I felt pretty bad today from not sleeping, so I will post the briefing tomorrow but here is the report on the company you have available and the state it is currently in.
Military realism note
The Norwegian campaign was, to put it lightly, a mess. Units were often landed from one boat while another boat carried their support weapons..possibly bound for another landing site altogether, heavy weapons were chronically short for the entire affair and a lack of anti tank guns would plague the British for their stay in Norway.
No British armour was available for the campaign and air cover was extremely limited for much of it.
The company below is fictional (though the parent unit is not) but is typical of the sort of situation a company commander could find himself in.
Manpower
Each platoon has 3 sections of 8 men, along with a 6 man headquarters section (you, a sergeant, 2 mortar gunners and 2 orderlies.
The company has its own headquarters with a total of 2 officers and 10 men.
(Historical note here: Pre-war establishing was 8 man sections, later they are increased to 10 but Im pretty sure that had not happened by the Norway campaign, in any event, you get 8)
Armaments
The infantry sections are armed with SMLE (Lee Enfield) bolt action rifles and grenades. Each section has a Bren light machine gun, firing from a 30 round box magazine on top of the weapon.
Each platoon has a 2” mortar as well, which has a handful of high explosive rounds and a decent supply of smoke bombs.
You were supposed to be deployed with some of the kit from the Battalion weapons company, but most of that was loaded on the wrong ship. Consequently all you have for support is a pair of Boys anti-tank rifles: Heavy rifles that can damage armoured vehicles within 100 metres or so.
There is no dedicated crew for these, so they will have to be assigned 2 men each to man them.
You also have a single Vickers belt-fed machine gun. This thing will keep spitting out bullets as long as you supply cooling water, but the weight makes it difficult to redeploy quickly, particularly in the snow. It does come with its own crew.
Each section also has a few rifle launched grenades which could damage a vehicle, but the range is not much better than 150 metres and accuracy is quite low.
Troop quality
The company received good marks in training and the officers and NCO’s have a good rapport with them. Few disciplinary problems have been encountered. However they are quite inexperienced and training was perhaps not as extensive as you might have hoped.
Morale on the other hand feels a little fragile. The company spent longer in the troop ships than anticipated, the trip itself was rather rough (not to mention the creeping fear of German “U-Booten”)
And now you have been unloaded in a bitterly cold, snow covered country and sent down the line to see what the Germans are up to.
But at least the men are complaining and as the Battalion CO always says “Its only when the complaining stops, that you have to worry”.
