Mission
The men selected for Operation Musketoon were two officers and eight men from No. 2 Commando and two Norwegian corporals from the Norwegian Independent Company 1, part of the Special Operations Executive. The raid was commanded by Captain Graeme Black, from Ontario in Canada. The second in command was Captain Joseph Houghton. The other men from No. 2 Commando were: Company Sergeant Major Miller Smith, Lance Sergeant Richard O'Brien, Lance Bombadier William Chudley and privates John Fairclough, Cyril Abram, Eric Curtis, Reginald Makeham and Fred Trigg. The two Norwegian corporals were Erling Djupdraet and Sverre Granlund. For a fortnight before leaving for Norway, the team had been training on a large country estate in Scotland. During the planning stage the commandos were supposed to be picked up after the raid, by a Short Sunderland flying boat. This was cancelled before they left, due to risks to the aircraft. Instead they would head for neutral Sweden. To assist in this, each man was issued with special equipment, which included a silk map of Norway and Sweden, a rice paper map of Russia and Norwegian Kroner notes. They also carried two compasses (one sewn into each collar tab), a hacksaw blade, a fighting knife and a Colt pistol. The only other small arm taken was a suppressed Sten gun, carried by Captain Houghton.
Read more about this topic: Operation Musketoon
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)