With the approach of first light, Starheim and Skinnarland found themselves growing increasingly nervous. There was no sign of the requested RAF escort, and the storm seemed to have blown itself out. Indeed, Starheim had to order a change in course to adjust for the new drift and current. Unless fate somehow intervened, they were going to be sitting ducks.
A dark and insistent worry tugged at his fatigued senses: had their radio message requesting the RAF escort actually been sent? Had the SOE received it? Certainly, there was no sign of any British warplanes.
As luck would have it, the dawn light revealed an utterly magical sight. As the darkness lifted, so a thick bank of low-lying cloud drifted towards the Galtesund. Starheim and Skinnarland could barely believe it. The gods seemed to be smiling upon them as neither could have hoped for. The storm-battered vessel steamed into the welcoming fog. Barely had it done so when those on the bridge detected the distant rumble of a warplane. Was it the enemy, or the RAF speeding to their rescue?
Anxious eyes scoured the grey and foggy heavens as the rumble grew to a thunderous roar. A wing tip dipped into view, mist swirling all around it. The sharp black outlines of the Luftwaffe’s insignia—a black bar cross against a square block of white—were momentarily visible, before the aircraft flashed past and was gone.
Starheim gave thanks: the fog had saved them.
At 1.15 p.m. a second hidden aircraft droned across the heavens. As it dropped into view, diving out of the fog, Starheim and Skinnarland were overjoyed to spy the distinctive markings of the RAF: red, white and blue circles. Deliverance. Starheim ordered the ship’s mate to hoist the Norwegian flag. As a second and third RAF warplane joined the first, they ran up the ship’s signal flags:
‘We are making for Aberdeen and want escort.’
‘Congratulations,’ the aircrew signalled back to them.
An hour later, an armed trawler steamed into view and signalled to the Galtesund to follow. The RAF pilots dipped their wings, waving a final farewell, before roaring into the distance, leaving the trawler to guide them into harbour. The Galtesund had to reduce her speed to match the trawler’s more stately pace, but at least those aboard felt somewhat safer now.
As the two vessels steered a course for Aberdeen, Starheim’s pirates suggested breaking out some of the ship’s cargo to celebrate: the Galtesund was carrying crates of cigarettes and alcohol. Starheim forbade it—at least until they’d made port. They were a good way out and it was too early to truly drop their guard.
With their reduced speed, it wasn’t until 8 a.m. the following morning that those on board heard the sonorous beat of a foghorn reverberating through the sea mist. It marked the position of the lighthouse to the south of Aberdeen. Starheim left it to Captain Knudsen to manoeuvre the ship into dock, where a contingent of military police boarded her.
Starheim told them where the ship had come from, who was aboard, and that there were no known Nazis amongst the ship’s crew. He also asked to see Captain Ellman, a Norwegian intelligence officer who was based in Aberdeen. The two men knew each other from previous operations, and he’d feel more comfortable explaining their extraordinary story to him.
‘The capture of the ship could not have been accomplished without Biscuit and Skinnarland,’ he would write of the operation. ‘They were … very clever and did their job well. Biscuit has been a very great help to me and is an excellent boy. My impression of Skinnarland is very good.’
As matters transpired, Starheim would have little opportunity to celebrate their safe arrival with one of his co-conspirators. At former Scoutmaster John Wilson’s behest, the one-time pirate Skinnarland was whisked away from the port and placed aboard the first overnight train to London. He was wanted urgently at SOE headquarters.
Meanwhile, back in Norway, the Galtesund’s disappearance had whipped up a veritable storm. As Starheim had steered her deep into the welcoming fog, so the Germans had put out a story that the coastal steamer had gone to the bottom with all crew and passengers. No one amongst the local seafaring communities believed it.
Word got out that the Galtesund had made her way to Scotland, with the six mystery passengers who had boarded her very likely her hijackers. Shortly after, the Germans were forced to admit that a reconnaissance flight had spotted the Galtesund, under escort by British warships and steaming towards the Scottish coast. Thankfully, as the seizure appeared to have been a British naval action, no reprisals were taken against the crew’s families.
By strange coincidence, the Galtesund’s cargo just happened to include some materials of real value to the Reich. Recently, the Germans had finished building ten radio stations dotted along the Norwegian coastline. For two months they had been awaiting the shipment from Germany of specialist equipment to be installed there. Whether by accident or design, that prized cargo was aboard the ship that had fallen into British hands.
In addition to the radio equipment, the Galtesund was carrying a newly developed meteorological device. It was Starheim who had smuggled it aboard, for he suspected it would be of interest to British intelligence. They would describe it as ‘the instrument which the Germans now attach to meteorological observation balloons … Cheese brought it as he wondered if there was anything novel about it from our point of view.’
Apart from alcohol and cigarettes, most of the Galtesund’s other cargo consisted of canned food. Wilson’s SOE fell on it with glee. ‘Not the least important part … were the labels on the tins,’ he explained, ‘which could be copied when sending supplies into Norway.’ The SOE’s forgery department would make replicas, so when rations were airdropped to agents and resistance groups, it would appear to be a genuine Norwegian foodstuff.
Relieved of her cargo, the 600-tonne Galtesund would not lie idle. She was pressed into service with Nortraship—the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission—a 1,000-vessel line that operated from London. Made up of the Norwegian merchant fleet outside German-controlled waters, Nortraship was then the world’s largest shipping company, and a great boon to Britain’s war effort. The pirated Galtesund found herself in very good company, as did many of the ship’s crew—those who chose to continue serving with her.
In recognition of his role in masterminding the vessel’s seizure, Odd Starheim received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), at the behest of his SOE taskmasters. They could not have been more delighted at his unsanctioned act of piracy, especially as it had delivered Einar Skinnarland into their eager clutches.
Spiriting Skinnarland to Britain was stage one in a top-secret SOE operation code-named Grouse, the aim of which was to prevent any more heavy water from reaching Germany. Of course, Skinnarland knew precious little about this. Questioned by a security agent upon arrival at the Aberdeen docks, he was surprised to discover that the man knew an awful lot about him, from a ‘mutual friend’.
During the long train journey to London that agent briefed Skinnarland about the efforts being made by the Nazis to build a nuclear weapon, and about the vital role of the Vemork plant in this rush towards Armageddon. Upon reaching London Skinnarland was taken to John Wilson’s office, set in Chiltern Court, a block of flats situated above the Baker Street tube station, part of the ‘rabbit warren’ of secretive SOE agencies that peppered the Baker Street area.
It was still very early, but Skinnarland was expected. He was about to get a major surprise. Seated before him he found a familiar figure: Leif Tronstad, a fellow Norwegian who’d spent a good deal of time in and around Skinnarland’s home area. More to the point, it was Tronstad who had designed and built the Vemork heavy water plant.
Tronstad had been an eminent professor at Trondheim’s Norwegian Institute of Technology, and the dashing 39-year-old had real presence. But nowadays, Skinnarland—himself a former engineering student—admired the Professor for a whole different set of reasons.
Following the German invasion, Tronstad had taken his wife and two young children back to his in-laws’ home in rural Norway. As German panzer divisions thrust north of their bridgehead, he’d joined the defence of his homeland. Over three weeks, and aided by the British forces who had landed in the country, Tronstad had fought ferociously to defend the two long valleys that link Oslo to Trondheim.
Pushed relentlessly backwards, when the final order came to surrender Tronstad and his men had buried their arms and ammunition for future use. Publicly, he had returned to his work as a university professor, and as a consultant to Norsk Hydro. Secretly, he had become a leader in the fledgling resistance movement, recruiting amongst his student network to form a cell that became known as Skylark B.
Tronstad earned his own uniquely fitting code name: The Mailman. It referred to his role in sending intelligence on Norway’s industries to Britain, revealing how these might boost the Nazi war effort. For a while, Norsk Hydro had been but one of his many areas of interest. But then, in the spring of 1941, London had called, demanding to know everything possible about the Vemork heavy water plant.
The Mailman communicated all that he could: the Germans were determined to raise production massively, but he was unsure as to exactly what they intended to use the SH200 for. Tronstad started liaising closely with Jomar Brun, Vemork’s double agent and a former classmate of his. Together they fed back further information to SOE headquarters. But then the Gestapo pounced: Skylark B’s radio transmitter was seized, along with the student who operated it.
That student was tortured. He talked. The Skylark B network began to implode. On 20 September, a warning message was smuggled to Tronstad: ‘The Mailman must disappear.’ Tronstad had bid a hasty farewell to his beloved wife, Bassa—a childhood sweetheart—plus their two young children, and made himself scarce. Eventually he crossed the border into neutral Sweden and from there made his way to Britain.
Some of this Skinnarland had heard. Some had been guessed at. And now here he was, just seventy-two hours after seizing the Galtesund, sitting before The Mailman in a mysterious London office.
Beside Tronstad was a second, much older figure. With his sparse hair, scarred nose, and stout, bullfrog-like appearance, there was something of the war-bitten troll about the man. But beneath the craggy brows Skinnarland saw eyes burning with a peculiar kind of intelligence, and not a small amount of shrewd cunning.
Wilson introduced himself to Skinnarland, and for a while the three did the necessary small talk, before Wilson and Tronstad began firing queries at the newly arrived Norwegian.
‘There are two questions we want to put to you. First, do you think you will have been missed by now?’
Skinnarland shook his head. Like many in his home area, he was a keen hunter and fisherman. ‘I don’t think so. I told everyone I was going into the hills on a hunting trip.’
Wilson exchanged glances with Tronstad. Over the past months the two men had developed a deep and instinctive trust. Wilson commanded the SOE’s Norwegian Section, and Tronstad the Norwegian government-in-exile’s equivalent organization. Together, they had amassed the most detailed and in-depth intelligence on the Vemork plant.
‘We benefited very considerably through the advice and complete cooperation that “The Professor” always gave us,’ Wilson would write of his ‘dear and close friend’. ‘The Professor was a frequent visitor to our private flat at Chiltern Court. There would be a ring at the bell, and immediately the door opened, a shout: “Margaret, have you got anything to eat?’”
Wilson was the son of a Scottish cleric who’d also been the Dean of Edinburgh University. When asked about his knowledge of the UK, he’d written on his SOE recruitment form: ‘Have travelled all over Great Britain … but give me The Highlands every time.’ Wilson had a Scottish wife, and Margaret was their feisty teenage daughter. Tronstad had fostered a deep affection for ‘the canny old Scoutmaster’, as he called Wilson, plus his family.
Wilson turned to Skinnarland and fired the next question at him—the million-dollar question. ‘Are you prepared, with what training we can give you, to parachute back into the Hardangervidda, and before you are missed? We need to learn everything about the situation at Vemork.’
Skinnarland nodded. There was no need to say anything. He was more than ready.
Wilson paused. He eyed Skinnarland, searchingly. ‘I’m afraid you’re taking on a very tough assignment. There’s not an hour to lose … Quite frankly we are very worried about what’s going on at Norsk Hydro. The Nazis have just demanded 10,000 pounds of heavy water by Christmas. And you’ll appreciate what kind of present that might lead to, over London.’
He went on to outline the basics of Operation Grouse. Skinnarland was to return to Norway to establish a totally discrete intelligence operation, in isolation from all other networks. Though he was to be dropped alone, others—a handful of fellow Norwegian SOE agents—were to follow. Their mission would be to sabotage the Vemork works in a clandestine guerrilla-style operation, and to destroy all supplies of SH200 before they could be shipped to Germany.
Skinnarland’s role, as the advance party and the linkman to the Vemork plant, was absolutely vital. They would very likely only get one chance to strike. They had to get it right first time.
‘Don’t jump into this with your eyes shut,’ Wilson warned. ‘Parachuting is a tricky business, and we won’t have much time to make you an expert.’
Before any attack was launched, Wilson wanted to know everything the Germans might be doing in and around the SH200 plant. Details on security measures and defences were key. If Skinnarland could discover the exact use the Germans were making of the heavy water, so much the better, though Wilson appreciated that this might be tricky. Wilson rounded off the meeting stressing the vital importance of absolute secrecy.
Skinnarland’s mission was to be known only to the three men in that room. Much of what he would communicate about Vemork would be too sensitive for radio transmission out of Norway. Instead, it was to be sent via courier to an SOE office in Sweden, and from there by diplomatic bag to London. The couriers—moving by bicycle, train or on foot over challenging terrain—were often young women, for they tended to attract less suspicion.
‘Both verbal and written messages were passed,’ wrote Wilson, ‘the length of the message being governed by the amount of paper a man could swallow in a hurry … It might take a courier a week to travel along the tops of ridges and mountains, and so avoid the many controls and patrols in the valleys.’
Those of Skinnarland’s messages that proved too bulky to be eaten in a hurry would have to be sent via the postal system, using an ingenious means of concealment. They would be meticulously encoded and sent in ‘duff’—or microdotted form. An entire typed page was photographed, reduced to a tiny spot no larger than a pinhead, and scattered throughout an ordinary-looking letter, hidden in the full stops like raisins in a suet (Christmas-type) pudding: ‘plum duff’ in British Army speak, hence ‘sending in duff’. To recover the message a 200-times magnification microscope was required.
Wilson made it clear that Vemork was the SOE’s absolute top priority target and their orders were to ‘eliminate’ it. Time was critically short. Skinnarland had to be dropped back into Norway before anyone realized he was gone. The remainder of his ‘Easter holiday’ break was all the time they had available to transform this engineer and outdoors man into one of the SOE’s most important assets across all of occupied Europe.
Skinnarland’s mission agreed upon, Tronstad took him to a local pub, so he could enjoy a few pints of fine British ale. And then … training.
The Operation Grouse orders read: ‘An organization is to be built up … entirely independent of other organizations in Norway …’ Weapons, radio kit and fellow operators were to be parachuted in to join Skinnarland. A coded radio message would be sent over the BBC to warn him of their impending arrival. Instead of the regular opening line of the evening news—‘This is the news from London’—the announcer would state: ‘This is the latest news from London.’
Wilson held his Norwegian agents in the very highest regard. ‘I knew that any qualified Norwegian I approached would agree to carry it out,’ he remarked of Operation Grouse. Wilson’s superagent, Odd Starheim, was sadly out of contention—he was too well known. His role as an undercover operator in Norway was over. Starheim would focus now on offensive, commando-style operations.
Wilson had more or less singlehandedly formulated the SOE’s training regime, which was arranged into distinct parts. First came three weeks of simple explosives, pistol-shooting and physical trials, ‘mainly to see if the candidate was suitable’. For those deemed up to it, there followed ‘a further weeding-out process’, based in the Arisaig area of Scotland, consisting of instruction in ‘all the latest explosive devices, small arms, unarmed combat and fitness training’. And for those who survived that, there was a third period of specialist training, in the Beaulieu area of the New Forest, learning ‘codes, secret writing, psychological warfare’ to prepare recruits as agents, wireless operators or saboteurs.
Wilson realized from the start that what the SOE were building was no regular military unit. ‘Its discipline had to be largely self-applied. A blind eye had to be turned to certain personal failings and idiosyncrasies. For strict military discipline a policy of mutual confidence and trust had to be substituted.’
He would learn quickly the type of man—and woman—the SOE sought. ‘However brave and efficient … men were, I began to realize other abilities and qualities were required. The tough gangster of detective fiction was of little use, and in fact likely to be a danger.’
‘No normal course of training can determine a man’s character,’ Wilson would remark. ‘It is curious but true that some of the best members of the Linge Company were thought at first not likely to make good agents, and one redoubtable member was almost rejected outright as unsuitable.’
With Einar Skinnarland, Wilson sensed he’d found the right operator, but he had few illusions as to the risks attached to what he was asking of the man. ‘Weather is appalling most of the time,’ Wilson wrote of the Hardangervidda, Skinnarland’s intended drop zone. ‘Sudden fogs, unpredictable gales, swift upward air currents … with hundreds of dangerous glaciers, marshes, swamps and impassable streams.’ Nobody would ever choose to be parachuted into the area.
Skinnarland had less than two weeks to cram in his SOE instruction—including his parachutist’s training—something that normally lasted for several months. Wilson would describe this crash course as being ‘the quickest turn-around and most vital piece of training we had ever achieved.’
Skinnarland got just two days at the SOE’s radio school, followed by three days’ parachutist’s instruction. His assessor wrote of him: ‘He showed great keenness … though his training was rushed.’ Rushed indeed. After those few days of fevered preparation, Skinnarland was deemed ready.
Wilson’s final words of advice to the flame-haired Norwegian were that if ever he found himself in a tight corner or was confronted with a situation not covered by his orders, he was to act as he saw best. As with the hijacking of the Galtesund, whatever he did he would have the full support of the SOE.
With those words ringing in his ears Skinnarland prepared to jump, alone and under the cover of darkness.