and asked if he could help them find a doctor. Hovland agreed to help, but informed them that the nearest doctor lived away, in the town of Egersund. In order to contact him, Hovland would have to use the telephone system, controlled by the German authorities, which would alert them to the presence of the soldiers. Believing that there was no alternative, the soldiers agreed to contact the Germans, expecting that they would be taken as prisoners of war. A party from the Norwegian Labour Service arrived at the crash site shortly afterwards and helped tend to the injured soldiers who burned all of their sensitive documents and materials. A German party arrived about twenty minutes later. Unwilling to abandon the wounded and doubting their chances of escaping to Sweden, Lieutenant Allen chose to surrender, believing that they would be treated as POWs. Underneath their uniforms, the soldiers wore civilian clothing and had been told to grow their hair and beards. With this, and the fact that sabotage equipment was found, Colonel Probst, the head of the Wehrmacht in the Stavanger district, had all survivors executed as partisans at the German camp at Slettebø near Egersund. Aftermath The Allies were unaware of the fate of the operation until they intercepted a German communiqué stating that two gliders and one aircraft had been forced down, and the crews engaged and annihilated. On 11 December they received a message from an SOE agent explaining that the second glider's occupants had all been shot. Many of the details about the fate of the two glider combinations were only discovered after the war had ended. None of the soldiers or aircrew who survived the crashes remained alive for very long. Of the soldiers from the first glider, three of the four injured men were tortured by the Gestapo and later killed by Stabsarzt [Dr] Werner Fritz Seeling who injected air into their bloodstreams. The fourth injured man was shot in the back of the head the next day. All four bodies were dumped at sea. The five uninjured men were held at Grini concentration camp until 18 January 1943, when they were taken to nearby woods, blindfolded and executed by the Gestapo. The German Wehrmacht and the Gestapo argued over the fate of the prisoners from the second glider. The Wehrmacht believed they should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, but in