'Maurice' (ii) was the Allied northern half of the pincer operation designed to close, initially with 'Sickle' (i) from the south, on the lodgement of the 138^th Gebirgsjägerregiment of Generalleutnant Eduard Dietl’s 3^rd Gebirgsdivision at Trondheim in Norway (16 April/3 May 1940).

This German regiment had been delivered to Trondheim in 'Wildente', at the start of 'Weserübung', by the ships of Kapitän Hellmuth Heye’s Gruppe II (heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and destroyers Paul Jacobi, Bruno Heinemann, Theodor Riedel and Friedrich Eckholdt of Fregattenkapitän Rudolf von Pufendorf’s 2^nd Zerstörer-Flottille) and steamship Levante carrying four 88-mm (3.465-in) and eight 20-mm Flak guns as well as two 100-mm (3.94-in) guns.

By the middle of April the German force had reached divisional strength and was keeping Generalmajor Jacob Ager Laurantzon’s Norwegian 5^th Division in check as it pushed detachments to the north toward Steinkjer on the railway line to Namsos and to the south toward Dragset on the railway line to Åndalsnes and Oslo. The German force could then advance little farther, despite the arrival of Generalmajor Kurt Woytasch’s 181^st Division as a reinforcement, and thus awaited the arrival of Generalmajor Erwin Engelbrecht’s 163^rd Division and Generalmajor Richard Pellengahr’s 196^th Division of General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst’s Gruppe XXI from Oslo up the Gudbrandsdalen and Østerdalen valleys.

The British had planned to pinch out this lodgement at Trondheim in its early stages with a concerted move, Major General A. Carton de Wiart’s 'Maurice' Force landing Brigadier G. C. Phillips’s British 146^th Brigade and Général de Division Sylvestre Gérard Audet’s Corps Expéditionnaire Français en Scandinavie landing Général de Brigade Marie Emile Antoine Béthouart’s 5ème Demi-Brigade des Chasseurs Alpins at Namsos, and Major General B. T. C. Paget’s 'Sickle' Force landing Brigadier H. de R. Morgan’s British 148^th Brigade and Brigadier H. E. F. Smyth’s British 15^th Brigade at Åndalsnes on 16 and 18 April respectively.

The first to land were the 146^th and 148^th Brigades, but the arrival of even these initial units was too late, for the Germans had been reinforced to full mountain warfare capability, whereas both of the British units were territorial infantry brigades, which were therefore checked at Steinkjer and Lillehammer respectively. Reinforcements, consisting of the 5^th Demi-Brigade des Chasseurs Alpins at Åndalsnes and the 15^th Brigade at Namsos, did little to improve matters, and on 26 April the leading elements of the 181^st Division and 196^th Division, moving from Trondheim and Oslo respectively, met at Dragset, just to the south of Trondheim.

It was now clear that the Allied plan could not succeed, and on 26 April the Allies decided to abandon central Norway and concentrate their efforts on the German lodgement at Narvik in the north of the country. The 148^th Brigade and the 5^th Demi-Brigade were evacuated from Åndalsnes on 1 May in 'Brick' and 'Tunnel' (i), the Germans taking the town on the following day, while the 146^th Brigade and 15^th Brigade were pulled out of Namsos on 2/3 May in 'Klaxon I', shortly before the German forces entered the town.