Page 63 - Wish Stream Year of 2017

75 years ago two of the most remarkable and audacious sabotage missions of WW2 took place in the frozen mountains of Southern
Norway. Jointly conducted by the Special Oper- ations Executive (S.O.E.) and Norwegian Resist- ance, their names were Operations GROUSE and GUNNERSIDE, and their objective was to deny the Third Reich the means to continue its atom bomb development programme at the Norsk Hydro Power Plant in Vermork, the only place in the world at the time producing viable quantities of a vital substance to the process, Heavy Water.
Exercise LINGE CADET
Taking its name from the Norwegian Officer commanding the Resist- ance, Maj Linge, EX LINGE CADET set out on the 75th anniversary of Operations GROUSE and GUN- NERSIDE with the aim of develop- ing skills in Nordic and cross-coun- try skiing in order to retrace the final steps of the Norwegian saboteurs, colloquially known as the Heroes of Telemark.
...the only place in the world
at the time producing viable quantities of a vital substance...
ourselves and began preparing for the move up to Kvitavatn where we would be based for the following three days, to begin our training under the guidance of Glyn Sheppard, a former SMI at RMAS, and Brian Desmond, a phenomenally knowledgeable for- mer artillery officer who has dedi- cated many years to understanding the story of Operations GROUSE and
We arrived at Rjukan, some 100 miles west of Oslo, on the evening of Saturday 16th Decem- ber. Positioned on the southern edge of the Har- dangervidda Plateau, our house was nestled into the hillside overlooking the Power Plant on the other side of the valley. We quickly orientated
GUNNERSIDE; he served as our historian and guide. Kvitavatn is some 1000m metres above Rjukan, positioned on the edge of a frozen lake high above the Power Plant and situated at the base of the mountain peak of Gustatoppen. The mountain housed a US radio relay station at the
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