North Strike

by John Harris

  ‘We might pick up a puffer in one of the fjords,’ Magnusson said, ‘and go by sea.’

  ‘Puffer?’ Campbell looked puzzled. ‘What’s a puffer?’

  ‘Some Scot must ha’e first called them that,’ Willie John explained. ‘After the steam puffers o’ the Western Isles. Two-masted, high in the bow an’ wi’ a big wheelhouse aft. They make a noise like a traction engine gaein’ uphill. You can hear ’em for miles but for ability to keep the sea there iss naethin’ ta beat ’em.’

  Trying to decide what to do was almost as difficult in the confusion that surrounded the situation as doing it. It was clear that somewhere to the south Norwegian forces were still resisting the Germans, and that young men were trying to reach them by every means at their disposal. A few others were trying to reach Narvik, expecting the Allies to land there at any moment, but there appeared to be no movement at all from the men at Hinnöy, and from the stories that found their way across the fjord it seemed the Allies were still trying to make up their minds what to attack.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Magnusson said in a fury. ‘All they’ve got to do is walk in and take the bloody place!’

  They decided to wait one more day, especially as the injured men seemed to need a little more time. It wasn’t easy, tempers were frayed by the disasters and there was no unity to bind them together, no discipline, none of the years of working together, officer and man, that held a ship’s company together in times of stress. They were only half a dozen regular Navy men, a group of Norwegians, a half-mad Polish boy who could only mouth thoughts of vengeance, and a girl.

  That afternoon, Magnusson stood outside the barn staring towards the north. The sky was the grey-yellow colour of mud and it looked heavy, as though sagging with the weight of snow. The wind was thin with the dampness that again spoke of more snow, and there was the same indefinable smell in the air they’d encountered as they’d arrived in Vestfjord for the first time.

  Stamping on the frozen ground behind him, Willie John swung his arms, slapping his back, and blew on his fingers. His breath hung like smoke about his head.

  ‘I hope tae Christ it doesnae block the roads,’ he said.

  ‘’Tis going tae be awful hard gettin’ south as it iss.’

  That night they received a message from the Egge family that a group of Norwegian naval officers were intending to board one of the trawlers and head for England with as many British survivors as could be mustered. Many men from the destroyers sunk in the first battle had hidden in the woods north of the town and were hoping to cross into Sweden, and the Norwegians had by now learned of the loss of Oulu. It was decided that Magnusson and Annie should contact them at the Egge house, and they begged a lift from the farmer, hoping to make arrangements for everyone to be picked up at Djupvik.

  It was clear as soon as they reached Narvik that Allied hesitation was giving the Germans time to re-establish themselves. According to the radio, other troops were already heading north from Oslo to link up with the troops from Trondheim who, in their turn, were probing still further north to contact the men in Narvik.

  They waited at the Egge house, nervous and impatient for the arrival of the Norwegian officers from the trawler.

  ‘If they can’t get away, they intend to blow her up and die with her,’ Fru Egge said.

  Annie turned to her mother. ‘What in God’s name for?’

  ‘It will be a gesture.’ Fru Egge flapped her hands unhappily. ‘To show the Germans we won’t tolerate them here. They told us so.’

  Annie glanced at Magnusson. ‘If they told you, they probably told others, too, and the others might have included a few Quislings.’ She beat her fist against the palm of the other hand. ‘They’d have done better to escape into Sweden or join the forces in the north.’

  They sat in silence waiting; as the time began to drag on, Magnusson grew worried. There had been treachery in Norway and not all Norwegians were as patriotic as the Egges. Occupied but unsubdued, Narvik seethed like a cauldron, and insecure, their commander killed in the British attacks and with no hope of reinforcement, the Germans were quick on the trigger. Had they also, in self-defence, recruited their Quislings and set them to work?

  The charred buildings and the wrecked shipping in the waters of the bay looked dark and ugly against the snow. Staring through the windows, Magnusson couldn’t sit still, and in the end they decided, for their own reassurance and for the safety of the Egge family, that they could stay no longer but must see for themselves what was happening.

  People were waiting by the station, and Magnusson eyed the railway line as it swept eastwards along the coast. Beyond the hills it rushed in and out of tunnels and cuttings and over high bridges to the Swedish frontier only twenty miles away. Just outside the town, there were half a dozen canvas-covered freight cars. They didn’t look like iron ore cars and he wondered if they carried guns because he’d heard the Swedes had been forced to allow the Germans to pass through their territory. In front of them was a locomotive damaged in the battle, festooned with bizarre ice sculptures fashioned from leaking steam by the intense cold.

  The Germans seemed to be everywhere, and in a vicious mood. As Annie and Magnusson reached the Ore Pier, a launch full of soldiers was just leaving. It headed out into the harbour, trailing an arrowhead of wake across the black water, towards a trawler at the entrance to Herjangsfjord. As they watched they saw the red, white and blue flag of the Norwegian Navy break out at the trawler’s masthead. A small crowd of Norwegians, hatred in their eyes, stood along the waterfront; then German military police, metal gorgets at their throats, started pushing them away.

  ‘Go home,’ the sergeant in charge kept saying. ‘Go home.’

  The Norwegians began to move reluctantly. Only a few stopped to argue and the gun butts came up at once to jab at kidneys and shoulders. It was obviously not a good time to be in Narvik, and Magnusson decided to leave and try again another day.

  They were just turning to go when a shot rang out. There was a cry and a loud ‘Aaah’ that came like a sigh from the crowd along the waterfront, then the high-pitched wail of misery from a woman. Magnusson reached out for Annie’s hand, but she darted away to find out what was happening. It seemed ages before she returned, ashen-faced and with blood on her hands.

  ‘So much for their protection,’ she said. ‘They have shot a boy who argued with them. They know the trawler’s going to escape. They’ve sent troops out to her.’

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the crowd. The launch was alongside the trawler now, white against her dark hull. As the Germans stood upright to climb aboard, there was a crackle of shots and two of the soldiers toppled into the fjord. Immediately, the launch pulled away, circling to pick up the wounded men. The growing dusk was lit up by flashes as more weapons were discharged from the trawler’s decks. The Germans were firing back now, and one of the Norwegians leaning over the bridge rail fell into the water.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Annie said. ‘Why did they learn about her today? Tomorrow we could have been clear.’

  The launch was now laying off at a distance, the men in it clearly uncertain what to do. Then they saw movement where the railway from the iron ore depot circled the headland at Framnes. A gun was being pulled into position by a lorry and they could distinctly hear the shouts of the crew across the water. The first shell burst on the shore of Herjangsfjord just beyond the trawler and they saw the acid-white flash among the trees. A groan went up from the crowd, and men could be seen running along the deck; then the Norwegian flag jerked down and fell to the deck.

  ‘So much for their resistance,’ Annie said contemptuously. ‘Ten minutes! Until the first shot was fired.’

  The launch moved in closer again as the flag came down, and they saw German soldiers scrambling to the deck of the trawler. A second launch left the quay and chugged across to join the first one, so that soon the trawler was swarming with Germans. Then, suddenly, the Norwegians began to break free and run. A few shots
were fired and two of them fell, but the rest were jumping into the water and swimming away as fast as they could. Almost immediately, there was a blinding flash and, as the thunder of the explosion came across the water to them, the trawler appeared to disintegrate. A huge cloud of smoke billowed out from the centre of the ship, brown and grey and streaked with the red of flames. She appeared to swell as the mast went straight up like a flung javelin, and as it flopped back into the fjord, it smashed down on the swimming men and crushed the German launch, which was struggling to get clear.

  ‘They did it,’ Magnusson breathed. ‘They blew her up!’

  The blast across the water whipped at their faces and plucked at their clothing. Debris was dropping in a tremendous shower, steel bitts, part of the deckhouse, spars, tangled rigging, the windlass and the anchor winch. Smaller objects whirled through the air like ashes from a volcano, and bodies, both Norwegian and German, floated among the wreckage.

  The remains of the trawler were already blazing like a torch and they could hear the roar and crackle of flames, their glow reflected on the watching faces, picking out the planes and angles of chins and cheekbones and foreheads. Launches and ships’ boats, hurriedly dispatched from all parts of the harbour, were hovering at a safe distance, afraid of further explosions; of the men who had jumped overboard only a few were still swimming.

  Annie turned and buried her face in Magnusson’s coat. One arm round her, he stared at the blazing hulk that was now settling lower in the fjord and tilting over to one side. Then slowly, like a tired animal, the trawler finally lay over on her beam and slipped beneath the water. As she vanished, there was nothing to be seen beyond a rising column of steam and a few floating scraps of burning wreckage.

  They turned silently and were just heading for Beisfjord when a commandeered lorry appeared, full of steel-helmeted men with iron faces and hard eyes, quite different from the shocked and defeated troops they’d seen not very long before. The lorry careered past them, sliding on the icy surface, and stopped across the road. As they shuffled to a halt in the snow, Magnusson was surprised to feel Annie’s hand slip into his as she pressed closer to him, and he realised that inside that tough little frame there were such emotions as fear, doubt and nervousness.

  ‘Nobody must leave Narvik!’

  The German sergeant was standing in front of them, his rifle raised and held across his chest. The people about them came to a stop, and the sergeant was joined by an officer who pointed towards the town.

  ‘Back,’ he said. ‘Back into the town!’

  Shoved, shouted at and threatened, they moved back like a lot of sheep as the Germans herded them into the square. There was a bus standing near the quay, an old battered yellow bus, its engine clattering. The Germans were forcing the driver and passengers to get out and join the crowd. Near the Ore Quay, more people were rounded up and all of them were driven through the town until they reached the Realskole.

  Packed inside, some sitting on the desks and others on the floor, surrounded by the childish chalked pictures of ships on the walls, Magnusson found himself still alongside Annie. It was bitterly cold, and he saw her looking at him, her face drawn with strain.

  ‘What are they going to do to us?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows. Shoot us all, probably.’

  He had meant it as a joke, but her frightened glance made him realise for the first time just how much the work she’d been doing must have taken out of her.

  ‘Not you,’ he said.

  ‘They might if they find out about me. What about you, Magnusson? You are a British sailor and you are wearing civilian clothes. They could accuse you of spying, too.’

  For a while they sat in silence, and as he realised she was still holding his hand, he sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry about your brother and your cousin,’ he said.

  She said nothing for a moment, then her shoulders moved, almost as if it were something she’d expected. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am sorry too.’

  After a while, they discovered why they were there. Somebody talked to the sentries at the door and the story sped round the room.

  ‘They are trying the men from the trawler,’ they heard. ‘They’ve set up a court in the mayor’s office. They are to be shot.’

  Soon afterwards, the Germans ordered them to their feet, and they were pushed outside. After the shelter of the schoolroom, the wind seemed to penetrate their clothing and the cold gnawed at their very bones. There was a warehouse near the quay with a flat brick wall, and they were forced to stand in a large semi-circular group facing it. As they waited, stamping their feet, a lorry arrived. Immediately, Annie’s hand slipped into Magnusson’s again, gripping it tightly.

  From the back of the lorry, seven Norwegian naval officers, still in soaked uniforms, appeared. One of them had his arm tucked into his shirt as though it were broken, and he looked grey-faced and sick with pain. Another had a bandage over his eye and round his head. They were all shaking with the cold. They were pushed roughly into a line against the wall and Magnusson heard Annie draw in her breath sharply. A German officer appeared from a car and stood near the line of men, reading out their names.

  ‘You are officers in the Royal Norwegian Navy,’ he said. ‘And you have been charged with rebellion. Having accepted German Wehrmacht rulings, you have been found guilty of rejecting them in that you attempted to escape with your ship and killed and wounded German troops. You have been properly tried by a German court martial, and have been found guilty. The sentence of the presiding officer is that you are to be shot to death at once. There is to be no appeal.’

  A low moan escaped from the crowd and several women began to weep. The men watched stony-eyed and, as Annie began to sob, Magnusson put his arms round her and pulled her towards him, hiding her eyes.

  German soldiers had been lined up in groups in front of the seven Norwegians. In a daze, Magnusson saw the German officer’s arm sweep down and heard the crash of the rifles. The Norwegians were flung against the wall, their chests covered with great splodges of blood. The man with his arm in a sling staggered back, his injured limb flung wide, the forearm and wrist hanging limply. Then, like the others, he slid down to a sitting position and toppled forward, leaving a smear of red down the dark brickwork of the wall.

  At the crash of the volley, Annie had cringed inside Magnusson’s arms, and he heard her cry of anguish. For a long time, after the thunder of the shots had died away, there was silence, in which Magnusson could hear the sobbing of women. Annie was shaking, her face buried deep in his coat.

  The German officer turned. ‘You may go,’ he said coldly. For a long time, the crowd stood silently, almost as though they didn’t understand, then one of the German soldiers pushed at the people at the end of the line, and they began to shuffle off, moving slowly, numbed by the cruelty and the ruthlessness of the execution.

  It was as they headed back towards Beisfjord a second time that Magnusson saw the bus. Annie seemed in a state of shock and she was crying softly.

  ‘If only people had listened,’ she was saying. ‘I knew the Germans would never come just as protectors.’

  The bus was still standing where it had been abandoned, small, old-fashioned, high-bodied and yellow. Not far away, the buildings were all wrecked where they had been hit by shells in the battle two days before, small wisps of smoke still rising from them. Heaps of steel, timber and concrete lay together and near them was another bus, charred to ruin, its tyres burned from the rims, the body blackened and twisted.

  ‘Look, Annie,’ Magnusson said.

  She brushed her hand across her eyes and stared at the little bus. ‘It goes to Bognes,’ she said wearily. ‘If the Germans allow it, of course. It’s a private bus and sometimes it doesn’t manage it and, after this, they’ll probably stop all services.’

  ‘Why don’t we take it?’ Magnusson urged. ‘The Germans are busy just now. They’ve got a town full of resentful people in a murderous mood. They’d never notice if i
t disappeared. Come to that, neither would the driver. I expect he’s gone for a drink to steady his nerves. An hour from now it’ll be too late and tomorrow the Germans’ll be watching. They might even have patrols on the roads out of town to the south.’

  She stared at him with suddenly bright eyes.

  ‘We could be on the way to Trondheim before they discover it’s gone. We could leave it as soon as we see any hint of the Germans, and walk into Trondheim to pick up the train to Sweden.’

  Impulsively, she grasped his hand and squeezed it with both of hers.

  ‘Yes, Magnusson,’ she said eagerly. ‘Yes!’ She stared at him and drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll drive it. Up here everybody doubles for everybody else, I have driven a bus many times.’

  Slowly, they walked towards the old vehicle. Inside it was a basket of vegetables and the skinned carcass of a sheep, as if some farmer had been bringing them into town when the battle round the trawler had started.

  ‘Food, too,’ Magnusson said. ‘We could even sleep in it, if we took turns.’

  She gave him a sharp glance that was full of excitement and daring.

  ‘The key is still in the dashboard,’ she said.

  Glancing about them, they saw that no one was looking in their direction and quietly, without fuss, they climbed aboard. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Annie found the choke and pulled it.

  ‘I think,’ she said quietly, ‘that it is the type that has to be wound up.’

  Magnusson was startled, thinking of clockwork; then it dawned on him that she meant the bus had to be cranked.

  Climbing out, feeling like a burglar rushing from the scene of a crime into a street full of policemen, he went to the front of the bus. The starting handle was attached to the engine, pushed from the ratchet with a spring. Shoving it in, he looked up and Annie nodded.

  It was icy to his touch, biting at his fingers. Giving it a tentative swing, he found there was no response. Guiltily he glanced round and swung again. Again there was no response. This time, in a fury, feeling that God had it in for him, he yanked with all his strength. As he did so, his foot slipped on the snow and he went down on one knee and banged his elbow on the fender with numbing force. But as he picked himself up he realised that the engine was ticking over.