Second World War
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 saw 9th Field Company RE in France once again, still as part of the 4th Division. It took part in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. In May 1942, it was reorganised as 9 Field Company RE (Airborne). 9 Field Company RE (Airborne) became the engineer support for the newly formed 1st Air Landing Brigade, with about one third of the company being trained in the use of parachutes while the rest were trained as gliderborne troops. The unit's first airborne operation was in Norway in 1942 when they were sent to destroy a heavy water plant. However, both gliders crash landed, and the few survivors were executed by the Gestapo. In 1943 9 Field Company RE (Airborne) also took part in further airborne operations in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.
Read more about this topic: 9 Parachute Squadron RE
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor’s on the very day.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law; where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)