by Neal Bascomb
Near midnight, Haugland returned to the cabin in a terrible temper. For several hours, he had dug through the snow at the dead drop, looking for the tin box with the message that Gunnerside was supposed to leave indicating how the mission went. And to think that all the while Haukelid and Kjelstrup had been here, in Skårbu. He was glad to see his friends, but he wanted to know what happened, why the delay, where was everybody else? “Don’t worry, Knut, keep calm,” Haukelid said, easing his feet onto the table. He paused. “It all went according to plan.” The news sent Haugland into a stomping, cheering dance joined by everyone in the cabin.
The men then began drafting a message to be sent to Home Station. Tronstad and Wilson would be desperate for news. Haugland tried to get a connection on the wireless transmitter but something must have broken when Skinnarland was transporting it. It would need to be fixed—and if one thing was certain, it was that a manhunt would soon be underway, if it had not begun already. “You can bet the Germans are in a fury,” Haukelid said. “They’ll search every corner of the mountains.”
“Those backcountry peasants and factory hands aren’t worth much up here in the wilds,” Kjelstrup said with contempt. Still, they would have to hide themselves—and well.
At noon on March 7, the fourth day of their march to Sweden, Rønneberg and his men were crouched in the corner room of a farmhouse, waiting for a skier to leave the area. The minutes ticked by slowly. They had watched the skier enter a cabin only thirty feet away from the farmhouse; he had remained inside for over an hour. Only when he’d left to go on his way did they relax. At 6:00 p.m. they moved on themselves—they had been waiting for night to fall before they crossed the long Hallingdal Valley.
The first stretch through the woods was easy enough. One man skied ahead of the group as a scout, making sure there was nobody else on their path. Then the pitch of the slopes became difficult to navigate. Rønneberg in particular struggled, his injured hand swelling badly. He said nothing to the others.
They came across a lumber road and followed it down to the valley floor, where they attempted to cross the Hallingdal River over patches of frozen ice. But the ice broke apart, and they were forced back to the bank. They found a boat, but to take it might have attracted attention, so they kept on going. Farther north, they spotted an ice bridge that ran all the way across the river and used it to cross.
They climbed the eastern wall of the valley, becoming lost in a labyrinth of lumber tracks, unable to get their bearings in the dense woods and darkness. They continued to zigzag upward until they reached the top of the valley’s eastern side. Then they skied for a couple of miles before calling a halt beside a lake. Their pants and boots soaked, exhausted after the night’s trek, they crawled into their sleeping bags.
Rønneberg had always known that the escape to Sweden would be a trial over many days. Five men in British uniform, heavily armed in case of a fight. Two hundred and eighty miles through an enemy-occupied country on alert for their presence. A punishing terrain of steep valleys and half-frozen bodies of water that none of them had traveled before except for short stretches. They were exposed to freezing temperatures and to storms, and when no empty cabins or farmhouses could be found, they had to sleep outdoors without an open fire. Their course steered clear of country inns, towns, and bridges, and far from anywhere that had a German garrison.
Back in Britain, Rønneberg had prepared exhaustively for what he foresaw as a ten-day, circuitous journey: they would travel northwest from the Vidda, across the Hallingdal Valley, then northeast until they circled the town of Lillehammer (a Nazi stronghold). From there, they had to cut southeast through three long valleys, after which they would finally reach the Swedish border. They brought Silva compasses and twenty-five topographical maps. But their maps and compasses could not predict thawed ice bridges, random patrols, Norwegian hunters, and blinding storms.
The next day, the winds quiet and the sky clear, they made good progress through low hills and gentle valleys. After sunset, the temperatures fell, and a stiff wind blew, clearing their path of snow. The bare ice beneath them ground at their skis. They found another unoccupied farmhouse, this one with stores of flour and bread. In the fireplace, they set alight the map that covered the area they had crossed through during the day—a ritual celebration.
On the sixth day, they set a quick pace, never venturing more than a few hundred yards from the planned route. They crossed paths, unavoidably, with two skiers on the bare mountainside and hoped that they were mistaken for German ski-troops, in their camouflage whites, weapons visible. Then they came to a lake that they needed to cross or take the long way around. Parts of the lake were thawed, but they found a path that they thought might work. Rønneberg edged his way out on the ice on his hands and knees, ax in hand. He inched forward, ears tuned to any snap or pop, testing the surface with the ax head. The ice was weak, but should hold their weight.
20
The Hunt
* * *
IN MØLLERGATA 19, Olav Skogen lay quietly on his bed, the rainbow of bruises across his body throbbing with pain. Even though nine days and nights had passed since his torturers last came, he was on constant alert for their return. He knew their routine: They came at night. A door opening. The shuffle of footsteps down the corridor. The rattle of keys. Then the light in his cell would flicker on, the door thrown open, and they would be upon him.
On their last visit, March 1, four of them had taken him to Victoria Terrasse. The shouting began immediately: What did he know about the underground resistance in Rjukan? “What are you trying to hide?” They were in a murderous mood, and Skogen knew that something significant was at play. When he told them he knew nothing, their leader, a burly bear of a man, pulled back his fist and punched him in the face. The blow knocked him from his stool onto the floor, where he lay half-conscious. As they pulled him back to his feet, he promised himself yet again: Never a word.
Then they fitted a screw clamp to his right shin. When it dug into his bone and still he did not answer their questions, they tightened another on his left shin. He tried not to scream as the clamps tore into his flesh but could not help the guttural sounds that escaped his mouth. Silently to himself, he repeated the words he’d heard Churchill deliver in a radio address before the German Blitz, as if the British prime minister were speaking directly to him: This is your finest hour. When the punishment of his legs did not persuade him to talk, his torturers inflicted the same on his arms, which swelled like balloons. Then he passed out. A bucket of water poured over his head had the intended effect of waking him up. Then they kicked him in his sides until he passed out again. As he crept back to consciousness, he overheard the four Germans speaking about Vemork, about how the plant had been blown up and the saboteurs had yet to be found. A faint smile flickered across Skogen’s face before another kick lifted him from the floor. When he next awoke, he was back in his cell.
That night, March 10, still suffering from his injuries—one eye half-shut and his limbs swollen—he heard the familiar footfall. His torturers reeked of alcohol. “Until now you had first-degree and second-degree torture,” one told him. If he did not cooperate, the third degree would commence: ripping off his fingernails and breaking his bones. Continued resistance would see him hanging from the hook on the wall until he spoke or died, whichever happened first. Skogen was silent. “You’re not fit to be examined tonight,” another said. “But soon you will be well enough, and then we’ll come for you one last time.”
Never a word.
“Operation carried out with 100 percent success. High-concentration plant completely destroyed. Shots not exchanged since Germans did not realize anything. Germans do not appear to know whence the party came or whither they disappeared.”
On March 10, Tronstad had his long-awaited confirmation from Swallow. More messages followed to Home Station over the course of the day: news of Falkenhorst’s inspection at Vemork; a multitude of arrests in Rjukan; the information that only th
Tronstad was moved by this last request. Here were men who had already risked so much, and they wanted to stay and do more, no matter the inevitable crackdown after Gunnerside. He and Wilson sent a message of their own: “Heartiest congratulations on excellent work done. Decision to continue your work approved. Greetings from and to all.” Two days later he delivered his report to the SOE at Chiltern Court. His best estimate was that between six hundred and seven hundred kilograms of heavy water had been destroyed (four months’ worth of production)—and without an aerial bombing that would have caused considerable collateral damage. The Germans would need at least six months to reconstruct the high-concentration cells and an additional four to six months to return production to previous levels. In total, this would delay German heavy-water supplies by ten to fourteen months.
Tronstad sent the same report to Eric Welsh at SIS, writing in an attached note: “It’s justified to say the Germans have suffered a very serious setback of their project in utilizing the atomic energy for war or other purposes.” Sir John Anderson, his team at the British atomic program, and Winston Churchill were all informed of the same. The operation gave both the SOE and Kompani Linge a major victory, elevating their reputations.
This success was in stark contrast to the fortunes of Operation Carhampton. The Tromøsund never made it to Aberdeen. Odd Starheim had escaped some tight spots in the past, but this time Tronstad knew that he was probably dead. The RAF swept the North Sea but found no sign of the steamer. German newspapers celebrated its sinking: “England’s once-proud Navy is so depleted that she needs to steal ships from little Norway . . . but just as the pirates were jingling their ill-gotten golden reward in criminal pockets, the Nazi fighter planes came upon the scene and sent the gangsters and their prey to the bottom of the ocean.”
In his diary, Tronstad blamed the British for providing insufficient cover for the escaping ship. In other entries, he wrote, “We must accept these losses”—they showed the brave fight being put forward by Norway—“grim in our loneliness,” and that Norwegians had “sacrificed enough for a while.” He was most affected by the loss of Starheim, and kept a photograph of him, shoulders draped in his country’s flag, on his mantelpiece.
But Tronstad knew, above all, that they had to carry on. He arranged the dispatch by sea and air of several teams of Kompani Linge agents to establish resistance networks with wireless radio stations in Oslo, Trondheim, Ålesund, and elsewhere—all in the expectation of a future Allied invasion. To provide for their security, he was also fighting a political war, pushing the high command and the SOE to keep these resistance cells independent instead of having a central Milorg command that would risk the entire network if it were infiltrated.
Using intelligence provided by the cells run by Tronstad, the RAF destroyed key structures at the Knaben mines, which provided molybdenum to the Germans, used in armor plating. Operation Granard saw the sinking of a cargo ship loaded with pyrite. And a mission named Mardonius was underway that planned to use limpet mines to blow up enemy troop and cargo ships in the Oslofjord.
All the while, Tronstad continued to develop his atomic-intelligence network. On March 15, he and Eric Welsh sat down with Victor Goldschmidt, a Swiss-born but Norwegian-educated professor who had recently fled Oslo for Britain. Goldschmidt offered some limited insights into the Nazi program and urged that Niels Bohr, who was Jewish, be brought to London as soon as possible. As one of the fathers of atomic physics, Bohr was too important to be left in occupied Denmark.
In fact, Goldschmidt’s proposal had been rebuffed by Bohr himself, but he’d insisted something be done to convince him. The Danish physicist, who believed he could best serve his country by remaining in Copenhagen, had also turned down Welsh and Tronstad when they had approached him earlier that year.
In the midst of this work, Tronstad hoped every day to hear news of Rønneberg and his men—to hear their “heartbeats” by wireless once they arrived in Sweden. With a hunt for the saboteurs now underway, they needed to hurry, just as those who had stayed behind needed to keep out of sight.
On March 13, the tenth day of their trek, Rønneberg and his men were just north of Lillehammer, still roughly a hundred miles from the Swedish border. Despite averaging twenty miles a day, they had moved more slowly than Rønneberg anticipated. The snow, the need to travel at night, and the difficulty crossing valleys and fording rivers had all cut at their pace. They were struggling to stay nourished, stealing food from cabins along the way to supplement the ten-day supply of rations they had brought for the journey.
Their muscles were exhausted from the persistent strain, and their skin chafed from the constant damp. Now they faced the heavily trafficked Gudbrandsdalen Valley that lay between them and the Swedish border. They set out before dawn to dodge any weekend skiers who might be staying in one of the several hotels in the area. As the sky grew light, two German Junkers shot past overhead. The men hoped they were mail planes traveling between Oslo and Trondheim. They could not be certain. A few hours later, they settled down in their sleeping bags, not quite yet out of the valley, and took turns keeping watch.
That evening, when they were preparing to get going again, Idland asked to speak with Rønneberg alone. Idland had been struggling to stay with the team, and there had indeed been some stretches of rough terrain that they would have traversed on skis if Idland had had the skill. “You must all speed up and get yourself to Sweden,” Idland said. “I’ll follow.” Rønneberg, who felt that Idland’s workhorse attitude more than compensated for any lapse in athletic ability, dismissed the idea. “Stop it now,” Rønneberg said. “You’re imagining things.” Idland tried to protest, but Rønneberg cut him off. They would arrive in Sweden together.
Under the light of the moon, they headed across Gudbrandsdalen. The roads were sheer ice so they kept to the fields, and there was little wind, but it was very cold. The thin straps of their rucksacks cut into their shoulders, and their legs ached after climbing the valley. After midnight, Rønneberg signaled them to stop, and they prepared beds in the woods, laying pine needles and heather on top of the snow. Then they wriggled into their custom sleeping bags, which were proving to be lifesavers.
Over the next seventy-two hours, the men tramped in a southeasterly direction, through woods and fields, often battling driving snow and sudden winds. They crossed a number of ski tracks, evidence that there was a lot of movement in the area, possibly German. They often struggled to navigate, unable to find points in the distance or in the dark to orient themselves on their maps. At these times, Rønneberg advanced on instinct, buttressed by his experience orienteering and the months of studying their escape. Perilously low on rations, they also sometimes ventured deliberately off course, desperate to find cabins with food stores. Often they found little or nothing.
Late on March 16, after a mistaken diversion down the wrong valley, they came to the Glomma, the largest river in Norway. To their shock, it was clear of ice. Rønneberg sent Storhaug, a native of the region, off to find a boat. The rest of the team took cover in a hay shed to wait for him.
After a few hours, Storhaug returned: he had located a boat they could steal. In the dark morning hours of the seventeenth, they rowed across the Glomma, then sent the boat drifting downstream. A miserable, frost-ridden rest in their sleeping bags followed. In the morning, they continued their journey, giving a group of lumberjacks a wide berth, then crossing through a confusing tangle of woods, roads, and streams that for hours left them at a loss as to their position. The heavy snow made each step a labor.
They broke into the cabin of someone Storhaug knew to be a Nazi sympathizer, convinced he would have a rich supply of food. He was wrong; the cabin was unsupplied. Again, they slept outside in damp sleeping bags and sweat-soaked clothes, but they were too ruined by exhaustion and hunger to care. Rønneberg dreamed of tables groaning under the weight of platters of food.
They woke up in a blanket of fog. It was fifteen days since they had set out from Lake Skrykken, and they were fewer than twenty miles from the Swedish border. After a time, they approached a road that cut through a long, open field. Crossing it now would expose them in broad daylight. They would have waited until dark, but they had too few rations and they were so close to reaching Sweden and safety. Rønneberg instructed the men to stay low and move quickly. Then, “All right, let’s go.”
The team skied as fast as their legs would carry them across the field, feeling like they were in the middle of an assault, eyes darting left and right, watching out for any trucks or cars. They reached the road, their breath heavy in the air. After checking that nobody was coming from either direction, they crossed over. Then they hurried through the other side of the field, their backs exposed to the road. Within minutes, hearts thumping in their chests, they were into the woods and able to slow down as they passed through a half-frozen marsh.
In the midafternoon, sun blazing down, they finally took a long rest. They shed their shirts and boots, spread out their sleeping bags to dry, and ate what was left of their food.
“Guys,” Idland said. “When we get to London, I don’t want to see your bloody faces for fourteen days. I’m completely sick of you.” The others smiled and laughed, at ease for the first time in weeks. They were so close to safety now.
As night fell, they moved through some low country pocked with stone-ridden ravines, thickets, and gnarled, twisted trees. It was tough going, and orientation was difficult as well, but there were no Germans in sight. At 8:15 p.m., March 18, they finally passed Border Marker No. 106 into Sweden. Then they built an open fire, settled themselves down around it, and burned the final map. Afterward, they crawled into their sleeping bags, shattered with relief and exhaustion.
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