To Sleep With Reindeer

by Justine Saracen

  “That is my understanding.”

  He pursed his lips. “Yes. Not many women train here, so we don’t have a women’s barracks.” He paused, frowning, as if to imply that her arrival indicated a mistake from someone in the planning hierarchy, which presented him with a dilemma. She waited for the “but…” and it finally came.

  “However, we’ve adapted the gardener’s cottage for the odd female.”

  Did he expect her to express gratitude? She only continued to smile.

  “Well then, I’ll show you to your quarters,” he said. He stepped toward the door without offering to carry any of her baggage, which she took as a sign of victory. It marked her as an equal.

  It had been hard enough to convince Tronstad and Wilson to add her to the otherwise all-male team of sappers. SOE, to which she now officially belonged, had plenty of women, but none had been included in this operation. “Women just don’t have the physical endurance,” Tronstad had insisted, with some justification. But her own argument was even stronger. The men would need her. She was a local and knew the terrain, having skied on the Hardangervidda more than once. She spoke Norwegian and, most importantly, she knew the layout of the Norsk Hydroelectric plant.

  Finally, he had capitulated, and here she was in the Cairngorm mountains.

  They arrived at a tiny cottage that, as they entered, presented a spare and slightly depressing space for minimum habitation. Two sets of bunk beds stood against adjoining walls, each with a sheet and blanket folded up at the foot. Clearly, she would have no roommates. A well-battered cabinet on the opposite side was obviously for clothing. One corner held a small sink with exposed pipes running sideways into one of the walls. Devoid of curtains, the windows could be darkened only by closing the outside shutters, and it was clear that the cottage had been a service outbuilding rather than housing. She could still see the hooks where picks and shovels had hung.

  “The toilet is outside in the rear, and supper will be at 18:00 hours in the main building,” the corporal said, then stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

  Checking her watch and noting the time until supper, she began to unpack her baggage, a process that took all of ten minutes. Aside from toiletries, she’d brought only a single change of clothes, four pairs of underwear, a heavy jacket, and military boots from Norway, assuming she would be issued a training uniform.

  She studied her spartan surroundings, which might have counted as depressing had she come from cozier circumstances, but her recent residences—her cabin on the transport boat, her room at Vemork, and before that, her student quarters in Oslo—had all been similarly cheerless. For that matter, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been cheerful.

  She brushed off the thought, tied her shoes, and headed toward the canteen.

  The open door of the mess showed four tables with roughly ten men at each, and when she entered, she felt as if all forty of them looked up at her. Their expressions seemed neither hostile nor friendly, merely puzzled, as if the burden of their acceptance rested fully on her.

  To hell with that, she thought, joining the line where a man in a white apron was serving food. Closer inspection revealed a playing-card sized piece of meatloaf, three slices of carrots, and a glob of mashed potatoes. She stood for a moment with tray in hand, searching for a place to sit, but every table seemed full. Was this how it was going to be? It was a bad start.

  “Come over here,” someone said, and she searched for a moment to spot where the invitation came from. At a table on her right, a man sitting at the corner beckoned her over. Relieved, she hurried over as his companion stood up with an empty tray and vacated a seat.

  “Thank you,” she said, sitting down. “I was afraid I’d have to eat standing.”

  The invitation came from a wiry, thin-haired man with a prominent nose and sharp chin. “Don’t take offense if the men look at you like a ghost,” he said as she sat down. “They’re nice chaps, most of them, and just didn’t expect a woman to show up. We’re training all day long, each of us trying to outdo the others. Some of the men might be a little grumpy at having a woman added to the competition.”

  “I thought SOE had a lot of female agents.” She scooped up a forkful of meatloaf. It was mealy and lukewarm, but tasty enough.

  “Not in mountain rescue and survival. Oh, by the way, I’m Reggie Tomlinson.” He held out his hand. “Are you in administration, or are you actually going to train with us?”

  “Kirsten Brun. Definitely not administration. Nope. I’m afraid I’ll be out there in the mud, or rather the snow, with all of you.” Another bite of the rapidly cooling loaf and a dollop of potato went into her mouth.

  “Snow’s right. We’re headed up into the Cairngorms tomorrow. Do you think you’re tough enough? I’m not mocking you, only asking an honest question.”

  She chewed and swallowed. “And my honest answer is that I don’t know. I’m not afraid of snow. I grew up in Norway and can ski as well as any man. But whether I have the strength and stamina for all the rest, I’ve yet to find out.”

  He shoved his tray away from himself. “Well, in the end, none of us knows what we’re capable of. We don’t even know what they’re actually training us for. Something to do with mountain climbing and demolition, obviously. Are they putting you in the classes with dynamite and TNT?”

  She tried the official coffee and found it significantly better than the substitute she’d been drinking at home. That was something to be thankful for. “As far as I know, I’ll be going through everything you are. Arctic survival, ice-climbing, parachuting, radio operating. We Norwegians are pretty tough.”

  “I’m sure you are. Your countrymen, too. Do you know those chaps over there?” He indicated with his chin a group of men seated at the end of the far table. They wore rough shirts instead of uniforms and looked like fisherman. One of them leaned against the wall smoking a pipe.

  “No, but they certainly look Norwegian.”

  “They’re from Company Linge. They keep to themselves, mostly, but I have the feeling they’ll be working with us on the next operation.”

  She debated joining the Norwegians at their table but decided against it. She’d have had to barge in on their conversation, and so far, with the exception of Reggie, no one on the mess had shown the slightest interest in meeting her.

  He collected his tray and stood up. “Jolly nice meeting you. See you on the mountain.”

  * * *

  In the days and weeks that followed, Kirsten skied as well as, if not better than any of the men, and even held her own in ice-climbing. To be sure, she lacked the arm strength of the men, but she had both agility and long practice to put her on a par with them. The only task she did poorly in was the physical rescue, which required her to carry a man on her back. In the deep snow, she managed only some hundred feet before her knees buckled. But four of the men didn’t do any better, so she felt no shame.

  Reggie caught up with her on the descent from the slope on Cairngorm mountain. He halted next to her as she unbuckled her skis. “Well done, old girl. I have to tell you, I never imagined you’d last this long. But now I can trust having you along on the mission.”

  “Only if I don’t have to carry you.” She laughed, her warm breath sending out a cloud of steam. “But I could drag you by your feet any distance. If you didn’t mind your head bumping over the rocks.”

  He snickered. “I’ll try not to need carrying. How do you feel about parachutes?”

  “Oh, right. We have to do that, too. I’d put off thinking about it.”

  “Parachuting is easy-peasy. You’ll do fine.” He lifted his skis onto his shoulder, then marched ahead of her to join a group of his mates.

  Reggie’s encouragement notwithstanding, parachuting got off to a bad start. She did manage to conceal her fear and drop through the hole in the platform without hesitation, but on the practice flights she had little control of direction and was blown far off the target zone, where she dropped with jarring
impact. As if to humiliate her further, a bubble of wind stayed in the parachute canopy and dragged her aching body a long way before she wrested control.

  “Don’t worry, Brun,” the training sergeant said. “We’ll work out the problem in the next two jumps.”

  Two more jumps? Oh, joy. Her mood improved that evening back at Station 26. After supper, she was on her way back to her cottage, when one of the Norwegian members of Company Linge crossed her path. She recognized him immediately.

  With his square, open face, slightly protruding ears, and a hairline that extended in a smooth horizontal across the top of his forehead, he suggested a peasant simplicity that his reputation belied. He held out one hand in greeting, and with the other he removed his pipe from his mouth. “Jens-Anton Poulsson,” he said. “I understand you’re Jomar’s daughter.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lieutenant Poulsson. Yes, I am. Though I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

  “Then you’ll be happy to learn we prevailed upon him and his wife to flee Norway. Shortly after you, in fact, though by way of Sweden. They’ll make it over here eventually. After our team leaves, unfortunately.”

  She processed the new information. “Did someone denounce him?” Rjukan was filled with collaborators.

  “No, but he couldn’t have worked much longer without falling under suspicion, especially in the coming weeks.”

  “Thank you for letting me know he’s safe, Lieutenant Poulsson. Your team will be leaving soon?”

  “Yes, in just a few days. Groundwork. Well, hope to see you again soon.” With a casual and unnecessary salute, he continued into the mess.

  SOE kept a firm need-to-know policy, and she was sure the men she trained with had no idea what they were training for. She herself had more or less pieced together the operation, and now she knew the timing. Poulsson and the other Norwegians would be dropped in first, to choose the landing spot. Presumably, in the coming weeks, when all the details were worked out, the manpower would be sent over and the operation would take place. Would they parachute out of planes or land in their gliders? They were trained for the former, but she would prefer the latter. Jumping out of planes was not her strong suit.

  She felt a certain comfort in knowing someone of Poulsson’s abilities was on the team to prepare the landing and to lead the sappers to Vemork. Still, the entire operation felt very vague. She knew the Hardangervidda better than anyone at the training station, and she was well aware of how deadly it could be, even if they all managed to land in the right spot and without injury.

  A sudden image of her mother came to her, complete with cigarette and disdainful remark. “Blimey.”

  * * *

  November 1942

  The engines of the Halifax bomber roared for a few moments—just long enough to set Kirsten’s heart pounding—and then the Horsa glider was jerked forward. It rolled along on its towline behind the Halifax for a few hundred meters, then was hauled upward, swinging wildly from side to side. After two or three minutes, the aircraft stabilized, and Kirsten’s fear subsided.

  Though the glider carried only fifteen men beside herself, it was packed full, transporting their food, weapons, equipment, and explosives. Nonetheless, the atmosphere was cheerful, the tense cheer of solidarity of a band of soldiers leaping into the unknown.

  Operation Freshman, it was called now, and Kirsten found the name unnerving because it suggested amateurism. Though she’d known what the target would be for weeks, the young volunteers had learned just that morning, but if any of them were anxious, it wasn’t apparent.

  The interior of the glider was dark in any case. The Horsa had tiny porthole windows along the fuselage, which were virtually useless. They provided no light, and even when she pressed her face against the glass, she could see only a gray wall of fog.

  Kirsten reminded herself that Poulsson and the others waited for them. They’d have laid out a landing strip with lights and would ensure that the sappers were uninjured and well fed before they led them south to Vemork. With a little luck, well, with a lot of luck, they would succeed, she reassured herself.

  She’d made sure she sat next to Reggie and the others she liked, and their banter kept her from brooding about the odds against them. He bumped her with his heavily padded elbow.

  “Hey. What do you call a grumpy German?” he asked.

  “I give up.”

  “Sauerkraut!” he said, and snickered.

  “Okay. Think you’re so smart.” She bumped him back. “How do Germans tie their shoelaces?”

  “Umm…I give up.”

  “With little knotsies.”

  The man who sat on the other side of Reggie snorted laughter. “I’ve got one,” he said. “Why are streets in Paris lined with trees?”

  “We give up,” everyone said in unison.

  “Because the Germans like to march in the shade.”

  Another man farther down the line called out, “How did the Germans conquer Poland so fast?”

  “We don’t know” came the ritual response.

  “They marched in backward, and the Polish thought they were leaving.”

  Kirsten shook her head. “Oh, that one was naughty.”

  The anti-German one-liners gave way to a series of knock-knock jokes, but the men wearied of these as well, and after a few hours, a general silence fell over them, broken only by occasional murmurs.

  Kirsten twisted around to peer again through the tiny porthole window behind her. At one point, she thought she could see the other plane-and-glider pair, two vague shadows in the mist, but it could have been her imagination. She fervently hoped it was, for the two shapes suddenly broke apart, and the smaller one dropped precipitously out of sight.

  She convinced herself it was just clouds, for it was her worst nightmare—to be cut loose too soon and float helplessly and blindly, not knowing whether they would land on water and drown or crash on a mountainside. She shook her head to dispel the images.

  “I thought we would get reports from our Halifax pilot. We’ve been flying for hours, and I’d really like to know if we’ve made landfall yet.”

  “Nope. Nary a peep since we took off,” one of the men close by groused. “The telephone cable attached to the towline must have broken.” He snorted. “We’re flying blind and deaf.

  The sappers fell silent again as another hour passed, and Kirsten felt a mix of boredom, anxiety, and annoyance. Something must have gone wrong, and nobody was telling them. Then she sensed the glider rise suddenly and abruptly fall again, as if the Halifax itself was searching for something at different altitudes. Better visibility, perhaps? Did it mean they were near the drop zone, or were they lost?

  She resisted the urge to grab Reggie’s hand and instead peered again through the porthole. When she realized the gray blur she was looking at was a layer of ice, a shot of fear effaced her other emotions. If the porthole was iced, so was the entire glider, and the Halifax, too.

  Abruptly, as if to confirm her worst fear, a sudden violent jerk that threw them all forward told her the towline had parted. A moment later, the glider began a nosedive. It pulled up and, with the towline no longer dragging them in a straight line, swerved from side to side, buffeted by wind. The glider banked, began to drop fast, and she prayed the pilot could see more than she could.

  She was thrown violently to the side as the air filled with the sickening sound of splintering wood and cries of alarm. With closed eyes, she sensed only sudden violent pain in her foot, her side, and her head, and everything went black.

  Chapter Three

  Maarit Ragnar stood on a rock on the Hardangervidda and watched the long strands of reindeer as they migrated eastward. She’d herded the reindeer often enough in her youth, but this time it was different. Now she was an orphan, though she wasn’t sure you could call yourself that at the age of twenty-seven. If not orphaned, then defeated. She’d had such laudable aspirations and achievements—a solid pre-medical education at the Norwegian College of Teaching an
d a student apprenticeship at the New Trondheim Hospital. It hadn’t even mattered that she was half Sami.

  Then, the Germans had arrived, which set off a string of disasters.

  First, her Norwegian father, who’d convinced her to educate herself rather than herd reindeer, had fallen at Narvik, trying to keep the Germans out. That loss had already shattered her. But more hardship followed. German victory and a change in the political atmosphere had forced her out of her position at the hospital. Sami, according to the new mentality that swept over Norway, were no better than Jews.

  But when she returned to her mother’s village, she learned she’d lost her brother Karrel and her mother Anik to the Germans as well. Her father, Erik Ragnar, had died courageously, and the battle that killed him could be counted as having held off the Nazis long enough to let the king escape. But Anik Ragnar and her son had died for nothing.

  And here she was, herding again, with her grandparents, Jova and Alof, wondering what to do next.

  “Hoi!” she called out, helping the dog turn one of the stray reindeer back toward the scattered mass that drifted slowly eastward. The herd was spread out in lines over half a kilometer, alternately feeding off the lichen they uncovered under the snow and rambling on, following the tame härk reindeer with its bell. It was enough to ski along the northern periphery, together with herders from two other families, while Grandfather and Gaiju skied along the south, keeping an eye out for stragglers or calves too weak to keep up with their mothers. In the distance, slightly ahead of the herd, Jova skied next to another tame härk that towed a sled holding the poles and cloth for the lavvu tent. Behind the first sled, a second härk pulled another one full of bedding and provisions, and dragging a sapling they would cut for firewood.

  Alof would choose a place to stop wherever he spotted a supply of lichen for the deer, and there they could make supper and rest for the night.

  But that was hours away. She couldn’t gauge time from the sky, since it had grown dark already at three, but she could measure by the pain in her legs, which was still only unpleasant. When it became excruciating, she figured Alof would be tired too, and they’d stop.