Authors: James Holland
'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
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 beginning 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.