by Giles Milton
The late-night merriment would continue around the piano at Gaynes Hall, although the gaiety was always overlaid with a touch of melancholy on these eve-of-mission soirées. Sue Ryder noted that the favourite songs were ‘All Our Tomorrows Will Be Happy Days’ and ‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’. There was always a sense that the men would not be coming back.
Rønneberg’s team were due to be parachuted into Norway on 23 January, but the flight had to be aborted due to thick fog. It was deeply disappointing, for the waning moon meant that the next flight wouldn’t be for another month.
Rønneberg was increasingly concerned that the men were spending too much time drinking and too little time keeping fit. The others disagreed, although they did accept that jogging across the Cambridgeshire levels was not suitable preparation for the snow-covered peaks of Norway. Rønneberg requested a transfer to Scotland in order to knock his men back into shape. ‘The muscles used when running on roads and fields are not the same as marching in broken and hilly countryside,’ he explained.38
Baker Street answered his call, sending them ‘to a solitary place’ in the north of Scotland where there were no pubs, no girls and no sunshine.39 They spent their days training, tracking deer in the relentless rain and waiting for the next moon.
At last, on 16 February 1943, Operation Gunnerside was again given the green light. The men were to be dropped into Norway that very night. Professor Tronstad came to see them off at Tempsford airfield. The rain was tipping down from the sky, soaking the white camouflage suits they were wearing in readiness for the snow on landing.
Pilot Officer John Charrot couldn’t believe how much equipment they had: so much that they had to be brought to the airfield in a lorry. He could only wonder what sort of operation they were due to undertake.
The kit was hurled aboard and then the men climbed into the Stirling IV aircraft. The plane’s navigator was intending to use dead reckoning navigation to hit landfall after 700 miles crossing the North Sea. A single error in his calculations and Rønneberg and his men would be heading to disaster.
15
In the Bleak Midwinter
A BLIND PARACHUTE DROP into occupied territory was not for the faint-hearted, as Colin Gubbins’s team of Norwegian saboteurs had learned from their training sessions. As you were shoved from the plane, your stomach hit your throat and the ground lurched forward at terrifying speed. When the parachute finally opened, it felt like a bullet ripping through your spine.
Joachim Rønneberg and his comrades had trained for this moment at Ringway, near Manchester, where their tutor had led them to a high platform in order to teach them how to land safely. They watched him jump and then heard him scream. ‘He broke both his legs,’ noted Haukelid without further comment. It was hardly a reassuring sight.
Training was bad enough, but the men were warned that the real jump would be infinitely more frightening. They would be parachuting into pitch darkness, falling through the knife-edge of an Arctic gale so cold it could freeze human skin in seconds. The men’s initial goal was scarcely less forbidding than the jump itself. They were heading to the Hardanger plateau, a high-altitude wilderness locked firmly into a thick crust of ice. Here, at the ends of the earth, there was nothing but relentless desolation punctured by the occasional glacier. ‘The largest, loneliest and wildest mountain area in northern Europe,’ was how Haukelid described it.1 Nothing but reindeer could survive in this frigid wasteland, for the only winter vegetation was frozen Arctic moss buried deep in the snow.
It was vital that the men should all jump within seconds of each other, for the plane would be flying at a speed of sixty yards per second. A hesitation of just ten seconds would see them landing at least 600 yards from their nearest comrade. If it was snowing hard, they would never find each other.
On this particular night, 16 February, the skies began to clear as the plane approached the Norwegian coastline and the icy expanse of the Hardanger plateau gleamed like a slick of cream in the translucent moonlight. The aim was to drop the men as close as possible to the frozen shores of Bjornesfjord, where there was a remote lakeside hut. The men scanned the bleach-white wilderness far below but could see no recognizable features in the landscape. At one point, the rear gunner commented on the ‘pretty fluffy clouds’ that they were heading towards at high speed.2 Fortunately, the pilot realized they were not fluffy clouds but the tops of mountains.
It proved impossible to locate Bjornesfjord from the air, so Joachim Rønneberg ordered a blind drop on to the Hardanger. At exactly two minutes past midnight, he was the first to plunge through the dispatching hatch into the freezing Arctic night, closely followed by his five comrades.
Knut Haukelid glanced upwards as he jumped and ‘saw the plane disappearing northwards, returning to England, to rain, to nice hot tea, to a party tomorrow’.3 He then looked down and got a reality check. The icy plateau stretched to infinity, its treacherous contours blunted by the thick wedge of snow.
The men made a near-perfect landing and the only mishap occurred when one of their twelve supply containers was carried away in a tremendous gust of wind. They chased after it and eventually found it stuck in the fractured surface of a frozen lake. Rønneberg gave a sigh of relief. ‘In that package we had rucksacks for half the party, with sleeping bags and weapons and food for the first five days.’4
It took almost four hours to gather all their supply containers. Once this was done, the men tried to work out where, exactly, they had landed. They were familiar with the Hardanger, but only in summer, and were completely perplexed as to their location. ‘The ground was quite strange to us,’ said Haukelid, ‘long, low, snow-clad hills.’ Rønneberg asked one of the team if he had any idea where they had landed. ‘We may be in China for all I know,’ was his response.5
All six men had been trained in psychological survival. This was one of Arisaig’s specialities and a vital tool when bivouacking in one of the world’s most extreme terrains. They knew that the very bleakness of the Hardanger offered them their greatest chance of eluding capture. Few German troops dared to patrol this lonely wilderness, where the extreme cold rendered every hour a fight for life. Haukelid had repeatedly been reminded that ‘one cannot defy nature, but must adapt and accommodate oneself to her. Nature will not change; it is man who must change if he is to live in conditions where nature is dominant.’6 Adaptability and confidence were two of the key elements in the psychology of survival.
Nature certainly proved dominant in the bluish-grey hour before dawn. Snow pellets scoured horizontal in the winter gale as the mercury plummeted. The men urgently needed to make contact with the Grouse party who had been living out on the Hardanger for four months.
Rønneberg’s team had no wireless transmitter, but they knew that their comrades had based themselves in one of the remote huts on the shores of the frozen Lake Saure. They set off through the heavily falling snow in what they hoped was the right direction. As they did so, Rønneberg cast an anxious glance at the sky. The snow was starting to tip down and threatening to become a white-out.
The men were to have an extraordinary stroke of luck. As they forced a path through the blizzard, they stumbled into a hunters’ hut buried waist-deep in snow. The visibility was so poor that they didn’t even see it. ‘We just walked into it,’ admitted Rønneberg. ‘We were very, very lucky.’7
They smashed open the door with an axe and took shelter, lighting a fire with the stockpile of birch wood. All knew that the hut had almost certainly saved their lives, for the blizzard that now swept across the Hardanger was terrifying in its intensity. ‘That night there broke one of the worst storms I have ever experienced in the mountains,’ said Haukelid.8 The Arctic gale screamed for four days, slamming snow against the cabin with such violence that Rønneberg was worried it ‘was going to be lifted off the ground’.9
At one point the chimney ventilator was snapped by the wind and Rønneberg had to step outside to fix it. ‘I was twice lifted by the storm
from the roof and thrown to the other side of the hut.’10
Thirty miles distant, the Grouse team were sheltering inside their Arctic refuge. They had a wireless transmitter and were in regular contact with London. They knew that Rønneberg’s team had been successfully dropped, but they had no idea how to find them. As the storm continued into its second day – and then a third – they grew seriously concerned.
Rønneberg’s men were indeed finding it hard to acclimatize to the dangerously low temperatures. Two of them had developed serious colds and the rest had severe inflammation in their neck glands. The only good news came when they found a discarded fishing logbook which revealed that they were close to the glacier that fed Lake Skrykhen. They had landed eighteen miles off target, but were within striking distance of the Grouse team.
On 22 February the storm finally blew itself out and revealed a spectacular winter’s morning. ‘The sun rose over the Numedal mountains, first copper-coloured and then golden.’ Haukelid looked out on to a winter landscape that was utterly transformed. ‘What had been a valley the evening before had now become a high snowdrift.’11 As he turned his gaze towards the frozen lake, he got the shock of his life. A man was skiing towards them at high speed and clearly making for the hut. If he was German, or even a hated quisling, a Nazi sympathizer, he threatened to jeopardize their entire mission. The men had no option but to seize him.
They waited for him to approach the hut and then grabbed him as he was about to enter. ‘Seldom have I seen anyone more terrified,’ said Haukelid. After a long interrogation, the man – a hunter – confessed to being a quisling. This was followed by a long debate as to what to do with him. ‘The boys were now generally in favour of shooting him,’ said Haukelid. But Rønneberg felt troubled about killing a fellow Norwegian. In the end, they took him prisoner, tying him to their toboggan and setting off in search of the Grouse team.
As they neared an area known as Kallungsjaa, they got their second shock of the day: a man on skis could be seen making his way up the valley. They flung themselves down into the snow and tried to work out if it was a German soldier. ‘He was packed in so many clothes that it was hard to get a proper view of him, while a huge beard made him unrecognisable.’
As Rønneberg studied him through his telescope, he glimpsed another skier, just a few hundred yards behind. He sent Haukelid to go and meet them in the guise of a reindeer hunter. Haukelid skied after them and got within fifteen yards before realizing to his delight that it was Arne Kjelstrup and Claus Helberg, two of the four-strong Grouse team. They were out in search of Rønneberg and his men.
Four months on the Hardanger had taken its toll, as Haukelid was quick to note. Their clothes ‘were so ragged and disgusting that the boys looked like the worst tramps imaginable. Behind their beards their faces were wan and thin and their shoulders were bent.’12
The two men spilled a terrible story of hardship and deprivation. The Hardanger was indeed a cruel place to live in the depths of winter. They had only survived by eating Arctic moss and, very occasionally, reindeer meat.
Their current base was in a mountain hut at Svensbu, some four hours to the south. The men decided to head there directly, but first Rønneberg wanted to release their prisoner. He made him sign a declaration that he owned a rifle (a crime that carried the death penalty in occupied Norway) and told him that if he ever spoke of his encounter, Rønneberg would betray him to the Nazis. It was a high-risk strategy, but less risky than continuing their mission with a prisoner in tow.
At around four in the afternoon they finally sighted the Svensbu hut, where the other two men from Grouse – Jens Poulsson and Knut Haugland – were hiding out. That evening was one of festivity. The ten men ate reindeer meat accompanied by chocolate and dried fruit contributed by Rønneberg and his men. Then, after catching up on each other’s news, they turned their thoughts to Norsk Hydro. In the next forty-eight hours, they were hoping to launch one of the most audacious acts of sabotage ever undertaken in wartime.
* * *
Colin Gubbins had received no news of Joachim Rønneberg and his men since the early hours of 17 February, when the plane that had dropped them into Norway returned safely to Tempsford airfield. He had no idea if they had landed without injury and nor did he know if their equipment had survived the drop. It was the same with every operation: months of intense training were followed by days of radio silence.
But on the morning of Wednesday, 24 February, a full week after Rønneberg’s team had left England, Gubbins received the message he had longed to hear. It came from Knut Haugland, the radio operator of the Grouse team. ‘The party arrived yesterday evening. Everything in order. The spirits are excellent.’ He added that they would be ‘on the air again after the operation’ and signed off, ‘heartiest greetings from all’.13
Gubbins privately feared that he would never hear from them again. For even if the men succeeded in breaking into Norsk Hydro, there seemed very little hope of them making their escape. They were engaged on a suicide mission that was likely to end with either a bullet in the head or a cyanide capsule in the mouth.
The Germans had dramatically increased security at the plant in the aftermath of the commando disaster. Guards were now posted around the factory and the garrison had been increased to 200 troops. Four anti-aircraft guns had been installed, along with banks of machine guns, and a network of searchlights had been wired around the place and ‘could illuminate the whole area and at the same time floodlight the pipeline’.14 A newly installed tracking station made it impossible for any would-be saboteur to send transmissions while in the vicinity of the plant.
The ten men made their descent from the Hardanger plateau on the day after contacting Gubbins and took shelter in a wood cabin at Fjosbudalen. This was only three miles from Norsk Hydro, but it was perched at the top of an incline that afforded a sweeping view of the surrounding landscape. It was the perfect place to plan the details of their attack.
‘We all sat down together and wrote on small scraps of paper all the questions to which we wanted answers,’ said Knut Haukelid.15 One of the Grouse men, Claus Helberg, then arranged a clandestine meeting with Einar Skinnarland, their contact inside the plant.
George Rheam’s training had covered every aspect of the attack except one: Rønneberg himself was to decide the best way into the factory, since this would depend on many last-minute variables. One option was to attack from the rear, using the steep slope of rock that linked the stack to the mountainside. But this was quickly ruled out, for the entire area was heavily mined and strategically placed machine-gun posts made it unacceptably exposed.
There was also the narrow suspension bridge, seventy-five feet in length and under constant patrol. To traverse the bridge, the saboteurs would have to shoot all the sentries. This was also ruled out, for the noise of the gunshots was certain to raise the alarm. Within minutes, the entire complex would be swarming with garrison troops working under floodlight.
The only other way into the plant was to descend to the bottom of the deep gorge, cross the river and then scale the other side. The Germans believed that the gorge could not be climbed without specialist mountain equipment but Haukelid was not so sure. He studied the RAF reconnaissance photographs and noticed that there was a segment of the gorge where fir trees grew from the top to the bottom. ‘Where trees grow,’ he said, ‘a man can make his way.’16
If the gorge could be scaled, there was a unique weak point in the German defences. A single-track railway line had been hacked into the side of the ravine, hundreds of feet from the bottom. It provided access into the plant, but was only ever used to transport heavy machinery. As far as Rønneberg knew, it was not guarded by the Germans. But it was visible from the suspension bridge and could only be used with extreme caution.
At shortly after 9 a.m. on the day scheduled for the attack, Rønneberg sent Claus Helberg into the gorge on a reconnaissance mission. When he returned five hours later, ‘he had a big smile on his face
’.17 He reported that not only was it possible to descend into the gorge, but that there was an ice bridge at the bottom that would enable them to cross the fast-flowing River Maan. The only worrying news was that this was fragile and ‘on the point of breaking up’.18 They would have to hope it would sustain their weight.
The information about the gorge convinced Rønneberg to use it as their point of access. They would attack that very night, descending down to the river and then scaling the other side before entering the plant via the disused railway line. It was a high-risk strategy, but less risky than storming the suspension bridge.
The rest of the day was spent fine-tuning the details of the attack, as well as cleaning weapons and preparing the explosives. The men also settled on passwords to be used in the darkness. The word ‘Piccadilly’ was to be answered with the words ‘Leicester Square’.
They were to split into two groups on arrival at the plant. The first group, led by Rønneberg, would undertake the sabotage. The second, commanded by Haukelid, would provide cover. If Rønneberg’s men were sighted, Haukelid’s group were to hold off the Germans with their tommy guns for as long as it took to blow up the plant.
After a few last-minute preparations, they set off at eight o’clock in the evening, under the pale light of a half moon. They skied down to the edge of the ravine, where they buried their skis, food and everything else they would need when making their escape. Once this was done, they began the treacherous descent into the depths of the gorge, clutching at trees and spruce branches as they slithered down. The side of the gorge was in places almost sheer, but there were always trees to cling to and a deep cushion of snow. ‘We waded and stumbled, leaving most of the work to the law of gravity as we slithered downhill.’ At times the snow was up to their armpits, so deep ‘that you had to do front crawl to get out’. It enabled them to make the descent without hurting themselves.
