The Winter Fortress

by Neal Bascomb

  When Einar returned to Lake Møs in the middle of May, German troops had moved into his brother’s hotel by the dam, turning his sibling into their servant and appropriating his stores of food and beer. The soldiers made a mess; judging by the scuff marks on the walls, they must have slept in their boots.

  In some ways, life returned to normal. Einar took a job with Norsk Hydro as a dam-construction supervisor, and he lived again at his childhood home. He dated a young woman named Gudveig from Bergen. They had met through his childhood friend and Norsk Hydro colleague Olav Skogen, who also was from Rjukan. Skogen was seeing Gudveig’s sister. The four skied together and took bicycle rides through the countryside.

  But there was another side to Skinnarland and Skogen. Since the invasion, they had set themselves to undermining the Germans in any way they could as part of the area’s nascent Milorg cell. Skogen was one of its leaders, and Skinnarland stored arms and organized a group of ten reliable men around Lake Møs. He traveled back and forth from Oslo and obtained a mimeograph machine for use by an illegal newspaper. He connected with the Oslo Milorg cell about setting up a wireless radio near his house and even dug a room out from underneath the floor of a mountain cabin in which to maintain it. But no set was found for him.

  In the fall of 1941 a local Rjukan boy arrested by the Gestapo turned informant in the hope of better treatment. He told agents that Skinnarland was hiding weapons in a cabin on the edge of Lake Møs. They arrested Skinnarland but were able to find only a common radio, albeit illegal, at the cabin. Nonetheless, he was held for ten days in Rjukan jail. Upon his release, he was more determined than ever to aid the cause.

  At the start of 1942, Skinnarland again traveled to Oslo, this time to ask Milorg’s signals chief if he could be sent to Britain to train as a radio operator and bring back a radio set with him. He was provided with fake papers under the name Einar Hansen. In early March he told his family that he was heading into the mountains on an extended hunting trip. Instead he left for Flekkefjord, a port town west of Kristiansand, where a British boat was scheduled to pick him up. It was while traveling to Kristiansand that he’d injured his leg.

  In Flekkefjord, he met with two other members of the resistance: curly-headed Odd Starheim and his sidekick, Andreas Fasting. The son of a ship’s captain and one in his own right, young Starheim was already a legend in resistance circles. Soon after the German invasion he had commandeered a small boat, which he named The Viking, and had gone to Scotland, where he became one of Martin Linge’s first recruits. He returned to Norway and, over the past year and a half, had developed an extensive intelligence network in the southern part of the country that informed on German naval movements and fortifications. Now on the run from the Gestapo, Starheim needed to escape the country, and he was charged by the underground to take Skinnarland with him. On meeting in Flekkefjord, Starheim told Skinnarland that their transport had been canceled because of storms on the North Sea. They needed to find another way. Given the hunt for Starheim, crossing into Sweden was out of the question. It was Starheim who came up with the idea of hijacking a steamer. Over games of chess, the three hatched their plan to hijack the Galtesund.

  But if Skinnarland was to be of any use in overtaking the vessel, he would first need to have his leg attended to by a doctor.

  Two days after his surgery, on March 14, Skinnarland boarded the Galtesund in Kristiansand for the trip to Flekkefjord. On the overnight journey, with walking stick in hand, he scouted out the steamer’s passengers, crew, cargo, and coal supply. There was only a single passenger, a man traveling to Stavanger, farther up the coast, to attend a christening. No Germans. Twenty-two crew. Knudsen, the captain, was a burly old sea dog who was unlikely to look kindly on someone attempting to take his ship. The Galtesund held a typical cargo for these coastal waters, including a couple of crates of Norwegian tobacco. The coal bunkers contained sixty tons, more than enough to reach Scotland. When the steamer arrived in Flekkefjord the next morning, Skinnarland disembarked to meet up with his fellow hijackers.

  A few hours later, he walked slowly back toward the harbor. On his suit lapel, as before, he wore a Nasjonal Samling badge—just another Norwegian in line with the new order, like the local girls on the arms of German soldiers, promenading in the brisk early evening.

  The revolvers tucked inside his suitcase told a different story.

  He crossed through a small cobblestone square lined with bright green and yellow wooden houses and then moved onto the quay, where stevedores were loading the last cargo onto the Galtesund. Its white-painted hull settled more deeply into the water.

  Boarding the steamer, Skinnarland made his way to the cabin in which he had stayed the previous night. Half an hour later, Starheim and Fasting arrived at the quay, then proceeded to the deck. At 5:00 p.m., on the third and final ring of the ship’s bells, the Galtesund shook to life under their feet, its propellers cutting through the black water. Belching black smoke from its funnels, the steamer chugged away from the dock.

  Once the vessel was clear of the sheltered harbor, Skinnarland left his cabin, his two loaded revolvers tucked into his belt and several lengths of rope around his waist. He was nervous. Very nervous. Starheim was practiced at this kind of action, but Skinnarland had no training and feared he would make a mess of things.

  At 6:20 p.m. he met Starheim outside the saloon. They were about to open the door, to enter and seize the captain, when the ship’s second mate came up from behind. He asked Starheim to produce his ticket. Skinnarland took his hand off the saloon-door handle, not sure what to do. “I’m afraid I’ve arrived too late,” Starheim said innocently. “So I thought I would pay onboard.”

  The second mate led him off to pay the fare. Minutes later, Skinnarland and Starheim were back at the saloon. They eased open the door, Starheim first, Skinnarland second, each with two drawn revolvers. “Hands up,” Starheim ordered. Only the captain and the passenger heading to Stavanger were inside. Neither responded until Starheim repeated himself. Then he said, “We’re officers of the Norwegian Navy, and we’re not alone; at this instant my men are seizing the engine room. I’m now assuming command of this ship.”

  The captain protested, but Starheim cut him off. Soon Skinnarland had the captain and passenger tied up with ropes. The two hijackers then headed to the bridge. The first mate tried to make it out a side door, but Skinnarland, more sure of himself now, prevented the escape. The pilot let go of the helm, but Starheim ordered him to maintain course. Below deck, Fasting secured the engine room with a pair of stokers he had recruited to the cause, and before long the Galtesund was theirs, without a shot having been fired.

  Now they had to survive the voyage to Aberdeen. Starheim wanted to set a course directly west, but they were nearing a coastal fortress manned by the Germans, and the pilot warned them that they should proceed on their planned course at least until the sun set. If they were not seen heading to the next scheduled stop, the Germans might suspect something. After dark, they would have until the break of the following day before their absence was noted.

  Starheim followed his advice, and once darkness fell the pilot finally headed away from the coastline. Shortly after, as arranged by Starheim when they were still in Flekkefjord, a compatriot sent a wireless message to London. “We have captured a coast ship of 600 tons . . . We make for Aberdeen. Please give aircraft escort because we expect attack from German aircraft tomorrow morning.”

  Through the night, he and Skinnarland remained in the bridge, drinking coffee to stay awake. At dawn, as a fog rolled over the sea, they heard the rumble of a plane in the distance. Fearing it might be a German search aircraft, they prepared for the worst. Everyone put on safety vests and the lifeboats were prepared. Starheim scoured the sky with binoculars while also trying to discern whether the plane’s engine sounded British or German. In a momentary break in the fog, he spotted the silver and black Nazi cross on the tail. Then the fog blanketed them again—saving their lives.

 
; At 2:00 p.m. the sky finally cleared, and the hijackers paced the bridge, knowing that the ship was again an open target. Then Fasting spotted another plane on the horizon. The red, white, and blue of the RAF brought cheers and sighs of relief. The seaplane circled over the steamer, and Starheim had the second mate signal: “Galtesund making for Aberdeen and wants pilot.” A moment passed, and the plane signaled back: “Congratulations.” They had an escort. The following morning, an armed trawler from Aberdeen led them through the minefields to port.

  To Skinnarland’s surprise, he was sent immediately to London by overnight train.

  Upon exiting the Baker Street Tube station, Leif Tronstad headed into Chiltern Court, a block of flats that rose above the London Underground tracks below. The brass plate beside the arched door read INTER-SERVICES RESEARCH BUREAU. It was the kind of ominous name that would have been appreciated by H. G. Wells, one of the building’s first residents and author of The World Set Free, a novel published in 1914 that predicted atomic bombs “killing and scorching all they overtook.” The “Bureau” was actually a cover name for the SOE, and Chiltern Court one of several buildings along Baker Street that housed its staff.

  Tronstad walked down the long hallway, then let himself in to the Norwegian section’s offices. Colonel Wilson had asked him to come meet one of the Galtesund hijackers.

  Since his first uncertain weeks in London, Tronstad had made himself an indispensable actor in the Norwegian struggle against Germany. At an officer’s training course in Scotland, he earned his captain’s rank, some sore muscles, and a close connection with the men who would fight on the ground. He authored an exhaustive report for the Ministry of Economic Warfare, which oversaw the SOE, on the Norwegian industries supplying the Nazi war machine, and this had helped identify prime targets. He sat on two high-level government committees to chart out the future of the Norwegian resistance and its partnership with Britain. He recognized the importance of Milorg, and this secured him the friendship of Oscar Torp and Wilhelm Hansteen, the Norwegian Army’s commander in chief. By spring 1942, as leader of the Norwegian high command’s Section IV, tasked with intelligence, espionage, and sabotage, Tronstad was at the center of the secret war against the Nazis in his homeland.

  Although at a remove from the struggle on the ground, Tronstad maintained good intelligence on the breadth of the Nazi horrors. After the failed Lofoten raid, there had been massive reinforcements of German troops, bringing the number to 250,000 and unleashing untold privation on the people who were forced to feed and house them. Gestapo torturers were known to have stomped on the torsos of prisoners, locking them in dark cells for weeks—and some of those prisoners had taken their own lives rather than betray what they knew. Close friends in the Trondheim resistance had been murdered in cold blood. Tronstad tried to keep his spirits up, firm in his belief that Norway would soon win its freedom. At the start of the new year, he wrote in his diary, “No sacrifice will be too great to achieve this goal.”

  His own family was not untouched by the suffering. For months Tronstad had heard no news. Then he learned that soon after Bassa and the children had returned to Trondheim, the Germans seized their house and financial assets. Forced into the streets, the family traveled to Oslo and, with the help of a family friend, set up house in Høvik, seven miles west of the city center. The Gestapo investigator, Fehmer, took Bassa in for interrogation, keeping her overnight at Victoria Terrasse. He grilled her over her husband’s disappearance, and she responded with the letter Tronstad had written to her explaining why he had left. In the morning, Fehmer let her return home but instructed her to report regularly to him, thus keeping up the intimidation. Tronstad prayed each day that he would see her and his children again soon and that they would understand why he had needed to be away from them at this difficult time.

  Tronstad greeted the new arrival from Norway waiting for him in Wilson’s office. If what Wilson and Starheim reported about Einar Skinnarland was true, then this construction supervisor from Lake Møs was their man, and he would be returning immediately to Norway.

  “There are two questions we want to ask you,” Tronstad said to Skinnarland. “To begin with, do you think that you have been missed by now?”

  “I don’t think so,” Skinnarland replied. “I let it be known that I was going into the hills on a hunting trip.”

  Tronstad looked to Wilson, who followed with the next question. In three months of working together, the pair had quickly grown to trust and understand each other. “Are you prepared with what training we can give you to parachute back to the Hardangervidda before you’re missed? We want to be kept posted about the situation at Vemork.” Skinnarland nodded. “I’m afraid,” Wilson continued, “that you’re tackling a very tough assignment. There’s not an hour to lose. And I can’t promise you any immediate help. Others—some of whom you may know—will follow later. Quite frankly, we’re greatly worried about what’s going on at Norsk Hydro.”

  Wilson and Tronstad detailed the increase in production at the plant. They needed to know everything Skinnarland could find out about German activities at Vemork, any intended use of its heavy water, as well as details on the plant’s security and staff. Skinnarland once again committed to the assignment.

  Now that he had positioned himself to hear about what operations were planned for Norway, Tronstad knew that a bombing run on Vemork had been dismissed by the British Air Ministry the previous December. The SOE’s Clairvoyant operation, which aimed to cripple the supply of power to industries of German importance, had gone further into the planning stages, with Vemork one of the operation’s six targets. A team was assembled, led by Rjukan local Poulsson, to be dropped into the area to set out lights in the Vestfjord Valley. These lights would lead bombers to the plant at night. Poulsson also had instructions to sink the ferries on Lake Tinnsjø that served as the main transportation link between Rjukan and the outside world. Tronstad argued against such drastic, far-ranging, and dangerous attacks on critical elements of Norwegian infrastructure, and ultimately, a few weeks before, the operation had been winnowed down to hitting a single hydroelectric plant on the western coast, where aluminum was produced.

  Before Skinnarland’s arrival, Tronstad and Wilson had decided to send Poulsson and his team to the area in April to launch a guerrilla organization that would sabotage targets and establish independent wireless contact directly with London. Skinnarland could prepare for their arrival and, given his extensive contacts at Norsk Hydro, and the fact that nobody knew he had gone to Britain, return to work and act as an intelligence agent on the inside.

  After their meeting, Tronstad took his new recruit out for a drink at a local pub. He was impressed by Skinnarland’s willingness to serve, no matter what was asked of him—and a lot was being asked of him—with no explanation of why Vemork’s heavy water might be of such importance. Norway needed more “young heroes” like him, Tronstad wrote later that night in his diary.

  On the clear, moonlit night of Saturday, March 28, barely two weeks after Skinnarland left Norwegian waters, a British Whitley bomber, known as the “flying barn door” for its boxy rectangular fuselage and broad wings, neared the Norwegian coastline. Its twin Rolls-Royce engines made for an awful racket, and the aircraft rattled and shook as it crawled through the sky toward its target point north of Lake Møs. Inside, a freshly enlisted sergeant in Kompani Linge, Einar Skinnarland, awaited his drop. His white padded jumpsuit, a sleeping bag, and a thermos of tea kept him warm in the frigid air. Beside him was a large steel tube packed tightly with two Sten guns, fourteen Luger pistols, 640 rounds of ammunition, and twenty fighting knives. A smaller container held some spare clothes, fake papers, 20,000 Norwegian kroner, a pair of pistols, a camera with enough film for eight hundred pictures, and a few other items, which were listed in the inventory as “presents for members of his organization.”

  They crossed into Norway without incident: no flak from the German batteries, and the two Whitley gunners quiet at their posts
. In an hour, maybe less, Skinnarland would have to plunge through the belly of the fuselage into the darkness and hope his silk parachute opened above him.

  He was terrified.

  Over the course of the previous week, he had been given the sparest of instruction. Most SOE agents sent behind enemy lines underwent at least ten weeks of intensive training, from preliminary courses at Stodham Park, to paramilitary work in Meoble, to “finishing school,” where they were taught everything there was to know about being a secret commando. Skinnarland spent two days at STS 52, the specialized school for radio operators, where he was given a crash course in using a wireless set and sending and receiving messages in code. From there he went to STS 51, an airport outside Manchester ringed by a large park, for parachute training. This usually took place over the course of seven days; Skinnarland got three. At the entrance to STS 51 two large posters hung on the wall. The first warned troops arriving in enemy territory not to think of themselves as heroes. The other advised that it did not matter how one jumped from a plane, Mother Nature would see that one ended up on land. “How you are received by her is entirely up to you.” On the first day, he practiced forward and backward somersaults on mats, then he was hoisted up on a trapeze to practice the same while falling from a height.

  He was told by the master sergeant that with a parachute one did not float gently to the earth like a feather. One hit the ground like a stone. Paratroopers unable to quickly transfer vertical motion to horizontal motion broke bones—usually a leg but sometimes also an arm or a few ribs. The school’s infirmary was filled with proof of this, should any be required.

  On his second day, Skinnarland stood on a wooden platform several hundred feet high, which was attached to a stationary balloon; some likened it to a “dinghy in the high seas.” A parachute strapped to his back, he dropped through a hole in the center of the platform. A seventy-five-foot, stomach-in-the-throat free fall was halted by the abrupt opening of the parachute. Skinnarland landed hard, doing his already bum left leg no favors. On his final day, he successfully jumped—twice—from an actual plane. “He showed great keenness,” his instructor wrote in his notes, though “his training was rushed.”