Raiders

by Ross Kemp

  Three weeks after taking off from Scotland, the W/T operator Haugland cabled London with a short message that offered only a few clues as to their ordeal. ‘Happy landing in spite of stones everywhere. Sorry to keep you waiting for message. Snow storm and fog forced us to go down valleys. Four feet snow impossible with heavy equipment to cross mountains.’

  Ravenously hungry and starting to show the first signs of malnutrition, the party understood the importance of finding extra provisions to supplement their modest rations. To their delight, Haugland found a stray sheep and two lambs in a gulley. ‘We were very, very hungry at this time so we immediately killed one of the lambs and then skinned it on the floor of the hut,’ recalled Haugland. ‘We cut up the meat and put it into a big kettle with some dried peas . . . It smelled delicious and we all sat down at the table eagerly. But as one of the group (Poulsson) carried the kettle over to us, it dropped onto the floor. We all immediately got down on our hands and knees and even though the floor was very dirty we filled our plates with what we could and ate every last bit. It was delicious.’

  Having recovered their strength, the men set out on daily reconnaissance trips to locate a landing place for the Commandos’ gliders. They found the ideal location – long, flat and free of rocks and other obstructions – to the south of Møsvatn, roughly ten miles from Vemork.

  On 15 November, Haugland cabled London with the news that the snow at the landing place was 30 cm deep and frozen hard. If the weather stayed fine, he estimated that the march to Vemork would take the Commando force about five hours. SOE and Combined Operations held a meeting in London the same day to discuss the first Allied glider-borne operation of the war. They decided Operation FRESHMAN was to be launched in three days’ time, during the ‘moon period’, when the days either side of the full moon would offer good light for the RAF crews to pinpoint the landing zone. SOE put GROUSE on standby to prepare for their arrival. On the 18th, Churchill signed off a memo giving the operation the go-ahead.

  The plan, in short, was for the Commandos to be led to the hydroelectric plant by GROUSE, fighting their way if necessary. After overpowering the German garrison there, the demolition teams were to break into the basement and destroy the heavy water canisters, fight their way back out against any reinforcements that had arrived in the meantime, then escape on foot across hundreds of miles of some of the harshest terrain on the planet to the Swedish border – but without skis. The wounded were to be given morphine and left behind. Operation FRESHMAN wasn’t officially designated as a ‘suicide mission’, but that is effectively what it amounted to. It was probably just as well the 34 Royal Engineers of the 1st Airborne Division selected for the task were kept in the dark about their objective until the very last moment.

  Even in ideal flying and landing conditions, glider operations were perilous, nerve-shredding affairs, dreaded by the troops – and there were few countries less enticing for a glider pilot than Norway with its rough terrain and challenging, changeable weather. But at 1715 on 19 November, the conditions were as good and settled as could be hoped for and Haugland wired London a message to that effect.

  The Royal Engineer paratroopers, heavily laden with weapons and equipment, filed out of the huts at Skitten Airfield near Wick and boarded the two Horsa gliders attached to Halifax bombers. There were seventeen men squeezed into each of the unpowered wooden aircraft, plus two RAF crew sitting at very basic controls. When they took off, just after six o’clock, the weather was fairly mild but the wind steadily picked up as they crossed the North Sea. By the time they reached the Norwegian coast, the gliders were bouncing through strong turbulence. One hundred miles inland, the GROUSE party waited anxiously at the landing zone, listening out for the rumble of the RAF bombers. But they never came.

  The details of the Commandos’ fate would not become clear until the end of the war, but when only one Halifax bomber returned, the operation planners feared the worst. One of the gliders had crashed into a hillside at a place called Fyljesdal, close to the coast, after the towrope had frozen solid and snapped. Eight of the men had died on impact, one had injured his spine and was paralysed from the waist down, another had broken both his legs, one had shattered his jaw and a fourth had cracked his skull and had difficulty in breathing. Shortly after the crash, two groups of Germans had arrived, one party of regular Wehrmacht soldiers and another of SS troops under the command of a Gestapo officer.

  The dead men were dumped in shallow graves and the Germans refused to let the locals give them a proper burial. The five uninjured men were taken to Grini Concentration Camp near Oslo where, after two months’ detention, they were taken into woods and executed. A War Crimes trial at the war’s end revealed the gruesome fate suffered by the four badly injured British troops at the hands of the Gestapo. Leaving one of them in the cell next door to listen to the torture of his comrades, the Nazi secret policemen battered the other three and strangled them with leather straps. When the Commandos were close to death, their torturers stood on their chests and throats and then injected air into their bloodstreams. All three died a slow death in agony. The fourth man was shot in the back of the head. Two of the torturers were sentenced to death for murder and the third was given life imprisonment.

  The fate of the survivors in the second glider was equally disturbing, but the full details of the hours leading to their death have never emerged. An SOE agent reported that the glider crashed near a town called Egersund, killing two or three outright and wounding an unknown number of others. After ‘interrogation’, all the survivors were shot. The Halifax bomber towing the glider crashed into a mountainside after becoming separated, killing the six-man crew.

  The catastrophe of Operation FRESHMAN was also a major setback for Allied efforts to wreck Germany’s atomic bomb programme. A map, with Vemork circled in red, had been found at one of the FRESHMAN crash sites. The Germans immediately set about strengthening the defences at the plant and sweeping the area for enemy agents. The GROUSE party was forced to disappear deep into the Hardanger until the danger had passed. SOE cabled them an urgent message, reading: ‘. . . vitally necessary that you should preserve your safety.’ As a further precaution the name of their operation was changed from GROUSE to SWALLOW.

  It was now close to a year since the rate of heavy water production at Vemork had been increased by 3,000 per cent. No more time could be lost. Just days after the FRESHMAN disaster, SOE decided to launch a second attempt. This time it would be carried out by a small group of British-trained Norwegian Commandos disguised as British soldiers. The operation would be code-named GUNNERSIDE.

  The new plan was as simple as it was daunting. A group of six men from the Linge Company was to be parachuted onto the Hardanger to team up with the Swallow/GROUSE party. The ten men would ski to Vemork, break or fight their way into the plant, destroy the heavy water and then escape to Sweden. Unlike their doomed comrades in FRESHMAN, at least this raiding party would have the benefit of skis – equipment that any Norwegian could have told the SOE planners was essential.

  Joachim Rønneberg was just twenty-two years old but he was the obvious candidate to lead the raid and would assume command of the combined parties on arrival. ‘Rønneberg was one of the most outstanding men we had. He was well-balanced, unflappable, very, very intelligent and tremendously tough,’ wrote Colonel Charles Hampton, who ran SOE’s Norwegian training school in Scotland. Rønneberg was equally clear as to who he wanted to join him in a venture which would test their courage and physical strength, their will to survive and outdoorsmanship to the limit. ‘I wanted strong, physically fit men with a good sense of humour who would smile their way through the most demanding situations,’ he said. He chose Knut Haukelid, a formidable operator, as his second-in-command. In his SOE reports, his instructor describes Haukelid as ‘exceptionally efficient . . . cool and calculating type who would give a very good account of himself in a tight corner . . . A really sound man and cunning. Has no fear.’ He would show all these qualit
ies in abundance by the time the mission had played out. The other four – only marginally less impressive than their leaders – were Birger Strømsheim, Hans Storhaug, Kasper Idland and Fredrik Kayser.

  At a meeting with the SOE chiefs in London, Rønneberg and his men were made aware of the enormous risks of the operation. Just in case they were in any doubt about the fate they faced were they to be captured, they were told about Hitler’s famous directive ordering the summary execution of all British Commandos. Unknown to the Allies at the time, this had come into force a few days before the FRESHMAN disaster. Rønneberg recalled: ‘They told us everything – that those who had survived the crash were shot, or “experimented” on and that some were thrown into the North Sea. They told us that we would be given poison capsules so that we would not have to suffer the same ordeal.’

  Using an exact life-size replica of the basement at Vemork, the sabotage party practised laying explosives on the cylinders over and over again until they could do it in the dark. Like SWALLOW, GUNNERSIDE were never told about the deadly capabilities of heavy water, only that its destruction was vital. Their ignorance of the stakes makes the risks they were prepared to take all the more remarkable.

  GUNNERSIDE and SWALLOW were to meet at the prearranged landing place, but failing that they would all head to a hut known as Svensbu. After the raid, while the GUNNERSIDE team were to head for the Swedish border, the SWALLOW members were to disappear into the Hardanger and await fresh orders. The parachute drop was scheduled for the ‘moon period’ around 17 December, with the raid itself pencilled in for the night of Christmas Eve when it was hoped that the German garrisons would be less vigilant than normal. Shortly before they left London for Scotland, they were given a special address by Professor Leif Tronstad, the former chief scientist at Vemork, who had escaped to London and teamed up with SOE. His in-depth knowledge of the Vemork plant was key to the planning of GUNNERSIDE. ‘You have no idea how important this mission is,’ he told them, ‘but what you are doing will live in Norway’s history for hundreds of years to come.’

  The survival of the SWALLOW party added to the sense of urgency. SOE knew their rations were virtually exhausted and that winter, with its ferocious blizzards and blood-stopping temperatures, was on its way. With German troops scouring the Hardanger area for British-backed agents and W/T operators, the SWALLOW party abandoned the hut at Sandvatn and moved into huts deep in the plateau, where there was even less chance of the Germans finding them. Not long after setting out, a ferocious blizzard blew in with winds so powerful that, according to Poulsson, ‘We often had to crawl along on all fours.’ It was the onset of one of the worst winters the area had experienced in living memory.

  ‘We had three tasks as we waited for GUNNERSIDE,’ said Poulsson. ‘The first was to stay alive, the others were to maintain radio contact with England and to establish contact with people who could give us information about what was happening at Vemork and what the Germans were up to.’

  All four members of the party were in poor physical condition by this stage. All edible vegetation on the Hardanger had long since disappeared and the migrating reindeer had yet to arrive. To make matters worse, they soon exhausted their store of dry wood. Kjelstrup and Helberg both developed oedema and swelled by about twenty pounds. All four suffered from fevers and nausea. By the time they had reached the Svensbu hut, where they were to team up with GUNNERSIDE, the food situation had become critical. Their rations were all but finished. Only the very smallest amount, which they kept for the direst emergency (i.e. imminent death), remained.

  Despite his own wretched state of health, and almost delirious with fatigue and hunger, Poulsson set out day after day, with his Krag hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, and skied for miles across the Hardanger in a desperate search for the reindeer herds. Day after day he staggered back to the hut, empty-handed. Finally, on 23 December, he caught sight of a herd on the distant horizon. The challenge now was to get within effective shooting range without startling them. That was no mean feat, even for a hunter of Poulsson’s experience. At the first sign of danger, reindeer flee, and Poulsson knew he lacked the strength to chase them for any great distance over the plateau. Quivering with excitement and nerves, Poulsson stalked the herd for over an hour. He knew the stakes. If they didn’t eat soon, he and his men would fall gravely ill and the operation would be placed in serious jeopardy. As he crept closer to the herd, exhausted from the effort and concentration, his foot gave way and he crashed to the ground. The two reindeer closest to him stamped their hooves to raise the alarm and the whole herd disappeared in a stampede over the crest of the hill. ‘It was enough to make a man weep,’ he said.

  The sun was starting to sink behind the mountains as Poulsson dragged his weary body up the next slope. Poking his head over the top of the hill, he was relieved to see the herd had not run far. He lay down and lined up one of the closest animals in his sights. Three cracks split the still frozen air in rapid succession and the herd thundered away into the next valley. It seemed that he had missed. He could see no carcass in the snow and was just about to head back to the hut when, using his binoculars, he noticed what looked like a trail of blood in the snow. He raced forward as fast as his skis would allow him and there, just over the brow, was his injured prey. One further shot from his Krag and the beast slumped to the snow. Laughing wildly with relief, Poulsson took his mug from his rucksack and drank the warm blood spouting from the reindeer’s wounds before it froze. After skinning and butchering the animal, he packed the best parts into his rucksack, covered the rest to be collected later, and staggered back towards Svensbu, happy in the knowledge that the long weeks of starvation and malnutrition were over – for the time being at least. When the emaciated SWALLOW leader entered the hut, covered from head to foot in frozen reindeer blood, the other three cheered with joy.

  That year’s Christmas feast was one that none of them would ever forget and, over the subsequent few weeks, the four of them devoured every last morsel of the reindeer, including nose, lips, brains and eyes. (‘The head was the best part,’ said Poulsson.) The food that did more than anything to keep them alive was the half-digested reindeer moss they found in the reindeer’s stomach. This was rich in vitamin C and carbohydrate, and mixed with blood and heated up came to be considered as a ‘delicacy’ by the men. Every part of the animal was put to use, including the pelts which were hung up around the hut for extra insulation.

  The reindeer had saved their lives and, in doing so, it had rescued one of the most important operations of the Second World War. But bad news soon followed good. London cabled SWALLOW to inform them that the raid had been postponed for a further four weeks. Poor weather had prevented the RAF from dropping the GUNNERSIDE party. The temperature crashed so low on the Hardanger in January that hoar frost lay inches deep on the inside walls and ceiling of the hut. The boredom and frustration of the party was almost as intense as the cold. Helberg filled much of his time making reconnaissance trips to Vemork and his hometown of Rjukan, each time resisting the temptation to visit his family or seek out provisions of fresh food. He often slept in a hut right next to his family home and watched them come and go.

  On 23 January the wireless set crackled into life with the news that GUNNERSIDE were on their way again. The four men rushed to lay out the lights at the prearranged landing site. A nearly full moon shone brightly in a star-studded sky. The weather could not have been better but, to the despair of all involved in the operation, the mission was aborted yet again. The Halifax circled over the Hardanger, but the navigator was unable to pick out the dropping zone and, running low on fuel, the pilot was forced to return to Scotland. Fury amongst the planners and the two raiding parties once again gave way to frustration and anxiety for another four weeks. The RAF had lost thousands of men flying behind enemy lines – many of them in Norway – and there was a widespread reluctance to criticise them but, according to the official report of the meeting called to discuss the aborted mission,
the plane’s navigator was given a severe earbashing. Tensions were high; time was running out.

  It was now over three months since the SWALLOW party had parachuted into the Hardanger. It was remarkable that they had survived that long. Could they hold out for another month? The twin pressures of malnutrition and perishing cold were pushing them to the limit. Throughout January and February, the temperature rarely rose above minus 30 degrees Celsius. With little to do but conserve energy and stay warm, they spent most of the time in their sleeping bags. On 11 February, they were put back on standby, but a few hours later a ferocious storm swept over the Hardanger. The winds were so strong it was impossible to move more than a few metres. Five days later, the skies cleared, the wind dropped, and GUNNERSIDE quickly scrambled aboard the Halifax to exploit the break in the weather. They took off at 2000 hours and it was beautifully clear when they approached the Hardanger. Just after midnight, the six men and eleven equipment containers plunged through the dispatching hole into the frozen night from a mere 700 feet. Moments later, they felt the thud of their homeland underfoot and they set about gathering up the containers littered over the landscape. There was no sign of the SWALLOW welcoming party.

  They buried the equipment they didn’t need for the raid itself under the snow, placed marking stakes and took the bearings so that they could find the location at a later date. The wind was strengthening by the hour. Another storm was gathering. They knew they had to hurry to find Svensbu or some other form of shelter, and they had barely set out when they were engulfed by a violent blizzard. Battered by winds so strong they could move only with the greatest effort, the six men were beginning to fear the worst when they stumbled across a hut called Jansbu. It was a stroke of the greatest luck. Because the visibility was so poor, had the column of skiers been advancing thirty yards either side of it, they would have missed it. As the men warmed themselves by the fire and dried their clothes, the storm shrieked and roared, growing in force hour by hour. ‘You felt as if the whole cabin was going to be lifted off the ground,’ wrote Rønneberg in his official report.