Old Sweat: email sent to you.
Here is a link to Six Years of War: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/Canada/CA/SixYears/index.html
Page 260: Only two men of the 1st Canadian Division, Privates G. Hansen and A. Johannson, saw active service in Norway (prior to Spitzbergen) They were soldiers of the Saskatoon Light Infantry (M.G.), who spoke Norwegian and were lent as interpreters to the 1st Battalion of the King's, Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, their own unit's allied regiment. They saw action in the neighbourhood of Dombaas with their adopted battalion, and withdrew with it through Aandalsnes in due course. (They recorded afterwards that the main language difficulty they had met was in understanding Yorkshire English.)24
Wrong about The Guns. The 2nd B.E.F. Jun 40, page 282
Only, with difficulty were the guns of the R.C.H.A. saved from destruction. It would appear that General de Fonblanque* and his staff were apprehensive lest attempts to save equipment might result in the loss of men. Lt.-Col. Roberts went to Garrison Headquarters and, in the words of his unit's diary, "fought hard for nearly two hours to save the guns". The order to destroy them was twice given and twice countermanded; and it is quite probable that they would finally have been destroyed had not the Garrison Commandant, Colonel W. B. Mackie, been an ex-cadet of the Royal Military College of Canada. Mackie spoke to de Fonblanque by telephone and obtained his reluctant acquiescence in embarking the guns. Roberts was told that he could load as many as he could get aboard by 4 p.m. It was then 2:15. By four he had loaded not only 24 field guns but in addition a dozen Bofors guns, seven predictors, three Bren carriers and several technical vehicles belonging to other units. The R.C.H.A.'s tractors and ammunition limbers had, however, to be abandoned.106 According to its diary, the steamer Bellerophon, on which the guns were loaded, had "still had room enough to take everything that was on the docks". The three vessels carrying portions of the regiment sailed at 5:15 p.m. on 17 June, and docked the following morning at Plymouth and Falmouth. The loss of equipment sharpened the gunners' disgust at having had to scuttle without meeting the Germans. The R.C.H.A. diary commented tartly, "Although there was evidently no enemy within 200 miles, the withdrawal was conducted as a rout." †
The rail parties of the Canadian infantry left France before the artillery. The trains were duly turned back in the early hours of the 15th. That carrying The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment had reached Laval, that with The Royal Canadian Regiment a place "believed to have been Chateaubriant" (this is unlikely, as they had already passed through Laval, which is on a different line). These two trains were back in Brest that evening and the men upon them were re-embarked on a British steamer which sailed the next afternoon and made Plymouth on the 17th.
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*The strain under which this officer was working can be readily imagined. He died soon afterwards as a result of his exertions.
†It is a remarkable but incontestable fact that, although one of the R.C.H.A.'s guns had been damaged in a road accident en route to Parce and turned in to Ordnance, so that the regiment returned to Brest with only twenty-three 18/25 and 25-pounders, it brought its full complement of twenty-four back to England.
