The Winter Fortress

by Neal Bascomb

  In the morning, they broke into the small locked side room in the cabin. In it, they found a fishing logbook and learned the cabin was named Jansbu. It was owned by a Norwegian shipping magnate and was indeed beside the lake Rønneberg had identified.

  With no wireless set and the storm outside continuing to rage, the team could only sit and listen to the wind, which sounded like muddled screams. The gale blew with such force and duration, they began calculating how much they and their equipment weighed and whether the sum total was enough to keep the cabin fixed to the ground. The structure held, but the rattle and shaking of the walls made them feel as if they were aboard a ramshackle ship tossed on a roiling sea. None of them had ever experienced a storm of such ferocity.

  Three feet of snow fell over the course of the blizzard. When the team dared to crack open the door, the storm still howling with undiminished force, they glimpsed a landscape transformed into high drifts and flat, indistinct planes of snow. Their mission receded in their minds; there was nothing but the storm.

  All six became ill from the swift change in weather. Only two days before, they had been near sea level in the moist, relatively warm English climate. Now they were suffering cold beyond measure on a plateau almost a mile above sea level. Swollen glands made it hard for them to swallow; their eyes became rheumy, their temples hot with fever.

  On February 19 Rønneberg wrote, “Same weather. Storm and driving snow. We made an attempt to reach the depot to fetch more food to save the rations. This had to be given up because of the danger of losing our way.”

  The storm elevated in intensity that night, a beast set loose in the world. In the middle of it, the smoke from the fireplace began choking the cabin. Rønneberg braved the conditions outside to check the chimney. When he shoved the door closed behind him, he found himself lost in a desolate wilderness. Snow fell in fist-sized clumps. Eyes wide behind his goggles, he could see nothing, and the wind stole his breath. He made his way onto the roof of the cabin, keeping his body low.

  The howl of the wind made it impossible for him to think straight. The landscape seemed to be moving and reshaping itself, as if nothing was real or firm. Finally he determined that one of the braces supporting the chimney pot had come loose. He struggled to straighten the pot and secure the brace, acting by touch alone.

  While engaged in this task, Rønneberg was suddenly lifted up and back, as if a giant had grabbed the back of his jacket. Then he was flying, head over heels off the roof, tossed away by a gust of wind. He landed in a snowbank. When he staggered to his feet, the cabin had vanished. All was white, swirling white, around him. Heading into the wind that had knocked him away, he eventually found the cabin. Climbing onto the roof a second time, he managed to fix the chimney pot, only to be hit by another gust of wind that sent him flying into the snow.

  A slight respite in the storm the next day allowed the team to venture from the cabin to attempt to locate their depot. All landmarks had sunk into the drifts of snow, including the rods they had put up as markers. A three-hour search ended in vain. Another, in the late afternoon, turned up one container, but then the blizzard returned with a fury.

  On the fifth day after their arrival, a fraught Rønneberg wrote, “The storm raged with renewed power. Visibility was zero. The general lassitude of all members of the party was still very much in evidence.” All the world was snow and wind, and there appeared no escape from its hold.

  As quickly as the storm swept into the Vidda, it left. On February 22, the six Gunnerside men woke up to silence. They stepped from the cabin into a clear, windless day. The blizzard had transformed the landscape. Jansbu was now an igloo. Drifts had gathered to make new hillsides. Stalagmites of ice and snow stood like a collection of quiet sentries on the watch. Jutting precipices of white hung over cliff sides. They might as well have emerged onto a planet made wholly of snow.

  Rønneberg gave the order that they must depart for Fetter by early afternoon. For six days they had been out of contact, and as far as Tronstad or the Swallow team knew, they might be dead, and the operation off. They must hurry.

  They returned to the general area of their depot, and over the next several hours, rummaged about in the drifts of snow until they found one of the rods marking it and were able to retrieve some extra rations. Given the distance and steep terrain they had to travel to reach Lake Store Saure, Rønneberg decided to minimize their loads. They would carry only enough explosives to blow up the high-concentration plant (not the surrounding machinery), uniforms for Swallow, Kreyberg rations for ten men for five days, and their operational equipment—weapons, hand grenades, shears, axes, field glasses, detonators, time fuses, and first-aid equipment.

  At 1:00 p.m. the team was finished packing up back at the cabin, ready to head out, when Haukelid spotted a figure in the distance. Towing a sled, he was headed straight toward them. They retreated inside, shut the door, and hoped he would pass without incident. There was no doubt, however, that their ski tracks would attract attention. In the dead of winter, particularly after such a storm, signs of human habitation deep in the Vidda would surely be cause for investigation.

  They readied their guns. As the man approached within a few steps of the cabin’s door, they sprang out. With six gun barrels pointed at him, the man’s weathered face paled. He was fitted out like a typical Norwegian in winter.

  “What are you doing in the mountains?” Rønneberg asked.

  “I’m a hunter,” he said, innocently enough. They searched him and his equipment. His identity card stated he was Kristian Kristiansen, forty-eight, from Uvdal, a valley due east on the edge of the Vidda. On his sled was over fifty pounds of reindeer meat. He was carrying rifles, a bundle of cash, and his pocketbook contained a list of names and addresses in Oslo. He was evidently who he said he was; the list of names, clients for his meat. That did not translate, however, into him not being a threat.

  Rønneberg brought Kristiansen inside the cabin. He asked him if he was a member of Nasjonal Samling. “Well,” Kristiansen said, still frightened, “I’m not exactly a member, but that’s the party I support.”

  “Are you sure?” Haukelid asked. The man was all but stating that he was their enemy, in cahoots with the Nazis.

  “Yes,” he said hesitatingly.

  Glancing at the others, Haukelid knew they were all thinking the same thing: that they might need to kill the man. Given their mission, there was no way they could simply detain him. If they let him go, he might reveal their presence to the Germans or to the police.

  Haukelid tried a different tack. If he were to go to Uvdal and ask around, he asked Kristiansen, would his neighbors say he had Nazi sympathies? “I’ve so many enemies down there,” he said, “they’re sure to say I’m not a Nazi, just to make things difficult for me.”

  It seemed as though the man was saying whatever he thought would win him the sympathy of his captors. He was in all likelihood harmless, but they could not be sure. It was for Rønneberg to decide what to do. “This is a bit of a shame,” he finally said. “You think we’re Germans, but we’ve nothing to do with them. We’re Norwegian soldiers, and we assume you look forward to the day when the king and government can come home.”

  “They’ve never done me any good,” Kristiansen said. “They can just stay where they are.”

  His statement shocked the Gunnerside men. Kasper Idland asked to speak with Rønneberg in private. “I’ll shoot him for you,” Idland said, once outside the cabin. Rønneberg knew he was trying to unburden him of the responsibility. It was a kindness. But he put himself into Kristiansen’s shoes: six heavily armed bearded men seize him in the middle of the Vidda—he is scared and trying to wriggle out of an impossible situation. It would have been one thing if Kristiansen was carrying an NS card, but he wasn’t. He might not pose a threat. Even so, Rønneberg’s instructions were that if the unforeseen occurred, he must act with the aims of the mission foremost in mind. He was not ready to decide. He told Idland, “We’d better take h
im with us for now.”

  Kristiansen immediately proved to be of use to the Gunnerside team. They took some of his store of reindeer and cooked a big lunch, saving their own rations. Then Rønneberg asked if he could guide them on a route toward Lake Store Saure. Kristiansen said he could. They decided to leave that night to avoid any further chance encounters.

  At 11:00 p.m. they departed. Kristiansen was in the lead, a sled tied around his waist loaded with rations and equipment. Rønneberg stayed close behind, compass in hand, to ensure they were following a proper course.

  Kristiansen proved a better guide than they could have imagined. Not only was his path sure, but he skied a course that used the natural contours of the land, economizing effort. It was, Rønneberg thought, beautiful to watch.

  At dawn, February 23, as the sun rose, first bronze, then gold over the mountains, Kristiansen led them to a small, flat-roofed hut owned by his family, where they rested. He chatted easily with them now and even attempted to buy one of their Tommy guns. When they left the hut and came across a herd of reindeer, Kristiansen begged to be allowed to shoot three or four of them—to be collected later. Rønneberg refused, but he had come to the conclusion that their captive was a simple mountain man, without guile—and no threat to the Gunnerside team.

  At the entrance to a long valley, seven miles by their map from Fetter, they spied a man crossing the lake below in their direction. They dropped quickly behind some boulders, none more quickly than Kristiansen.

  Rønneberg waved Haukelid over and handed him a pair of field glasses. Given that the skier was headed in the direction of Bjørnesfjord, he might well be a member of Swallow out searching for them. Haukelid would know better than anyone if this was the case. Although the skier was only a few hundred yards away, Haukelid could not make out who it was. He had a heavy beard and wore a thick layer of Norwegian clothes. Then Haukelid sighted another skier coming around a bend, a hundred yards behind the first. Rønneberg ordered Haukelid to move forward for a closer look. If he was discovered, and the skiers were not Swallow, Rønneberg told him he should simply say he was a reindeer hunter, much like Kristiansen.

  Haukelid crept through the soft snow as the two skiers came up from the valley toward him. Near the crest, they stopped. One, then the other, scanned the surrounding area. They were looking for somebody, for something.

  As they started ahead again, Haukelid recognized a weatherbeaten Helberg when he turned his face toward him. Beside him, bearded and unkempt, was Kjelstrup. For a second, Haukelid remained hidden, overjoyed at the sight of his friends. He wanted to say something funny—“Dr. Livingstone, I presume”—but seeing how thin and wan they looked, he thought better of it. Instead, he simply coughed, and the two swung their heads around, startled, hands on guns. When they recognized Haukelid, a shout, a whoop, then a holler rose over the valley.

  A message from Home Station had confirmed that Gunnerside had been dropped on February 16, but still stated, erroneously, that they had been released over Bjørnesfjord. Poulsson had sent Helberg and Kjelstrup out to search for them there. By pure luck, Gunnerside came along that same route from Lake Skrykken. The three men embraced and slapped each other’s backs, and Haukelid waved for the others to join them.

  Crowded into Fetter that night, the men had a feast. The Gunnerside team provided crackers, chocolate, powdered milk, raisins, and, as was welcomed most of all by Poulsson, “tobacco directly imported” from England. The Swallow men offered reindeer of every cut, including marrow, eyeballs, stomach, and brain. Their guests were happy enough with the lean meat.

  Earlier, Helberg had gone ahead of the others to warn Einar Skinnarland that the Gunnerside men were on their way. Skinnarland’s identity needed to be kept a secret even from Gunnerside in case anyone was captured during the operation. After Skinnarland left Fetter, Rønneberg, Haukelid, and two more of the six arrived while two others kept Kristiansen under guard in the valley.

  After discussion with Poulsson, Rønneberg decided to release the hunter with a warning that if he spoke to anybody about them, they would make it known that he had helped guide their party. “Stay on the Vidda and say nothing,” Rønneberg told Kristiansen before letting him go.

  Nobody felt completely at ease with the situation, but Rønneberg measured the risk against the taking of an innocent life.

  The ten men talked and laughed like old friends into the night. Haukelid thought of the months Swallow had spent surviving on the Vidda, and considered that, despite their rough beards and sallow skin, they were in remarkably good shape. He asked whether they had experienced any trouble, and when Kjelstrup answered, “Nothing,” they all understood it was to be left at that.

  Poulsson and his team were cheered to see new faces and to enjoy new conversation. Their long wait and struggle had proven worthwhile. Altogether, they were almost overwhelmed by how uplifted and inspired they felt just at being united with Gunnerside.

  Of the mission ahead, there was little talk. There would be time for business in the morning. For now, they celebrated.

  16

  Best-Laid Plans

  * * *

  AFTER A RESTLESS NIGHT—every bed and every inch of floor taken over by curled-up sleeping figures—the ten men had some coffee and a breakfast of reindeer. Their choice of meat: “boiled or roasted?” Then they gathered around the table to hash out their operational plan.

  First, Rønneberg assigned each man his task. He himself would lead the demolition party, accompanied by Kayser, Strømsheim, and Idland. They would split into pairs to double their chances of reaching the target. Haukelid would command the covering party of Poulsson, Helberg, Kjelstrup, and Storhaug. They would see to it that no one interfered with the setting of the explosives.

  Haugland would go to Jansbu, the cabin beside Lake Skrykken, with the radio equipment to establish and maintain contact with London. Skinnarland, referred to in front of the Gunnerside members only as the teams’ “local contact,” would join him.

  Now they needed to figure out the best way in and out of Vemork. With a pencil and paper, Rønneberg sketched out the plant and surrounding area. He had never actually been there, but he knew every detail from their prep work and drew it true to scale. Rjukan to the right. Vemork in the middle. Lake Møs to the left. The Vestfjord Valley split the rudimentary map from left to right, following the course of the Måna River.

  Vemork was perched on a ledge of rock above the river gorge, on the south side of the valley. The eleven pipelines that fed its turbine generators rose along the valley wall above the power station at a sharp angle. A single-track railway line ran east to Rjukan along this same wall. A seventy-five-foot-long single-lane suspension bridge connected Vemork to the valley’s north side. Located by the bridge was Våer hamlet, a scattering of residences for the plant’s staff. Through it ran the Møsvann Road, connecting Rjukan to the Lake Møs dam. A long, high trek up the valley’s northern wall led to the endless Vidda.

  While in Britain, Tronstad and his Gunnerside team had pored over maps and photographs to decide on the best course to reach Vemork. The Swallow team had done the same during their time in Fetter. Now, together, they needed to finalize a plan.

  They debated three main routes to Vemork. They could approach from across the top of the southern side of the valley and descend to the plant alongside its penstocks. This idea was quickly ruled out because a guard had recently been placed at the top of the pipelines, and numerous minefields lined the approach.

  They could make a straightforward attack: ski down to Våer, neutralize the guards on the bridge, and head across to the plant. This approach had the benefit of easy terrain, but if the guards saw them coming and were able to raise the alarm, the team would have to make their attempt on the heavy water cells in the middle of a firefight. Any escape would be doubtful.

  Last, they could cross down through the gorge, climb up to the railway track, and enter the plant through a locked gate that, although patrolled, was not under
permanent guard. As Tronstad had suggested in London, this was their best chance of reaching the compound unseen, but there were dangers: certain places along the railway line presented the saboteurs with a six-hundred-foot drop straight into the river below.

  Rønneberg decided not to make a decision until they had secured the latest intelligence about the plant’s patrols and defenses. Helberg was due to collect such from a contact in Rjukan the following night. Once Helberg had the information, he would rejoin the team at a cabin in Fjøsbudalen, a narrow valley a few miles northwest of Vemork. This cabin would serve as their launch point for the operation.

  They took a break from their planning to stretch their legs, and all of the Gunnerside team members, with the exception of Haukelid, went off skiing. Before they returned, Haukelid sat down with his original team members. From a thin piece of paper hidden in his belongings, he read out the operational orders he had developed with Tronstad. These detailed setting up guerrilla groups in Telemark after the Vemork mission was complete. Skinnarland, although absent, was included in this work.

  After he read the message, Haukelid balled up the paper and moved to throw it into the stove. “Is that edible?” Haugland asked. Haukelid nodded. “Well, we don’t throw away food here.” Haugland took the ball of rice paper and popped it into his mouth. He had to work a bit hard to chew it, but it was a change to his diet and welcome for that.

  On Thursday, February 25, Rolf Sørlie and his family were celebrating his brother’s birthday with chocolate pastries. Sørlie checked his watch frequently—he did not want to be late. Finally, as the time approached 7:30 p.m., he told the others that he was going out for a walk. His mother did not question him, understanding that he was likely up to some resistance work about which it was best she knew nothing.