Sirius sled patrol

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The SIRIUS Sledge Patrol ( Danish Slædepatruljen SIRIUS ) is a Fernspäh - dogsled unit of the Danish Armed Forces for Defense of Greenland in North and East greenland and to monitor the Northeast Greenland National Park . The military unit is based in Daneborg on the east coast of Greenland on the Wollaston Forland peninsula on Young Sound. The strength of the unit is 14 soldiers . Twelve patrol soldiers are stationed in Daneborg and two others in Mestersvig . Sirius has 80 sled dogs from his own breed. Administratively, the Greenland Sled Dog Patrol has been under the authority of the Royal Danish Navy, Naval High Command (SOK) in Aarhus since 1994 , and the Arktisk Command in Nuuk in West Greenland.

SIRIUS bases

The Sirius headquarters is Daneborg . The summer headquarters of the Sirius patrol is the station on Ella Ø in Kong Oscars Fjord, 220 km southwest. The closest station is the Zackenberg research station, which is only manned in summer, 29 kilometers north-northwest. Mestersvig with aviation airfield , situated approximately 260 km south of Daneborg and Danmarkshavn 280 more km to the north. The next permanent settlement is 430 kilometers south of Daneborg in Ittoqqortoormiit (Danish Scoresbysund).

Tasks and implementation

The duties of the patrol include maintaining Danish sovereignty over Greenland, police duties in the Northeast Greenland National Park and the military surveillance of North and Northeast Greenland. The patrols operate in 2-man squads with eleven dogs and a sled. The breeding of Greenland sled dogs weighing 40 to 50 kg is carried out by Slædepatruljen itself. The dog sleds are kg for a transport load of 400 kg at a net weight of 90 or more designed.

The operating time for the six dog sled patrols is February to May in spring and two months from October in winter. The daily walking distance is between 30 and 50 kilometers. You can bivouack in a tent or in one of the 65 huts. There are 350 emergency huts throughout the park. In the summer, the group creates the supply depots with 30 tons of supplies for the patrol time with the support of rented cutters , planes and helicopters.

Additional fixed tasks for the soldiers at the Daneborg station

  • Telecommunications (radio man)
  • Dog man
  • Technical service (machine man)
  • Station electrics (sparky)
  • Water treatment (osmosis man)
  • Boat man
  • Fire master
  • Equipment manager (nordre man)
  • Slop chest man
  • Provisioner (provisions man)

alternately

  • Kitchen service (cookie)
  • Revierdienst (cleaner)
  • Dog care

As a special welfare measure, Sirius receives the Christmas mail from the Danish Air Force in a parachute drop. The monthly pay for a SIRIUS member is 22,000 DKK (around 2952 EUR).

equipment

SIRIUS has been using tried and tested equipment for decades with a relatively large wall tent made of heavy cotton. The reason for this is that cotton is relatively insensitive to fire, the greatest source of danger in the Arctic and Antarctic. Appropriate polar equipment is used that is not part of general Danish army equipment, such as the 120-liter Norrøna Recon backpack.

The dog sleds of the patrols, like those of the Inuit, are made of wood, in which the runners and the wooden loading platform are not held together with screw connections, but with nylon straps (formerly leather). This "soft" connection prevents the slides from breaking and tearing connections. Uneven floors are better absorbed. The second man, who does not drive the sledge, runs on skis or runs ahead of the team. The skis are also made of wood. The armament consists of bolt action rifles M1917 Enfield in caliber .30-06 Springfield and Glock 20 pistols in caliber 10 mm Auto . The weapons are used for self-protection against polar bears. Guns are also compulsory for visitors to the national park. Entry requires a permit and expedition equipment must be carried.

Selection and training

Every year from June to August, the selection process with psychological tests for the 20 to 30 year old male officers and NCOs of the Danish armed forces takes place. More soldiers are admitted to the subsequent courses than are required for the subsequent two-year deployment. There are repeaters who do more missions after standing in Denmark. As a result of the annual exchange, one of the teams changes so that one soldier from the first year of service and one from the second year of service always form the 2-man squad. Parts of the training take place at the Norwegian Army Winter Combat School in Elverum with skiing, wilderness orientation by day and night and survival techniques for the winter. The training at Danish training institutions includes extended telecommunications, medical and pioneer training, as well as repeated training for handguns in Oksbøl.

history

In its current form, the patrol is a relic of the Cold War , but its beginnings go back to before World War II .

In a judgment of April 5, 1933, the Permanent International Court of Justice , a forerunner of the International Court of Justice in the legal dispute with Norway, which occupied Eirik Raude's land in north-east Greenland , found that Denmark , if it wanted to continue to claim north-east Greenland as territory, would do so by being present in the country justify that area. Until 1941 this presence consisted of two police posts of two men each.

In 1941 Eske Brunn, the Danish provincial bailiff, set up the Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje (Northeast Greenland Sled Patrol) in agreement with the Americans in order to be able to clarify possible German activities in Northeast Greenland. The unit, consisting of 15 men, consisted of Danish police officers and Danish, Greenlandic and Norwegian fur hunters and had no military training. However, the relatives had lived in northeast Greenland for years and were therefore very familiar with the area and its difficult circumstances. In order to observe the provisions of international war law, they were marked as Danish military personnel and were given a rank. The unit's patrols were engaged twice.

The first encounter with the Wehrmacht took place on May 13, 1943, when the weather team of the company Holzauge was discovered by patrol members. The Danish corporal Eli Knudsen was killed in this battle . The second battle occurred on April 22, 1944, when the dog sled patrol carried out an attempted coup with a fire attack on the Bassgeiger weather station . During the battle, Lieutenant Zacker, the military head of the German weather station, fell.

The Northeast Greenland Sled Patrol was disbanded after the war, and in 1950 an identical unit named RESOLUT was set up in its place and renamed the Sirius Patrol in 1953 , after the brightest star in the Big Dog constellation .

The heir to the throne, Frederik of Denmark , took part in the Sirius expedition from February 11 to May 31, 2000 with a circumnavigation from West to East Greenland .

See also

literature

  • Ralf Hewelcke: On the trail of the Sirius patrol. With sled dogs 2400 km along the east coast of Greenland. Accurat-Verlag, Berlin a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-926578-35-1 .
  • David Howarth: The Sledge Patrol. A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Victory. Lyons Press, Guildford CT 2001, ISBN 1-59921-322-2 .
  • Peter Schmidt Mikkelsen: One Thousand Days with Sirius. The Greenland Sledge Patrol. Steading Workshop, Cawdor 2005, ISBN 0-9550773-0-3 .
  • Odsbjerg is different: Nordøstgrønlands slædepatrulje 1941–1945. Comma, Copenhagen 1990, ISBN 87-7512-442-4 .
  • Gottfried Weiß: The arctic year. A winter in Northeast Greenland. 2nd Edition. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-89228-535-7 .

Web links

Commons : Sirius Sled Patrol  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files