The Viking Battalion: Norwegian American Ski Troopers in World War II
Edited by Olaf Minge, Kyle Ward, and Erik Brun
Casemate
(July 31, 2023)
384 pages

By How Miller

Their training at Camp Hale, Colorado, at 9200 feet at the valley floor, had a lot of similarities to that of the First Special Service Force, the Canadian American outfit often called the Devil’s Brigade. The 99th was attached to the Rangers in the breakout from the Normandy beachhead. They later became part of the new 474th Infantry Regiment that was created from the American veterans of the Devil’s Brigade, including over 400 Darby’s Rangers. All these outfits performed “normal” combat as well as special assignments, such as the Rangers scaling the cliffs at Pointe du hoc on D-Day and the Devil’s Brigade scaling the “impossible” cliffs at Monte Cassino in Italy. We could also mention that 80 men were recruited from the 99th to the OSS, where the founder of Special Forces, Aaron Bank, served and learned his techniques.

The 99th Bn (Sep) was born as an all-Norwegian outfit, either by birth or as American descendants. All had strong reasons to fight against the Nazis. Norway is a mountainous, cold environment that breeds strong, determined people and was under the occupation of the Nazis.

The book, The Viking Battalion, is an assemblage of accounts, mostly by its members. Erik Brun, son of one member, Christian M Brun, was inspired to honor all the members in cooperation with the other two self-described editors, Olaf Minge, grandson of CPT Raymond K. Minge, a doctor with the 99th, and historian Kyle Ward. There is an amazing amount of detail in these narratives. The stories, though they unavoidably contain some overlap, illuminate parts of the story that are not often told.

First is an overview, followed by roughly chronological accounts and some interesting vignettes. A couple of the multiply-covered events were the Battle of the Bulge and some well-known battles preceding it. Besides the combat coverage, they include how they interacted with the civilians, from the mountains of Colorado through the U.K., to friendly French and Belgian towns, hostile German towns, and post-war Norway.

Also covered was how their training and other activities were highly publicized, at least at the local level. Clearly, this was a potential disinformation campaign to convince the German high command that they were planning to invade Norway. This likely had the positive effect of holding divisions of Nazis in place to defend against the supposed invasion. Part of the publicity was about how they excelled at all forms of competition and their being the subject of a field rations test that proved the rations’ worth. And during the war, Bradley was so impressed with them that he had 50 men reassigned to be security for the 1st Army HQ.

One of the highlights mentioned was the satisfaction of serving as Honor Guard for the return of King Haakin VII to Norway.

You can read part of Howard Bergen’s 1945 account, written while the 99th was still stationed in Norway, with access to all the records, click here.