Neutrality Duty
The Alta battalion was mobilized 10 October 1939 to help guard Norway's neutrality in the Second World War and positioned in the border areas of eastern Finnmark during the Finnish Winter War to safeguard the northernmost areas of Norway against possible Soviet aggression. At the time the battalion consisted of around 900 soldiers. Guard and patrol duty in the border areas brought the battalion near the brutality of war and served to harden the men of the unit. After seeing the fighting and burning town in Petsamo the soldiers and officers of the Alta Battalion began to view war as a reality and not merely something found in the history books.
The Alta battalion was then demobilized on 15 January 1940. As the battalion deactivated, Lt. Col. Dahl realised that the international situation was still unstable and the unit might be needed again soon. Thus the soldiers were ordered to tag their uniforms and personal equipment before handing them in for storage. This precautionary measure helped the battalion greatly when it was again needed less than three months later.
After the return to Alta a ski company of ninety volunteers was formed and retained for another two months of training. On average the battalion was not considered especially ski-worthy and most of the soldiers had their only skiing experience from the neutrality duty.
Read more about this topic: Alta Battalion
Famous quotes containing the words neutrality and/or duty:
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was when he entered it.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)