The Winter Fortress Page 5

  To their grizzled Irish sergeant major, who went by the nickname Tom Mix, after the American western star, Haukelid and the others were all the same: men to be instructed on how to kill, to sabotage, and to survive, any way and any how. He taught them only one rule: “Never give your enemy half a chance.” This suited Haukelid fine. From the time he was a boy, rules had always rubbed him the wrong way.

  At 6:00 a.m. the squad of new recruits started their day with what Mix liked to call “hardening of the feet”: a fast march across the extensive estate. After an hour of this, the recruits’ feet were more blistered than hardened. A short breakfast was followed by weapons instruction. “This is your friend,” Mix said, twirling his pistol around his finger. “The only friend you can rely on. Treat him properly, and he will take care of you.” Then he took them out to a grove in the woods and taught them how to stand—knees bent, two hands on the grip of the pistol—and how to fire: two shots quickly in a row to make sure the enemy was down. If circumstances allowed, “Aim low. A bullet in the stomach, and your German will squirm for twelve hours before dying.” Haukelid had grown up hunting, but this was something very different.

  After two hours of shooting, they spent another in the gym. They somersaulted forward and backward. They jumped off high ledges and rolled forward into a standing position. They pummeled punching bags. They wrestled, learning how to take down and disarm an enemy with their bare hands. A long knife hanging from his hip, Mix wove into his lessons stories of his own fighting in World War I and his time policing in the Far East. The other instructors were the same, one sharing, “We killed so many Germans, we had to rise up on our tiptoes to look over the heaps of them.”

  A break for coffee, then the squad had signals training, learning how to send and receive in Morse code. This was followed by lunch, then a two-hour class in simple demolition. “Never smoke while working with explosives,” Mix said, a lit cigarette perched between his lips, again offering the point that rules existed to be broken. They blew up logs and sent rocks skyward. Ears ringing, they moved on to orienteering, navigating the estate with maps and compasses, then field craft, stalking targets and scouting routes through the woods. From 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. they were free to relax and have a meal before the night exercises began. These consisted of more weapons, more explosives, more unarmed combat—now executed in the pitch darkness.

  Through day after day of this schedule, his boots and collar softening with each training session, Haukelid hardened into a fighter. Though reasonably fit at the start, he became fitter still. On occasion, he would be invited into a room with an officer or a psychiatrist to be asked if the training was too much, too hard, if he wanted to quit. This kind of work wasn’t for everybody, they said. It was for him. Firing two shots in rapid succession became a reflex, and his aim grew lethal to the range’s paper targets. He learned how to time throwing a hand grenade (“One can go from here to London before it explodes,” Mix said) and not to be sparing with them. He gained expertise in hand-to-hand combat and in the use of a knife. He grew skilled at demolitions, able to light a ten-second fuse with steady hands.

  Three weeks later, Haukelid was told that this—all this—had only been the preliminary training. The instructor report on him stated: “He is a cool and calculating type, who should give a very good account of himself in a tight corner . . . Has no fear.” Haukelid received marks of “very good” for field craft, weapons, explosives, and map reading. His signaling was simply “good.”

  On December 20, thirteen days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack, bringing the United States, the country of his birth, into the war, Haukelid boarded a train to Scotland for further instruction. He had a promise to keep, a promise made by his mother to the Gestapo before her son had left for Britain.

  In 1905, after breaking from its union with Sweden, the new Norwegian government sought to create a constitutional monarchy. The democratically elected parliament would be the highest authority, with the king the ceremonial head of state. They settled on Prince Carl of Denmark, who was descended from Norwegian kings, as the best candidate, but he declared that he would fill the role only if the people voted for him. He was duly elected, and thus King Haakon VII rose to the throne.

  That same year, Bjørgulf Haukelid immigrated to the United States. He settled in Flatbush, Brooklyn, far away from the remote mountain lodge for hikers and cross-country skiers in Haukeliseter, fifty miles west of Rjukan, that his father wanted him to take over one day. The construction of New York’s subway provided ample opportunity for a civil engineer. Bjørgulf married a nurse, Sigrid Gurie, who had emigrated from Oslo, and on May 17, 1911—Constitution Day in Norway—they had twins: Knut and Sigrid. The only thing closer to Knut than his sister was a small teddy bear he kept perpetually clutched in his arms. Its name was Bonzo.

  The following April, the family boarded a steamer back to Norway. Knut’s parents missed their homeland and wanted their children raised as Norwegian. With the recent industrial boom, there was no better time.

  On the way across the Atlantic, the RMS Titanic signaled a distress call. The steamer carrying the Haukelids diverted from its route to help rescue survivors, but they were too far away and arrived too late.

  In Oslo, Bjørgulf launched a successful engineering firm and bought a house in which to raise the children. Knut was a rascal from the start. Dyslexic and restless, he hated school. Sitting still in those hard chairs all day, listening to the drone of the teachers, was torture for him. Because he had a slight stutter, being asked to speak in class only tightened the screws. And so he got through the day by pulling pranks. Once he released a snake in the middle of class, earning one of his many expulsions. Knut preferred the outdoors, but in the city there was not much opportunity to get outside. What was more, his mother, not wanting him to get dirty, made him wear a sack with a hole cut out of the top when he played in the backyard. Theirs was a house with many rules and restrictions. His twin sister, who wanted to be a painter and live in Paris, struggled against their parents as well.

  The one place Knut was able to run free was the Haukeliseter lodge. On weekends and in summertime, he skied, fished, camped, and hunted with his grandfather, Knut Sr., in the mountains and lakes of Telemark. He was told the old tales of trolls inhabiting and protecting the lands of Norway, and he believed them. His faith in these creatures lent even more magic to the woods he loved.

  Always with an eye for adventure, Haukelid left for the United States just shy of his eighteenth birthday. At the same time, his sister left for Paris. He enrolled at Massachusetts State College but never graduated. A devotee of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, he took to the road. In the Midwest, he found a job on a farm. He liked the work and the open plains but bucked against some of the farm’s puritan ways. At dinnertime he had to wait out the long prayer given by the farm owner before he could eat. One night, Haukelid offered to say grace. He sang a short Norwegian song—nothing to do with God—and dug into his meal as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  After a few years, he came back to Norway. His father found him a well-paid job at Oslo’s biggest bank, but Knut turned it down. One could earn more money, he told his father, fishing for trout. And off he went. After several months of fishing, he moved again—this time to Berlin. He studied engineering, learned German, and contemplated his future. In 1936 he witnessed Hitler’s propaganda parade at the Olympics. One night, when confronted by a drunk Nazi Party member who was spouting one vile statement after another, Haukelid dropped him with a punch.

  At last, he returned again to Oslo. His sister, discovered in Paris by Samuel Goldwyn, was now starring in films with Gary Cooper. Haukelid finally buckled under his father’s wish for him to get serious with his career and his life. He took a job with his father’s firm, importing engineering equipment from the United States, and fell in love with a young woman named Bodil, a physical therapist who treated him for back pain brought on by his outdoor adventures.

  In
early April 1940, Haukelid had just finished building a jetty in Narvik and took a few days off to go cod fishing before stopping in Trondheim. While there, the Nazis invaded. After listening to Professor Tronstad at NTH remark on the need to take a stand, Haukelid and a few students commandeered a freight train and drove it almost halfway to Oslo until they found the tracks closed. They abandoned the train and took a bus to the nearest army mobilization point outside Lillehammer, but it had no weapons to offer. At the mobilization site, they learned that the Nazis had taken Oslo. The news moved many of Haukelid’s companions to tears. Then came word that the Germans had demanded the king abdicate and the government step aside. When Haakon VII refused, Luftwaffe bombers had tried to kill him in his woodland retreat. Haukelid, who believed he had seen the bombers on their way to assassinate the king, had found his leader, and his purpose, and this brought him to tears also.

  He finally tracked down a regiment battling the Germans. Its commander, a colonel, gave him a Krag rifle and thirty rounds of ammunition, then sent him into war. Over the next three weeks, despite having no military experience, Haukelid fought. His battalion ambushed a line of German panzers at a mountain pass, wiping them out with Molotov cocktails and a single cannon, but apart from that one success they experienced one pushback after another.

  After his regiment’s surrender, Haukelid tried to reach the fighting in the two valleys that ran between Oslo and Trondheim, but his countrymen were already in retreat. He then traveled to the capital and went to his parents’ home, a spacious apartment at Kirkeveien 74. His father was away; only his mother was there to welcome him. Knut went into the bedroom where some of his belongings were stored and closed the door. “What are you doing?” his mother asked, coming into the room.

  “Getting some things,” Haukelid said.

  “You need to get out and fight,” she told him.

  That was exactly his plan. From the closet, Haukelid pulled out the boots and skis he was there to collect. The plan was to head north with his close friend Sverre Midtskau to the strategic port town of Narvik. On his way, Haukelid grew sick and began spitting blood. By the time he recovered from his stomach ailment, the battle in Narvik was over as well. In his surrender, before being sent to a German prison camp, Norway’s top general made a plea to all Norwegians: “Remain true and prepared” for the future fight.

  The general’s words stayed with Haukelid as he went into the mountains with Bodil, as far from the occupying Germans as he could get. He spent the summer earning enough money fishing to sustain them for the struggle ahead. Then he got word that Midtskau was in Oslo and wanted to see him. Haukelid left for the capital. It turned out that Midtskau had been to Britain, where he had received wireless training before being sent back to Norway aboard a British submarine. The others who came with him went north to start Skylark B in Trondheim, while Midtskau was tasked with launching Skylark A in the Oslo area. For that he needed Haukelid.

  For months they moved from hut to hut in the woods outside Oslo, sending radio signals to Britain but hearing nothing in return. Through a range of contacts in the city, they gathered intelligence on the German command in the capital, everyone from Reichskommissar Josef Terboven, who served as Hitler’s dictatorial representative in Norway, to General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, who oversaw the German military forces, to SS Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich Fehlis, who ran the security services. Unable to make contact with London, Midtskau traveled to Britain by fishing boat to pass on the intelligence and retrieve new equipment. During his parachute drop back in, the radio set was damaged beyond repair. They continued with their efforts nonetheless and even hatched a plot to kidnap Quisling. Haukelid and his friend were daring and brave; they were also amateurish and terribly ineffective.

  In early 1941 the Gestapo arrested Midtskau and another in their group, Max Manus. Both managed to escape. Haukelid was detained soon after, but the Norwegian police let him go. Despite these setbacks, the group continued with its spying.

  Reichskommissar Terboven, the thin, bespectacled former bank clerk who had supported Hitler since his early days, moved quickly to consolidate Nazi rule. He removed any Norwegians not loyal to the “new order” from positions of influence: judges, clergy, administrators, journalists, business heads, policemen, local municipal leaders, and teachers alike. The Norwegian parliament was shut down, its members dismissed. The parliament building in the heart of Oslo now flew a Nazi flag and housed Terboven’s administration. The SS installed themselves in nearby Victoria Terrasse, a stately government building that stretched over a city block.

  The Nazis’ presence extended well beyond Oslo. Travel after curfew or beyond a certain place without an identity card or pass was prohibited. Radios were banned. Anyone in violation was subject to imprisonment—or whatever punishment the Nazis chose, since it was the Nazis, not the police, who enforced the law. Nothing was published in Norway without the censor’s stamp of approval. New schoolbooks were printed to teach students that Hitler was Norway’s savior. Strict rationing of coal, gas, food, milk, and clothing left families scraping by. People were reduced to making shoes from fish skins and clothes from old newspaper. All the while, the Germans confiscated whatever they wanted for themselves, from the finest cuts of meat to the products of Norwegian industry, even taking the best houses.

  Some Norwegians supported the new order. Many others merely did what they were told. But there were others still who pushed back against the Nazis, whether by refusing to provide a seat for a German soldier on the tram or by organizing cells of resistance to meet force with force. Haukelid was open to such violent resistance, but he didn’t know where or how to act.

  Then, in September 1941, workers throughout Oslo went on strike against the strict rationing of milk. With the invasion of Russia slowing into a brutal siege, Hitler wanted his occupied territories managed with a firm hand; Terboven was under pressure to act. Furthermore, SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of German police and security forces, was in Oslo at the time, and the Reichskommissar dared not look weak in front of him. Threatening to bring anyone who would threaten his hold on Norway “to their knees,” Terboven instituted martial law. Hundreds were arrested, and the security chief, Fehlis, ordered the execution of the two strike leaders.

  At the same time, an intensified Gestapo hunt for underground cells led to the breakup of Skylark B in Trondheim. The Nazis quickly tracked down all links to Oslo. Midtskau and several others were rounded up. Haukelid fled to Sweden, but not before marrying his sweetheart Bodil in an informal ceremony.

  Soon after, Gestapo captain Siegfried Fehmer, looking for new leads, descended on the Kirkeveien 74 apartment owned by Haukelid’s parents. The former lawyer was the Gestapo’s lead investigator of the resistance in Oslo. Unlike many of his fellow officers, he rarely wore his stiff gray uniform and black peaked cap, preferring instead plain suits, and employing a handsome smile to disarm interrogation subjects and recruit informants. Brought to Norway by Fehlis, who had helped train him as a bloodhound, Fehmer tried to assimilate with the locals, at least by taking Norwegian women to bed and learning the language—the better to do his job. Blond, six feet tall, intelligent, with a sharp memory, he was widely known in the resistance as the Commissar.

  Fehmer found only Haukelid’s mother, Sigrid, and new wife, Bodil, in the apartment. He led the two women down to a waiting car, which, he warned, would bring them to Møllergata 19, the Gestapo prison. On the way, Fehmer asked Sigrid if she knew where her son was. Sigrid slapped the German officer hard across the face. Fehmer asked again. Then again. “He is in the mountains,” Sigrid finally said. Thankfully she had managed to destroy her son’s American passport before the Gestapo arrived.

  “No,” Fehmer said. “He is in England. Our contact in Sweden tells us that he has already been taken across the North Sea. What do you think he is doing there?”

  “You will find out when he comes back!” she promised.

  Fehmer brought her and Bodil to Møller
gata for further questioning, but he got nothing more from them and they were released.

  In fact, Haukelid had yet to leave for England, and he received word in Stockholm of the arrests of his mother and wife. He returned to Oslo, but the security clampdown made resistance activity impossible, so he once again crossed the border and finally left for Britain by plane. In London he met first with Eric Welsh, his handler, who wanted him to return immediately to Norway as a spy. Haukelid had other ideas. He wanted military training, and he wanted to fight. In his view, it was the only way his country would be freed. Welsh sent him to Norway House.

  There, in an attic-floor office overlooking Trafalgar Square, Haukelid met Martin Linge. Wearing the gray-green uniform of a Norwegian Army captain, Linge had a winning smile and a firm handshake, and like every one of Linge’s potential recruits, Haukelid was charmed by the officer straightaway. A former actor, Linge had been attached to a British unit when it landed near Trondheim in April 1940.

  At first, Linge spoke of how things were in Norway, of places they both knew. There was no doubt he was trying to read Haukelid: what he wanted, why, and if he was capable of achieving it. He explained that there was a lot of work to do if Haukelid had a mind for it. He would be joining a small company, numbering only a couple of hundred men. It was overseen by the British but was made up only of Norwegians. Military experience was helpful, but not necessary, because he would be practicing unconventional warfare, often behind the lines. It was the kind of warfare where one man in the right place could make a big difference. The training would be tough, even brutal, and the operations even more so. The specifics of these were not made clear to Haukelid, but he wanted in nonetheless.