TORBEN ØRUM was a man worth watching. When the Germans came, Ørum, thirty-nine years old and the Danish Air Force’s youngest lieutenant-colonel, set up a private espionage network. His agents, young lieutenants demobilized by the Danish Army in 1940, worked as labourers near German camps and airfields to spy on the occupation forces. Eventually, Ørum hoped, his men could escape westward, either to be trained as agents to be returned to Denmark or to fight in uniform alongside the British. Colonel Ørum, not a trained intelligence officer, was indeed a man worth watching—which unfortunately the Germans did very closely.
When Ørum went to Sweden to relay information to the British Legation in Stockholm, he made the mistake of travel ling on an ordinary visa, and German agents followed him. Back in Denmark, advised by officer friends that he was about to be arrested, Ørum and one of his officers, Lieutenant Jessen, daringly caught a train for Germany, hoping to be able to make their way through France and Spain to England. But the tall, aristocratic-looking colonel was an easy man to keep in sight, and he and Jessen were arrested before they got as far as France.
Still making a show of allowing Denmark to appear self-governing, the Germans returned both officers to Copenhagen for trial. It would be wise, German authorities suggested to the Danish courts, to condemn the pair to death. Since Denmark had no capital punishment, and no Danish laws existed to deal with such cases harshly enough to please the Germans, a special ‘Lex Ørum’ was enacted to avoid a German-imposed death penalty. The Colonel received a twelve-year prison sentence, and Jessen was sentenced to ten years.
Ørum was in a Danish prison in 1943 after the Danish Government resigned, and the Germans decided to reopen his case. A Resistance group, learning that Ørum was to be taken to the Reich to be executed, began a most unusual military action—in the stockroom of a bookshop on the ground floor of the Nazi headquarters building in Copenhagen’s Town Hall Square.
Mogens Staffeldt’s bookshop in Dagmarhus was a crossroads of Resistance activity. Whenever Resistance members could not convene safely there for daily meetings, Staffeldt sign-posted a warning with certain combinations of books placed in one of his display windows. A small, quiet man, then in his late twenties, Staffeldt knew how to contact any category of Resistance people. Through Colonel Ørum’s wife he learned that Ørum was ill in the Copenhagen Military Hospital in Tagensvej, a boulevard near the centre of the city, and he passed this information to Major Svend Truelsen, a young barrister, who, as an officer in the Royal Life Guard, then led the Danish Army and Navy underground espionage network which was in contact with the British. Mrs. Øtum helped Staffeldt arrange a meeting between Ørum’s nurse, Helga von Seck, and Truelsen.
Miss von Seck, a Danish Army nursing sister, described to Truelsen the hospital’s security arrangements and also the pair of Danish police guards brought from a local civilian prison to watch over Ørum. Working in two shifts, one of the policemen always kept the colonel in sight. ‘They’re terrified of him,’ she said. ‘He promised never to try to escape when their backs are turned—but he said he might try to get away while they’re watching him.’
‘Would those guards help us?’ Truelsen asked.
‘And get sent to a concentration camp? No, sir! They let the Colonel have a wireless receiver and books—which he isn’t suppose to have—but that’s all they’ll do.’
‘Assuming I could get into the hospital, could you arrange things so I can see Colonel Ørum alone?’ Truelsen asked.
The nurse thought for a moment. ‘Well—there’s an X-ray room next to his, and it would be normal for me to ask the guard to send him in there. You’ll need keys for the corridor and for that room—’ She grinned. ‘But that’s easy. Easier than getting past the German military guards at the hospital entrance.’
Miss von Seck promised to steal the two hospital keys for Truelsen, and they arranged a meeting in the X-ray room.
The four main buildings of the Copenhagen Military Hospital formed a large quadrangle which could be entered only through a fifteen-feet-wide arched passageway through the administration building that fronted on Tagensvej. Truelsen arrived at the hospital clad in a white cotton surgical coat, and none of the German military policemen tried to stop him as he walked past their guardroom at the left of the entrance, through the tunnel-like archway, and into the quadrangle. Truelsen noticed that hospital patients occasionally strolled between the ranks of trees or sat on the benches that lined the concrete walks of the courtyard. Not pausing, the young major walked straight to the far end of the high, tiled-roofed building that faced from the quadrangle’s right. He went into the doorway at the end of the building, up a few steps, and let himself into the X-ray room at the left of the entrance-way to the long corridor.
‘Here’s the Colonel for his X-rays, Doctor,’ Miss von Seck announced a few minutes later, ushering Ørum into the small room where Truelsen waited. The Danish police guard peered into the room, then withdrew and locked the door. Quietly the major and the colonel discussed the situation. Escape seemed impossible, Ørum stated flatly. The high wooden fence around the hospital was patrolled at all times by German guards. The only way out of the compound was the tunnel through the administration building to Tagensvej, and a squad of German military policemen always sat in the guardroom. At night all the guards were especially alert, and in the day-time Germans were all over the hospital. But escape would, Truelsen insisted, be possible, and he began outlining the tactics of the plan.
Leaving the hospital that evening Truelsen noticed that, as Ørum had said, Germans seemed to be everywhere, peering from the windows of the four tall buildings or slouching on the benches in the courtyard. Off to the left side of the hospital grounds lay rows of barracks full of sick Wehrmacht personnel probably not too sick to be unable to pursue a Danish fugi tive. According to both the Colonel and Miss von Seck, Ørum was the best-known, most recognizable patient in the hospital.
When Truelsen strolled out through the archway the Germans merely nodded good-byes. Well, he would have no trouble getting other Resistance men into the hospital quadrangle to help him if it were properly planned. But how to get the notorious Ørum out?
A few days later, Miss von Seck arranged another meeting in the X-ray room, and Truelsen presented a finalized, detailed plan to the senior officer. It would have to be timed precisely, because if anything untoward happened the entire plan would collapse. If the plan failed, Truelsen said, there would be a lot of dead Germans, not to mention quite a few dead Danes. Ørum was pessimistic and asked if his rescue was worth such a risk. Truelsen said it certainly was, because in addition to saving a single Danish officer, it meant preventing the German intimidation of the entire Danish officer corps. Colonel Ørum would be rescued on 21st October, 1943.
At two o’clock on the afternoon of the 21st Truelsen marshalled all the Life Guard reserve officers in the operation at the offices of the Danish Agricultural Council. One of the only civilians in the meeting, Jens Lillelund, had been invited because Truelsen admired his coolness and because Lillelund’s Holger Danske saboteurs would later on have a hand in the action. All of the men wore normal civilian clothing except Truelsen, Lillelund and two of the officers, who had white hospital coats. Every one of the men at the meeting had either a sub-machine gun or a pistol. In mid-afternoon, their briefing complete, they set out in taxis.
Bicycles glided up and down Tagensvej past the hospital when the first two taxis drew up. One stationed itself opposite the German sentry post at the left-hind corner of the Military Hospital compound facing Tagensvej; the other covered the right-hand sentry, in order to attack the German military police if something went wrong inside the hospital. A third taxi arrived, parked directly across the street from the hospital entrance, and Truelsen stepped out with Lillelund and two of the other white-coated officers. All three wore glasses. A fourth officer, dressed in civilian clothes, remained in the taxi until he saw the first three walk into the hospital entrance, past the guards and through the arcade. Then this last officer, Captain Lunn, a husky man well over six feet tall, also began to stroll toward the entrance-way.
Earlier that afternoon Colonel Ørum had been to the hospital massage clinic, and when he returned to his room he asked to be allowed to be taken for a walk in the compound. Helga von Seck arranged permission for the Colonel to be in the yard between four-thirty and five in the afternoon.
As three of the men walked toward the rear of the building in which Ørum was kept, Captain Lunn boldly went into the German guardroom and asked to see a doctor. The physician’s name was one that Truelsen’s men had selected after a careful check to see that there was no such doctor in the hospital. Truelsen, Lillelund, and the third man, Lieutenant Skeel, walked awkwardly because they were carrying a number of things. Skeel was the most stiff, because under his white coat he held a sub-machine gun. The fourth officer, Lieutenant Scavenius, paused inside the compound, just to the left of the entrance. He stood idly, his coat also concealing a sub-machine gun.
Skeel halted a few feet outside the doorway to cover Lillelund and Truelsen when they entered the building in which Ørum was kept. The two men paused in the tiny vestibule opposite the X-ray room, and Lieutenant Scavenius came in just behind them. A few minutes later Colonel Ørum and his guard emerged from the Colonel’s bedroom fifteen feet away. The Colonel was wearing his overcoat over civilian clothes and was ready for his walk in the yard. As they passed into the vestibule Lillelund stepped from behind a doorway and clapped a hand over the Danish guard’s mouth. At the same moment Truelsen jabbed a pistol in the guard’s stomach. Scavenius was just behind the other two, and he and Lillelund forced the man into the X-ray room, and Colonel Ørum and Truelsen followed, locking the door behind them.
‘Keep quiet or we’ll kill you,’ Lillelund ordered, taking his hand from the guard’s mouth.
The policeman looked pleadingly at Truelsen. ‘W-w-won’t you please put down your pistol? Maybe we can talk this over.’
‘I never put down my pistol when it’s pointed at a man’s stomach,’ Truelsen replied.
‘This is going to get me in trouble—in terrible trouble !’ the guard protested.
‘If you have any troubles,’ Lillelund snapped, ‘get in touch with us. We’ll have you sent to Sweden.’
As Lillelund ordered the guard to empty his pockets, Truelsen handed the Colonel a pair of thick-framed glasses, a handkerchief, and a hat Mrs. Ørum had provided. Pocketing the guard’s identity papers—they might come in handy later—Lillelund Scavenius began to bind the man up, atop a mattress they had dragged to the floor. Before they were finished, Truelsen and Colonel Ørum were outside the small room and stepping out toward the door.
A customs cruiser was docking at that moment in a harbour in Copenhagen, and the two Danish Navy officers who had stolen the boat with the help of the Sound customs officer, now waited, occasionally checking their wrist-watches. They nodded affably at the Gestapo guard on the quay, then wondered if he would cause trouble later. Both Danes wore borrowed customs uniforms.
Ørum and Truelsen walked out past Skeel without a sign, then turned right and began strolling toward the opposite side of the courtyard. Several hospital patients idly glanced at them. Germans peered from the windows, but Miss von Seck had passed word around that the Danish Colonel was going to be allowed to take a little therapeutic exercise in the compound. The two officers turned left, then reached the end of the walk at the far side of the compound and turned left again.
In the X-ray room Lillelund and Scavenius used bandages to bind the policeman as tightly as a mummy, and Lillelund forced a rifle cartridge into the guard’s mouth, warning him that if he tried to yell, he would swallow it. Adhesive tape scaled the guard’s lips. Skeel remained alertly on guard behind the building. Colonel Ørum nervously held a handkerchief, ready to pretend to blow his nose. Now the problem was to get past the guardroom. It was all a scene from pantomime, only the usual scuffling sounds of daily routine breaking the silence.
As Colonel Ørum and Major Truelsen approached the arcade Captain Lunn was still in the guardroom talking to a German who was leafing through the hospital directory. Lunn had orders to try to shoot all the Germans if they as much as noticed Ørum. Through the small window Lunn saw Ørum approach. Then the tall captain, according to plan, began fumbling with his hands and suddenly spilled the contents of a small white box. Medicinal capsules began rolling over the floor of the guardroom. ‘Oh, damn it !’ Lunn said.
All the men in the guardroom began scrambling around on the floor, retrieving the pills that rolled under the desks and tables, into every corner. Lunn watched the guards, his hands now tensely gripping the machine pistol under his coat.
Not one of the Germans was looking through the guard-room window when Ørum and Truelsen walked past, left the entrance and strode across Tagensvej to the waiting taxi. The back door of the cab was opened, and its engine was running. An army officer in civilian clothes sat next to the driver.
In the guardroom Lunn thanked the Germans politely for picking up the capsules which he then counted carefully. ‘My colleague must be working in one of the other hospitals in Tagensvej today,’ he explained apologetically, and left.
Lillelund and Scavenius now had bound the guard tightly. They tossed a packet of British cigarettes—these had been in a parachuted container—on the floor. Then they calmly walked from the X-ray room, carefully locking the door behind them.
Skeel, seeing Lillelund and Scavenius come outside, also began walking toward the hospital exit. The Germans merely nodded at all of the Resistance men, doubtless thinking they were on the hospital staff.
Truelsen’s taxi had already gone, and when the other men reached the street, the taxis covering the sentry posts also moved off.
Ørum sat nervously in the taxi with Truelsen. ‘They’ll be certain to follow us,’ he said.
‘Nonsense, sir,’ Truelsen smiled. ‘They probably don’t even know you’ve gone. Anyway, we’re rather well covered.’
Truelsen ordered the chauffeur to drive to Trianglen. The young officer looked through the rear window of the taxi but saw no cars apparently following them. Their taxi had turned left at the roundabout into Blegdamsvej, had passed the Niels Bohr Institute, and was heading north-west toward Trianglen, a busy traffic intersection. There the driver stopped and Truelsen paid him. When the car had driven off Truelsen led Ørum toward another taxi that had been engaged by an officer and was waiting on schedule. They climbed inside and found a peaked cap with a badge on the front of it reading ‘Customs Inspector’. ‘Here, sir,’ Truelsen told the Colonel, ‘put this on. It’s your size.’
Back at the hospital, Helga von Seck went about her business, careful to avoid Colonel Ørum’s room. The police guard, still bound and gagged in the X-ray room, struggled, trying to reach the telephone on the window-sill.
Truelsen’s taxi went to Bergensgade and was changed for a third cab which cruised through the Hellerup suburb toward Tuborg Harbour where the Sound customs cruiser was waiting by the quay on which the Gestapo man still stood. The taxi drew up and Colonel Ørum, now more calm and carrying a pistol Truelsen had given him, stepped out. Ørum began to say good-bye, but Truelsen gestured him to continue to board the cruiser. ‘I can never thank you enough,’ Ørum said. ‘You saved my life.’
‘It was only my duty,’ replied Truelsen.
When the two officers came abreast of the Gestapo man he looked at Ørum and nodded. The Colonel glanced at the German, said, ‘Good evening’, and walked with Truelsen to the cruiser. As Ørum stepped aboard the customs boat wearing the cap, the two men on deck saluted and smiled. Truelsen walked to the end of the long pier to watch the boat safely away.
It was five-thirty in the evening—dusk—when they drew away from the quay under the eyes of the Gestapo man, headed out into the harbour, their lights lit and the flag of the Danish customs authority flying, and then cruised northward along the Danish coast of the Sound. Abreast of Charlottenlund the small boat veered eastward, put out its lights, and the noise of its strong engines rose as it raced across the water. Less thin two hours later it reached its destination in Sweden and the only remaining problem was returning it to where it belonged—a task which Holger Danske would facilitate. Setting off two sabotage charges at a pair of German factory buildings at nine o’clock that night Holger Danske successfully diverted all the German units along the Sound away from the small quay. The boat was returned safely.
Later that evening Truelsen gathered together for a celebration party about ten of the men who had helped free the Colonel. Nobody had been captured. Before the party was too far under way Truelsen telephoned the Danish Military Hospital and asked to speak to one of the German authorities. ‘If you unlock your X-ray room,’ Truelsen said, ‘you’ll find a guard tied up there.’
There was a pause. Truelsen heard mumbling on the other end of the line, then a voice asked him, ‘Would you wait a minute, please?’
‘We never wait,’ Truelsen said, hanging up the telephone.
The guard in the X-ray room had, in fact, much earlier been able to knock the telephone off the window-sill, and he had been freed. When the Germans had then called in Helga von Seck to describe what clothes the Colonel wore that day, she withheld nothing. She had no reason to lie, because an hour before she had had a telephone call from Major Truelsen saying that Ørum was safely in Sweden.