by Tony Insall
This was a bad time for SOE. In the same month Peter Deinboll, who had been responsible for several attacks on the Orkla pyrite works, was killed when the aircraft bringing him back to Norway disappeared and was presumed to have crashed near Oslo. Others who had supported the work of the Oslo gang were also arrested by the Germans. There were even larger setbacks in southern Norway for SOE – and SIS as well. The Sandpiper station and Tomtit wireless operator were arrested in November 1944 and, following a series of raids, Milorg lost some 400 members through arrests in Arendal, Mandal and, to a lesser extent, in Kristiansand.24 At the same time, the Germans arrested people working for the SIS stations Otto and Makir in the same area25 and SOE’s Osprey was forced to go into hiding.26 The situation deteriorated to such an extent that Sønsteby confided to Max Manus that unless there was an invasion or the war ended by Christmas, the resistance might as well give up its work.27 However, German successes did not continue at the same rate and things quickly improved. Milorg made an excellent recovery in the south and six months later their armed strength was 1,000 armed and trained men with arms available for another 300.28
The well-camouflaged site of the SIS station Makir, operated by Oluf Reed Olsen. © NHM
Manus, Gram and BUNDLE
Manus and Gram continued their shipping sabotage activities, code-named BUNDLE, in 1944 with both success and frustration. In February Gram attacked a newly launched patrol vessel in Oslo harbour with limpet mines. It sank in shallow water and was unserviceable for several months. In June, as they had noticed that security was less tight when no ships were in harbour, the two spent several days in hiding under a quay in the harbour. Then they planted seven limpet mines on the 13,000-ton troop ship Monte Rosa, shortly before she sailed. They did not explode, most likely because the anti-removal fuses did not work and the limpets were probably washed off, so the ship survived. The early versions of these mines were quite frequently ineffective, a source of considerable frustration to those who had run great risks to attach them.
Chapter 7 outlined how Gram and Manus, in particular, had an unconventional attitude to military discipline. The consequence of this was that they sometimes had a rather uneasy relationship with Wilson, who did not always appreciate their blunt – though quite understandable – complaints about the ineffectiveness of armaments such as limpets, or imaginative suggestions such as that SOE should develop small torpedoes which could more readily and safely be deployed against German shipping in harbour. Of one specific complaint, Wilson wrote to Tronstad in August 1943, ‘I am aware that the general tenor of their letter probably arises out of a somewhat misguided sense of humour. On the other hand, they must be made to realise that they are soldiers in the Royal Norwegian Army, and not freelance journalists.’29 On another occasion, when SOE in Stockholm intervened on behalf of Manus concerning a more personal matter, Wilson did not hold back. ‘You are in no position to judge in a matter of this kind… I wish you clearly to understand that as CO of the Norwegian section such matters are decided by me personally. I do not make hasty decisions and I expect my orders to be accepted and carried out.’30
Far from being downcast by negative reactions from London, and with help from several colleagues, Manus was inspired to devote considerable time and energy into developing a home-made torpedo himself. The welding was done in a building in Oslo, where the Germans had requisitioned the whole house except the room where they were working. This made moving the torpedo around a dangerous business – they were twice stopped and checked at a road block when carrying one, an experience which Manus later described as ‘unpleasant’. A series of prototypes were developed and transported more than sixty times in all, and at some risk, to fjords for testing or use against German ships. There were many setbacks and disappointments, when the torpedo did not run straight or changes in the expected salinity of the water affected its buoyancy. Eventually, in August 1944, Manus and Roy Nielsen (another member of the Oslo gang) launched a torpedo from a range of sixty yards against a German destroyer in Moss Sound. It exploded on the stern and caused sufficient damage to put it out of service for seven months – a remarkable achievement.31
Donau in the Oslofjord before it was sunk. © NHM
Manus had been in Stockholm when Gram was killed. He returned bent on revenge and determined to sink a large German ship, choosing the Donau, a 9,000-ton troopship, which had long been a target for him and Gram. He pursued this objective despite being under considerable nervous strain, as correspondence with SOE made clear. Security was extremely tight, and German guards were shooting indiscriminately at any objects floating in the fjord. In January 1945, Manus and Nielsen bluffed their way into the harbour and launched an attack from under the quay where Donau lay alongside, planting nine limpet mines. For good measure they attached their remaining mine to the stern of the 2,000-ton Rolandseck, also carrying troops. Donau, which was carrying 1,500 soldiers, including five companies of Alpine troops with full equipment as well as horses and other material, sank in the Oslofjord and many soldiers and horses drowned. Rolandseck was put out of action for months.
Donau, sunk with limpet mines in the Oslofjord by Max Manus and Roy Nielsen in January 1945. © NHM
Wilson wrote a heartfelt and understanding letter of congratulation to Manus:
I have realised very fully what you must have felt when you heard of Gregers’ loss. For this reason I can appreciate to the full that the action in which you were lately engaged ranked very high in your mind and in your heart, as a proper revenge for your comrade. Apart from this, the blow you have struck is one of the biggest that has been carried out by a single man anywhere, and you may take a very legitimate pride in the fact that BUNDLE has definitely done its job.32
Manus was awarded a DSO.
Railways
The reluctance of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) to permit railway sabotage in the summer and autumn of 1944, though poor for morale, did not hold up the active training programme for NORIC members based near Aviemore. The only glitch was caused by a newly appointed stationmaster at Aviemore who forbade the use of his line for any future exercises. On being informed of this tiresome inconvenience, Wilson instructed the commanding officer to go and see the general manager of Scottish Railways, an old friend of his, and request that the facility be restored forthwith. This duly happened.33 It was not the only time that Wilson, who was born in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, used his Scottish connections to SOE’s advantage. And it may not be a coincidence that the name of his birthplace, Jedburgh, was used as the codename for SOE and OSS operations to drop small groups into parts of occupied Europe, mainly France, to carry out sabotage and guerrilla warfare operations against the Germans.
At the end of October, and in the face of continued pressure, SHAEF relented and agreed to a limited number of sabotage attacks being carried out against the main Norwegian railway routes. It recommended that these attacks should concentrate on the lines from Oslo to Bergen and Trondheim. In the face of some sustained German resistance as the Allied offensive approached Germany, they changed their mind in early December and requested a sustained operation against German road and rail transport throughout Norway. The subsequent campaign lasted until April 1945, and included more than forty major attacks, as well as plenty more sabotage on a smaller scale. There were some spectacular successes. On 13 January 1945, Woodlark destroyed the Jørstad bridge, leading to the destruction of a German troop train, the death of some seventy soldiers and the closure of the line for a fortnight. Grebe blew up three bridges, with similar results, while Fieldfare destroyed a bridge over the Rauma river which disrupted traffic for three weeks. Since the Special Air Service (SAS) had very few trained skiers, Wilson also decided to send in a platoon of trained Norwegian Army paratroopers to launch an attack north of Trondheim (Waxwing). This they did successfully. In March, Milorg went one better, coordinating an attack in southern Norway which involved over a thousand men, destroyed ten important brid
ges, countless sections of railway line as well as switching equipment, and prevented any traffic for more than four weeks.34 SHAEF were very appreciative of the effectiveness and the significance of these actions, as their assessment in Chapter 13 will highlight.
A successful railway sabotage operation to slow down the rate of German troop withdrawals from Norway in March 1945. © NHM
There were plenty more significant sabotage actions carried out by the Oslo gang. For example, Sønsteby was also responsible for the destruction of the German railway authorities headquarters in Oslo. He consulted the architect of the building so as to establish the size of the charge required, and used sixty pounds of dynamite to destroy the building and bury all its records. He told Wilson later that he had not consulted Hauge beforehand ‘because he would have thought it to be an impossible idea’.35
OSS and the American contribution
The spring of 1943 saw the beginning of the integration of OSS with SOE in the European theatre. Their influence, combined with the friendly disposition of other influential American commanders, was pivotal in arranging the loan of the three submarine chasers used by SOE in the Shetlands. Mackenzie observed, ‘it can be said without irony that this was practically all that the USA contributed to subversive war in Norway’.36 This may seem a somewhat harsh judgement, but it reflects the fact that by the beginning of 1943 SOE and SIS had reasonably well-established organisational structures in Norway, and two years of experience of clandestine operations there. Both they, and General Hansteen, were apprehensive about the possible consequences of introducing another untested service into Norway. At a meeting in January 1943, Hansteen told Lieutenant Colonel Ellery Huntington of OSS that the Norwegians were already working closely with both SOE and Combined Operations, and there were also the very delicate activities of SIS agents to be considered. He suggested that it might be better if OSS devoted their efforts to the northern part of Norway. Following representations from the Admiralty, who were concerned to protect the position of SIS, the Chiefs of Staff went further. They considered that Norway was already sufficiently well covered by existing organisations. They were unwilling to agree to yet another service operating there independently, so specified that OSS assistance would be welcome, but only as long as their activities were conducted through SOE and subject to the agreement of the Norwegian High Command. Gubbins informed Colonel David Bruce of OSS accordingly, and the Americans accepted this condition.37 They arranged for the training of 120 American officers and men with Norwegian backgrounds in three Norwegian-American operational groups, whom they planned to bring over to Scotland for training in the Highlands. They also established Westfield, an office in Stockholm tasked to develop operations in Norway as well as elsewhere in the region. A memorandum of understanding to that effect was signed with Wilson on 23 October 1943.
In the event, and despite their initial enthusiasm, it proved impossible to work out any substantial operational tasks for OSS in Norway, and so their active involvement was limited. There was one American deployment to Trøndelag in March/April 1945, involving a detachment of the Norwegian Special Operations Group (NORSO), commanded by Major William Colby, who later became director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on Operation RYPE (Norwegian for grouse). They were tasked to parachute in and destroy a section of the railway line running through this area, so as to slow down German troop movements. Their arrival was delayed by poor weather. They also sustained serious losses when a B24 aircraft crashed into a mountain and another dropped its agents on the wrong side of the Swedish border. Colby eventually succeeded in blowing up a bridge near Tangen, and then another section of the line near Snåsa.38 A separate American attempt to become involved in intelligence work also came to nothing. This was Kitten, the plan for an OSS Mission to deploy to Norway in close collaboration with the intelligence service FO.II to obtain information which would be useful in the Allied occupation of Germany and – again with FO.II – to conduct counter-espionage activities against the German intelligence services.39 Their attempts were initially frustrated by what the SOE Norwegian section history candidly described as natural prejudices, and the Westfield office in Stockholm did not work as effectively as it might have done because of what one of their own officers considered to be misconceptions regarding its original purpose, poor leadership by the officer in charge and an indifferent attitude on the part of their London headquarters.40
Despite their operational disappointments, the Americans nonetheless proved to be valuable Allies in other respects. They participated actively in planning, and a succession of effective officers, particularly the widely respected Georg Unger Vetlesen, were participants on the ANCC. They also provided prodigious quantities of weapons and equipment to supplement the limited allocations which had previously been available because of the demands of the armies in France. Equally important, from late 1944 onwards, they were able to provide sufficient aircraft to make a substantial difference to supply bottlenecks.
Wireless stations
The statistics describing the growth of SOE wireless stations in Norway reflect an impressive story of a fairly steady increase, though the numbers fluctuated from time to time following German disruptions. SOE calculated that there were just two sets in use in early 1941, sixteen in 1943, and that in the spring of 1944 work was going on in over twenty districts, with one or more wireless sets operating to the UK from each of them. Among the stations then working, three were in the Oslo neighbourhood and carried Milorg traffic. German interception and direction finding would no doubt have given some indication of the extent of this traffic. This makes it difficult to understand how a German report was submitted to the High Command in January 1945 stating categorically that Milorg was no longer in communication with London! SOE does not appear subsequently to have been able to find out why this happened.41
Although some wireless operators were able to live clandestinely in towns, most of them endured a hard life in remote locations in huts in the forest or the mountains, and were regularly short of food when air supplies all too frequently failed to arrive. SOE calculated that during the occupation 110 wireless operators worked in the field, of whom sixty were trained in the UK, forty-three were trained in Norway, and seven in Sweden. Twenty of them were captured, of whom nine were killed, one escaped, three were released on liberation while the remainder, with the exception of Johnny Pevik who was killed in jail, were later freed from prison camps.42
Chapter 1 described how the SIS station Cygnus sent King Haakon a Christmas tree in 1943. An SOE wireless station near Moss did something similar, sending a Christmas message to Churchill in December 1944:
To his Excellency Mr Churchill
We congratulate you and wish we had your strength to sweat, weep and bleed. We will try to do our best. Axel
This was forwarded to Desmond Morton, Churchill’s personal assistant who liaised with the intelligence agencies. There is, disappointingly, no record of any reply.43
Notes
1 TNA, HS 2/2.
2 Ibid. SOE planning paper, 20 February 1943.
3 TNA, HS 2/236.
4 TNA, HS 7/178, appendix J.
5 TNA, HS 2/2. See also ‘Norges dristigste sabotør’, Militær Historie (2018), No. 1, pp. 4–10.
6 TNA, HS 8/407.
7 TNA, HS 2/2.
8 TNA, HS 9/1177/1 and HS 2/249.
9 TNA, HS 2/2.
10 NHM, SIS progress report January 1945.
11 TNA, HS 8/766.
12 TNA, ADM 1/30052 and ADM 199/1813.
13 TNA, ADM 199/1815.
14 TNA, HW 18/384.
15 TNA, HS 2/138, HS 2/132 and HS 2/234. See also Myklebust, Tungtvannssabotøren, passim.
16 Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE, p. 665.
17 TNA, HS 2/204.
18 TNA, HS 7/174.
19 TNA, PREM 3/408/1.
20 TNA, FO 371/36872.
21 John Gilmour, Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin: The Swedish Experience in th
e Second World War (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012), pp. 104–107 and pp. 124–125.
22 TNA, HS 7/174 and PREM 3/408/1.
23 TNA, HS 7/174 and HS 7/178. See also Sønsteby, Report from No. 24, passim.
24 TNA, HS 7/174.
25 Rørholt, Usynlige soldater, p. 470 and p. 472.
26 Herrington, unpublished PhD, p. 343.
27 Manus, Underwater Saboteur, p. 168.
28 TNA, HS 7/174.
29 TNA, HS 2/191.
30 TNA, HS 2/192.
31 TNA, HS 2/193.
32 Ibid.
33 NHM, Wilson history, pp. 171–172.
34 Mackenzie, p. 671.
35 NHM, Wilson history, p. 145.
36 Mackenzie, p. 662.
37 TNA, HS 2/219.
38 Mackenzie, p. 659. See also John Prados, Secret Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: OUP, 2003), pp. 29–34.
39 TNA, HS 2/134.
40 TNA, report by Lieutenant. Commander Georg Unger Vetlesen, 7 July 1944, HS 2/7.
41 TNA, HS 7/174.
42 TNA, HS 7/175.
43 TNA, HS 2/234.
* There is a gap of eighteen months in SOE records of the Norwegian anti-U-boat campaign, and therefore very limited information about their activity during this period.