The Winter Fortress

by Neal Bascomb

  Now, sitting in silence inside the Halifax, the six men looked to their dispatcher for the sign they were nearing the drop. They drank tea to stay warm. Two more hours passed.

  The plane zigzagged across the Vidda. Its pilot relayed to Rønneberg that he could not yet see any signal from their reception party. A scattering of low clouds had come across the sky, and fog hugged the valleys. The Halifax veered back toward the coast to allow its navigator to get a new bearing; then they returned to the drop zone. Out his starboard window, Haukelid saw Lake Langesjå. The dispatcher gave the call for them to prepare to jump, and the hatch in the fuselage floor opened. A six-minute warning was called.

  But no signal to jump followed. The navigator was not able to spot the drop site. Haukelid wanted to go regardless. Rønneberg did too. The Vidda passed below them. They urged the pilot that they would jump blindly and “sniff our way to the dance floor,” but he would not allow it, fearing that they were too far from Lake Store Saure. Wind gusted through the hole, freezing the men stiff. Still the Halifax continued to circle.

  After midnight, they were told that the plane was running low on fuel and needed to go back to Britain. It felt like a crater was opening in each of their hearts. To return, on the brink of action in their homeland . . . they simply could not resolve themselves to it.

  Suddenly, there was a burst of antiaircraft fire. The sky around the plane lit up with what looked like sparks. The Halifax banked sharply from left to right, trying to avoid the barrage, throwing the Gunnerside team about in the fuselage. The plane was hit in a wing and rocked violently. One of the engines burst into flames and then cut out. As the cascade of shells continued, the Halifax corkscrewed. Another engine died.

  Then all was silent but for the din of the remaining two engines. They had escaped. The Halifax continued over the North Sea, limping home.

  That night, on a hilltop overlooking the northern end of Lake Store Saure, Einar Skinnarland cranked hard on the hand generator he had rigged to the Eureka in place of their dead battery. His arms ached, and he was bone-weary after skiing seventy miles in three days to retrieve the generator—returning just in time. An hour before, the yellow moon still visible in the sky, they had heard an airplane cross overhead. Poulsson and Kjelstrup marked out an L shape with flashlights on the lake, but there was no drop. Soon after, a freezing fog descended over the Vidda. If the plane returned, the radio beacon was now the only chance the navigator would find them, and the hand generator was the only way to power it.

  While Helberg listened at the headset, Skinnarland rotated the handle. At 3:00 a.m., after hours of waiting, the team finally gave up hope that Gunnerside was coming. Frozen and exhausted, they returned to Fetter and collapsed.

  Over the next several days, storms blotted out the sun and blew across the Vidda. On January 28, Haugland deciphered the message from Tronstad they knew was coming: “Deeply regret weather conditions have made it impossible to land party. Do hope you can manage to keep going until next standby period February 11. Revert to ordinary sked [wireless schedule]. Take care.”

  Poulsson and his men knew what to do: survive, maintain radio contact, and collect the latest intelligence from Vemork. Their brief diary entries spoke to the constant, monotonous toil and the isolation of a winter that was far worse than any they had experienced before. From Poulsson: “Jan. 29—Skinnarland and Kjelstrup went off to Lie. Jan. 31—Helberg’s birthday. He celebrated with a trip to [recharge] the flat battery. Feb. 1—God-awful weather last night. Feb. 3—Helberg returned and brought some food. Feb. 6—Awful weather.” Skinnarland mostly jotted down the daily weather and the distances traveled. He recorded journeying from Fetter to Lake Møs to High Heaven and back again, over and over, often ten miles a day, every day, the wind always blowing—the only variation being in which direction it blew.

  At the approach of the next standby period, the men found themselves at breaking point—or beyond it. They had plenty of reindeer now, but their bodies were suffering from a lack of diverse nutrients. The cold, the constant effort, the tension—these all took their toll as well. One or another of them was always sick, whether from stomach trouble, fever, muscle strain, edema, or sheer exhaustion. One morning, away from Fetter, Skinnarland found himself almost unable to move his legs. He holed up where he was for two days until he got his strength back. Haugland, who roused himself from sleep in the middle of the night, every night, to radio Home Station, came down with a terrible flu. Still he kept up his schedule, tapping coded messages with dots and dashes by the dim light of a candle while his body shook from fever.

  On February 11, an icy, southwest wind cut across Fetter, followed by another blizzard that left them stuck in the cabin for days. At times their thoughts darkened. Unlike soldiers on the front, whose courage was tested in the immediacy of battle, the five men in Fetter were fighting the relentlessness of time and the faceless, remorseless Vidda. There were moments when they wanted to surrender. Enough waiting. Enough cold. Enough hunger and strain and wind and snow. The comfort of their families was only a day’s ski away. They could so easily go home, sleep in their old beds, eat at their parents’ tables.

  “What was the point of it all?” Poulsson wondered to himself as he huddled with the others in the cold, dark cabin. “What was the point of our suffering here in the mountains? What was the point of carrying out the job we had been ordered to carry out? Was there any chance that it might succeed and that we might escape alive?” He dared not give voice to these doubts. This made them no less real.

  15

  The Storm

  * * *

  AFTER THE FAILED January drop, Rønneberg insisted the Gunnerside men take a break from Gaynes Hall. While waiting for the new moon phase, they spent two weeks in a lonely stone cottage beside Loch Fyne, in western Scotland. Owned by a former intelligence officer and friend of Colonel Wilson, the place had no electricity and was accessible only by boat or on foot across the moors. Surrounded by mountains, it was the perfect training location—far rougher than the easy meadows around Cambridgeshire. The six took daily hikes with full packs to accustom their muscles to the terrain they would face on the Vidda. When not trekking, they fished for salmon and hunted seals and stags. Their time in Scotland both readied them physically and brought them closer together as a team.

  On February 12 they returned to Gaynes Hall. The window to depart was open, but if Norway was being ravaged by the same rain and strong winds as Britain, they would not be leaving any time soon. On their first day back, Tronstad met them to review the latest information from Swallow. They had feared that the long delay in launching the operation would give their enemy time to reinforce security at Vemork and that had now happened. “German troops have joined Austrians. Strength of guard at Vemork increased to thirty men,” reported Swallow. “Double post on the bridge. During air raid alarm complete state of readiness.” Since the Freshman disaster, the Germans had increased their garrisons at Lake Møs from ten to forty men; at Vemork, from ten to thirty; and at Rjukan, from twenty-four to two hundred. These reinforcements were mostly crack German soldiers. An antiaircraft battery had been set up at Lake Møs. A pair of D/F stations searched constantly for radio transmissions, and several Gestapo investigators were permanently on hand in Rjukan, sniffing out any trouble.

  The Germans had also laid additional minefields around Vemork, positioned searchlights throughout the grounds, and posted reinforcements at the top of the pipeline and on the suspension bridge. Patrols ran around the clock. The winter fortress was prepared for an all-out assault. All these heightened defenses signaled the importance of the atomic program to the Nazi war effort, yet recent intelligence Tronstad and Welsh had collected from their spies painted no more than a murky picture of the intensity with which they were pursuing a bomb.

  Paul Rosbaud, aka the Griffin, sent news that a member of Hitler’s inner circle, Albert Speer, had commandeered the German program, but Rosbaud was uncertain what this meant for its status.
He also highlighted Heisenberg’s intention to build a self-sustaining reactor despite the explosive fire that had ruined his most recent experiment.

  Harald Wergeland, the University of Oslo professor Tronstad had recruited as a spy, recounted a meeting with a German physicist who stated that their research was focused on building a power-generating machine, not a bomb. Any such weapon was a distant dream, Wergeland was told. Nicolai Stephansen, a Norsk Hydro executive who had recently escaped to Stockholm, backed this up. He delivered a report that chronicled the continued push for heavy water at Vemork. Yet from the conversations he had with German scientists at Norsk Hydro headquarters, the rise in production was “not to be utilized for bombs or other sorts of devilry connected with the war.”

  However, couriers also brought secret messages from Njål Hole, a twenty-nine-year-old Norwegian physicist. Tronstad had encouraged Hole to join the Physics Department at the Nobel Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to spy on any Germans who visited or corresponded with its staff. Among the institute’s noted scientists was Lise Meitner, whose close collaboration with Otto Hahn helped lead to his discovery of fission. In January, Hole sent a message, detailing recent attempts in Berlin to separate uranium isotopes with centrifuges. He also reported an outright statement by a German physicist involved in the program that his countrymen “intended to make uranium bombs.”

  Tronstad shared none of these conflicting reports with Rønneberg and his team. Vemork was the single identifiable target open to them in their effort to stop the Germans from obtaining a bomb that could annihilate a city in a single strike.

  Rain battered the roof of the truck as it came to a stop at the edge of Tempsford airport. The rear doors opened, and the Gunnerside team emerged in white camouflage suits and ski caps, their weapons at their sides. They crossed the tarmac to the Halifax, where Tronstad stood waiting. “Whatever you do, you must do the job,” he told them. “Whatever problems you hit against, think of the job. That is your main responsibility.” He wished them luck, and they clambered inside the fuselage. They took their seats, squeezed in beside all their gear, which included an arsenal of half-pound charges of Nobel 808, detonator cords, primers, delays, and pencil time-fuses. At 7:10 p.m. February 16, the plane rumbled down the runway and lifted off. Over the North Sea, the clouds disappeared, revealing the moonlit water below.

  After four days at Gaynes Hall, each bringing notice of “No operation today,” they had finally got the call to go, despite the weather. During the briefing with the aircrew, both Rønneberg and Haukelid made it clear that if the navigator was unable to spot their new drop site (Bjørnesfjord, one of the largest bodies of water on the Vidda and a short day’s journey from Swallow’s location at Fetter), they should be called into the cockpit to help. They also told the crew that, whether they spotted Swallow’s reception lights or not, sure of the position or not, they would be jumping that night. “We’ll find our way ourselves on the ground,” Rønneberg said.

  “Ten minutes,” the pilot called out just before midnight as the Halifax crossed over the Vidda. The team readied themselves to drop. At last, two minutes into the new day, the warning light switched to green. Rønneberg led the way, vanishing into the darkness and rushing wind. In quick and sure order, four of the remaining five men and several containers followed.

  Then Knut Haukelid edged toward the hole, his heart thumping in his chest. No matter how much he had practiced at STS 51, parachute school, his nervousness about jumping never abated. Twelve hundred feet of empty air was a lot to fall through, and it was impossible to know what dangers existed on the landing. One Kompani Linge team had parachuted down onto a lake, gone straight through the thin ice, and drowned. Every second he delayed put him farther from the others.

  Haukelid then saw that the cord that released his parachute was wrapped around the dispatcher’s leg. If he jumped, the dispatcher would come with him. Swiftly, Haukelid rose, shoved the man out of the way to free the line, and then, without further hesitation, leapt through the hole. A moment later his parachute opened, and with a sharp tug, he was momentarily lifted up by his shoulder straps. Sixteen other parachutes, attached to containers and packages of gear, floated down with him.

  He landed in a bank of snow, drawing his parachute together before it could sweep him away across the ground. One of their supply packages suffering this fate was carried through the snow for over a mile. They discovered it lodged in a crack of ice. A few feet to the left and the winds would have continued to carry its essential contents—three rucksacks and sleeping bags—too far away to find.

  They assembled quickly. Rønneberg asked Haukelid if he knew where they were. He had spent the most time on the Vidda. “We may be in China for all I know,” Haukelid joked, but given the expanse of flat terrain surrounded by hills, he suspected they had landed exactly on target. For a brief moment, he sat, cupping a ball of white snow in his hand, savoring his return to Norway at last.

  Then the team got to work. First they buried their parachutes. Then Storhaug, who was the strongest skier, scouted the area, while the five others set out to locate their containers. A short while later, Storhaug returned with the news that he had found a cabin a mile away. Over the next several hours, they collected their containers and placed them in a long trench they dug in the snow. They set rods around the depot to mark its location and used a map and compass to take a navigational bearing. By the time they finished, the steady drifts of snow had obscured almost all signs of their arrival.

  At dawn, they arrived at the empty cabin. To enter, they removed the doorframe with an ax. It was an expansive space, with a sleeping loft, a well-equipped kitchen, a fireplace, a sitting area, and a cord of cut birch. It would have been a nice place to hole up for a few days, but they didn’t have that kind of time: they would need to start soon for Fetter. After a short sleep, they returned to the depot and sorted out the weapons, equipment, explosives, and food they would need for the sabotage. When the deed was done, they would retrieve additional supplies for their retreat to Sweden.

  At 6:00 p.m. Rønneberg led them eastward, compass in hand. According to their maps, fifteen miles separated Bjørnesfjord and Lake Store Saure. They were carrying almost 65 pounds each on their backs and towing two toboggans of equipment, each weighing 110 pounds. Four miles into their journey, the winds picked up, blowing against their backs. Soon after, they were caught in a storm that surged across the high plateau with runaway force. With each slide forward of their skis, the westerly winds cut harder, and it became very difficult to see.

  Forging ahead, Rønneberg came across a twig sticking up from the snow. He thought it curious but continued, only to come across some underbrush a couple of hundred yards later. Had they been cutting across the Bjørnesfjord—a channel of water—there would be no such vegetation. Then the realization hit: they had not landed at the intended drop site.

  He stopped, and the others came alongside him. Through the sweeping winds, he yelled, “We have to turn back to the cabin so—” the rest was lost in the storm.

  He started back in the direction from which they had come. The others followed. Now they were headed straight into the gale, and ice and snow bit at their faces. The gusting wind made it almost impossible to breathe without the men shielding their mouths with their hands. Visibility cut to zero, and their incoming tracks erased, Rønneberg led them only by the needle of his compass.

  They pushed on, hauling their gear through the snow. The darkness was impenetrable, and the cold overwhelming. If they missed the cabin by even a few feet to either side, they would continue endlessly into the Vidda, into the arms of a tempest.

  The huge storm enveloped Fetter. Inside the cabin, the Swallow team and Skinnarland were worried. On the morning of the sixteenth, clear weather over the surrounding mountains had given them hope that Gunnerside would launch that night. Soon after, Haugland received the crack signal “211” on the wireless set—the prearranged code from Home Station that the d
rop was moving forward.

  Poulsson led his team to Bjørnesfjord. They set out the Eureka and prepared the lights, but besides hearing the distant drone of engines, there was no sign of the plane or the drop team.

  Throughout the night of the seventeenth, the blizzard continued, almost burying the cabin in snow. They talked of sending out a search party to Bjørnesfjord, but Poulsson thought better of it. It would be near impossible to find one’s own hands out in that weather. Further, he doubted that Gunnerside had dropped anywhere near the target. They would have to wait until the storm subsided. But with each passing hour, the blizzard seemed only to grow more angry and murderous. Huddled in their sleeping bags, the walls of Fetter thick with hoarfrost, they shivered and feared the worst.

  Rønneberg took the framed map down from the wall. A few hours earlier, he and his team had run blindly—seemingly miraculously—into the very cabin they were looking for. Stamping their frozen feet and trying to thaw their frostbitten faces, they were well aware that they had barely escaped the Vidda with their lives. As the others slept, Rønneberg took first watch, though it was hard to think there was any threat greater than the terrible cold and wind.

  Now, staring at the map by flashlight, Rønneberg tried to determine exactly where on the plateau they had landed. Starting at Bjørnesfjord, he ran his finger in a broadening circle, spying for terrain that matched their surroundings. Someplace flat, with a sizable lake, bordered by hills. On the third encirclement, his finger settled on Lake Skrykken, twenty miles northeast of their targeted drop and forty from Vemork.