by Neal Bascomb
On December 2, 1941, Haukelid was woken up by dogs barking. There was a chill in the air, and frost clouded the windows overlooking the huge wooded estate of Stodham Park, fifty miles southwest of London. He had escaped to Britain in November because of the same intense Gestapo manhunts that had driven Tronstad from Norway. Now he was part of a group of roughly two dozen Norwegians who had volunteered to attend special commando training to fight for their homeland.
Quickly, Haukelid dressed in his new British uniform, its starched collar surpassed in stiffness only by his standard-issue boots. Outside, he stood with his fellow soldiers. They came from every walk of life: rich, poor, and in between; from city, town, and backwoods country. A few had never handled a gun before; others were marksmen. Some were boys, barely eighteen. Most were in their twenties, and a few were old men — all of thirty, like Haukelid. Before the war, they had been students, fishermen, police officers, bankers, factory workers, and lost types looking for their place in this world — again, just like Haukelid. Together they learned to kill, to sabotage, and to survive, any way and any how. Their grizzled Irish sergeant major, who went by the nickname “Tom Mix,” taught them no rules but one: “Never give your enemy half a chance.”
The squad of new recruits started their day at 6 A.M. with what Mix liked to call “Hardening of the Feet”: a fast march on the estate. A short breakfast was followed by weapons instruction. “This is your friend,” Mix said, twirling his pistol around his finger. “The only friend you can rely on.” Then he took them out to a grove in the woods and taught them how to stand — knees bent, two hands on the grip of the pistol — and how to fire: two shots quickly in a row to make sure the enemy was down. If circumstances allowed, Mix said grimly, “aim low. A bullet in the stomach, and your German will squirm for twelve hours before dying.” Haukelid had grown up hunting, but this was very different.
After two hours of shooting, they spent another hour in a gym. They pummeled punching bags, wrestled, and learned how to take down and disarm an enemy with their bare hands. A break for coffee, then instruction in how to send and receive messages in Morse code. This was followed by lunch, then a two-hour class in demolition. “Never smoke while working with explosives,” Mix said, a lit cigarette perched between his lips, again offering the point that rules existed to be broken. They blew up logs and sent rocks skyward. Ears ringing, they moved on to orienteering class, navigating the estate with maps and compasses, then field craft — stalking targets and scouting routes through the woods. From 5 to 8 P.M., they were free to relax and eat before the night exercises began. Those consisted of more weapons, more explosives, more unarmed combat — now executed in the pitch-dark.
A British Special Operations Executive class in demolitions.
Through day after day of this schedule, his boots and collar softening with each hour, Haukelid turned into a fighter. Though fit at the start, he became fitter still. On occasion, he would be invited into a room with an officer or a psychiatrist and asked if the training was too much, too hard, if he might want to quit. This kind of work wasn’t for everybody, they said.
It was for him.
Firing two shots in rapid succession became a reflex, and his aim grew lethally accurate to the range’s paper targets. He learned how to time throwing a hand grenade (“One can go from here to London before it explodes,” Mix said). He gained expertise in hand-to-hand combat and in the use of a knife. He grew skilled at demolitions, able to light a ten-second fuse without his hands shaking.
After three weeks of this instruction, Haukelid graduated from what his Stodham Park instructors told him was only preliminary training. On December 20, 1941, he boarded a train to Scotland for further lessons.
At Meoble, an old hunting lodge on the windswept coast of the western Highlands, the training began with scrambles through thick brush, crossing ice-cold rivers, and rappelling down steep ravines. Using both British and foreign weapons, he practiced instinctive shooting (shooting without the use of sights) and close-quarter firing. In demolitions, he graduated from blowing up logs to destroying railroad cars. He crafted bombs of all sizes and was amazed at what a small charge placed in the perfect spot at the perfect time could do: It could stop an army, obliterate a weapons plant.
He was taught how to break open safes, how to use poison, how to knock out a guard with chloroform. He practiced how to kill silently with a knife. He learned how to follow a route to a target by memory alone, how to camouflage himself in the field, how to crawl through a marsh and reach his assailant undetected, how to take him down without a sound — without even a weapon. “This is war, not sport,” his instructors reminded him. “So forget the Queensbury rules; forget the term ‘foul methods’ … these methods help you to kill quickly.” A sharp blow with the side of his hand could paralyze, break bones, or kill.
The members of the Norwegian Independent Company, later known as the Kompani Linge.
Even the occasional night off was instructive. For New Year’s Eve, Haukelid and the others in his squad were taken to a pub to celebrate. At first, it seemed like a good time, but they were enlightened later that they were watched all evening to see who drank too much, who made a fool of himself, or, worst of all, who spoke of what he should not, as one had always to be on one’s guard. It was a merciless regime, and as before, Haukelid was asked regularly if he wanted to back out. He refused.
On January 14, 1942, Haukelid arrived at Special Training School 26, in the Scottish Highlands near Aviemore, the home of Norwegian Independent Company No. 1. Roughly 150 Norwegians lived in three hunting lodges amidst the cragged granite mountain peaks, steep valleys, and long stretches of moors. The place reminded Haukelid almost too much of his homeland, but that meant it was the ideal terrain to prepare for missions.
The Norwegian company was part of an expansive British organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Founded by Churchill in 1940, its directive was to “set Europe ablaze” with commando missions against the Nazis. Its masterminds, who started the organization from three rooms at St. Ermin’s Hotel, called themselves the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”
Haukelid was happy to be surrounded by Norwegians like him, who had risked everything to come to England to learn to fight. For two weeks, he trained with his new company and roamed the snowbound countryside. Then, on January 31, several visitors came up from London by night train. The company showed off their shooting and raid techniques, and then hosted a dinner at one of the lodges at STS 26. Oscar Torp, the Norwegian Defense Minister in exile, and Major General Colin Gubbins, second-in-command of the SOE, were the guests of honor. Torp gave a rousing speech, promising a new era of cooperation between the exiled Norwegian government and the British. Their aim in Norway was twofold: the long-term goal of building up Milorg, the underground military resistance in Norway, in anticipation of a future Allied invasion; and the short-term goal of performing sabotage operations and assisting in raids to weaken the Germans. The Independent Company would be at the forefront of any attack. When he finished, the men cheered and pounded on their tables.
Lt. Colonel John Wilson.
Then Torp and Gubbins introduced the two officers who would command them. The first was Lieutenant Colonel John Wilson, the new chief of the SOE Norwegian section. He told them that he had “Viking blood” in his veins but that over the generations it had thinned like his graying crown of hair. At fifty-three years of age, he had a short but upright bearing, a quiet, stern voice, and a determined manner. Wilson had helped design and run the SOE’s training schools. Next to Wilson, dressed in uniform and cap, stood Leif Tronstad, whom Haukelid had briefly met on the fateful morning of the German invasion. Coordinating closely with Wilson, Captain Tronstad would oversee the company’s training, planning, and execution of operations, and direct the Norwegian soldiers in their fight for their country. Haukelid pleaded for that chance to come soon, but it was not yet his turn. Others would first have theirs.
Neal Bascomb, The Grand Escape
