Canadian Troops In Norway For Cold Weather Combat Exercise
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Old Sweat said:
When I was on an AMF(L) depl there co-located with the detached Bde No coy in Skjbotendahl Camp, one of the officers explained that the field rations were so horrible that the conscripts often refused to eat them, which sometimes led to troops collapsing on exercise. They preferred to make a "pocket lunch" of a sandwich shoved in their combat coat. The ration pack "meat" in a tin was nicknamed "Dead Man In a Can": it was a suspicious-looking pinkish-grey mess that my dog would probably not eat.
They also had a nasty thing that looked like brown toothpaste (it came in a squeeze tube). This, I discovered, was "fish paste". It was in the rations and in the dining hall as well.
Once, I invited an officer I was working with to come to lunch at the 1PP Bn field kitchen. We had massed the coy kitchens under the KO, and the cooks were doing their usual excellent work. The Norgie officer stepped inside the tent, took one look at the side tables loaded with milk, bread, fruit, desserts, etc and was in shock. After staring around for a moment, he asked "Do you guys always eat like this?"
WRT the women, I agree. I recall a memorably drunken session in the Bde Officers' Mess in which a rather attractive young female officer of the Bde Engineer Battalion felt that she would be much more comfortable if she shed her combat pants and stood at the bar in her underwear, which were decidedly non-issue. This was much appreciated by both the Cdn and Norgie officers present.
339 Squadron ate better in the field than they did in garrison - real meat instead of mushy meatballs, and everything had flavour.
The messes did not serve lunch in garrison, either. There were rolls of waxed paper on the walls and everybody made sandwiches to take to work with them. I well remember the cheesy/seafoody tube spreads. Some were good, some seemed more like weapons than consumable substances.
Lunches were only provided in the messes when we were there. I do not know if that was done as a sign of hospitality, or if the CF paid for it, but the Norwegians seemed to like it. As I said earlier, they consisted of the previous night's leftovers fried.
Dinner was usually boiled potatoes, boiled frozen mixed vegetables, and packed-meat-mush-balls. The only variation in the latter was the colour and size. Nothing had any flavour. Salt and curry powder were provided as the only seasonings. We sold mini pizzas in our canteen in the evenings. That and cheap beer guaranteed several Norwegian visitors each night.
Monty Python did a spoof travelogue called "Norway Home of Giants" or something similar. It's most likely on Youtube.
The messes did not serve lunch in garrison, either. There were rolls of waxed paper on the walls and everybody made sandwiches to take to work with them. I well remember the cheesy/seafoody tube spreads. Some were good, some seemed more like weapons than consumable substances.
Lunches were only provided in the messes when we were there. I do not know if that was done as a sign of hospitality, or if the CF paid for it, but the Norwegians seemed to like it. As I said earlier, they consisted of the previous night's leftovers fried.
Dinner was usually boiled potatoes, boiled frozen mixed vegetables, and packed-meat-mush-balls. The only variation in the latter was the colour and size. Nothing had any flavour. Salt and curry powder were provided as the only seasonings. We sold mini pizzas in our canteen in the evenings. That and cheap beer guaranteed several Norwegian visitors each night.
Monty Python did a spoof travelogue called "Norway Home of Giants" or something similar. It's most likely on Youtube.
When I was doing the mountain firing attachment I did a couple of overnighters with Norwegian FOO parties. All I recall about the hard rations were the crackers - sort of like melba toast or flat bread - and the mystery meat and cheese in a tube. It was subsistence at best but after humping up and down foothills type mountain, it was edible. At least it wasn't Brit Compo, which I've also eaten.
It was quite different from the Italian field rations FJAG and I had on our attachment to the Alpini mountain artillery a few months earlier.
It was quite different from the Italian field rations FJAG and I had on our attachment to the Alpini mountain artillery a few months earlier.
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I forgot about the biscuits...
IIRC there was also a cake of brown powder that was supposed to be hot chocolate.
Another odd thing was that in a section-size winter tent group, the conscripts did not get sleeping bags: that was reserved for the officer (as some of you know, the Norwegian Army in the period had no real NCOs-only commissioned officers, or officer candidates employed in a junior NCO role). The troops got animal pelts that seemed to be reindeer. The rationale I was given was that only the officer, as the leader, needed the quality of rest that a sleeping bag provided.
One thing I found very odd was that at that time (early '90s), about 50% of the conscripts couldn't ski when enrolled. I had thought that all Norgies were born on skis, but I was told that since the majority of the Norwegian population lived in cities in the far south, skiing was not a universal skill.
IIRC there was also a cake of brown powder that was supposed to be hot chocolate.
Another odd thing was that in a section-size winter tent group, the conscripts did not get sleeping bags: that was reserved for the officer (as some of you know, the Norwegian Army in the period had no real NCOs-only commissioned officers, or officer candidates employed in a junior NCO role). The troops got animal pelts that seemed to be reindeer. The rationale I was given was that only the officer, as the leader, needed the quality of rest that a sleeping bag provided.
One thing I found very odd was that at that time (early '90s), about 50% of the conscripts couldn't ski when enrolled. I had thought that all Norgies were born on skis, but I was told that since the majority of the Norwegian population lived in cities in the far south, skiing was not a universal skill.
I'm trying to remember the name of the flatbread. My first ex-wife, being half-Norwegian, used to buy it.
Their field kit of all types was very Spartan. I wasn't sure how they could survive with it.
339 Squadron did fairly well in the field. Simple, but adequate, tents which all had a nice wood stove inside - and a bunch of conscripts to cut trees into suitable sizes and feed them every hour or two.
Their field kit of all types was very Spartan. I wasn't sure how they could survive with it.
339 Squadron did fairly well in the field. Simple, but adequate, tents which all had a nice wood stove inside - and a bunch of conscripts to cut trees into suitable sizes and feed them every hour or two.
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I recall being bemused by the conscript/regular split. My 'rations memory' is a of a sort of fish and potato soup or stew two or three times a day. Not much else stands out but it was only one exercise and it was long, long ago. :warstory:
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Loachman said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acNnq8pwbC4
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Loachman said:
I lived for a month in a tent heated by one of those Norgie wood stoves (we all did...) I got laryngitis that took me weeks to get rid of. That said, they did have some good pieces of modern kit and some neat adaptations:
-a packframe designed to carry a .50 cal HMG with the spade grips downwards and the barrel pointing straight up. A bit awkward in the woods, but much easier than how we usually humped it; and
-because all the likely approaches were through narrow alpine valleys strung with utility wires and with lots of trees, the TOW was of very limited use (command wire problems over obstacles). The Norgies had fitted the old 106mm RR with laser sights and mounted it on a BV 206 chassis. This gave them a "fire and forget" capability that was much more likely to work under those conditions than the TOW would have been.
pbi said:
When I was on the Brigade North exercise in 1973 they were using 106s of the bare bones variety. Because of the shape of the ground and perhaps the training of their conscripts who were on a six month term of full time service, no attempt was made to fire from defilade. Instead the dismounted RRs were manhandled to a crest on the highway, pushed up and (simulated) firing a couple of rounds , then withdrew. In my opinion, and I'm not an infantrymen, this was a dodgy tactics. At the very least as a gunner, my target appreciation was that their gun position was in an obvious target area and manhandling a dismounted recoilless rifle through an artillery concentration is not apt to get you a place in the victory parade.
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Fossil
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We spent most of our time pretending we knew all about 'Motti' tactics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salients,_re-entrants_and_pockets#Motti
At the time, I assumed that 'Motti' meant 'ski 30 miles through mountain ranges with your house on your back at 30 below, starve and freeze, then scare away a bunch of USMC REMFs and eat all their MREs'. ;D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salients,_re-entrants_and_pockets#Motti
At the time, I assumed that 'Motti' meant 'ski 30 miles through mountain ranges with your house on your back at 30 below, starve and freeze, then scare away a bunch of USMC REMFs and eat all their MREs'. ;D
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We had a Norge FOO party from a M109 Bn attached to our Company in 1992 (I had the other FOO party) for a while during an exercise. They were very professional, but showed up without any rations of any sort. They lived (well) strictly off of our IMP leftovers for days.
SeaKingTacco said:
Helmets on. When I was there in September 1973 there were at least two M109 Bns in the area. One was the full time battalion in Brigade North and the other was a reserve battalion that would be called out on mobilization. At the time it had just finished its annual two week exercise. Of interest, its CO, who was a regular, had attended the Canadian Army Staff College in the mid-sixties. Helmets off.
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Old Sweat said:
I often wondered what training levels they were actually capable of achieving, given that the conscript troops did (IIRC) one year, and then an annual call-up of about two weeks. Other than the officers (who would move onwards and upwards in their professional careers), I didn't really see how expertise and experience were being maintained at the tactical level, since there were no NCOs beyond a "Sgt" at section level who was normally an officer selection candidate singled out of the conscript stream. Many jobs seemed to be done by junior officers that we would have assigned to NCOs or WOs. (like the old Soviet system). While this would have been a challenge in CbtA units, it must have been very difficult in technical support units, especially adapting to new equipment items that came in after a technician did their conscript service.
I did notice, in a few places, very old Captains being used to do jobs that we would assign to Sgts or WOS, such as Range Control, Base Ops, etc. This might be how they got around it. A few Norgie officers commented that they envied our system of professional NCOs, but that this wasn't possible under their defence regulations. ( Since some time after WWII, any full-timer had to be a commissioned officer)
I suppose that their advantage was that they would be fighting to defend their homeland, in highly defensible terrain on which the Norgies had TEWT-ed, planned and exercised endlessly for years. All they had to do (I guess...) was hang on long enough for NATO to arrive. The Home Guard companies and platoons would be fighting in or near their own villages, and as I mentioned earlier the country had a true "National Defence" scheme of total mobilization. I guess their motto was "Never Again".
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pbi said:
That was one of the things, along with the soup/stew, that stuck in my mind. There were no (just very few?) NCO radio technicians ~ all the ones with whom I had contact were officers. Maybe they were some sort of specialist officer but they were officers and they were doing jobs we would assign to a private or corporal.
I was also a bit surprised at what I though was a fairly low level of knowledge about radio in the near Arctic. The engineers and scientists were (still are, I think) first rate, but their signal officers, like ours I am saddened to say, didn't really understand what the doughnut (which causes, amongst other things, the Aurora Borealis) does to radio communications in nearby regions. (Sending me up there to 'explain' that to already too busy regimental and battalion signal officers did not appear, to me (or them) to be an especially good use of resources, but ...)
A good (thanks NASA) image of the doughnut which is powered by the sun.
You can communicate well in the open parts, but communicating with conventional,
terrestrial radios within the doughnut or between regions can be interesting.
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Fossil
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They were quite proud of the fact that they could mobilize 1 million people in 4 days (out of a population of about 4 million).
I wonder if they have maintained that capability.
I wonder if they have maintained that capability.
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daftandbarmy said:
If Canada could acheive this, our connection to the average population would be more than the old salt, "support is a mile wide and an inche deep."
Sadly, who would approve paying for this ability?
