Featured White Papers
- Microsoft Dynamics AX: Build a competitive edge for manufacturing plant operations (Microsoft)
- Hosted CRM buyer's guide (Inside CRM)
- 5 Strategies for Making Sales the Engine for Growth (AchieveGlobal)
Content provided in partnership with
Government Industry
The Sledge Patrol: a WWII Epic of Escape, Survival and Victory
Military Review, July-August, 2003 by Kevin L. Jamison
David Howarth, Lyons Press, NY, 2001, 233 pages, $14.95.
The Sledge Patrol is a reprint of a 40-year-old book about a small skirmish on the periphery of World War II that helped decide the course of the war. When Germany occupied Denmark, Denmark's Greenland colony quietly seceded, and the colony's governor formed a militia. The militia, patrolling the coasts, prevented German landing parties from establishing military bases on Greenland. The lack of German forces on Greenland bases would have made little difference, except that Greenland offered an excellent position from which to invade Europe.
In Europe, weather moves from west to east, and in June 1944, Greenland weather stations predicted excellent weather conditions. German General Erwin Rommel's weatherman predicted continued storms in Normandy, so Rommel returned to Germany. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's weatherman consulted Greenland's data, predicted good weather for the Normandy landing, and the invasion was on.
Author David Howarth writes eloquently, even lovingly, about Greenland's frozen terrain, despite the fact that the northern latitudes are so forbidding that all humans are de facto friends. Organizing the Greenland Home Guard from a handful of fiercely independent hunters, who were so few that Howarth describes each in detail, was not as difficult as the terrain. How the men overcame the challenges of patrolling in such a harsh environment provides lessons for soldiers who must conduct operations in severe climates.
Kevin L. Jamison, Attorney at Law, Gladstone, Missouri
COPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Army CGSC
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
