Gravesite : Square G2, Row 46, Grave 010

A standard upright white marble US Military gravestone. 

Technical Sergeant 5 Leif E. Meland (Leif Edvin Kristiansen Meland)  was born on February 28, 1914 in Herad, Farslund, Norway.  He arrived in the US in 1938 in New York. He enlisted in the US Army in 1943 and being a Norwegian speaker he was recruited into the OSS. 

Meland was a member of OSS (Office of Strategic Services) Operational Group Norway, Team Norso.  On March 31, 1945 he along with five other team members were being deployed to Norway to support Operation Rype by an Operation Carpetbagger B-24 aircraft. The plane was unable to make the drop and crashed upon returning to home base in the Orkney Islands in Scotland; all but the Co-Pilot were killed in the crash.

See site Kirkwall- Orkney (this website) for more on Operation Rype and the crash that killed Meland. 

Each of the Norwegian-American OSS Team members were buried in their native Norway after the war.   See this website for the Isolated Burials (ISOBs) for each of the OSS team.

LEIF E MELAND

NEW YORK

TEC 5 OFFICE OF STRAT SERVICE

WORLD WAR II

FEB 28, 1914   MARCH 31, 1945