical hardening and landing operations (in Portsmouth and Plymouth).

1944
In the period January - June 1944 the entire unit was attached to the Norwegian MTB flotilla at Shetland. They participated in several operations on the Norwegian Coast.

During the summer of '44 No 5 Troop completed parachute training as well as courses in Rock-Assault Landing and Cliff-climbing. At this point, they were training for an attack on the Channel Islands. No 5 Troop was earmarked for Sark. The attack of the Channel Islands never came off. Instead, it was in September decided to employ No. 10 Commando on the continent.

Walcheren
November 1944

In late September, No. 5 Troop was shipped to France and transported overland to Belgium. No 10 Commando was here attached to 4 Special Service Brigade, tasked with destroying the German garrison on Walcheren. Heavy artillery positions on the island still blocked the approach to Antwerpen harbour.

The plans called for No 4 Commando to land at Flushing, Walcheren's south-eastern harbour town and here establish a bridgehead. At the same time, 4 Special Service Brigade would land at Westkapelle, Walcheren's westernmost town, and from here link up with No 4 Commando. Once the island's southern coastline was secured, 52nd Division would land at Flushing. The assembled forces would then advance northwards. 10 Commando was attached to 41st Royal Marines Commando.

The landing at Westkapelle was conducted on the 1st of November under heavy bombardment, lasting from 10:30 to 16:00. 4 Special Service Brigade suffered heavy losses. No 5 troop had 3 killed, 10 wounded and one man missing. 41st Royal Marines now advanced, throwing the Germans back towards Domburg. One company of the 41st plus No 10 Commando was left in Westkapelle to secure the western flank through the night.

At midday the next day, No. 10 Commando was rushed to Domburg to take the forward positions the 41st had been holding. The advance from Westkapelle towards Flushing had been slowing down, and 41st Royal Marines Commandos was shifted northwards.

On the 3rd of November, No 5 Troop attacked a German battery in their area. The battery was taken after two hours, 211 prisoners taken. Major Rolf Hauge was wounded during the attack, and lieutenant Gausland assumed command. The company was ordered back to consolidate nearer Domburg, and the next day was held in reserve as No. 10 Commando attacked to secure the positions taken the day before.

On the 5th of November, No 5 Troop moved to the front and advanced through woodland under heavy bombardment. The night was spent in open positions under fire from snipers and enemy patrols. Lieutenant Rommetvedt was seriously wounded. The men were relieved on the next morning.

The 7th of November saw No 5 Troop back at the front, and involved in the attacks that were driving the German forces back towards their last strong defensive position, Batterie W19. After a heavy aerial bombardment on the next morning, the final attack took place and the German forces on Walcheren surrendered.

Kapelsche Veer
December 1944 - January 1945

By the end of November, No 5 Troop had been transfered to Bergen op Zoom to prepare for an attack on North Beveland. The attack never happened, and the commandos were next transfered to Breda, then to Ovsterhout where they arrived on the 23rd of December.

No 5 Troop was now moved to the front at Geertrudenberg by the river Maas. Their task was patroling behind enemy lines over the river and on the heavily fortified island Kapelsche Veer in the river. On the 12th of January, they received more personnell, 12 men under command of lieutenant Gabriel Smith.

On the night to the 13th of January, Kapelcher Veer was attacked with support from armour and artillery on the mainland. No 5 Troop was now attached to No 47 Royal Marine Commando. A Polish company were to secure the bridgehead, while a main force of 5 troops of the Royal Marine Commandos attacked on the left flank. No 5 Troop and one troop from No 47 provided a diversionary attack on the right flank. The attack was unsuccessful, and the attackers had to withdraw after 8-10 hours of bitter fighting. Lieutenant Smith, Petter Hopen, Olav Bjørndalen and Bernt Myrvåg from No 5 Troop were killed during the operation.

1945
After the unsuccessful attack on Kapelsche Veer, No 5 Troop was again transfered to Bergen op Zoom for reorganization and training. Their next planned mission was participation in the Rhine crossing. However, the Norwegian High Command had at this time submitted a request that No 5 Troop be reserved for possible action during the libertaion of Norway. To their surprise, the men were now transfered to Brügge and on the 9th of February returned to Eastbourne. On the 1st of May, they were flown into Stockholm - in civillian. They entered Norway by train on the 9th of May.

After Crown Prince Olav's return to Norway on the 13th, No 5 Troop was honoured by assuming the guard of the Royal Palace in Oslo. Some days later, the men were distributed to the district commands. Most of the personnell distributed to District Command Eastern Norway were used as the basis for a new Kings Guard.

Captain Hauge was awarded the British Military Cross. Hauge and lieutenant Gausland was also awarded St. Olavsmedaljen med Ekeløv.

..........
Regards
mack pl

[2RHPZ]

The Battle For Kapelsche Veer

by Terry Copp

On Nov. 2, 2001 a large delegation of Canadians as well as many Dutch citizens gathered at the Bergen-op-Zoom Canadian War Cemetery for the long-delayed funerals of Charles Joseph Beaudry and George Robert Barritt. Both men, privates in the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, had been reported "missing, presumed dead" in January 1945 during the battle for Kapelsche Veer. Their bodies and that of Private Victor Howey, uncovered the year before, had been found by Dutch engineers clearing mines and other explosives from a long, flat, diked island in the River Maas (Side By Side They Rest, January/ February).

The remains of a large number of German soldiers had also been discovered, but in Canada attention was understandably focused on the young men who had volunteered to serve their country in the campaign to liberate Europe. News coverage of the event included commentary on the battle for Kapelsche Veer and fortunately journalists were able to rely on a recently published account of the action written by Donald Graves and published as part of his book, Fighting For Canada: Seven Battles, 17581945. Graves, and the journalists who described the battle, raised questions about the decision to attack the island as well as the plans for the operation.

Canadians, long used to hearing more about defeat than victory, were now told about a successful action which may not have been worth the costs.

Canadians first heard the name Kapelsche Veer in February 1945 when newspapers carried stories describing the five-day battle to clear the enemy from its last bridgehead south of the Maas. During the previous months the news had been about Hitler's Ardennes offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Allied counter-attacks that forced the enemy back to his start-line. Newspapers had also provided accounts of German offensives as well as reports on British operations, but it seemed—to ever sensitive Canadians—as if their army was on the sidelines.

The frontline soldiers saw it somewhat differently. It was true that during their "winter on the Maas" battalions were regularly rotated out of the line and action was largely limited to patrols, but in the damp cold of a Dutch winter the prospect of endless patrols was enough to demoralize even the bravest.

Conflict between senior commanders and the men who have to implement their orders is common in all armies and the Canadians were no exception. Such tension was particularly evident in 4th Canadian Armoured Division where Major-General Chris Vokes, who described himself as a "great rough red hairy bastard," had taken command in December 1944. Vokes, a veteran of the Italian campaign, was determined to impress his personality and ideas on the division, telling his officers that he was "heartily sick of" hearing about their exploits at "Buggeroff-Zoom, Sphitzen-on-the Floor and other places."

Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Stewart of the Argylls was so incensed with Vokes' attitude and the constant demands for patrols that he wrote to Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, stating he had no confidence in his divisional commander. On Jan. 25, the day before the battle for Kapelsche Veer began, Stewart, who had criticized the whole concept of the operation, was ordered to report to the neuropsychiatric wing of No. 10 Canadian General Hospital to be examined for battle exhaustion. Among the symptoms Stewart was alleged to have was "undue concern for his men." In my view, Stewart did not have battle exhaustion because he did not display any of the major symptoms.

The human costs of the prolonged winter war were considerable when measured in men's lives. During November 1944 the Canadians in Northwest Europe suffered 277 fatal casualties. December brought 229 more and in the first 25 days of January, before the battle for Kapelsche Veer began, 164 of our young men died while defending a static front on the western flank of the Allied armies.

The 63 fatal casualties suffered in the last week of January were a dreadful price to pay for a windswept island in the River Maas, but so was the loss of every soldier involved in the war Hitler and his Nazi supporters had inflicted upon the world.

The winter war and the battle for Kapelsche Veer were forgotten, except by those who fought there, until Geoffrey Hayes wrote a new history of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment in 1986. Hayes had first learned about the events from his uncle, Major Jim Swayze, who commanded the battalion in January 1945. Interviews with other surviving Lincs revealed that men still talked about Kapelsche Veer as a "dividing point" in the regiment's history. There was a clear perception, Hayes wrote, that something important happened there and many veterans used the words "before" or "after" Kapelsche Veer in telling their story. The Lincoln and Welland veterans believed that their worst enemy at Kapelsche Veer was not the tenacious German paratroopers or the weather but their own senior officers who committed them to a battle that could only be won at a price no combat soldier thought worth paying.

Is this a fair assessment of Kapelsche Veer and of the senior commanders? Lieutenant-General Sir John Crocker's 1st British Corps was responsible for a 60-mile front along the River Maas which he was to defend with two armoured divisions and the armoured cars of the Manitoba Dragoons. Intelligence reports suggested the need to prepare for airborne landings behind the lines as well as attacks across the Maas. The German bridgehead at Kapelsche Veer, which had been fortified in late December in preparation for a major attack, was too obvious a threat to be ignored and Crocker decided to do something about it.

The Poles tried to seize the island on the last day of 1944, but were forced to withdraw due to heavy fire from the north bank of the river. A week later a Polish infantry battalion actually captured the small harbour but could not overcome the resistance of enemy paratroops dug-in along the dike.

Crocker continued to insist that the bridgehead at Kapelsche Veer must be eliminated. On Jan. 13, the 47 Royal Marine Commando unit launched a third assault on the island attacking both flanks. This attempt, using lightly armed elite troops in a night attack, failed when the enemy, confident that their troops were safe underground, brought extremely heavy mortar fire down on their own positions causing heavy casualties among the Royal Marines.

Crocker now had two choices, he could abandon further attempts to capture the position and simply mask the island or he could order a much more elaborate attack. He chose the second option and issued new orders. "The enemy," he stated, "must be eliminated and the task will be undertaken by 4th Cdn. Armd Div."
D-Day was to be "as soon as practicable" but "speed was less important" than careful preparations. Crocker also suggested that some new element be introduced into the plan "so that surprise can still be achieved." All of the resources of 1st Cdn. Army, including air support and the specialized armour of 79th Armd. Div., was available to the division.

These orders left little room for debate and there is no contemporary evidence that anyone tried to argue against a new attack. The plan for Operation Elephant called for a smokescreen to limit the impact of observed fire from the north bank of the river and assumed that a 60-man "canoe commando" could use the smoke to cover their approach to the harbour on the north side of the island. Smokescreens were notoriously difficult to fine-tune for tactical purposes and the decision to base the operation on the success of this device was very risky. Asking men in vulnerable canoes to paddle down a river within easy reach of an enemy on both banks was simply reckless. The attack was to "be made from three directions simultaneously" with no mortar or artillery support and no smoke, other than for deception, until H-Hour. Hindsight is not required to criticize the plan.

By 1945 the Canadians along with their allies knew from experience how to fight and defeat their enemy. The method sometimes described as "bite and hold" involved carefully planned fire and movement with the artillery providing the main means of neutralizing the enemy while the infantry and, if possible, armour moved forward by bounds, consolidating at each phase. This was slow, unspectacular work and some generals, anxious to demonstrate their skill at manoeuvre warfare, preferred to short circuit the process with complex plans like the one Vokes outlined for Operation Elephant. Such plans failed to account for the "friction of war" or for the rule that if something can go wrong it will go wrong.

The emphasis on achieving surprise prevented the Lincs from carrying out a recce of the area until the day before the attack and the companies only moved to their forming up places on the evening of Jan. 25. Outfitted in white snowsuits, the men waited in the cold for morning. H-Hour was 7:25 a.m. and the four groups were on the move and ready to cross their start-lines on time. On the right flank both companies got onto the island but were delayed when their Wasp flamethrowers bogged down while trying to climb the dike. The first attempt to rush the main defenses failed because of well-positioned machine-gun and mortar fire from the north bank of the river.

Neither the smoke shells fired by the artillery nor the smoke generated by 803 Pioneer Smoke Company effectively screened the island. The failure of the smokescreen also jeopardized the "canoe commandos" who were forced into the centre of the river by ice conditions close to the bank. With two kilometres still to go and losses from enemy machine-guns mounting, Captain R.F. ****ie ordered his men to abandon their quixotic venture and join the companies on shore.

The enemy was not content with a defensive success and so shortly before 10 a.m. it launched the first of several counter-attacks. There was no choice for the Lincs except to withdraw and by 11:30 a.m. the survivors were evacuated from the eastern end of the island leaving Major Ed Brady's B Company, which was well to the west, as the only Canadians on Kapelsche Veer. It was now up to Vokes and Brigadier J.C. Jefferson to decide upon a new course of action. They chose to reinforce the bridgehead on the island with tanks from the South Alberta Regt. and order the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada to attempt a new approach working up gradually from the east. By 10 p.m. an Argyll company, "supported by two South Alberta Regt. tanks," were dug-in on the island, relying on the rum-ration to get them through a cold, windy night.

The next day the Lincs and Argylls worked their way forward closing the arms of the pincers on the enemy strongpoint. The intricate system of underground tunnels and gun positions cut into the sides of the dikes continued to frustrate the Canadians but the lessons of the first disastrous day were not forgotten and no unnecessary risks were taken. The tanks of the South Alberta Regt. provided invaluable support in closing with the enemy. The Argylls' war diary, written by then Lieutenant Claude Bissell, later a distinguished scholar and President of the University of Toronto, records the action of one tank "which moved right onto Raspberry—the code name for the objective—despite the fact that the tank commander did not expect to be able to get the tank out again."

Throughout the final three days, the battle for Kapelsche Veer became a contest of wills. If Crocker's decision to attack the island is to be questioned then what of the 6th Parachute Division's determination to hold a position of little strategic or operational value? The German attempts to continuously reinforce their garrison and to mount counter-attacks simply made no sense. Allied artillery, using air bursts, inflicted enormous casualties on the enemy especially during efforts to cross the river. As late as the evening of Jan. 30, artillery fire smashed several crossings and inflicted many casualties. This proved to be the enemy's last gasp and on the night of Jan. 30-31 the paratroopers who were still alive abandoned the island.

Crocker ordered a "post-mortem" on the operation so that "any lessons discovered in the actions could be communicated to others faced with a similar problem." Both Jefferson and Vokes reported that a more careful approach "consolidating as one goes is a definite lesson" and advocated "attacks with limited objectives...repeated until the assault position was reached," the doctrine which had been taught at battle schools since early 1943.

There is one other lesson that those who comment on the battle might wish to consider. Historians often assume that when things go wrong some alternate course of action would naturally have worked better. There is a good case to be made for a different operational plan for Kapelsche Veer, but can we be certain the idea of seizing the island was mistaken? What if the enemy had used Kapelsche Veer to launch an attack on the understrengthed Polish Division? On Jan.18 an entire battalion of the 7th Parachute Regt. crossed the far more formidable obstacle of the Rhine near Arnhem and captured the village of Zetten. By the time 49th West Riding Div., supported by Canadian tanks, had retaken the town they had suffered 220 casualties. Indeed, command decisions are rarely simple in war.