Secret Alliances
Page 23
Production at the mine gradually increased again. A further operation, FEATHER, was launched in October 1943 with the objective of destroying as much ore as possible. This time Deinboll’s party was larger, and was dropped by parachute. His reconnaissance showed that the very heavy German presence would prevent them from entering the mine workings to destroy equipment. He decided to blow up the shunting locomotives instead. These were of a special gauge and only available from France. On 31 October the party divided into small groups to attack the locomotives at three different locations. Five locomotives were either destroyed or so badly damaged as to be unserviceable for six months, and Deinboll himself wrecked other essential equipment. The valley thereafter was even more heavily guarded, but Deinboll and his group stayed in the area. Less than three weeks later they made a second attack against the shunting engine at Løkken and the remaining single locomotive. This succeeded, though one saboteur was killed in an accident. The hauling capacity of the railway was considerably reduced. The party remained in Sweden and went back to carry out a further attack the following year, again in the middle of summer. Deinboll returned to Britain and was awarded a bar to his DSO. He was killed in November 1944, when the aircraft carrying him back to Norway disappeared without trace.32
Telavåg
As highlighted in Chapter 3, the incident at Telavåg led to one of the worst atrocities committed in Norway during the war. In April 1942, when the Borghild landed an SIS agent there, the vessel remained in port for four days and the crew walked around openly wearing Norwegian uniforms, presumably because they thought it would improve their chances of being treated as prisoners of war if they were captured. Shortly afterwards at the same spot, the Olaf landed two SOE agents, Emil Hvaal, the Anchor wireless operator, and Arne Værum, the Penguin wireless operator. Unwisely, they remained in the area for a while, were given away, and surprised by the Gestapo. In the subsequent exchange of fire, Værum and two Gestapo officers were killed. In retaliation, the Germans destroyed the village, sent all the able-bodied men to Sachsenhausen concentration camp (where thirty-one out of seventy-two people died), and shot a further eighteen hostages. The subsequent Security Service investigation of this incident did not really address the issue of crew behaviour, apart from recommending that they did not give imported commodities such as white bread, coffee or English cigarettes to the local population as it could attract attention.33
Could this atrocity have been prevented? Probably not. But the German raid was the culmination of an unfortunate chain of circumstances. The original plan had been to drop the Anchor team of Tor Gulbrandsen and Hvaal by parachute near Drammen in January 1942. However, there was an incident on the night before their departure, when the pilot of the aircraft which was carrying agents participating in Lark and Anvil decided during the flight that he had insufficient fuel to reach Anvil’s dropping point. He suggested that he should drop them both together (which was not normal procedure) on the dropping point which was to be used for Anchor the following evening, a proposal which they declined and which, in any event, was prevented by cloud and icing on the wings. The Anchor party declined to go the following evening, because they believed that Lark and Anvil had been dropped on their point the night before, and no one was able to provide information which would have disabused them. The plan was changed,34 and the Anchor team travelled separately by sea, with Gulbrandsen being delivered, also to Telavåg, in late February.‡‡‡
There followed a further instance when SIS did not share information with SOE about its sailings. SOE were not warned that an SIS boat operating from Peterhead had very recently visited Telavåg, where the Anchor team were to be delivered. When they later found out about the activities of the Borghild and its crew, SOE complained to SIS. During a conversation between Wilson and SIS a few weeks later in mid-June, to try to resolve some other inter-service difficulties in Bergen, the SIS representative attempted
to place all the blame on the Telavåg incident for his present troubles in Bergen. I told him that we knew that the German Intelligence Service had rounded on the Gestapo for butting in at Telavåg and thereby spoiling a line [presumably SIS] which they had been carefully nursing for some time.§§§ I also alluded to the fact that his chief had admitted a mistake had been made by allowing the Borghild to sail into this area. He then quietened down and realised that we were not perhaps so ignorant as he had assumed us to be.35
In May 1942, Finn Nagell of FO.II sent a report on what had happened at Telavåg to General Hansteen, based on information from SIS. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the account laid the responsibility for the incident on SOE’s behaviour, though it did contain an admission that the SIS boat had invited a Telavåg resident on board and ‘filled him full of rum’ – a gesture which could scarcely have passed unnoticed locally. He drew attention to the lack of coordination in choosing landing sites, and suggested that Hansteen should intervene to try to resolve this.36 Hansteen copied the letter to the Minister of Defence, Torp, and raised the need for better coordination with SIS at the next meeting of the ANCC, but the problem was not properly resolved until SIS moved its operating base back from Peterhead to Scalloway in November 1943. SOE were, however, certainly more careful on their own account before then. For example, in December 1942, Wilson consulted Øen in FO.IV about the wisdom of landing the Moorhen party at a designated spot so soon after Chough agents had been landed only fifteen miles away. This had stirred up the Germans after the escape of twenty-five men from the district.37
When news of the German reprisals became known, it caused widespread outrage and led the SOE station in Stockholm to suggest a retaliatory bombing attack on Germany. Reflecting the sensitivity of the subject, Wilson replied to this controversial suggestion by private cypher, thus limiting the number who saw his message: ‘request you make cannot be complied with as it is totally opposed to high policy and would achieve nothing of any value to war effort’. Stockholm were reluctant to accept his decision. They replied that it was of prime importance to keep up the spirits of the Home Front, and to demonstrate to people supporting the work of the resistance in Norway that their sufferings did not pass unobserved. They argued that to allow the executions to go unchallenged would be a fresh confession of impotence where Norway was concerned. Wilson patiently spelt out in more detail the reasons why the policy would not be changed:
You must appreciate … that matters of this kind have to be dealt with as questions of major policy involving both the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff committee, and that also the opinions of the Norwegian authorities in this country have to be considered. So far as these are concerned, I am in a position to tell you that the Minister of Defence and General Hansteen have determined that they will allow none of the usual Nazi methods of burning houses and shooting hostages to interfere with our combined activities in Norway … Their particular anxiety is that Norwegian traitors and informants should be the first objective rather than the Gestapo leaders themselves. The reason for this is that in this way the supply of information will dry up and reprisals will not normally be taken by the enemy. When any opportunity presents itself by which people like Berenz [sic] and Bernhardt [sic]¶¶¶ can be removed, even at the cost of loyal Norwegians’ lives, that opportunity should be taken. Bit by bit we hope to provide you with a sufficiency of material to carry out this line of action, but it is particularly necessary that no direct reference to that material should be made in telegrams, and that reference to it in letters should be veiled, all such letters being written ‘off the record’ so to speak.38
Some of the damaging activities of Norwegian informers, as well as operations against them, will be considered later in the chapter.
Chapter 5 described how Ingvald Johansen, the skipper of the Vita, had gone ashore to send a letter to his girlfriend, while his accomplice Solem had tried to telephone his wife, and how Kristian Fougner had been embarrassed by the behaviour of Leif Larsen and his crew when they delivered him to Vindholmen and went ashore to
buy salmon. So the behaviour of the Borghild crew was not an exception. In fact, such behaviour was remarkably common among crews (including those of naval MTBs) visiting the Norwegian coast, and it is fortunate that it did not lead to more incidents such as that at Telavåg. However, things began to change after Tor Gulbrandsen, the Anchor organiser, confessed that he had agreed to work for the Germans. SOE realised that the behaviour of Shetlands crews in going ashore on operational trips might offer, to a double agent, the means of sending messages back to the Abwehr. In February 1943, Wilson issued an instruction to the Shetland base that they should make sure ‘by search of person of both agents and crew and otherwise that no message of any kind is attempted to be smuggled out’.39 Soon after, the SOE security section wanted to go even further, complaining about the behaviour of the SOE crew which had delivered an agent (Pollux) to Norway on behalf of SIS the previous November. They suggested the adoption of more stringent security measures, for example, that a conducting officer should accompany every operational trip. However, this was not accepted.40
Worse was to come. In April, an unnamed Norwegian officer who had made a secret visit to Norway on behalf of the Norwegian High Command informed the admiral who was the commanding officer in the Shetlands about the behaviour of the crew of a fishing boat which had taken part in the Operation CARTOON, during the raid on the pyrites mine at Stord in January 1943. One evening, when visiting Godøy, the crew went to a dance where they met some Germans. The skipper was about to draw his revolver and shoot them, but was dissuaded by the others. Before their departure from Godøy the crew wrote letters and asked a local Norwegian to forward them. Although he accepted them, the man was cautious, and subsequently burned them. The same Norwegian officer quoted several other similar examples, including gifts of food and sweets given to local Norwegians, which could only have come from the UK, and which, on occasion, led to arrests. This resulted in strict instructions being issued by the admiral that no one was to go ashore in Norway except in the course of his duty, and then only if permission has been obtained from the senior officer present. All conversations with the local Norwegian population were to be recorded in writing. No letters, written or printed papers were to be sent or taken ashore in Norway without authority, and posting of letters by unauthorised persons was strictly forbidden. Contravention of the order would be treated as a serious offence.41
MARTIN
MARTIN was an unsuccessful operation, for almost all those involved were killed by the Germans. However, the experience of the lone survivor, Jan Baalsrud, is a truly epic story of endurance and bloody-minded determination in the most adverse of circumstances. It also shows the remarkable extent to which SIS helped SOE by arranging his return to Britain via Sweden.
The plan for MARTIN involved sending four men to northern Norway to organise the sabotage of German fuel and ammunition depots, particularly those at the airfields of Bardufoss and Harstad. These were used as bases by German aircraft which attacked Arctic convoys taking supplies to Murmansk. The party travelled on the Brattholm in late March 1943. After arriving at a small island off Tromsø, they sought to get in touch with a local merchant who was known to be a reliable contact. Unfortunately he had died, and his successor, uncertain whether they were loyal Norwegians or agents provocateurs, reported them to the local magistrate, who informed the Germans. They sent a force to capture the group. The SOE agents managed to destroy the Brattholm, but one of them was shot and killed and the rest, apart from Baalsrud, were arrested. Following a brutal interrogation, they gave up the name of their local contact, Kaare Moursund, the head of the local SIS station, Upsilon. He was arrested and this led to further arrests, including another SIS agent, Thor Knudsen.
Through a neighbouring SIS station, Mu, the remnants of Upsilon informed London of these events, quoting a Gestapo officer and other sources as informing them that both Moursund and Knudsen had been forced to make a partial confession. In early April they added that the Brattholm survivors, together with Moursund and Knudsen, would be transferred to Trondheim by sea on the Ragnvald Jarl on 10 April. The station asked for the Ragnvald Jarl to be intercepted by the Royal Navy. SIS passed the message to SOE, who asked the Admiralty to arrange this. The Assistant Chief of Naval Staff declined to do so. A further message from Upsilon stated that the whole group had apparently been sentenced to death, and repeated their request for their transport to be intercepted. Once more SOE approached the Admiralty, but again to no effect – ‘I think rightly’, commented Wilson later. In the event, the transfer to Trondheim did not take place, and Upsilon reported that the eight SOE survivors had been shot in Tromsø. (Two others died of their injuries.) It added that one survivor was safe and would be sent to Sweden when his frostbitten feet had recovered. Both Moursund and Knudsen were transported to concentration camps and died there in 1944 – Moursund in Melk, a sub-camp of Mauthausen, and Knudsen in Natzweiler.42 As outlined in Chapter 3, once things settled down in Tromsø and the station was able to restart regular transmissions, SIS sent Upsilon a warm commendation praising their activities.43 They also grumbled that SOE had not notified them about their planned activity in the Tromsø area. Wilson retorted that SOE had earlier informed them that they had no intention of setting up an organisation in Tromsø itself, but would be confining operations to the hinterland, mentioning specifically the possibilities of operating against Bardufoss. Despite the disruption which it had caused to Upsilon, Wilson later noted that SIS did not appear likely to make a big issue over this case. There is nothing to show that SOE knew in advance that Moursund was working for SIS when his name was given to the MARTIN party as a contact which they might use. It is nonetheless surprising that SIS chose not to criticise SOE for actions which had caused them to lose two of their agents.
In the meantime, Baalsrud managed to escape the large German force which was searching for him, though he lost one of his boots, was hit by a bullet and had most of his big toe shot off. He swam through freezing Arctic waters to a small island, where he waited for a couple of hours until dusk before swimming several hundred yards further to an inhabited island. There he received assistance from several families and was eventually rowed to the mainland and equipped with skis and food sufficient for him to travel to Sweden, some seventy miles away across the mountains. This part of his journey was uneventful, except for an incident when he was skiing through a small village in the early morning and was suddenly confronted by a group of German troops crossing the road. He assumed that they must have been half asleep because they failed to notice his Norwegian uniform and badges, with ‘Norway’ in English on his shoulders. Soon afterwards, however, he was caught in a blizzard and fell over a cliff, breaking one ski and losing the other, as well as his rucksack containing clothes and food. He wandered around in the blizzard for four days, before he stumbled, snow-blind and with badly frostbitten feet and legs, into a house in Furuflaten, by Lyngenfjord, occupied by the sister of Marius Grønvold, who fortuitously was working for SIS.
It was clear to Grønvold that Baalsrud’s condition was too bad for him to be able to continue to Sweden on his own. He would need to be carried. In fact, some of his frostbitten toes turned gangrenous and Baalsrud later amputated them himself with a pocket knife. Grønvold informed his Upsilon colleagues in Tromsø (who reported it to London), and arranged that fellow resistance members in Manndalen, the next valley, would collect Baalsrud and seek assistance from some Samis (in those days described as ‘Lapps’) who would take him to Sweden. Grønvold and trusted friends strapped Baalsrud to a home-made sledge and carried him up the steep cliff to the top of the mountain range dividing Lyngenfjord from Manndal. When they arrived, there was no one to meet them because a German patrol had just arrived in Manndal and it was not safe for the party to leave the village. The cliff was too precipitous for Baalsrud to be taken back down, so he had to be left in the open, while Grønvold arranged via Tromsø for another attempt to collect him. In the meantime, it snowed, and when the Manndal pa
rty arrived several days later, they could not find Baalsrud because he had been buried. A week elapsed before Grønvold could return and establish that Baalsrud was still alive, and the third attempt by the men from Manndal to locate him was finally successful. However, bad weather intervened again, and Baalsrud had to be abandoned in the open or in a cave on several further occasions before there was finally contact with a Sami who agreed to take Baalsrud to Sweden. During this period, when he was on his own, a small German patrol passed by only thirty yards from where Baalsrud was lying, without discovering him. He spent nearly three weeks out in the open, exposed to freezing winter weather. The last part of the journey with the Samis was not uneventful either, because close to the border they were spotted and fired on by a German patrol. Fortunately, the patrol was too far away, and the party crossed into Sweden unscathed. Baalsrud was taken to hospital in Boden, where he was taken out of the sleeping bag in which he had lain for over a month. He spent months in hospital, where medical treatment saved what remained of his feet, and was repatriated to England in late September.44 He was awarded an MBE and recovered sufficiently to be able to work as an instructor at Glenmore and to deploy back to Norway as the war ended.