by John Harris
‘Please?’
He shrugged. ‘I think we’ll need transport.’
They reached the farm at last and carried the injured men upstairs. The condition of the naval rating and one of the Norwegians was serious. The other three were suffering from shock.
The Norwegians seemed bewildered by the events, and Annie got them tearing up sheets and clothing for bandages, and taking down curtains to wrap round the wet and shivering men. The farm was made up of detached buildings – living quarters, a cook-house, stables, store rooms, even a schoolroom for the neighbourhood – and the barn had an outside ramp leading to an upper floor which was big enough for everybody.
‘We have used it for wedding feasts and for dances,’ the farmer explained.
He was plainly troubled by what had happened, but proud that the Germans had not occupied Narvik without casualties.
‘One of the British destroyers is beached near here,’ he said. ‘And another sank in mid-channel further west. But two German destroyers were sunk and five damaged. The others are all short of ammunition and fuel, and only a few of the merchantmen are still afloat. There were twenty-five of them. Another ship, Rauenfels, was blown up. She ran into the destroyers as they left. She was carrying ammunition and went sky-high.’
‘Serve the clumsy bugger right just,’ Willie John said with bitter satisfaction.
The following morning they woke cold, tired and hungry. The barn window was patterned with rime, and a bucket of water by the door was frozen solid. As they went outside, the air, thin and icy, hit them like a blow in the chest, searing their lungs as they drew breath. They could see the fjord from the door, a black lake of water under a cold grey sky and surrounded by snow-clad hills. There was no sign of the Germans and the farmer brought the news that they were still occupied with clearing up the debris in Narvik harbour.
‘They say the British fleet is off the Lofotens somewhere,’ he said, ‘and the pilot station at Tranöy reported two British destroyers to the north of Baröy. I think they are still waiting for the Germans to try to escape.’
His sons had already gone south to report to what there was of the Norwegian army between Oslo and Trondheim, and he was expecting to go himself as soon as he could make arrangements for someone to help his wife and daughters look after the farm. Other men like him in the area were doing the same thing.
It was clear, however, that escaping south was not going to be easy. From Trondheim, Bergen, Kristiansand and Oslo, the Germans were already fanning out, setting up roadblocks to stop the movement of civilians, and bus services were coming to a halt. They were now wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to get hold of a fishing vessel in Djupvik and escape at night towards Trondheim, putting themselves ashore there to pick up the railway to Sweden. The problem was chiefly money, food and the depth of the snow. The blizzard which had been blowing on and off ever since the Germans had first made their appearance had loaded the branches of trees and lay in drifts several feet deep. A visit to Narvik seemed imperative.
It wasn’t difficult to get a lift in the back of a timber lorry, but it was bitterly cold and Magnusson and Annie huddled together out of the biting wind. Her face was pinched and white-looking, and when he put his arm round her and pulled her to him to keep warm, she didn’t object. As they crossed the causeway to the railway station, the place looked grey and sombre under the leaden skies, the buildings black against the whiteness of the land. The Germans had already placed guards about the centre of the town and it seemed wiser to keep well away from it.
It started to snow again as they climbed from the lorry and walked towards the harbour. Houses caught by the blast from exploding ships, after the fight on the 9th, looked like death’s heads, their empty windows like the eye sockets of a skull. Roofs were missing and several buildings were mere shells streaming smoke, while the narrow waters in front of the Post Pier and the Ore Quay were filled with the wreckage from damaged ships. The big whaling factory ship, Jan Willem, appeared to be untouched but her starboard side was a confusion of hoses and wires hanging into the sea, and all round her the water was full of sunken vessels. Of the twenty-five merchant ships, which had been in the harbour, only Jan Willem, a big freighter, Lippe, and two British ships, North Cornwall and Mersington Court, still seemed to be afloat. On the East Side of the fjord a British destroyer lay beached and on fire, her ammunition still exploding.
The German destroyers had suffered dreadfully and the survivors were still struggling to save their ships. Superstructures were distorted and large areas of deck were burned out. Several seemed water-logged, and boats were ferrying between them and Jan Willem, crammed with cutting gear and men, while on the other side of the factory ship a submarine was refuelling hurriedly.
As they recovered from the shock of invasion, the faces of the Norwegians had assumed a stubborn unyielding expression that showed their unwillingness to accept the Germans as ‘protectors’. Sturdily independent of authority at any time, they were now rigidly following only the directions of their own town officials and avoiding helping the invaders. Though they were cut off from the rest of Norway, they had better sources of information than people further south, because the reception from the Swedish radio was good in Narvik and news of Norwegian resistance came regularly over the air from Tromsø. There were no reports of fighting in the north but men on skis were bringing across the mountains information from other parts of the country. Tromsø radio had urged evacuation of the town, and in spite of the German efforts to stop them, young men were still slipping away across the fjord.
Keeping to the back streets, they managed to find their way to the Egge home. The door was opened by Annie’s father. Behind him was his wife who flung herself into her daughter’s arms, her eyes full of tears. Herr Egge grasped Magnusson’s hand and squeezed it.
‘We thought you were dead,’ he said.
Annie turned. ‘Do the Germans also think we’re dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘It won’t be long before they change their minds,’ Magnusson warned. ‘They’ll find the boat and Vinje’s grave, and eventually the injured will have to be brought in.’
Annie’s parents had fled with her grandmother to the basement during the naval battle and were still in a state of shock.
‘The radio said the British had been repulsed,’ Annie’s father said. ‘But there were hits on the ships in the harbour. They say the German commander was blown up with his ship and there are floating corpses and German wounded everywhere.’
While Annie and Magnusson ate a hurried meal, Herr Egge went hurrying among the neighbouring houses and returned with his pockets full of money. ‘It isn’t much,’ he said, ‘but it will help pay your fares. We can’t supply food for the journey because we haven’t got much. The Germans have shut all the shops and banks. They’ve organised ration cards, though, and there must be a lot less people than there were. I’ve heard the dead at the hospital are lying up the cellar steps and the mayor’s asking the Germans to bury them, because we can’t do it.’
They spent the night at the Egges’ house, Magnusson sleeping in the bed of the missing son, and the following morning they were all up early.
They had to get back to the farm before it grew dark, and they set off intending to beg a lift. The surviving German destroyers were humming with activity and it looked to Magnusson as though they were expecting trouble. One of them, disabled, had been secured to the jetty and German sailors were stacking ready-use ammunition as if she were to be employed as a shore battery. Another cripple was being escorted out of the harbour, while the remainder were raising steam.
Then, as they reached the Beisfjord causeway, they heard shouts from behind and saw people beginning to run and scatter. As they stopped, bewildered, a car skidded to a standstill alongside them.
‘Get out of town!’ the driver yelled. ‘The British are coming! The pilot station at Tranöy telephoned and they’re clearing the place! They say one of the ships is a colossus
!’
As the car drew away with screeching tyres, they heard a rumble like thunder from the seaward end of the fjord.
‘That’s gunfire,’ Magnusson said and they began to hurry after the other people crossing the causeway.
The gunfire was heavier already than anything they’d heard before and a young man running towards them yelled that the fjord was swarming with ships. German troops were hastening already from the occupied areas of the town, except for the few who remained behind for the defence of the harbour. The firing increased, punctuated by tremendous blasts, the sound echoing backwards and forwards across the water to remind Magnusson of the story of Rip Van Winkle hearing the giants playing at skittles in the mountains. The whole fjord seemed to be expanding and contracting with the sound.
‘Come on,’ he said and, grabbing Annie’s hand began to run. As they reached the trees at the other end of the causeway they heard a roar like an express train approaching, and as he pushed her down into the snow a shell exploded in the town.
Tiles and timber hurtled through the air and they felt the blast wash over them. As they lifted their heads, smoke and a cloud of pulverised snow was drifting away towards the south and they could see flames leaping up. Men, women and children were hurrying into basements and towards a half-built subway in the hillside belonging to the ore company. A few remained on the slopes on either side of the fjord, indifferent to the danger in the exhilaration of seeing the hated Germans suffer. Soldiers were running about, bent double, their arms about their heads, showing all the signs of panic. Another shell roared past and smashed into the town.
‘Poor bloody Narvik,’ Magnusson said. ‘First the Germans, now us!’
Annie’s head came up, her eyes bright. ‘Poor Narvik?’ she said. ‘Proud Narvik! We don’t expect to regain our freedom without blood. It’s like being the princess in the fairy story with the black knight and the white knight fighting for her.’
Above the racket of small arms, they heard the sound of an aeroplane engine and, looking up, saw a British Swordfish, lumbering and slow with its double wings and fixed undercarriage, circling just to the north where they had seen the crippled destroyer limping away. Then they saw nine destroyers – some of them large Tribals, Magnusson noticed at once – followed by the majestic shape of a battleship, square, ugly and menacing, her huge guns lifting. Stark and black against the white background of snow, he recognised her at once.
‘It’s Warspite,’ he said.
The ships were emerging from the smoke, the British destroyers circling to look for targets. One of the German destroyers shuddered from torpedo hits, which lifted great columns of water above her forward and aft. Then Warspite’s great guns fired. The tremendous crack came across the water as they saw the long tongues of flame leap from the barrels. The German vessel, already on fire where the torpedoes had struck seemed to leap in the water and pieces of deck flew through the air. Guns were going off everywhere now, the British destroyers firing everything they possessed. The German ship burst into flames along her whole length and men could be seen jumping overboard into the water.
The Swordfish was passing sedately over the town now. It was already becoming impossible to see across the fjord for the burning buildings and the drifting smoke from Warspite’s guns. Around Annie and Magnusson, young Norwegians were dancing and yelling excitedly.
A German shell, fired wildly in the confusion, landed on the slope below them and the blast waves tore through the trees, uprooting several. Another tremendous explosion enveloped the destroyer moored at the quay as a floating battery. One of the British destroyers had closed her to board but had been driven away by heavy firing from the shore. As she went astern, the German ship blew up. A group of Germans running for their lives were swept away by a flying iron spar and what few windows had not already been destroyed in the battle on the 9th fell in. By this time the British destroyers had disappeared down the narrow fjord to the north of the town beyond the Ore Quay. The rumble of gunfire and explosions continued for some time; then they saw the British ships retiring seawards, and Magnusson began to curse and pound his fist against the trunk of a tree. He turned to find Annie staring at him, bewildered.
‘That’s the second time they’ve been in here and I’ve had to stand and watch ’em leave without me!’ he stormed.
A man came out of a nearby house, his eyes excited. ‘They’ve got the lot,’ he yelled. ‘They trapped them in Rombaksfjord! My brother saw it all and telephoned!’
It seemed there wasn’t a single one left of the ten German destroyers which had steamed in so arrogantly only four days before, and the Germans ashore were all dead, captured or in flight.
The town was covered by the pall of smoke that now hung over the fjord and they could dimly see vehicles moving out towards the east. For a while the Norwegians round them watched; then, unable to resist, they began to recross the causeway into the town. Magnusson looked at Annie and she looked back at him, her eyes bright. He knew she wanted to go too.
As they entered the town again, houses and buildings were burning; there didn’t seem to be a single undamaged window or roof. The air was thick with the stench of fuel oil mixed with the acrid smoke of burning timber, and they could hear the crackle of flames. The whole town seemed to be a confusion of bomb craters and rubble, with splintered wood and bent steel everywhere. The Norwegians showed no bitterness at the bombardment, but the Germans were half-delirious, – laughing, crying or singing – and when they were told they were finished they could only answer, ‘Ja, ja! Kamerad! Kamerad! Pardon!’
Already they were streaming out of the town in flight to the mountains, some of them mere boys of no more than eighteen, their tunics unfastened, their hands devoid of weapons, sheer terror on their faces, as they stumbled through the snow towards the trees and the mountain that loomed over the town.
‘For God’s sake,’ Magnusson said, as they watched. ‘If we could only put troops ashore now, we’d have the place!’
The Germans continued to stream past them, dropping personal belongings and equipment as they went, many of them wet through and looking like half-drowned cats, tramping a path through the snow like a dark curving snake. One youngster, small and wearing an oversized helmet stopped to speak to them.
‘Which is the way to Sweden?’ he asked.
Annie immediately pointed towards the slopes.
‘Up there,’ she said. ‘That’s the way.’
Her eyes were bitter as he moved on. ‘It takes them into the mountains,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they’ll starve up there or die of the cold.’
The streets were empty with just an occasional truck moving about, filled with bodies brought from the shore under tarpaulins, and one elegant old limousine with tasselled curtains, marked by a red cross, that was picking up wounded. The Missions to Seamen was littered with German bedding and equipment and the remains of meals but otherwise it was empty and Annie stood silently looking at it, her face pale and sad.
Shells with delayed fuses were still bursting in the town and the harbour was a graveyard of wrecked ships. Flocks of gulls screamed over the water, diving from time to time on the floating corpses. The pier was a heartbreaking sight. The new cold storage plant, of which Narvik had been so proud, had collapsed, and the creamery at the other side of the square had lost all its windows. Wooden jetties had been blasted away, the pillars projecting from the water like decayed teeth. Parts of ships lay everywhere among the timber, logs and cleft rocks, like the playthings of destructive monster children.
The windows of the town’s great stone church had been smashed and its slender spire had lost some of its tiles. Graves were being dug in the cemetery, even as others had been laid open by shells, and the mortuary chapel had been blown to pieces, the debris scattered among the headstones.
The town was deathly quiet. There was no electricity because the power station had been hit. The destruction was immense but among those few Norwegians still in the streets there was
a strange leaping enthusiasm. Despite what had happened to Narvik, it had been a victory, and some of them were singing ‘Tipperary’ – the only British tune they knew.
A few more Germans drifted past, also singing, but it was looted Norwegian brandy, not self-confidence, that stirred their voices. Some of them wore scraps of Norwegian uniform or civilian clothes, and one of them, staggering with drunkenness, took an angry pot shot at a cat, the bullet striking a stone and whining away into the sky.
Watching them, Magnusson stood on the wrecked jetty near the smoking remains of the destroyer that had blown up. Then he stared down the fjord in the crazy half-hope that by some miracle of telepathy he could let the situation ashore be known.
As he turned away, he found a German officer staring at him. He was tall and good-looking in the best Aryan manner, his face white and tense, his jaw jutting forward, his hand holding a pistol. He clearly imagined Magnusson was a Norwegian, and for a moment, before Annie grabbed his hand and pulled him away, Magnusson thought the German was going to shoot him.
‘I can tell you one thing,’ the German choked, turning on his heel and following the others out of the town, ‘and that is that your friends, the British, will never come! Never!’
Six
That evening the BBC and the Norwegian free radio announced that the Allies had made landings on the Norwegian coast. There was a yell of delight from the listening men.
‘We can join them when we know where they are,’ Magnusson said.
‘Perhaps they’re at Narvik by this time,’ Annie smiled.
But a discreet telephone call to the Egge family revealed that no troops had arrived there. The following morning, they learned that British troop transports were anchored off the Island of Hinnöy to the north and immediately began to debate whether it would be possible to reach them. But Hinnöy involved a circuitous journey round Narvik.
‘We must warn the British ships somehow,’ Annie insisted. ‘The place is simply waiting to be captured.’