Poulsson shaded his eyes. After so many days spent in the ice-grey twilight of the fog-bound Vidda, and countless nights in the Cousin’s dark hut, he wasn’t used to the glare. Sunlight. At last. It was 23 December 1942, and Poulsson had woken to a glorious dawn.
The fog had lifted. Rays had broken through. It was a perfect day.
For an hour or more he’d been following the reindeer tracks. It was a good-sized herd, and already he could feel his pulse quickening. If only. If only he could track them and make a kill—he would be the saviour of his men. He crested a ridge, the crust of snow breaking crisply under his ski poles, the air fresh and tight in his lungs. He scanned the whiteness below. Nothing. Where were they?
A phrase came back to him from his childhood. Reindeer: ‘They are like ghosts. They come from nowhere, fill up the land, then disappear.’ Maybe something had spooked them? A wolf? Humans? A German patrol? A herd in flight could travel twenty-five miles in an hour, easily. They might already be far away.
He pressed onwards, eyes glued to the distinctive tracks in the snow. He crested a second ridge. He stopped and pulled out his binoculars, wiping the glasses with a cloth he kept tucked under his watchstrap. He scanned the terrain below. The flat midday light played tricks, compressing everything and cutting out form and distance.
He swept the lenses back and forth across the sun-dazzled whiteness. He almost missed it. A group of rocks in a far valley. But wait, the rocks were moving. Slowly, almost as one, they drifted northwards across the snow.
He’d found it: the herd.
Pulse quickening, he set out once more. Being careful to keep downwind, lest they catch his scent, he skied across the intervening terrain. He climbed a second ridge. Halted. Removed his skis and crept into view. They were close now. Seventy or so of them, grazing on the moss that Poulsson and his men had grown sick to death of eating.
Well today, if only he could do this, they would feast like kings.
He wasn’t yet within range. Between him and the herd lay open terrain. He couldn’t risk crossing it. They were bound to see or hear him. He would have to lie in wait, hoping that they would come to him. An hour passed. The cold bit into his skin. He hated risking any movement, but he had to keep exposed flesh ice-free. He screwed up his face, shaking shards of ice from his thick beard and rubbing any areas that started to numb—the first signs of frostbite.
But no matter how long he waited, the herd just didn’t seem to come any closer. Grazing on the moss fringing a small lake, most were like statues. With their thick whitish-grey pelts they melted into the surroundings, breath pooling in frozen gasps. He would have to risk making a move. The light would fade, and the last thing Poulsson could face was a long ski back in darkness, empty-handed … again.
He flitted into the valley, sticking to whatever cover he could find. Two bulls were nearest. He crept towards a small mound that would bring him within range. In theory the Krag was accurate up to around 900 metres. In practice, he needed to get to within a third of that distance to be sure of a kill. If he fired and missed, in that instant the herd would be gone.
Poulsson was almost at the mound behind the cover of which he would take aim and fire when his feet shot out from under him. Moments later he was sliding down the hillside in a mini avalanche. Up ahead the bulls stamped repeatedly, their alarm call pulsing across the hard snow like drumbeats. Within moments the valley was filled with the deafening sound of panicked hooves, and the herd was gone.
Poulsson sank back into the cold whiteness. He cursed this barren land. He felt utterly spent. Tears of frustration pricked his eyes. What he wouldn’t give for a pinch of pipe tobacco, to bolster his frozen spirits. There was one spark of hope. When he’d first spotted the herd, he’d noticed a smaller group of reindeer grazing in a valley high above. It was just possible that they hadn’t been spooked. It was his only chance.
He skied fast now. The light was dying. No point in finding that second herd if it was too dark to take a shot. He hit the slope leading up to the higher ground, removed his skis and began to climb. He tried to combine speed with utmost care. The last thing he needed was to take a second tumble and to scare off this herd—that’s if it was still there.
He reached the lip of the rise and sank to his belly, inching his way upwards, praying that the wind would be in his face when he topped out. He raised his head, heart beating fit to burst. There. Ahead of him, maybe 300 metres. Reindeer. He counted thirty, skittish and unsettled as the wind kept shifting across the flat, exposed terrain. If it changed direction to behind him, they would catch his scent and be gone.
Poulsson belly-crawled ahead, rifle held before him. He would hit the first animal in the diaphragm. If his aim was true, the animal would fold gently into the snow, as if taken by the sudden need to rest. He might even get a second shot in. Who knew when the herds might return, and presently the hunger of his men knew no bounds.
He came within range and eased the rifle into his shoulder. He breathed deeply, calming his nerves and finding his centre, just as his grandfather had taught him. He took aim, the exhalations of the animals forming a cloud of warm mist enveloping them. He took up pressure on the Krag’s trigger, and squeezed. The rifle barked.
The target animal didn’t fall. Instead, it took to its heels. Poulsson fired again. And again. Still no animal fell. In a swirl of frightened snow they were gone.
Poulsson couldn’t understand it. Had he missed three times? Was his physical condition so dire that he’d lost the ability to hold a rifle and aim true?
He skied after the herd. Almost immediately he discovered blood amongst the hoof prints. He hadn’t missed. He figured it had to be the ammunition that was at fault. It was military issue steel-jacketed rounds, as opposed to the soft lead bullets that he more normally used for hunting. The shots must have cut clean through the animal, doing far less damage.
There were three blood trails. He picked one to follow. He came upon the wounded cow, legs scrabbling in the snow as she tried to stand. He raised the Krag and put her out of her misery. He tried to track the other blood trails, but it was almost dark now. He hated leaving two animals to die a slow death, but this was a matter of survival.
Poulsson returned to the cow. He grabbed a tin cup and filled it with her blood. He drank, rich warmth and energy coursing through his system. He drained the rest of the blood into a bucket, carefully setting it aside. He skinned the animal and quartered it, placing the head and tongue into his rucksack, plus the stomach, with its semi-digested load of lichen. From long experience he knew that these were the parts of the animal—rich in nutrients and flavour—that starving men craved.
He added the heart, liver, kidney and ribs and, crucially, slices of fat, for energy. He piled the leaner cuts in a heap, and roofed it over with snow. He’d return for that the following day. Finally, he cracked the small bones near the hooves, and sucked down the milky white marrow—a final burst of energy to prepare him for the long ski home under a crushing load.
He’d once commented that no man should ever carry more than thirty kilos across the Vidda, in such cold and at such altitude. He was close to that limit now, alone, and night was upon him. But he was buoyed up by the euphoria of the moment.
In the darkness of his return, he skied into the same herd that had first eluded him. The reindeer broke cover, thundering into the empty night. He arrived at the cabin, placed the blood-soaked rucksack by the door, and dusted his hands off in the snow. He walked in, head bowed and silent, as if—once again—he had failed. Poulsson figured he’d earned a little theatre.
Four sets of eyes turned to him dully. Any hopes they’d cherished had died several days ago. They felt sorry for him; more sorry for themselves. It was Kjelstrup who first noticed: there was blood on Poulsson’s trousers. He glanced at the Grouse leader’s emaciated features. He could tell that Poulsson was hiding something.
With a yell of excitement he darted outside and fell upon the bulging, bloodied rucksack. The others joined him, their wild cheers echoing across the dark Vidda.
Salvation.
With this, they would live. They were saved. This signified that the long-awaited reindeer herds had come. There would be more hunting. For now at least, life was assured.
Arguably, there were few others who could hope to survive here, in this harshest of lands. As Wilson had concluded, when sending out Skinnarland and then Poulsson and his men:
Even the most expert British skiers … could not have lived in the mountains across the North Sea … It would have been suicide to parachute our own people over on sabotage work. The enemy would have known about the landings in a matter of days, if not hours. Don’t forget there were … Quislings over there, as well as many loyalists.
Norway, geographically, and in every other way, was just about the worst country in the world for undercover operations. The weather could change from favourable to decidedly dangerous in a few minutes. Areas suitable for landings … were few and far between … It was a country for mountain-trained men, who could merge into the local background, minutes after they hit the deck.
The following day, Christmas Eve, Poulsson and his men gathered at the hut’s rough-hewn table, a juniper twig and some paper stars making a stand-in Christmas tree. To a background of carols played over the radio, and with the headphones set on a tin plate to amplify the sound, they feasted. Poulsson—the self-appointed Grouse chef—had prepared a soup made of reindeer blood and half-digested lichen, from the animal’s stomach.
There would be no tripping over a reindeer pelt this time, spilling the precious meal. The soup was followed by fried reindeer tongue and liver. For the first time in weeks the men felt satiated. The animal had given its life so they might live. Arguably, it had given its life so the world might live in freedom and in peace, for such were the stakes in what was coming.
But for now, the survivors would celebrate the sheer fact of their survival. No one ever beat the Vidda. You had to learn to bend to its ways. If you did that, it would provide. Eventually. As it had done now.
As they sat back contented, one amongst them began to hum a tune that they had learned to love during the long months of Scottish training. All raised a voice—quiet, hopeful, re-energized. It was Christmas Eve and they had something very simple to celebrate: they were alive. Softly sung vocals echoed around the hut.
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes,
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes …
Humans cannot survive on meat and fat alone. They needed vitamins and carbohydrates, gleaned from fruit and vegetation. Poulsson and his men knew this, hence their eating the reindeer’s stomach contents. Over the coming days they would consume every last morsel of the carcass, stewing the bones for forty-eight hours and pounding the residue into a thick, gluey ‘porridge’.
‘We ate everything except … the hooves,’ remarked Poulsson of the reindeer that he had killed. And when that first animal was used up, they went out hunting again, for the herds had arrived in earnest now. Nothing went to waste. ‘The skins we put on the floor, ceiling and walls to make the hut warmer.’
The failure of the December Gunnerside drop meant a wait for the January 1943 moon period. But with the reindeers’ sacrifice, they would endure. A 14 January radio message reflects how Poulsson’s team was reinvigorated. Typically, it downplayed the previous weeks of privation.
‘Reason for our silence difficulties in battery charging … Rations running short … German force in district still 200. No change in forces at Møsdamm and Vemork. New … D/F station at Møsdamm. Consider diversionary flying operations immensely important for the safety of the dropping. All lakes frozen and covered in snow.’
The last part of the message referred to the pending drop of Ronneberg and team. With the Germans scouring the Vidda and listening in, Haugland was suggesting that the aircraft should execute a diversionary ploy, to disguise the dropping of the Gunnerside team.
In London Wilson heeded Haugland’s advice. He and Tronstad racked their brains for a suitable ruse. None came to mind. They would need to get their thinking caps on. In the meantime, Wilson radioed realism and encouragement, in equal measure, to team Grouse: ‘Weather still very bad but boys eager to join you.’
The ‘eager’ Ronneberg paid a visit to his local ironmonger’s. He and his men had already procured bespoke sleeping bags, boots, rucksacks, boot covers, ski caps and skis, all made to measure by various local craftsmen. They’d even got hold of some soft rabbit-skin jockstraps, to better protect their manhood from the trials and tribulations of the Vidda. But the right kind of bolt croppers—heavy, with insulated handles in case of electrification—had eluded them.
Now Ronneberg had them in his grasp. No lesson, however small, went unremarked. A note regarding the ‘special pair of bolt shears’ was sent to Wilson in London, along with the receipt, reference future operations. ‘I am forwarding it to you in case you wish to take a note of the address of the suppliers …’
Over the preceding weeks the Gunnerside team had taken lessons from the SOE’s training manual, learning the exacting dance of combat and turning it into an art form. The pivotal point of that dance was the Thompson sub-machine gun. Popularized by 1930s gangsters, the SOE believed the iconic weapon suited their purposes admirably.
The ‘Tommy Gun’ has a short barrel and fires blunt-nosed pistol ammunition … by reason of the heavy calibre of the bullets and the high rate of fire it is a valuable weapon for any type of close combat … such as Street and House Fighting …
In turning on to targets, the gun does not move independently of the body. It is brought onto the target by the body and feet moving … naturally to balance the body … you must get around on your target with tremendous speed … Note: Jumping round is a poor substitute for neat, precise footwork …
Ronneberg had reached similar conclusions about the weapon’s merits. ‘First we decided on Sten guns, because of the weight …’ The Sten weighed seven pounds compared to the tommy gun’s near ten. ‘During training in Scotland we abandoned this idea, owing to the unreliability of the weapon … We decided to take Tommy Guns instead, as these could be used as rifles up to 200 yards with good accuracy.’
At one stage Ronneberg and his men had been put through a firing exercise by a regular army weapons instructor. They were given 200 rounds each and told to advance down a mock-up street, taking out targets as they went. They started out, firing from the hip and pivoting gracefully as they’d been taught.
The instructor halted the exercise: they should stop, bring the weapon to the shoulder, and aim and fire ‘properly’, he explained. Ronneberg and his men demurred. They carried on as before. By the end of the course the instructor had lapsed into silence. He’d never seen such swift, accurate shooting.
Prior to the January moon window, Tronstad drew up a final briefing on their target. Entitled: ‘GUNNERSIDE … Approach to factory area’, it laid out in incredible detail the means to fight their way into the Vemork plant, to seize it, and how to stop German reinforcements from driving them out again.
All … lines of approach can be covered by a single or double post at the … shelter just inside the main gate. This is a concrete affair with a ½ inch iron plate door fitted with a peephole … Part way up the hydrogen gasometer runs a platform, which is reached by a staircase and affords an excellent view of the main gate. The ¼ inch iron plating gives some cover … One may further assume the Germans will hesitate to shoot at the hydrogen gasometer for fear of an explosion … The best place is on the level part between the gasometers, which gives … lines of retreat either between them or through the compressor house. The field of fire ahead is excellent over all lines of approach.
The briefing covered point after point in similar detail. It was excellent: a step-by-step guide to how to seize and hold the Vemork works. Their equipment was ready. Their intelligence was as good as it could possibly get. The raiders were more than prepared. They just needed the weather to hold good over the Vidda to hit the next moon window.
On 23 January Ronneberg and team flew out of RAF Tempsford, heading north towards Norway, hoping that they would not be returning any time soon. They were to be disappointed. The Vidda proved to be as elusive as ever. Having failed to find the landing zone, the pilot refused to let the six men jump.
In one of the greatest of ironies, it was partly as a result of a new nickname acquired by Haukelid that the pilot had been adamant that the drop be aborted. Tiring perhaps of Bonzo, someone had given Gunnerside’s chief rebel the teasing name of ‘The General’. Apparently, the aircrew had overheard someone referring to Haukelid in those terms, and concluded that they were flying in some high-ranking Norwegian Army officer.
Upon landing back at RAF Tempsford, Ronneberg and his men had confronted the aircrew. The pilot glanced at Haukelid: ‘I thought it looked too bad to drop a general.’
Either way, the January moon window had closed, and Ronneberg felt frustrated and let down. ‘We wanted to drop,’ he remarked. ‘But the pilot would have none of it.’
Team Grouse would now have to hold out for another terrible month on the Vidda, and how were Ronneberg and his men to kill the long days waiting, trapped in Britain? Any further time at Tempsford or similar, and they were going to go stir crazy. What they needed was to return to conditions as close as possible to those on the Vidda, or at least as Britain in January might offer.
Wilson concurred: he needed team Gunnerside to keep in tip-top condition, both physically and mentally. Repeated let-downs had to be eating away at their morale and their convictions, and that he could ill afford.
In America the turn of the year had brought news of dark promise and fear, in equal measure. The Manhattan Project’s atomic pile—their experimental nuclear reactor—had gone critical, the point at which it became self-sustaining. This marked a huge milestone in the development of the bomb. A self-sustaining pile would ‘breed’ plutonium—at least if it was ‘moderated’ by heavy water. And with American scientists convinced that their German counterparts were well ahead of them, they had to presume that the Nazi pile had gone critical years before. Which begged the question: just how much plutonium had the Germans managed to acquire?
As Samuel Goudsmit—a key Manhattan Project figure—put it:
Since the Germans had started their uranium research about two years before us, we figured they must be at least two years ahead of us. They might not have the bomb yet, but they must have had the chain-reacting piles going for several years. It followed they must have fearful quantities of artificial radioactive material available. How simple it would be for them to … sow death wholesale amongst us …
Of the Manhattan Project people Goudsmit wrote: ‘Some of the men … were so worried they sent their families to the country-side. The military authorities were informed and fear spread … scientific instruments were set up … to detect the radioactivity, if and when the Germans attacked.’
Such worrying reports were heard in Britain. Reluctant to acknowledge these grimmest of fears, still Churchill felt obliged to push forward with Operation Peppermint. Geiger counters and teams equipped to use them were to be stationed around Britain, in case of such an attack. Peppermint was cloaked in layers of secrecy. If word leaked out there would be panic on the streets, and in January 1943 that was something that the Allies could not allow.
All this served to increase the pressure on Wilson.
Right now he needed a place of respite for the Gunnerside team. He sought a remote and private hideaway where six men might wind down and recharge batteries. He found it at Crispie, a remote and rambling house facing west across Loch Fyne—Britain’s longest sea loch—the only intruders being the red squirrels that abounded there. A Mr Mackenzie lived at Crispie, a veteran of the First World War who’d been involved in intelligence work.
‘The atmosphere and surroundings are, of course, particularly suitable to Norwegians, being wild, rough and rugged,’ a ‘Most Secret’ report recounted. Of Mr Mackenzie, it concluded: ‘Being unable to take a very active part in this war on account of a “gammy leg” … he would be well disposed to rendering any assistance he could.’
Crispie was secretive. It was private and remote. It was set within scenery that evoked the Vidda. ‘This sounds like the place we want,’ Wilson declared. In late January Ronneberg and party were whisked north to Crispie. There they could tramp the moors to their hearts’ content, and fish and hunt game.
Having got the Gunnerside party out of the way, Wilson now had to keep Grouse onside. He radioed Haugland, begging the team to hold on for another month, and another moon window.
‘Deeply regret weather conditions have made it impossible to land party. Do hope you can manage to keep going until next standby period … Take care. We all send you our thanks and our admiration.’
Haugland radioed back an unflinching and pragmatic response. ‘On account of turning of crank handle the correspondence goes a bit more slowly … If possible we require for killing game Krag ammunition …’
Team Grouse were running short of ammo for hunting reindeer, but they were most certainly hanging on. Marooned in the Cousin’s Cabin, Einar Skinnarland had even cobbled together a charging mechanism for their battery, one that was operated entirely by hand—the so-called crank handle’.
Yet Wilson was feeling the pressure. General Groves—the American in charge of the Manhattan Project—had been in touch with General Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of American forces in Europe. The Vemork SH200 facility had to be put out of action at all costs. If sabotage wouldn’t do it—if the British couldn’t pull something out of the bag—would a massive US Air Force bombing raid not suffice?
Wilson had to get this done, for others were itching to take over.
As January blew into a rain-lashed February, Crispie it seemed had done a fabulous job. ‘My dear Mackenzie,’ Wilson wrote, ‘I wish to thank you for the arrangements you made in order to ensure that this party were kept fit and in good condition … I feel that this opportunity of getting amongst the hills will prove of greatest value to them in the work which they have to do on the other side.’
With the February moon window fast approaching, Wilson, Tronstad and Ronneberg agreed that enough was enough. They could brook no further delay, and neither by any stretch of the imagination could team Gunnerside. They would insist on the aircrew doing the forthcoming drop, no matter whether they could find the landing zone or not.
Once they were down amongst the snow and rock of the Vidda, Ronneberg felt certain they could find their way.