How on earth could the Colonel, of all people, be here in the cell with me? I must have been dreaming.
The Colonel smiled. “When you’re ready, come outside and join the others. Mrs Collins is cooking up a feast.”
“Come outside?” I bumbled, completely confused.
The Colonel continued. “Sorry about the rough handling. We had to test you, lad. You and the others have all done well. You’re still at Drumincraig, of course. The journey in the aeroplane was just ten minutes round Inverness airport, and then we brought you straight back here.”
“And the Germans?” I asked. I felt so relieved that it hadn’t occurred to me (yet!) to be angry with him.
“They’re out-of-work actors. Good, aren’t they? And they’ll work for almost nothing. So many theatres have had to close because of the war.” Colonel Armstrong looked around the cell, with its bare, windowless walls and filthy straw. He gave a satisfied nod. “We’re in the outhouse beyond the shooting range. I’m quite pleased with this little prison, though I say it myself. Quite convincing, don’t you think?”
When I emerged from my cell I could see the back courtyard only thirty metres away – near enough for the cooking smells to reach me. I’d been so near, and yet so far away.
Freddie, Lars and Åse, all looking dirty and hollow-eyed, were sitting on a small dry-stone wall waiting for me. Åse gave me a big hug.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I said.
Åse grinned. “I’ve got a huge bruise that’s the same shape as a map of Ireland. But Fred’s is even better.”
Freddie rolled up his trouser leg. He’d lost most of the skin on his left shin.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was during the questioning. This big German chap threw me across the room and I landed on a radiator.”
“Did you annoy him?”
“Not really, but I did answer all his questions in Latin. Thought it might keep him on his toes.”
I looked at Åse. And, despite our wobbly knees and bruised ribs, we started to laugh.
Though we’d been gone less than a day – and we hadn’t exactly been far away – coming back into the courtyard at Drumincraig felt like returning home after a long journey. Mrs Collins came out of the kitchen to greet us. She clasped us all suffocatingly in her huge bosom (Lars screwed up his eyes and winced but Mrs C paid not the blindest bit of attention and hugged him all the tighter). Then, at last, she let us go upstairs to get washed and changed for lunch.
We had the rest of the day off. And although Colonel Armstrong had promised us there would be no extra lessons, Åse quickly pointed out that if he saw us hanging around he was sure to find us something to do.
So after lunch, we gathered up blankets and pillows from our beds and crept down to the boiler room in the basement. And, while the others made a big nest of bedclothes on top of the wood pile, I sneaked two bottles of Mrs Collins’ lemonade and a packet of Bourbon biscuits from the kitchen.
So that’s where we are now, settled down for a lovely long afternoon of lounging and log writing and biscuit nibbling. And it’s been made all the more wonderful because we all know that soon there will be no more days like this. Soon we’ll be fighting for our lives. But that’s in the future. Not now. Now we’re just going to take things easy.
Åse can take over the log now. I bet she has some pretty bitter things to say about Colonel Armstrong.
Åse Jeffries
7TH DECEMBER 1942, DRUMINCRAIG HOUSE
We are just back from the Colonel’s latest lovely surprise: a day and a night in an interrogation cell with one-way mirrors on the walls so that he and Chop-chop-chop could secretly watch us being duffed over. The scary German interrogators may only have been actors – though they do seem to have “got into” their parts – but the fleas in the straw were 100 per cent genuine. I’ve got a little row of bites all down one arm.
We weren’t put on the rack or hung upside down – that’ll be for the Gestapo to do when we get caught in Norway. But it was very hard. I thought I was going to die. So did Jakob. Fred says he nearly gave way when they brought out a tray of little Viennese pastries and hot sausage rolls, but he pulled through by shutting his eyes and playing imaginary chess games with himself.
The only person who didn’t seem shaken up was Lars. Afterwards, when we were all yacketty-yacking away, Mr No-Chat said nothing. And when Jakob asked him how he felt, Lars just shrugged and said quietly, “The real thing is far worse.” He wouldn’t say any more, but there was something pretty chilling in his voice and it shut everybody up.
Anyway, it’s all over now. Tomorrow we leave for the air base, where we’ll collect our gear and our final briefings and prepare for the Big Drop.
Area of Operations: one of the most inhospitable places on the planet.
Target: a basement only accessible via a tunnel no wider than the Colonel’s pipe.
Team: Fred the Geek, Mr No-Smiles-No-Chat, Mr Sensible and eeny weeny little me.
And the up side? My chances of returning to stuck-up old Roxbury Hall are almost zero. No more dancing lessons, no more deportment classes, no more carrot pie, no more lectures on how to carry an umbrella and address the wife of a bishop. And, naturally, if it comes to a choice between instant death and elocution lessons with Mrs Forrester, I’ll take instant death any day.
Åse Jeffries
8TH DECEMBER 1942, DRUMINCRAIG HOUSE
Lars and I spent the whole of our last day at Drumincraig training in Sergeant Chop-chop-chop’s plywood replica of the Vemork power plant basement and the heavy water containers. By the end of the day we knew the layout so well we could get in, set the charges and leave again in twenty-five minutes without ever taking our blindfolds off. Even Chop-chop-chop seems pretty pleased with our timekeeping.
When we got to the air base today, Colonel Armstrong took us to see our equipment. It was laid out in great piles along a table: tents, weapons, skis, clothes, rations… I don’t know how we are going to carry it all across the Hardanger Plateau without an army of forklift trucks, or several hundred slaves. The food alone – even though it’s only a four-week supply – takes up at least three rucksacks. And we’re going to have to eat an awful lot of pemmican, which is a strange dried meat and fruit mixture that hardens into something a bit leathery and tastes of dog food with a lingering touch of Ribena. Bleuch!
They seem to have thought of everything, though: special woollen mitts with a separate trigger finger, Norwegian kroner, a little coil of waxed thread for shoe repairs, Swedish compasses, and so on. Nothing has British labels, though we do have a whole load of British army uniform for the attack itself. That has to be seen to be done by outsiders, not Norwegians, otherwise the Germans might carry out Herod-like reprisals on the local population. And the boys also have special rabbit-skin jock straps for the parachute jump – apparently they can really hurt themselves if they aren’t protected.
It all looked great – if a bit scary – and then I noticed one rather important omission. Between the four of us there is only one packet of toilet paper.
When I pointed this out, the Colonel got very sniffy.
“You’ll just have to learn to make do, Miss Jeffries. In the Middle East, the troops clean their backsides with sand. There’ll be plenty of rocks and sphagnum moss…”
And then he put his left forefinger in the air – the gesture he always makes when he’s going to say something very important.
“Now,” he said in a hushed voice. “I have a very personal gift for each of you.”
The door opened and Chop-chop-chop (for once he wasn’t smiling) brought in a tray carrying four small snuff boxes with red enamel lids. The room went really still.
I opened my box. Inside was a small white capsule.
Potassium cyanide.
Our very own poison tablets.
Thank you, Colonel!
The Colonel continued to talk in a hushed voice. “Keep this pill about your person at
all times, and preferably sew it into your clothing. You never know when you might need it.”
I turned the little box over. It has a hallmark on the back. Genuine silver. They spare no expense here. The only thing that comes cheap is human life.
Jakob P. Stromsheim
9TH DECEMBER 1942, HARDANGER PLATEAU
We are here, and we’ve spent our first night on Norwegian soil! I’m now inside a sleeping bag, inside a tent, on a hillside covered in snow somewhere or other on the Hardanger Plateau. But I’ll start with the seconds just before my feet touched Norwegian snow.
I was dangling half out of the bomber, in the freezing night air. My arms ached because I was trying to hold on to the hatch while the wind tugged at my legs, and the whole aeroplane – it had suddenly slowed right down for the drop – was vibrating wildly. Three hundred metres below me lay a jumble of snowy hills and lakes and rocks and streams.
This was sheer madness.
But then, over the roar of the engines, I heard the words:
“Number one! GO!”
I dropped down into the freezing, moonlit sky. It was such a fast, clean fall. But after a few metres – and they passed in a trice – my parachute opened with a great jerk, and, for a moment, I was hoisted back upwards.
Then everything slowed down and I drifted towards the ground with the wind tearing at me all the time. The plane had done a loop and the sound of the engines died away as it headed back to Scotland.
Dotted around in the moonlight, were Lars, Åse and Freddie, all dressed in the same crinkly white camouflage suits as me, and all floating down in their parachutes. Further away still, there were twelve more, smaller parachutes. These were tied to twelve metal boxes containing all our stores and equipment. The boxes were coffin-shaped – one of Sergeant Sneydy’s little jokes, I suppose. Maybe he thought a few coffins would come in handy.
When I first saw Norway from the plane, the Hardanger looked all smooth and white and flat. But now I could see that it wasn’t flat at all. And the wind was pushing me towards the side of a very steep hill with huge boulders sticking out through the snow. The slope came towards me dead fast. I tried to steer the parachute away from the rocks. I bent my legs and crouched over.
Wham! Welcome to Norway.
I hit a huge hillock of snow and rolled to a stop. I’d missed the rocks and the landing had been painless. But, when I tried to get to my feet, I realized I was waist high in soft snow.
The parachute gave a sharp tug.
Help!
Quickly, before the wind could pull me down the hillside, I undid the cords, crumpled the parachute into a big ball and wedged it under the corner of a large rock.
Then I tried to get my bearings. It was a clear night, and I knew immediately that the navigator had got it wrong. We were definitely not in the Skoland marshes (which had been the plan). In the moonlight, I could see that I was in a long, steep valley with a lake (probably frozen over) at the foot. Gusts of snow-filled wind were scurrying everywhere. In the distance I could make out two white figures, one of them probably Åse to judge by the size, moving slowly towards each other.
I looked around to check none of the containers had fallen nearby, then, as I’d be walking into the wind, I put my head down and set out along the hillside to join them. The snow was so deep that I was wading rather than walking.
When I reached Lars and Åse, Freddie had already arrived with a large metal box that he’d tugged down the hill. The wind was too loud for anyone to hear anything, but I pointed to a huge boulder further down the slope. The others followed.
When we were in the lee of the boulder and out of the wind, we gathered round Freddie’s metal box. It was smaller than the others (but still coffin-shaped) and had a red stripe down the side. This was Sergeant Sneyd’s idea. It was an “overnight” container holding the things we’d need immediately after the drop. And goodness, I’m grateful to him now.
Freddie undid the clasp and inside we found a spade, four sleeping bags, matches, a candle, a tiny primus stove, a saucepan, a loaf of pemmican, a bag of oats and – this was a surprise – a bag of sticky yellow crumbs.
“Aha!” said Freddie. He stuck his finger into the bag and licked it. He’d taste anything – even if it said poison on the front, he’d still lick it.
“Lemon bonbons!” announced Freddie. “They must be from Mrs Collins.”
We all stuck our fingers in the bag. The sticky lemon sugar tasted better than anything you can imagine.
Åse grimaced. “Says it all, doesn’t it? Mrs C gives us lemon bonbons. And what does the Colonel give us? Poison capsules!”
After that, I sent Lars off to reconnoitre the valley – he said it felt familiar, but he couldn’t be sure because it was so dark. Meanwhile I lit the primus stove and Freddie prepared something to eat. Åse took the spade and began digging a sleeping trench just under the boulder.
Lars returned a few minutes later. He’d worked out exactly where we were.
“We’ve been put down about thirty kilometres too far west. Ronsen’s hut is further down this valley. That should be safe. It’s a good weatherproof little shack. And old Ronsen used to keep it well supplied.”
“How far?” I asked. I’d never heard Lars say so much at once.
“It’s a good day’s journey,” he replied. “And we’ll have all the stuff to take with us.”
That didn’t sound good. We still had to find the other boxes and that could take us a long time. Even if it didn’t snow overnight, the wind might cover them with snow. It was worrying, but I didn’t say anything to the others.
Freddie had made porridge from melted snow and oats, with a sprinkling of lemon bonbon bits on top. We all hunkered around the stove and ate the mixture straight from the saucepan. I’m not sure that lemon-flavoured porridge was such a good idea, but at least it was hot and sweet.
Afterwards we carefully shook the snow from our camouflage suits, took off our boots, and wriggled into the sleeping bags. Even though we were going to sleep in all our clothes and our balaclavas, it would still be a very cold night.
The four of us lay close together: Freddie and me in the middle, Lars and Åse on either side. I tried to get as far down into my sleeping bag as possible, blowing on my hands and wriggling my toes to try and get warm. Then it occured to me that the arrangement wasn’t quite right. Still in my sleeping bag, I got to my feet and jumped round till I was on the other side of Åse.
“Move along in,” I said. “You go in the middle, Åse. You’ll stay warmer.”
“Excuse me?” said Åse.
“Quite right,” added Freddie. “Åse, you can’t be on the side. You have to have someone on either side to keep you warm. Little things get cold quicker. Your proportion of surface area to body mass is higher. That’s why mice have fur and elephants only need skin.”
“I’m not a mouse,” huffed Åse.
“OK, Mouse,” said Freddie.
“I said I’m NOT A MOUSE!”
“OK, Not-A-Mouse,” said Freddie.
“Freddie, that’s enough,” I said. But I was smiling.
We settled down into our sleeping bags again and lay there, all huddled together. I tightened the sleeping bag drawstring round my face. Like the others, I had turned into a little pod of white material – with only my nose sticking out and a little cloud of breath emerging from my nostrils.
Dear God, please don’t let it snow tonight! I thought.
I looked up. I had never been anywhere so wild at night. The sky was a vast arch of darkness, and it made me feel very small. We were just little specks of humanity about to set off on a huge, idiotically dangerous mission…
But there was no point thinking like that.
“The North star seems brighter here,” I said.
“All the stars are brighter in Norway,” replied Åse. “It’s as if we’re nearer to them.”
And then Freddie told us about the stars. He showed us Aldebaran, and the double star Sirius, and th
e Seven Sisters of the Pleiades. He pointed out the belt of Orion the Hunter and the stars of his shoulder: Bellatrix and the red dwarf, Betelgeuse. On he went: Rigel, Saiph, Castor, Pollux… He was veering off into the minor nebulae when I finally dropped off to sleep.
Jakob P. Stromsheim
9TH DECEMBER 1942
So here I am, writing this tucked up in the tent with the night closing in all around.
This morning I woke up with the sun in my face. It was so cold I didn’t want to get up, but Lars was already crouched over the primus stove making tea. I wriggled out of my sleeping bag, cleaned my hands and face with some snow, and looked out across the valley.
The lake down below was white at the edges, but its centre glistened black where the water hadn’t frozen. Along the valley bottom, skirting the edge of the lake, a thin band of birch trees swayed in the breeze. Nothing else seemed to live or move there.
The hillside we were perched on was jagged with boulders. As I’d feared, the wind had shifted the snow during the night. Somewhere, in among the boulders and crevices, the remaining eleven containers were now lying hidden.
We needed to find them. Quickly.
After breakfast I got Freddie to set up his signals equipment while the rest of us searched for the boxes. We each headed off in a different direction, trudging through the heavy, damp snow, all the while scanning the hillside for coffin-shaped lumps. Often what I thought was a box turned out to be just a rock or a lump in the snow. And when I did find a box, I usually tripped over it before I saw the metal edges sticking out through the snow.
By lunchtime we’d retrieved ten of the eleven coffins. But it was only in the late afternoon that Lars found the final box of ski equipment, wedged behind a small hillock down by the lakeside.
By that time it was too late to set out for the day, so we put up our two tents and I checked the contents of the last container. My stomach was churning with fear. I’d carefully gone through everything, so I immediately knew what was wrong. The spare tins of paraffin hadn’t been packed. After tonight we’d have no more fuel.
Mission Telemark Page 6