We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (9 page)

"Well, once upon a time," he began slowly, "in a far away country,
long ago ..."

EINAR HAD come back that afternoon from a visit to Tromso.
Everyone there had been talking of Toftefjord and its sequel; and
although the people were used to brutality, they were aghast at the
pitiless drama which had reached its grim climax in their town. In
fact, what Einar told Jan that night is a sombre story of inhumanity.
It is told here not because there is pleasure in telling it, but because
without it the full contrasting picture cannot be drawn of the compassion and kindliness of the people who helped the only survivor;
for all of them were familiar with the German technique of occupation and knew quite well what punishment they would suffer if they
were caught.

Although Einar, and everyone else in north Norway, knew the
outline of the story a day or two after it happened, it was not till the
end of the war that its details were discovered. They were given then
in evidence in trials in Norwegian courts.

When the shopkeeper made the fateful decision after his sleepless
night and telephoned to his friend the official, the official himself was
faced with a dilemma. He was a member of the Norwegian Nazi
party, whose leader Quisling had been appointed head of the puppet
government by the Germans; but this fact did not mean in itself that
he had Nazi inclinations. Soon after the occupation of Norway began
many people in minor Government posts received a circular letter from the Germans simply saying that unless they joined the party
they would be dismissed from office. In the south, a lot of them were
able to consult each other when they got this ultimatum, and they
agreed to reject it. So many refused to join that they succeeded in
calling the Germans' bluff and retained their offices. But in the scattered districts of the north, where it might be two days' journey for
one of them to visit another, each of them had to face this problem
on his own; and a great many of them decided, or persuaded themselves, rightly or wrongly, that if they did sign on as members they
would be able to protect the interests of the people, whereas if they
refused they would be replaced by a German nominee. The man the
shopkeeper knew was one of these.

In any case, Nazi or not, it was certainly his nominal duty, as a
Government servant, to report any story so strange as the one which
the shopkeeper told him that morning. Perhaps he did it unwillingly.
Perhaps he argued that already a dozen people had heard it, and that
now the shopkeeper had begun to talk there was nothing to stop him
from telling everyone. More over, the shopkeeper had told it to him
on the telephone, and most of the telephones there were on party
lines. Anyone could listen to interesting conversations, and everyone
did. The story was bound to spread, and the Germans were bound to
hear it; and then the official himself would be the first to suffer.

At all events, as soon as the shopkeeper had rung off, the official
put in a call to Tromso. With what feelings he did it, nobody but himself will ever know.

First he rang the police station, but it was still early in the morning and the constable on duty wrote down the report and said he
would show it to his chief at half-past nine. He also rang a friend of
his in Ribbenesoy, to ask him if he had seen any strangers, and if
there was really a boat in Toftefjord. This friend had not seen anything himself; but the shopkeeper had just rung him up and told him
all about it. Then the official, feeling perhaps that things were moving too quickly for him, put in a call to police headquarters. He was given another rebuff. They told him to take his own boat and go over
to Toftefjord to see if the story was true.

This idea did not attract him in the least, so he called his assistant
and told him to do it. The assistant went off to borrow a boat from a
neighbour, but as he had not had his breakfast he sat down to a cup
of coffee with the neighbour before he embarked. In the meantime
the official was struck by a better idea, and rang up his friend in
Ribbenesoy again and asked him to go overland to see if there was
anything in Toftefjord. The friend said he was too old to go climbing
at that time in the morning. But he sent a small boy; and some time
in the forenoon, unknown to the Brattholm's crew, the boy peered
over the crest of the hills and saw the top of a mast in Toftefjord, and
did not dare to go nearer, and ran home to confirm the story.

When he heard this, the official rang the police headquarters
again. He could assure them now that the boat had really been seen,
and he hoped they agreed that there was no point in his going
unarmed to investigate. He thought they should tell the Gestapo. But
they rang off without giving him any definite answer; and some time
in the morning, he rang the Gestapo himself.

It seems clear when one reads this story, with its incongruous
elements of inefficiency and farce, that all the Norwegian police
prevaricated on purpose. No doubt they hoped that if they delayed
the report for an hour or two it would help the strangers in
Toftefjord, whoever they were, to make good their escape. But as
the crew of the Brattholm did not know they had been betrayed,
this effort to help them was wasted. It is said that at the very
moment when the German ship was sighted off Toftefjord two rowing boats were entering the fjord to warn the Brattholm. One of
them was probably manned by the two fishermen who were going
to hide the cargo, but nobody knows who was in the other one. In
any case, they were too late. Both of them stopped when the
German ship bore down on them, and the men in them put out
lines and pretended to be fishing.

The people of Tromso knew nothing of the fight till the German
ship got back there. Then they saw prisoners being landed, and men
carried ashore on stretchers. Within a few hours, the story was whispered throughout the town, and some hundreds of citizens were in
fear of their safety.

Tromso claims to be the biggest town in the Arctic, and it is the
metropolis of an enormous area; but for all that, it is not very big:
about the size of an average English market town. It is so far from
other towns that it is more than usually self-contained. It would be
an exaggeration to say that everyone knows everyone else; but certainly everyone knows its more prominent people. Its interests are
fishing and whaling and arctic furs, and the general business of a
small seaport. During the occupation, its modest and peaceful affairs
were swamped by the demands of a German headquarters, and its
society was riven by the chasms of political beliefs. It had its few traitors, despised and ostracised by everybody else; and it had a new
form of society, in which money counted for very little, united by an
implacable loathing of Germans which was never experienced in
England or America.

By the time that the Brattholm landed, the town had already
organised itself to combat the effects of the occupation as well as it
could. Active opposition had been out of the question without direct
help from England; there were probably more Germans than
Norwegians in north Norway. But some things could be done, and at
least preparations could be made for the end of the occupation. Eight
of the leading citizens had combined to build up an organisation to
collect intelligence and make plans to administer the town and the
surrounding country on the day of the Germans' defeat. They
expected this day from season to season throughout the five years;
each Christmas they believed it would come in the spring, and each
spring they looked forward to the autumn. They had sent messengers
to Sweden and got into touch with the free Norwegian embassy in
Stockholm, and through Stockholm with their government in London. They had been sent a radio transmitter and it was installed
in the loft of the state hospital in the town.

Apart from sending a radio message from time to time when the
Germans did anything which seemed of particular interest, perhaps
the most important thing which an organisation of this sort could do
was to befriend people who got into serious trouble. Many men who
would have opposed the Germans when they found they had a
chance, or when a decision was forced upon them, had had to give in,
in the early days, for fear of what would happen to their wives and
children if they were arrested. It strengthened their will to resist if
they knew there was somebody who would see that their families did
not starve if they themselves were imprisoned or banished to
Germany. The organisation in Tromso had this matter extremely well
arranged. It could call on funds from all the rich people and business
houses in the town. The family of a man who suffered at the hands
of the Germans was cared for without any question. When the crisis
of the capture of Brattholm broke upon them, they were actually disbursing £2000 a week in secret to widows and orphans and the
dependents of local men who had been arrested by the Germans or
forced to flee the country.

It was never intended that the sabotage organisation which the
Brattholm party was to found should have any connection with this
existing spontaneous intelligence and relief organisation. The two
things were always kept separate in Norway, so that if one was broken open, the Germans could not necessarily penetrate the other. But
the names of the two men in Tromso which had been given to
Eskeland and his party as their principal contacts were Thor
Knudesn and Kaare Moursund. These men had been chosen, without their knowledge, merely because they were known to be patriotic; but they were actually two of the eight leaders of the Tromso
organisation.

As soon as Jan heard from Einar in Bjorneskar that some of his
companions were alive and in the Gestapo's hands, he knew that Knudsen and Moursund ought to be warned. He could not possibly
go into Tromso himself without any papers, so he asked Einar if he
would do it for him. Einar agreed; but whether he ever went there is
not known. If he did, he would have been too late; because both men
had already been arrested.

These two arrests set Tromso in a ferment of excitement and
apprehension. Both the men were well-known in the town. Knudsen
was the managing editor of one of the two local papers, and
Moursund the office manager of the coastal shipping line. Knudsen
was the actual man who distributed money for the organisation in
secret charities. Several of his colleagues in the newspaper office were
involved in his illegal activities, notably the editor, whose name is
Sverre Larsen, and the owner, Larsen's father, whom the Germans
had already dismissed from his own paper for his views. The arrests
were totally unexpected. No one believed that Knudsen or Moursund
had known the Brattholm was coming, but it seemed only too clear
that the Brattholm's men had known these two names and were then,
at that very moment, under Gestapo pressure. How many other
names did they know? Would Knudsen and Moursund be put to torture? There was not a man in Tromso that night with any pretentions
to patriotism who did not know that his own hour might be at hand.
Those who were closest to the two arrested men went home to prepare their own wives for a parting which it was useless to pretend
would not be final, and to prepare themselves for the sudden imperious hammering on the door, and for the crippling pain which had
to be borne in silence.

Meanwhile, the shopkeeper and the official were called to town
and courteously feted by the Germans. Neither of these somewhat
simple men was any match for the questioning at which the Gestapo
were so remarkably skillful whether they used torture or threats or
flattery. It is very unlikely that they hid anything which they knew,
whether they wanted to or not. They were thanked by the Germans,
and congratulated on their excellent work, and rewarded with money and food and cigarettes and two dozen bottles of brandy. It may be
supposed that there in the town they first felt the depth of the wrath
of their neighbours against them. The gifts of the Germans perhaps
had a bitter taste.

The next people to be arrested were, unexpectedly, the two fishermen who had promised to hide the cargo. Nobody ever discovered
who had given their names to the Germans. The shopkeeper denied
it. There is a possibility that the names were extracted from the crew,
or that the two men were caught and questioned when they were
rowing into Toftefjord, and gave themselves away. It was hard that
these men were taken, because they did not even know that the cargo
had come from England.

The state of tension in Tromso did not last very much longer.
While it lasted, it was in all truth hardly bearable, and it could not
have been sustained for very long. During the day after the first
arrests, the men who had every reason to expect to be among the
next to go went on with their business as usual, because to have done
anything else would have focused suspicion on themselves. The
newspaper had to be written and printed, to take a single example.
But it was hardly possible for them to give the appearance of normal
living, or to keep their thoughts or their eyes away from the shuttered
windows of the great grey Gestapo building in the middle of the
town, where they knew their own names might be shouted aloud
when agony went at last beyond endurance.

On the third day the news became known that the Brattholm men
were dead and Knudsen and Moursund deported. It seems callous to
say that the news of these deaths was heard with relief, and it is true
that the thought of the barbarous deeds which had been done in
their town shocked the townspeople profoundly; but the men themselves could only have wished that their end would come quickly.

Exactly what was done with them did not become known till after
the war was over, when their bodies were exhumed for Christian burial and their executioners were put on trial.

Of the twelve men of the expedition, Jan had escaped, and one
man had been killed in the fight in Toftefjord. The other ten were all
brought to Tromso alive, although several of them were wounded.
Eight of them were shot chained together on the outskirts of the
town, and thrown into a common grave. The other two were tortured to the point of death and then put in the Catholic hospital,
where they died.