Mission Telemark

by Amanda Mitchison

  It’s six thirty now. It’s dark outside and Fred is cooking supper. We’re to set off at eight o’clock so that we get to Vemork just before the midnight sentry change. Our preparations are done. Now it’s a matter of waiting, and that’s probably the worst bit of all.

  This will probably be my last entry. I know we’re unlikely to succeed, and escaping afterwards will be all but impossible.

  I’m signing off now – I need some time to write a letter to my family. I’m glad we’ve kept this log – it may give those who come looking for us some idea of what we’ve been through.

  Dear Mum and Pop,

  I want you to know that I love you both VERY MUCH and give Trudie a big hug too. I know I haven’t been a perfect daughter, but I have tried my best. So please forgive me for the times when I’ve disobeyed you, or been crabby and annoying.

  Mum, give my gymnastics cups to Trudie, who I adore (even if she is perfect…). Of course I want you to remember me but please don’t keep my bedroom frozen in time, with all the books and things perfectly arranged like in some creepy museum. Let Tru move in. She’s always wanted the bigger room.

  Celebrate my birthday every year with a gigantic chocolate cake. And give Max a doggie treat and a final tummy scratch from me.

  If you do find my body please let me lie by Grandpa and Grandma in that little graveyard in Skudneshaven where there’s nothing but sea and sky and wind. It is so perfect. Sorry for this rather shaky hand.

  Your ever loving daughter,

  Åse

  Jakob P. Stromsheim

  5TH JANUARY 1943

  We’ve made it to Vemork! We’re resting in the old electrical converter hut outside the plant until the guard changes. Then we’ll have to go in. This is what’s happened so far.

  At eight o’clock we were standing in the dark outside the hut with the wind whipping the snow up round our legs. This was it. For a moment I wished I was back home with Mother. Help! It was so cold and so frightening, and everything rested on the next few hours. Then a stern little voice inside me said, “Get a grip, boy! Remember your duty!”

  So I braced myself, leaned forward on my ski poles and looked at everyone carefully in turn. I had to know for sure that no one had had a change of heart. Lars, Freddie and Åse all had their balaclavas down with only their eyes showing through the slits. It was a bit like looking at people through a postbox. But they nodded back at me.

  “All right,” I said, trying to make my voice sound firm. “Let’s go.”

  Lars led the way. The slope headed steeply downhill and, as I was the last to go, it was as if my friends were simply disappearing over the edge of the mountain. I set off after them and I soon realized that this really was a wonderful ski run. The piste was as long and as straight as a playground chute.

  After a while, we came to the treeline where the land was broken up with odd stumps and bits of brush. We took off our skis, put them on our shoulders and started to climb downwards. The going was hard – great spiky juniper bushes blocked the way and the snow had collected in huge drifts, sometimes over a metre high. The mountainside was still very steep and often we were half tumbling, half sliding downwards, with only the tree trunks to break our fall. Åse calls this “skambling” – part skiing, part falling, part tumbling.

  Eventually we reached the road through the valley. Here we brushed ourselves down, put our skis back on and glided down the road, keeping to the edges where the snow was still soft.

  We followed the road as it twisted its way down the valley. We were much more exposed now and I pulled back my balaclava so I’d be able to hear any approaching cars. But I could hear only a slight, dull hum in the air, like the sound of a city in the far distance, which grew louder as we descended.

  Finally we turned a corner and – at last! – on the far side of the gorge, I saw the power station. It was all lit up in the moonlight – as huge and forbidding as a Transylvanian castle, with the deep gorge in front acting as a moat. The hum was now clearly separate sounds – water rushing through the sluices, the whirl of dynamos and a more general clatter of machinery.

  Freddie stood beside me, his goggles dangling off his chin. He looked completely transfixed. “Crikey!” he said. “It’s a whopper! They used 1,700 barrels of cement and 800 tonnes of steel just to build the main electrolysis building. There’s 50 cubic metres of water going through those penstocks every second—”

  “Come on.” I tugged at his sleeve. “This isn’t the time. We’ve got to get off the road.”

  And, at the very moment I said this, headlights swerved round the corner only ten metres in front of us.

  “Geddown!” I shouted. Fear made me very fast. I pulled Freddie down with me into the ditch at the side of the road and there we crouched, skis and sticks tangled together. Slowly – so very slowly – the beams of the headlights passed over the top of our ditch and the vehicle trundled on up the hill. It was a miracle they hadn’t see us. I was shocked – it had been a close call.

  But Freddie seemed completely unfazed.

  “That must be the bus for the workers on the night shift,” he whispered, sticking his head out over the top of the ditch.

  “Stay down!” I yanked him back just as another set of headlights scanned the road. A second large, heavy vehicle passed by.

  “Now I remember,” grinned Freddie. “There are two buses for the night shift, aren’t there?”

  I managed not to say anything.

  Back on the road Åse and Lars emerged from behind a large mound of snow. After the near miss, everything we were doing felt so much more scary and real – the headlights had been a sort of awakening. I felt jumpier than before.

  We skied on until we reached an old power line road which branched off up the mountain to the east. Lars led us 50 metres along the road and then we veered off into a dark wood. In a small clearing we took off our skis.

  It was a sheltered spot, but I could still feel the wind on my cheeks. It came in little gusts and was strangely warm – warmer and drier than the air around me. Bad news. It was a foehn, a high-pressure wind coming down from the mountains, getting warmer and warmer as it descended. The last thing we wanted was a foehn – the warm air melts the snow and ice. If the ice on the River Mane melted, we wouldn’t be able to cross the river and the whole mission would be lost. We couldn’t swim that river and survive – not even Lars could do it.

  I put my balaclava back on and pressed my fingers against my jacket so I could feel the little button compass in my pocket. There was absolutely nothing to be done.

  We hid the skis under a pile of snowy spruce branches, then we checked our guns and pistols and Lars and I put on the special packs holding the explosives. Freddie took the metal shears and Lars looped a long coil of rope around his middle.

  Lastly we shared out the hand grenades and the extra ammunition. Åse stowed away the very last of the chocolate in her pocket.

  It was now ten o’clock. In two and a half hours we’d be inside the plant.

  There was no going back.

  I nodded to Lars and we set off down the mountainside.

  At the bottom of the gorge my worst fears came true. The foehn had done its work; the ice on the river was gone. Lars and I looked at each other and shook our heads. Why was everything so difficult?

  We made our way along the bank with Lars in the lead. The river, fed by melt water in the mountains, roared past us in full spate. A hundred metres further down, we came to a bend in the river, overshadowed by dripping birch trees. Here Lars stopped and pointed to a large rock beside the river.

  “This is where I crossed,” he shouted over the roar of the river.

  I looked at him in disbelief. He couldn’t be serious!

  There was some ice there. But it was no flat ice bridge – just a few semi-submerged lumps bobbing up and down in the rushing water. Only one large island of ice remained near the far bank.

  We climbed to the edge of the river bank.

  “I’m
light. I’ll go first,” said Åse. And before any of us could protest, she jumped onto the first block of ice. It rocked under her, and she wobbled a bit and had to stretch out her arms to gain her balance. She stepped onto the next piece of ice. “Whoa.” She steadied herself. Then, nimble as a hare, she hopped onto the next block. And the next. And the next. There was a large gap before the big ice island. She jumped this, righted herself and stepped onto the bank on the far side, giving us a thumbs-up.

  Freddie had been surveying Åse’s progress gloomily. “That’s all very well,” he said. “But she’s light as a flea and she’s a champion gymnast.”

  I put my arm round him. “I know. I thought she’d fit in a cartwheel. But cheer up, Freddie. It’s not so bad.”

  Lars went next. He took a slightly different route, only using the bigger blocks of ice, but jumping further between each one.

  When he reached the far bank, Freddie turned to me.

  “You go next,” he said.

  “Not on your life!” I said. “My job is to bring up the rear. Come on, Freddie. You’ll make it. Think of it as a rather difficult book where every lump of ice is a different chapter.”

  Freddie was not at all convinced. But, very gingerly, he stepped onto the first ice block, where he lurched horribly to and fro with his arms flapping in the air. I couldn’t bear to watch, so I just stared at the ground, held my breath and waited. Thankfully he managed to right himself.

  “This is not fun!” he exclaimed.

  “Keep going. Use your momentum.”

  Freddie moved on to the next ice block and executed another very wobbly landing. But after that he seemed to get the hang of it and made his way across the river quite smoothly.

  I followed him over and, as I reached the far bank, I looked up at the side of the gorge we now had to climb.

  The cliff was a huge, vertical slab of rock about 200 metres high – that’s the height of ten or twelve Drumincraig Houses piled one on top of another. In the darkness, I couldn’t see the summit, but I could sense that it was very, very far away. This climb would go on and on and on. In fact the cliff face might as well continue up into the stratosphere – we’d never get to the top.

  What made matters worse was the surface of the rock. It was as if it had been sliced out of the mountainside with a gigantic and very sharp blade. Lars was right when he said there were trees and shrubs growing on the rock. But the plants were only present in some places and, even then, they seemed to emerge from the tiniest cracks and crevices. Otherwise the cliff face was sheer.

  How could we climb this? I looked down at the ground. The bed of the gorge was solid rock and ice. If we fell, we would die.

  I took off my gloves and put the palm of my hand against the cliff face. The stone was wet and slimy, with melt water pouring down in tiny rivulets. I’d never dreaded something so much in my life.

  Åse also leaned a bare hand against the stone. “Yeuch.” She wiped her hand on her camouflage suit. “It’ll be like climbing a blancmange. We’ll be slipping all the time.”

  She was dead right. But it was my job to try and sound encouraging. “Look, the sooner we get started the better,” I said. “These things are never so bad once you’re doing them. Just don’t look down.”

  I waited until Freddie and Åse had got some way up the cliff face before I started the climb.

  For the first 50 metres, everything went well. Even if I did have to stretch a lot, my hands and feet were always able to grope their way to some little crevice or outcrop in the rock and clutch on to it. Sometimes these holds were just tiny cracks and sometimes they were so nearly out of my reach that I had to rely on them before I was really sure that they’d hold my weight. I just kept on going up: right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot…

  I couldn’t see much – the moonlight didn’t seem to get down into this part of the gorge – and I felt very alone, clinging to the sheer cliff with nothing to keep me company but the far off drone of the power station and the swoosh of melt water running down the crevices.

  After a while, my fingers began to ache. Then one of my legs got the shakes. I stopped, shut my eyes, concentrated on my breathing and waited.

  The spasm in my leg ended and I opened my eyes again. I slid my right hand across the rock face, feeling for a hold.

  There was nothing there.

  I stretched my hand out further. Even a tiny crevice would do… There was nothing.

  I carefully switched hands and tried with my left hand, reaching up and down and back and forth. The rock face was smooth as glass, but with outstretched fingers I could just feel the tips of a plant hanging down the cliff.

  I peered through the darkness – the plant was some sort of long, hanging shrub. Stretching as far as I possibly could, I swung my body back and forth, but the shrub was still too far away. I stopped. I had to stay calm. I waited a moment, then reached out again. Still my fingers were clutching at air.

  I was breathing hard now, and I didn’t know if this was from panic or exhaustion.

  What did I do now?

  I looked down.

  It was the stupidest thing I could have done. There was just darkness and far, far below a tiny winding string of silver, which was, of course, the river. One wrong move, one twitch of a muscle, and I would fall to my death.

  There was only one thing I could do and I had to do it now, before my fingers went numb.

  In one final, desperate leap, I swung my body out across the cliff face and at the last moment I let go of the ledge and reached for the shrub.

  For a fraction of a second I was in mid-air holding on to nothing. Then my hand – thank goodness – closed around the plant and somehow it took my weight. Gasping for breath, I pulled myself up. I could hear the roots of the shrub tearing, but I’d found a foothold and I hoisted myself up until I was able to get hold of the ledge that the shrub was growing out of. There was also a small pine tree there and I’d just got my arm round the trunk when a gust of wind roared along the rock face and pulled hard at my back. I clung to the trunk.

  Slowly the wind eased off and at last I could breathe again.

  I knew then that I must have a guardian angel.

  I set off once more on the climb. My nerves were better now that I’d chanced all and won. Soon I was back to my old rhythm: right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot… But I couldn’t shake the thought that if the wind had come a minute earlier, I would’ve been a mangled heap at the bottom of the gorge.

  When I finally scrambled over the top of the cliff onto the ledge, I discovered that Lars and Åse were already at the top. But Freddie was still some way down the cliff. I must have overtaken him at some point. If I’d found that climb hard, how on earth was Freddie getting on?

  Lars and I took the climbing rope, tied it to a larch tree and dropped the end over the edge near to Freddie. It only went down a short way, but at least it reached him.

  After that, I lay down flat on my stomach with my face over the edge of the cliff and whispered encouraging things to Freddie.

  At last, he was near enough to reach my hand and I leaned over, grabbed him under the arms and hauled him up onto the ledge. He lay there for a minute, pale and shaky and out of breath.

  “It’ll be easier when we go back,” I said. “We can belay down the rope for the first part.”

  Freddie nodded. He flexed his hand. “My metacarpi are stiff.”

  “Your what?”

  “My fingers,” said Freddie. “They’re stiff. And my toes. I need a little chocolate. Medicinal purposes. I have to soften the ligaments. Otherwise I might have problems using those bolt cutters.”

  “What garbage!” snorted Åse. “You’re not going to be playing a piano sonata. You’re only opening a gate.”

  All the same, she delved into her pocket, brought out a block of chocolate and broke off eight squares. “Let’s all have some,” she said.

  The chocolate did cheer us up. We took off our packs and ate it really sl
owly – as if it were our very last meal. And it was so delicious!

  We were still about a kilometre away from the plant, but the two huge pale buildings of Vemork stood out against the mountainside.

  The ledge we were sitting on was about three metres wide and skirted the side of the mountain. Along its length ran a small railway track that carried trolleys of coal from Rjukan village up to the power station. All we had to do now was follow this track. But there remained one big problem: mines.

  This smooth, level path was just too good to be true. Surely the Germans would have laid tripwires and mines in the area all around, just as they’d done on the slopes above the power station? And, of course, there was only one way to find out… We had to test the ground.

  “I’ll go ahead,” said Lars.

  I looked at him, sitting there all stony-faced. I didn’t know quite what Lars’s demons were, but I was sure he didn’t expect to come back from this mission. In fact I suspected he was hoping not to survive.

  “Thanks, Lars,” I said, because it was still a very brave offer on his part. “But I’m doing this bit. You can’t be spared. Nobody else really knows their way round the Hardanger like you do. This part is my job.” And I gave him a look that said, This isn’t up for discussion.

  I handed Åse the rucksack with the explosives, then I set off down the track. Although I was trying not to show how scared I was, at first I walked very carefully and lightly. But after a while I realized this was slowing me up too much and I had to walk more normally. If a mine was to blow my head off it’d do so anyway, whether I was on tiptoe or not.

  So I walked on in the moonlight, with the hum of the plant buzzing in my head. The wind was rising, pulling the snow from the boughs of the fir trees. Everything felt a little unreal – as if I was watching myself from afar. I wondered what I should be thinking about, when every step might be my last and I decided to rest my mind on good things: an Errol Flynn film I saw on my last birthday at home, Mother’s scones, games of tennis in the summer, a fishing trip in Lake Tarlebøvatnet with Father. But that, of course, brought me back to the mystery of the little button compass and how it had ended up with Lars.