Ski Company: Canada

Good Morning All,

As many of you no doubt know I am pursuing leads of Canadians serving in the Commandos with particular emphasis on 1941.

I've just spent 3 weeks in the UK...two weeks of which were spent at the National Archives (Kew). Whew....what a place.

About an hour before closing on my last day there I discovered a "snippet" of information buried in a COS Committee War Cabinet document dtd August 6th 1940. The topic was "Raiding Operations". There were brief progress reports on the following.

a. Training of Regular Formations
b. Training of Independent Companies
c. Training and organisation of Commandos
d. Special equipment for combined operations
e. Parachute troops
f. Scope of Raiding Operations.

In section (b) there were two paragraphs about Independent Companies (IC) followed by the followed stand-alone sentence....still under the IC heading and before the Commando section.

"It was hoped that a Ski Company raised in Canada would be available this winter for operations in Norway" (Winter 1940).

My source mentions his group, consisting of about a hundred men recruited for "Special Service with HM Forces" from units all over Canada, trained in December 1940-January 1941 in various raiding techniques, which we are all familiar with as Commando training, and which I've mentioned in other posts. He also said they were trained as ski troops and rumor had it they were bound for Scandinavia.

My gut feeling is that this Canadian "Independent Company" likely was never used as intended, but probably provided personnel for existing British units (probably Commandos as the ICs faded out). I'd love to say this was an organic Canadian unit per se, but I have no evidence of that to date. I'm in the Canadian Archives in Ottawa daily trying to dredge something up.

I will certainly keep you posted and will scan the document when I get home and have ready access to a scanner. I'll post it to CVA following that.

Thanks for your patience with this quest.....it is a REAL pain in the ass...so close, but yet...

Jeff

Jeff,
That's great news - sounds like you're getting somewhere with your research.

Keep us posted - it's all very interesting and part of the Commando story.

Nick