The one thing that worried Major Hahn was that he might run out of ammunition before help arrived. Luckily, the English and their Norwegian friends had not been foolhardy enough to try an assault over open ground; they would have been cut to shreds, of course, but his men would have expended valuable ammunition in the process. As it was, the Allied commander seemed content to keep him pinned down, lobbing the occasional mortar bomb into his position.
In fact, Major Stavely was far from content. Recognizing that any assault on the enemy positions would lead to unacceptable casualties, he was waiting anxiously for the wind to change. If he couldn’t take the village by a head-on assault, the next best bet was to smoke out the Germans, or at least generate enough smoke for his men to attack under its cover.
The wind was gradually moving round to the west. Just another few degrees, and he would give orders for the group of men stationed among the trees with petrol-filled cans to set fire to the woods. Although no woodsman, he knew enough about pines to be certain that they would burn.
Stavely had set up his HQ in a house nestling on the hillside several hundred yards from the village; it was not an exposed position, but he had a good view of the houses below and the river beyond. Its rightful occupants, a young couple with two children who had been with those who had taken refuge at the sawmill, had wanted to return, but he had regretfully turned them away, insisting that it would be too dangerous. He had been right, of course, but their obvious disappointment had been hard to bear.
“Sir.” It was Sergeant Neesham, who had been on observation duty outside.
“Yes, Sergeant, what is it?”
“Aircraft, sir. Comin’ up the valley. Don’t think it’s a Jerry, sir.”
Stavely went outside and looked up through a gap in the trees. A moment later he saw it, flying at a safe height outside the range of small-arms fire. It waggled its wings, circled the area and then flew off to the south. Stavely smiled.
“That’s our observation aircraft, sergeant,” he told the NCO. “Gone to see what’s over the hill, no doubt.”
Stavely knew exactly what was over the hill 20 minutes later, and he was wishing that he didn’t. The aircraft returned, dipped low over the valley before heading south again, and a breathless runner came floundering through the snow, carrying the message container it had dropped. The major pulled off the lid and extracted the roll of paper that was inside, reading the message that was hand-printed on it with growing alarm:
THREE TANKS AND APPROX 50 INFANTRY APPROACHING FROM SOUTH, FIVE MILES. ALSO TOWED ARTILLERY AND TRUCKS. WILL INVESTIGATE FURTHER.
“That’s all we need,” Stavely said, as he informed his officer of the new development. “How the hell did they get this far? What’s happened to the Norwegians south of the river?”
In the freezing tandem cockpit of the Mureaux, Armstrong and Kalinski were asking themselves much the same question. The enemy force was advancing through the mountains along a road which, according to his map, should not have been there at all. But it was there all right, threading its way through the peaks for 30 miles, and Armstrong could only assume that it had been spotted by the ever-present German reconnaissance aircraft.
He frowned. Somewhere around here, according to Colonel Gough, there ought to be a Norwegian Army battalion, but there was no sign of it. If it was not in a position to halt or at least slow down the enemy column, then the troops at Kvam would soon be in serious trouble.
There was no intercom in the Mureaux apart from a primitive speaking-tube; it was easier, and more effective, for pilot and observer to shout at one another. In any case, Armstrong had no trouble in understanding his pilot’s signals. With a sweep of the arm, Kalinski indicated that he was going down to attack the approaching enemy.
“Oh, God,” Armstrong muttered to himself. “This is unreal. Any second now and I’ll wake up.”
But it was real, and despite himself he laughed out loud, recalling the words of a pilot he’d met who had flown Hawker Audax biplanes against dissident tribesmen in Iraq before the war. “Piece of cake, old boy,” the veteran had told him. “You just creep up on ’em, gun the engine a few times to frighten the horses, then give ’em a good thrashing with the old Lewis gun!”
Armstrong had a feeling that the Mureaux would probably have acquitted itself quite well in Iraq. But the enemy down there ahead of it now were not poorly-armed Iraqis on horseback, but well-armed Germans with tanks and machine-guns, and the immediate future appeared anything but rosy. Anyhow, he thought resignedly as Kalinski pushed down the aircraft’s nose, he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
He had already checked his MAC machine-gun, and now he cocked it and swivelled it round on its mounting so that it was pointing downwards over the side of the cockpit. He had no forward field of view, but he would know when they were at the target when Kalinski’s gun opened up. The Mureaux vibrated as the speed built up, the slipstream howling past the struts like a flock of demons in full flight.
The aircraft shuddered as the pilot opened fire, then levelled out of its headlong dive, forcing Armstrong towards the floor of the cockpit and momentarily throwing him off balance. Recovering, he grabbed his gun again and peered over the side, just in time to see a convoy of trucks, nose to tail. He raked them with the gun as the aircraft shot past, although with scant hope that he had actually hit anything.
Somebody was firing back, though, because there was a sharp toc-toc-toc and three neat holes appeared in the aircraft’s left wing, close to where one of the struts joined it and too close to Armstrong’s head for comfort. Then, suddenly, he was being thrown all over the rear cockpit again as Kalinski stood the aircraft on its tail. He heard the pilot shouting a string of words, and even though they were incomprehensible to him, being in Polish, he was convinced that they were not of a polite nature.
Armstrong had a dazed impression, no more than a fleeting glimpse, of huge dark shapes all around him. Then the Mureaux turned violently upside down as a massive slipstream caught it, buffeting it out of control. The snow-covered earth and the mountain peaks whirled crazily around him and he closed his eyes, certain that they were going to crash but feeling strangely calm and detached about it all; then, miraculously, Kalinski had the groaning and protesting Mureaux under control again, returning it to the state of level flight to which it was more accustomed.
Kalinski steep-turned the aircraft so that its nose was pointing north, towards the River Laagen. He was yelling at the top of his voice, giving vent to what sounded like wild Red Indian war whoops, and gesticulating ahead. Armstrong tried to see around him, peering between the struts and the engine cowling past the whirling propeller blades. The he saw what was making the pilot so excited, and could hardly believe his own eyes.
Dead ahead of the Mureaux was a formation of six Junkers 52 transports. There was no mistaking them. And as he watched, sticks of parachutists began to tumble from their exit doors, their parachute canopies blossoming as they drifted down towards a relatively flat snow-covered expanse below, a place where the valley walls diverged.
Armstrong realized that they must have flown slap through the middle of the Junkers formation, which was now turning away, its task completed. For a moment he thought that Kalinski was going in pursuit of the lumbering transports, but the Pole had other ideas. Lumbering or not, the Ju 52s were only marginally slower than the Mureaux, and overhauling them would be a practical impossibility. There were easier targets.
Yelling “Shoot!” to Armstrong, Kalinski swept down on the descending paratroops, his gun chattering. The men had dropped as usual from a low altitude and were in the act of landing, hastily trying to disentangle themselves from their parachute harnesses. As the aircraft roared past them, a few feet above the ground, Armstrong hosed bullets at them from his rear gun. It was only when he saw men collapsing, their white smocks spattered with red blotches, that he realized he was killing them.
But some were firing back, intent on killing him. There was a sud
den loud thump and the Mureaux lurched. Alarmed, heart in mouth, Armstrong looked over the side of the cockpit and then drew back, coughing, as grey fuel vapour swirled around him.
“They’ve hit the tank,” he heard Kalinski shout. “Got to get her down before she catches fire. I’ll get as close to the river as I can.”
Fire, Armstrong thought, clutching the side of the cockpit in terror. Please God, not that. Get her down now, you crazy Polish bastard!
But Kalinski flew on, the aircraft descending steadily, heading along the mountain pass towards where the road began its tortuous descent through the pines to the river below. The stench of petrol was almost unbearable. At last, when he had put a couple of miles between himself and the enemy paratroops, Kalinski decided that it was time to set the Mureaux down.
In response to a shouted command from the pilot, Armstrong tightened his seat harness and hung on for dear life, watching with a kind of paralysis as the mountain slopes rushed past the aircraft’s wing-tips. With flaps fully extended, the pilot found a straight bit of road and slammed the Mureaux down on its sturdy undercarriage. There was a fearsome crash and the aircraft bounced into the air again. The next instant, Armstrong was slammed brutally against the front of the cockpit as the undercarriage came into contact with soft snow and the aircraft decelerated from 50 miles per hour to zero in a couple of seconds.
He found himself staring at the sky as the tail rose vertically, and had the presence of mind to duck down into the cockpit as the machine turned over on its back. The broad parasol wing acted as a cushion, the struts cracking and splintering as its upper surface struck the snow-covered road.
Hanging upside down, his head only a matter of inches from the road, bruised and dazed, Armstrong loosened his straps and stretched out an arm, bracing his hand firmly against the ground. Then he unfastened the harness completely and quickly extended his other arm, letting his limbs take the weight as he lowered himself from the cockpit and crawled out from underneath the shattered wing.
Smoke was trickling from beneath the aircraft’s engine cowling. Kalinski was still in the front cockpit, his arms dangling and waving feebly. He was half-conscious and muttering something unintelligible. Armstrong tried to support him with one arm as he fumbled inside the cockpit, seeking the pilot’s harness release. It seemed to be locked tight. Armstrong felt panic beginning to hamper his movements; the smoke was becoming thicker.
Suddenly, there was someone beside him. A knife blade flashed, biting into the harness. Strong arms caught the pilot as, freed at last, he dropped head first from his seat. Then, still dazed and only half aware of what he was doing, Armstrong was helping to drag Kalinski clear of the wreck into the shelter of some boulders.
A second or two later, the Mureaux’ fuel tank ignited with a dull thud, sending a column of thick black smoke rolling up into the sky.
Shaking his head to clear it, Armstrong looked at the man who had come so unexpectedly to the rescue. Like the German paratroops, he wore a white smock, and for a moment alarm surged through the Englishman. Then, with a rush of relief, he realized that the man was a Norwegian soldier. He also saw that there were more of them on the mountain slopes; they had raised their heads from their defensive positions to see what was happening.
“Do you speak English?” he enquired. The Norwegian grinned at him. “Sure,” he replied. “Five years in British Merchant Navy. Can swear like bloody trooper.”
“Listen,” Armstrong said urgently. “There’s a force of German paratroops a couple of miles back. You must have seen them drop. But just behind them there’s a column of tanks, artillery and infantry. We counted three tanks up front, and half a dozen guns. Don’t know how many troops, maybe a couple of hundred.”
“Sure,” said the former merchant seaman. “We watch them. Make little surprise for the shitty bastards here. You go now quick, before fuckers arrive. River three kilometres that way. Go straight down hill, and you come out near Kvam. Your troops there.” A sudden shrill whistle attracted his attention, and he looked up at the hillside, where a soldier was waving his arms. He bent over Kalinski, who was now sitting up, and seized him by the armpits, pulling him to his feet. He draped one of the Pole’s arms over Armstrong’s shoulder and gave him a friendly push.
“Go now quick. Get into trees. Soon we fight.”
Armstrong nodded his thanks and shook the Norwegian’s hand before turning and plodding off in the direction the man had indicated. After a few tottering steps, Kalinski came fully to his senses and removed his arm from his companion’s shoulders.
“I can manage now, thanks,” he said. “Just felt a little shaky, that’s all.” He managed a weak grin. “Now neither of us has an aeroplane,” he added.
They reached the shelter of the trees and started off down the long slope towards the river, stumbling through the snow. Behind them, the Norwegian ex-sailor picked up his rifle, resumed his former position and waited.
The German paratroops advanced in two files, one on either side of the narrow road, cautiously approaching the spot where Kalinski’s aircraft still burned furiously. Just before they reached it, the Norwegians opened fire, killing and wounding several. Dragging their wounded with them the Germans withdrew, one group expertly covering another as it pulled back, the whole force retreating several hundred yards.
Soon afterwards, the first German shells began bursting on the hillsides.
Chapter Eighteen
As they stumbled down the slope, Armstrong and Kalinski found that the mountain road ceased to exist, becoming little more than a track winding between the trees, but one still wide enough to allow the passage of the Mk III Panzers and the artillery the Germans were bringing up.
Behind them, the two men heard the boom of explosions as the enemy guns opened up on the Norwegian positions. There was firing ahead of them, too, in the valley, and something else: smoke. They could smell it long before they saw its tendrils drifting through the trees, and it carried the strong scent of burning conifers.
Suddenly, Kalinski gave a hiss and seized his companion by the arm, pulling him down on to his knees at the base of a tree. White-clad figures were flitting through the trees farther down the slope, pausing briefly to take snapshots at unseen targets before continuing their flight.
“What do you make of it?” Kalinski whispered in Armstrong’s ear.
“At a guess, I’d say our chaps have driven the Germans out of the village,” Armstrong whispered back. Until now, he had had no idea where the track joined the valley floor in relation to Kvam, but the direction in which the Germans were heading told him that the village must be somewhere off to the left.
“Come on,” Armstrong said urgently, “we’ve got to get back and let the troops know exactly what’s heading their way. Listen to that!” He gave a jerk of his head, indicating the way they had come. The explosions of artillery shells had given way to rifle and machine-gun fire, which meant that the enemy must be assaulting the dug-in Norwegians.
“They haven’t a hope of holding on,” he said grimly. “Let’s get going.”
Checking first to make sure that there were no more Germans in the vicinity, the two airmen doubled away through the trees, keeping low and stopping every so often to watch and listen for signs of trouble. They had gone just over a mile, by Armstrong’s calculation, when several shots rang out. Splinters of wood whirled from a tree trunk a few feet above Armstrong’s head and he threw himself flat, followed a split second later by Kalinski.
Armstrong was in no doubt about who was doing the shooting; there was no mistaking the dull report of a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “We’re British!” It was only half-true, but that didn’t matter under the prevailing circumstances.
There was a pause lasting a few seconds, then a voice with a trace of a Yorkshire accent shouted back, “All right, come forward slowly. But keep your hands in the air!”
They advanced cautiously, e
merging from the trees opposite the eastern end of the island that divided the River Laagen. An arm rose out of a foxhole, waving them on. A few seconds later, they stumbled breathlessly into positions on the south bank of the river that were occupied by soldiers of the Nineteenth Regiment of Foot: Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire Regiment, more popularly known as the Green Howards.
A young subaltern rose from his foxhole and regarded the two newcomers dubiously. A Smith and Wesson .38 revolver dangled from his hand.
“Who the blazes are you two?” he demanded to know.
“Flight Lieutenant Armstrong, and this is Captain Kalinski. We were shot down.”
The young officer’s face brightened. “Oh, I know who you are. I say, bad luck, though. About being shot down, I mean.” He gave the men a cigarette apiece; Kalinski shook his head but Armstrong accepted one gratefully, his pipe being at Aandalsnes with the rest of his belongings — which, fortunately, his ground crew had managed to rescue for him before they began the trek back from Lesjaskog.
The valley floor was clogged with dense smoke from the pines that were burning on the other side of the river. The officer confirmed what Armstrong had suspected; that the trees had been deliberately set on fire to cover an assault on the village.
“Listen,” the pilot said, “I’ve got to see Major Stavely urgently.” In a few sentences, he explained the size and composition of the enemy force that would shortly be descending through the woods.
“We wondered what the firing was,” the subaltern said thoughtfully. “It looks as though the Norwegians are catching a packet, then.”
Armstrong nodded. “They can’t possibly hold on.” Already, he noticed that the distant firing had died away to the odd desultory shot. “Keep your eyes open for the survivors, if there are any. They are wearing white smocks, like the Jerry paratroopers, so it will be easy to mistake them for the enemy if they filter down through the woods.”
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