Cactus

AlbanyRifles,

Rifleman is on the right track to the answer. The Grenadier Guards, while rightly tracing its origins back to the First of the Foot Guards formed in 1656, was not accorded the Grenadier honor until the Battle of Waterloo.

Oh, and I must add this unit wasn't at Battle of Long Island (or anywhere on North America) at all. The Battle of Long Island was the earliest I have seen the terminology being used, hence the reference.

Albany Rifles

Well is it Foot Guards?

Or is it light infantry?

__________________
“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” — Oscar Wilde

Cactus

Hint: Rifleman chose the right flank - the right flank The general's reserve is usually the picked grenadier companies. What is the picking called? What such unit was first formally regularized by the Brits into a Regiment?

Albany Rifles

The Royal Scots, the 1st Regiment of Foot, are the right of the line of the British Army.


However, the Grenadier Guards earned their name for their defeat of the French Grenadiers at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. That would meet you requirement that they won their place on the field of battle....even though they are neither the oldest nor have the honor of the right of the line.

Cactus

Ah, but they were not the first Regiment the British gave the honor of being a Grenadier Regiment. Which was the first?

Sorry, I was referring to the companies of any foot battalion - Light Company on the left, Grenadier Company on the right, other 6-8 companies in between - when I said Rifleman was on the right track. (A poor joke I admit, but I just had to say it).

Albany Rifles

All the others I looked up or knew...so I finally resorted to the Scoundrel's Way, aka Google

8th Grenadier Regiment of Bombay Sepoys

101st Grenadiers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If this ain't it...I GIVE UP!!!

Cactus

And Wiki served you very well!!!

The practice of putting together grenadier companies from different battalions into one battalion is called "grenadiering". It was very popular and reached insane levels among some commanders in 18th and 19th Century. The preference for tall and strong soldiers (as these grenadiers invariably were), was really wide-spread among many commanders. It may account for the rather homoerotic observation of the "Old Thousand Yards" Rifleman posted; the people were just like that back then.

Your question.

Albany Rifles

What unusual organization did Robert Morton head during the ACW?

Rifleman

I don't think anybody's going to get it, Albany.

I cheated and went to google and I'm still couldn't find reference to a Robert Morton who headed anything "unusual."

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"Aim small, miss small." - Benjamin Martin in The Patriot

Rifleman

In WWII, the British had a plan to kill Hitler at Berchtesgaten. They were going to parachute two SOE agents dressed as German mountain troops into the Bavarian Alps for a sniper mission. The sniper team was going to shoot Hitler on the path he used for his morning walk.

Anyone know what that operation was codenamed?

Make a great movie too, huh?

tankie

Was it the oyster conspiracy ?

__________________
TANKIE , WITHOUT WAX

RustyBattleship

I have a book titled "World War II Super Facts". In it it lists 266 code names begining with OPERATION from Operation 7 to Operation Zeppelin. Yes, I counted every damned one of them. Sped read through them THREE times today (instead of taking care of other business.).

It lists Operation Flash that was the first attempt on Hitler's life to take over the German Government (I think that was explosives disguised as bottles of wine to be taken aboard Hitler's airplane).

It lists Operation Valkarie as the second attempt to take Hitler's life (bomb in the bunker).

It lists Operation Long Jump that was an attempt by the SS to assassinate Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchil at the Teheran conference.

But it lists nothing like you described.

Found only that SOE stands for Special Operations Executive to encourage guerilla activities against the Nazis.

BUT. It did remind me very much of a movie Gregory Peck did. He was an expert marksman and actually sighted in on Hitler (before the war) with an empty rifle just for the thrill of the hunt. After the war started and his girl friend was killed (by Curt Jurgens) the end of the movie shows him parachuting into Germany with his high-powered, telescopic sighted rifle.

You sure you weren't thinking of that movie?

__________________
Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

glyn

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Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

Rifleman

The plan was called Operation Foxley and it was an SOE plan.

Rustybattleship, I don't know why the plan is not in your book, unless perhaps your book was published before the plan was declassified.

I'm not sure, but I believe it had already moved past the feasibility study and into the planning stage when Churchill shut it down.

I intend to order these two books for further study:

Amazon.com: Operation Foxley: The British Plan to Kill Hitler: Introduction by Mark Seaman: Books

Amazon.com: Kill the Fuhrer: Section X and Operation Foxley: Denis Rigden: Books

Operation Foxley, had it been done, would have been the mission of missions, wouldn't it? Hollywood couldn't come up with a better plot: two SOE agents parachuting into the Alps dressed like German mountain troops; killing Hitler as he walked from the Berghof; and then having to exfiltrate. A little like Where Eagles Dare but for real.

This is what the public thinks all sniper operations are like. We know, of course, that 99% of all sniper operations are in support of conventional infantry operations at the battalion level; yet, here was the fanciful "hunting behind enemy lines" with a dossier on an enemy leader actually being planned.

There is a wiki article on Operation Foxley. I don't know how accurate the details are:

Operation Foxley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RustyBattleship

I tried looking it up again and could not find it under Operation or under Foxley.

The book was published in 1983. So it's possible the history of the plan was kept confidential until after the 50 year limit of classification passed (that was applied to some operations and reports of the war).

There is still a letter dating back to the First World War in the National Archives that is still classified as top secret. When an interviewer from the TV show "60 Minutes" asked the curator why the letter would still be classified after all this time and anyone involved would probably be dead anyway, the curator answered, "It's not who was involved but HOW the intelligence information was gathered." Then he laughed and said, "It is quite a letter."

Hmmm. I wonder if Mata Hari had anything to do with it.