They fell into silence as the truck rumbled on. They had left the Germans and the enemy artillery behind, and were within touching distance of safety, yet just one enemy attack from the air could end their chances. Tanner smoked almost continuously, until his throat, already sore from the thick smoke of battle, was so dry he could barely speak. He tapped his feet and drummed his fingers, patted the wound on his neck and stowed his father's old scope in his haversack. But the truck would not go any faster, however much he might wish otherwise.
At last, after nearly an hour, they emerged from the valley, and there, nestling at the water's edge beneath a thick pall of smoke, stood the tiny port of Andalsnes.
The town was a wreck, hardly any houses standing; most had been reduced to little more than charred, blackened remains. Thick, cloying smoke hung heavy on the air. The harbour teemed with exhausted troops, but there was no sign of the ships. Tanner and his men jumped down from the truck.
'Thank you, sir,' he said, offering his hand to Lieutenant Lindsay, 'but we must leave you here. We need to find the Norwegians.'
Lieutenant Lindsay shook his hand. 'I hope our paths cross again, Sergeant. Good luck.'
They left the Marines and headed down a rubble- strewn road towards the quayside. 'Stick close to me, boys, and keep your eyes peeled. We've got to find them.'
'Why, Sarge?' said McAllister. 'They'll be here somewhere.'
Tanner turned on him. 'I'll tell you why, Mac. Because we've lost good men for that professor. We've hacked over mountains and across lakes, been strafed, bombed and shot at, and I'm damned if I'm going to leave this God-forsaken place without knowing that they're here and safely on a ship.'
His head throbbed and now that he was on his legs once more, the depth of his post-battle fatigue weighed down on him. Ahead, as they reached the quayside, all he could see was a sea of men. Jesus, he thought, how are we ever going to find them? They pushed their way through amid angry cries from equally exhausted and irritable men. 'We're looking for three Norwegians,' he said. 'Two men and a girl? Anyone seen them?' It was hopeless asking, he knew.
'There are lots,' said one wag. 'Have a look the other side of those mountains.'
They pushed on, but the light was fading, and then ahead, inching its way towards them, a ship - a destroyer. As it sounded its horn, the entire throng let out a massed cheer.
'Blimey, Sarge, it's like bloody Elland Road around here,' grinned Hepworth.
Tanner looked up at the skies. The light was fading.
'Another ten or fifteen minutes,' said Sykes, 'and then it'll be too dark.'
'I know, Stan,' said Tanner. 'That's what worries me.' He craned his neck. 'Come on, come on,' he muttered, 'where are you?'
'I didn't mean that, Sarge,' said Sykes. 'I meant it'll be too late for the Luftwaffe.'
They reached the end of the quay, but there was no sign of them. 'Where the bloody hell are they?' said Tanner. 'Come on, back we go. Let's have another look.' Doubts were creeping into his mind. What if they had never got aboard that train, after all? Perhaps they had been turned away. The destroyer was pulling into the quay. And it was getting darker by the minute.
They pushed their way through the mass of soldiers, but still nothing: no blue-grey greatcoat; no fair-haired girl in a long blue coat; no middle-aged professor. As the destroyer berthed and a gangway was pushed out on to the quay, Tanner lurched forward, forcing his way through the throng. 'I've got to get to the gangway!' he called out frantically. 'I've got to get to the gangway.'
The crowd of increasingly annoyed soldiers closed in on him.
'You don't understand,' pleaded Tanner, 'I've got to make sure someone gets on that ship.'
'Sarge! Sarge!' Tanner felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Sykes and the others behind him. Then Hepworth and McAllister parted and Tanner turned to see Professor Sandvold, Lieutenant Nielssen and Anna standing before him.
For a moment, he felt as though he had seen a ghost, and then he was laughing.
'He's been getting in a right flap,' Sykes told them. 'Worrying 'is pretty head that you got left behind.'
'You need not have done, Sergeant,' said Professor Sandvold. 'We have been here for over an hour and a half, quite safe.'
'We were worried about you, though,' said Nielssen. 'We heard there was heavy fighting.'
Tanner looked at Anna and pushed his way towards her.
'You're wounded,' she said, reaching out to him.
'A nick, that's all. I was lucky.' He squeezed her hand. 'Anna, I'm very glad to see you.'
She smiled, but then he saw a wistful expression cross her face - the same he had seen on the morning they had headed towards Tretten together.
'Will you come with us?' he asked, but he knew what her answer would be.
'I cannot leave my family, Jack. I have to find my brother. If I went with you, I would feel as though I am running away. Deserting my country.'
Tanner nodded. He took both her hands in his. They were nearing the gangway, the throng pushing them towards it. 'What will you do?' he asked.
'I don't know. Try to get home. Continue the fight.' She looked at him. 'The war will not go on for ever. One day. . .'
They had almost reached the gangway. Professor Sandvold was now walking up it on to the ship. Tanner glanced at him, then turned back to her.
'I'll miss you,' she said.
'And me you.'
'Sarge?' said Sykes.
'You must go,' said Anna. She kissed him, her lips lingering a moment on his. 'Goodbye, Jack.'
Tanner swallowed hard and felt her fingers let go of his. Someone pushed into him and then he was walking up the gangway, looking back towards her. He stumbled, steadied himself and then, as he was about to step aboard, he looked back once more. She had gone.
As the destroyer pulled away to ferry the men to the waiting cruiser, Tanner leant on the railings and gazed at the black outline of the mountains. It was little short of a miracle, he thought, but they had made it. He took out a cigarette, cupped his hands and lit it, inhaling deeply. Sandvold was safe. He and six of his men were safe. But far too many men - good men - had been left behind.
'Cheer up, Sarge,' said Sykes, beside him. 'We're going home.'
Tanner smiled. 'Yes, Stan.' He patted Sykes on the back. 'I suppose we are.'
THE END
HISTORICAL NOTE
The Norwegian campaign, sadly, was not Britain's finest hour and, indeed, directly led to the resignation of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, on 10 May 1940 - a day that saw Winston Churchill take on the mantle in his stead and marked the start of the German blitzkrieg in the west.
The events in the Gudbrandsdal valley occurred largely as written. 148th Brigade, under Brigadier Morgan was deployed south to Lillehammer and destroyed at a series of engagements in much the way I have described it. They were short of artillery, transport, aircraft and just about everything else; and although it was not Morgan or even General Ruge's fault - and certainly not the fault of the men who fought there - the British effort in the Gudbrandsdal was an utter shambles. By the time Major General Paget and 15th Brigade arrived, there was little that could be done to stop the rot. Fortunately, the eventual evacuation at Molde and Andalsnes was one of the best pieces of organization of the entire central Norway campaign, enabling a number of men to survive.
Further north, the war in Norway continued for another month, but the writing had been on the wall almost from the outset. On 8 June, the last Allied troops were evacuated. King Hakon VII and his son, Crown Prince Olav, were among those to be shipped to Britain, where they remained until Norway was liberated at the end of the war. In their absence, Norway was left under German occupation, although Norwegian resistance remained a thorny problem for the Germans. I would like to think that Anna Rostad would have been among their number.
Reichsamtsleiter Scheidt was a real person, but I could find out very little about him after his time in Norway came to an abrupt end at the be
ginning of May 1940. However, he resurfaced later in the war. By 1942, he was working for one of his pre-war Nazi Party champions, the notorious Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg, one of the architects of the Final Solution. Equally real were Reichskommissar Terboven and Generalmajor Erwin Engelbrecht, the latter of whom won the Knight's Cross for his performance in the Norwegian campaign.
Professor Sandvold was not a real person, however, and neither is his claim to have discovered oil off the coast of Norway. I'm afraid that didn't happen until the early 1960s, and the first oil-rig didn't start pumping out oil until 1971. Since then it has made Norway a rich country. However, it is certainly true that had the Germans had a whiff of there being extractable oil off the Norwegian coast they would have been very determined indeed to get at it. Oil was a commodity that Germany never had quite enough of during the war, and its shortage was one
of the factors in her eventual defeat. Also true is the detail about the Norwegian gold reserves, which were successfully smuggled to Britain.
Soldier's slang and the liberal use of acronyms are as much a part of military life now as they were before and during the war. The words that Tanner uses were mostly of Indian origin, and became part of his normal vocabulary during his time in India before the war.
For those unfamiliar with them, however, here is a guide:
Basha shelter, house
Bunduck rifle
Croaker dying person, someone severely wounded
Cushy easy
Dekko to take a look
Iggery, jaldi get a move on
And here is a further glossary of the military terms used:
HE high explosive
M/T motor transport
RAP Regimental Aid Post
Sangar a small defensive position above ground
(usually built when the ground is unsuitable for excavation)
SMLE Short Magazine Lee Enfield
To those unfamiliar with military jargon and terminology, the complexities of structure and organization may be hard to grasp. An army of the Second World War - British, American, German or Italian - was divided into corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions. A force could be designated an 'army' if it consisted of two or more corps. A corps had no great significance but was a contained force within an army, usually comprising at least two divisions, i.e., no less than thirty thousand men. Next down the scale was a division. This was still a major tactical and administrative unit of an army, and within its structure contained all the various forms of arms and services necessary for sustained combat. However, different divisions had different emphases: the fighting core of an infantry division was an infantry brigade, and could, as was the case in Norway, be deployed on its own. An infantry brigade was made up of two or more infantry battalions, plus attached artillery, engineers and other units. The battalion was the basic infantry unit, usually made up of four companies of, in total, between seven hundred and nine hundred men of all ranks. A company was divided into platoons of thirty-six men, which in turn were split into three ten-man sections. The remaining six men would be the platoon commander, the platoon sergeant, and four other ranks. The size of an infantry brigade could vary enormously, but a three-battalion brigade plus additional units would be between four and six thousand men strong. An infantry division - at full establishment - usually included around seventeen thousand men.
The Norwegian campaign showed Britain that she had a lot to do if she was to keep the Germans at bay. Too many of her tactics were out of date. There was no concept of co-ordinated air power, for example, or even all-arms tactics, whereby infantry, tanks and artillery were trained and employed together. Britain would have to learn the hard way and suffer numerous bitter disappointments before the tide began to turn.
For the men of the Yorks Rangers, the end of their part in the Norway campaign marked only the beginning of their war. There was much work for them still to do over the long years to come. Jack Tanner and Stan Sykes were needed again all too soon.
I owe thanks to the following: Oliver Barnham, Robert Boyle, Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, Trevor Chaytor-Norris, Rob Dinsdale, Richard Dixon, Professor Rick Hillum, Steve Lamonby, Peta Nightingale, Hazel Orme, Dr Hugh Pelly, Michael Ridpath, Bill Scott-Kerr and everyone at Transworld, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Lt-Col. John Starling, Patrick Walsh, Guy Walters, Susan Watt, Rowland White, Major Steve White, Bro, Rachel, Ned and Daisy. Thank you.
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The Odin Mission sjt-1 Page 35