C ECIL CLARKE WAS having a good war. Three years earlier, he had been struggling to balance the books at his Bedfordshire caravan business. Now, he was one of the country’s leading experts in sabotage, responsible for training Colin Gubbins’s most intrepid agents. He had developed some of the most effective weapons of the war, notably the grenade that killed Reinhard Heydrich, and his limpet mine was being produced in the tens of thousands. It had been used to blow up everything from factories in the Balkans to transport ships in Greece.
Three weeks before Christmas 1942, Clarke learned that his limpet had played its most spectacular role to date. A team of commandos led by Herbert ‘Blondie’ Hasler had crept into Bordeaux harbour and slipped limpet mines on to enemy vessels, severely damaging five of them. Operation Frankton, the Cockleshell Raid, was a brilliantly audacious strike at the enemy. Lord Mountbatten said that ‘of the many brave and dashing raids carried out by the men of Combined Operations Command, none was more courageous or imaginative than Operation Frankton.’ 1 The imaginative element was due, in no small part, to Cecil Clarke.
Mrs Clarke did not share Cecil’s enthusiasm for war. While he was blowing craters in the grounds of Brickendonbury Manor, she was struggling to lay her hands on enough food for her three young boys, while simultaneously trying to cope with the running of LoLode. The company now had ten employees who were undertaking orders for the War Office, constructing ambulance trailers and other towed vehicles. Clarke was noticeable only by his absence.
By Christmas of that year, Clarke was growing restless with life at Brickendonbury and was keen to lead a saboteur unit of his own. He appealed to Colin Gubbins to let him take a freelance band of guerrillas to the Middle East, where he felt sure he could wreak havoc. He was to be disappointed. Gubbins told him it was ‘impossible to entertain the suggestion’, 2 for he was far too valuable to the home team. Yet he acknowledged his desire for change, allowing him to step aside from his role at Brickendonbury and giving him a temporary posting to Arisaig.
Clarke made his way to the killing school, where he was made Officer in Charge of User Trials. This placed him in charge of fine-tuning all the prototype weaponry that was being tested in the Highlands. His first task was to trial the new generation of limpet mines in the chill waters of Loch nan Ceall. Gubbins knew all about Clarke’s hands-on approach to testing weapons – it invariably involved him plunging into the water in his underpants – and offered a piece of friendly advice. ‘In view of the cold at this time of year,’ he said, ‘I suggest you get some of the special Air Force bathing suits which will keep out all the water.’ 3
Clarke had always been a restless individual, distracted by any passing curiosity. He soon requested to be moved again, only this time he asked to be transferred to the Firs, in order to work alongside Millis Jefferis. Stuart Macrae was delighted when he learned that Gubbins had approved the transfer to Whitchurch. ‘Like you,’ he said to Clarke, ‘we have always been irregular and always will be.’ 4
Poor Dorothy was now to see even less of her husband, for the Firs was more than thirty miles from Bedford. Clarke was not inclined to share quarters with the other staff (and they, perhaps, had little desire to share with him). It suited everyone when he rented a cottage in Whitchurch village. He took particular delight in discovering that it was the only one known to be haunted. When his young boys came on a rare visit, he told them that the ghostly apparition of a woman was said to drift through the house at night and that people sleeping in the bedrooms used to ‘wake up feeling they’d been throttled’. 5 It was hardly a reassuring image, but Clarke was careful to remind his sons that ghosts didn’t exist. When his bottle of Brylcreem inexplicably toppled over, he told young David that he wouldn’t believe the house was haunted until the bottle righted itself. It never did.
No sooner was Clarke installed at the Firs than he set to work on a novel little invention called the Aero-Switch. It was designed to be used on German planes while they were on the ground, where they were particularly vulnerable to sabotage. The Aero-Switch was a pressurized explosive charge that, as he explained to Macrae, ‘could be inserted into a German bomber by some brave fellow and would explode when the aircraft reached a certain height’. It worked by means of an ingenious metal bellows that expanded with the reduced atmospheric pressure, forcing two wires to connect and detonate the charge, with devastating consequences for the plane.
The explosive itself was housed in a flexible sausage casing and Clarke maintained that although it ‘could not be conveniently concealed in the pocket’, it could ‘without comment be carried in the trousers’. Macrae begged to differ as he watched Clarke parading around the room with a giant sausage in his pants. ‘He was wrong about the “without comment”,’ he said, ‘and there was always considerable ribaldry when he demonstrated this method to his pupils.’
The Aero-Switch was an inventive way of reducing the size of the Luftwaffe and the Firs immediately set up a production line. It soon became the weapon of choice for many saboteurs working in occupied territories. German-controlled airbases were often too large to be well guarded, enabling any would-be saboteur to crawl through the perimeter fence under the cover of darkness and plant their weapon on the plane. ‘The usual drill was to make a slit in the wing fabric of a German bomber and pop the thing inside so that in due course the wing would be wrecked and the bomber likewise.’
The weapon had not long been in service when Macrae learned from intelligence sources that ‘the entire Luftwaffe bombing fleet about to set out for London had been grounded whilst a search was carried out for this sabotage weapon which had already caused them too many casualties.’ Macrae proudly passed this information to his wife, who was working at Bletchley Park, ‘only to be informed that she knew all about it because she had handled the message’. 6
While Clarke had been working on the Aero-Switch, Macrae had been busy perfecting his clam, the miniature version of Clarke’s limpet. When demonstrated to the Russians, they immediately recognized its potential on the Eastern Front and placed an order for 1 million. Soon after, the Allied armies in the west ordered a further 1½ million. The clam, like the limpet, was another winner for Millis Jefferis’s team at the Firs.
Cecil Clarke’s move to the Firs left a vacancy for the top job at Brickendonbury Manor. Colin Gubbins had no doubts as to who he wanted as his new commanding officer. George Rheam had first come to his attention a few months earlier, when he had been told of a brilliantly gifted northerner living in a suburban house in High Barnet. He was said to be the country’s leading expert in steam turbines, power stations and generators: he was immediately summoned to Baker Street for an interview.
Those who met Rheam rarely forgot the experience, for he was a chilling individual, an unsmiling genius with thatch-coloured hair and penetrating steel eyes that betrayed no hint of his inner thoughts. He spoke sparingly, precisely, as if adjectives and adverbs were a frivolous waste of time. Gubbins was quick to realize that Rheam had a very clear idea of how to destroy the Nazis. His great desire was to turn Occupied Europe into an industrial junkyard and he insisted that ‘sabotage, if properly planned and carried out, can reduce a country’s war-potential to the point where it becomes impossible to wage war.’ 7
Rheam also knew more than most people about industrial engineering. He had worked for nearly a decade at Metropolitan Vickers, where he displayed more aptitude for interacting with steam turbines than with his colleagues. In 1930 he and Mrs Rheam had moved south so that he could take up his job at the North Metropolitan Power Company’s generating station at Southgate, near London. Here, he spent his working day studying the component parts of electricity generators. He was soon the country’s leading expert.
In the late 1930s, as Britain drifted towards war, Rheam began to turn his thoughts to the destruction of machinery. One day, he was struck by the exhilarating thought that he could cripple all the most important power stations in Britain with a very small quantity of explosives. Indeed, he reckoned that he could completely paralyse British industry ‘for a very long period with less than two tons’. 8
And herein lay his genius. Although he gave the appearance of being narrow-minded and introspective, he was in fact the very opposite. ‘A large man with a large mind,’ said one, ‘[and] the inventor of many industrial sabotage techniques.’ 9 Gubbins was deeply impressed. ‘First class,’ he jotted in his notebook. ‘A first class officer.’ 10
Now, with Cecil Clarke’s permanent departure from Brickendonbury Manor, Rheam was offered the job. He accepted with alacrity and immediately took up his role as commanding officer. The change in regime was instant and total. Clarke had pushed his men hard, but he had done so with a twinkle in his eye. Rheam, by contrast, was never knowingly caught smiling. ‘A strong, dour, efficient officer who does not easily brook any outside interference.’ Such was the opinion of Colonel Young, one of the junior staff at Brickendonbury. He said that Rheam ‘would run most efficiently any post which he undertook’, although he added that this would not be done ‘through his personal charm’. 11
Rheam shared one thing in common with the other members of Gubbins’s inner circle, ‘that rare combination, accurate hands and a highly imaginative brain’. Above all, he seemed to have a far greater understanding of the Nazi mentality than his colleagues and ‘knew rather better than most of the rigidities of the systems they were trying to conquer’. 12
Rheam took up his new post at a time when the number of saboteurs undergoing training at Brickendonbury Manor was on the rise. In the early months there had rarely been more than two dozen students at any given time, but by Christmas 1942, Gubbins was sending more than 150 students a month. This placed strain on the running of Brickendonbury and required the services of a small army of young ladies from the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.
One of them, Sue Ryder, was quick to note that Rheam did not approve of employing female staff. ‘But he had to,’ she said, ‘because it was laid down by Gubbins.’ She went out of her way to avoid the new master, for she found him ‘very strict’ and rather unpleasant. ‘We were all very frightened of him.’
Rheam firmly believed that saboteurs needed to develop an intuitive understanding of the machines they were hoping to blow up. To this end, he ordered the acquisition of industrial plant machinery, sending his staff to scour factories and scrapyards for old turbines, electrical installations and generators. These were all installed in Morgan’s Walk, in the lower garden of Brickendonbury Manor, and included ‘a two engine Manchester, a Tempest or Typhoon with a Sabre engine and a German JU88’. 13 He also had a Churchill tank parked on the East drive, along with a Great Western Railway locomotive.
Rheam adapted many of Cecil Clarke’s ideas, taking his students to transformer stations and teaching them how to locate key parts of plant machinery. Once back at Brickendonbury Manor, in one of his all too rare moments of geniality, he would offer a glass of whisky to any student who could place a detonator on any part of the building, or any item of furniture, timed to set itself off before he could find it. No one ever succeeded. ‘He seemed to have a sixth sense,’ said one, ‘and expected something to be there.’ 14
Colin Gubbins paid frequent visits to Brickendonbury Manor and was impressed by Rheam’s thoroughness, noting that his training ‘covered the whole field of expertise, from oil wells, arms factories, marshalling yards and shipping, down to tyre-bursters, abrasives and adulteration of lubricants’.
The timing of Rheam’s appointment could not have been better, for Gubbins was in the process of planning his most audacious act of industrial sabotage to date. The target was ‘of really first-class importance’: 15 indeed, there were some who were already arguing that it was the most important target of the war. For the Norsk Hydro plant at Rjukan in Norway was the only one in Europe to produce heavy water, otherwise known as deuterium oxide. This was an essential ingredient in the production of plutonium and therefore in the building of an atomic bomb. If the factory was not destroyed – and soon – Hitler would have enough heavy water to start building a weapon of mass destruction.
Colin Gubbins had foreseen the threat posed by the Norsk Hydro plant ever since General von Falkenhorst’s troops had swept into Norway in the spring of 1940. An intelligence report at the time had revealed that Third Reich scientists had requested an immediate increase in production, to 300 pounds a year. In 1942, the output had been increased again, massively, to 10,000 pounds.
That autumn, Professor Lindemann warned Winston Churchill that the Germans had stockpiled one and a half tons of heavy water, most of which was stored at Norsk Hydro. ‘When they have five tons,’ he said, ‘they will be able to start production of a new form of explosive, a thousand times more potent than any in use today.’ 16
The War Cabinet was so alarmed by the prospect of Hitler winning the atomic race that it ordered the destruction of Norsk Hydro to be given ‘the highest possible priority’. 17 A two-stage military operation was immediately set in motion. First, a small group of Gubbins’s Norwegian guerrillas would be parachuted into the country in order to undertake vital reconnaissance. When this was completed, there would be a full-scale attack by Lord Mountbatten’s commandos.
Gubbins’s Norwegian saboteurs were initially led by a highly competent Norwegian captain named Martin Linge, who soon knocked his men into shape. His fighting force was given the name Norwegian Independent Company Number One and was placed under the operational direction of John Skinner Wilson, head of Baker Street’s Norwegian Section. Gubbins’s romantic Highland spirit ran away with him when he described Captain Linge’s men. ‘The stories of their deeds read like the sagas of old,’ he said. ‘The ancient Viking spirit had remained alive throughout the centuries of peace.’ 18
Captain Linge’s unit rapidly expanded to such an extent that it was given its own headquarters at Gaynes Hall, a classically fronted Georgian mansion in Cambridgeshire. The unit also had its own dedicated endurance centre at Drumintoul, a Victorian shooting lodge in the Scottish Highlands with close links to Arisaig.
The Norwegians selected for the mission against the heavy water plant – Operation Grouse – were successfully dropped into Norway in October 1942. They hid out in the snow-clad wilds of the Hardanger plateau and began laying the groundwork for a commando attack, escaping detection as they lived off the land.
When it came to landing the British commandos – Operation Freshman – the mission turned to disaster. Their two gliders crash-landed, killing fifteen of the men and seriously wounding many of the rest. The survivors were captured within days. The fortunate ones were executed immediately, while the rest were tortured and then killed. Three of the men were taken to a local hospital where a Nazi collaborator devised a particularly gruesome way to dispatch them, injecting air bubbles into their veins.
Operation Freshman proved beyond all doubt that an attack on Norsk Hydro was beyond the scope of the commandos. Yet the need to destroy the heavy water plant was as urgent as ever. Bombing from the air was considered but ruled out. Even if the factory was hit, no bomb was powerful enough to destroy the underground plant room. Indeed the bombs were more likely to kill the Norwegian civilians who worked for Norsk Hydro.
Ultimately, there was only one possible solution and that was to send in a crack team of Norwegian saboteurs, who could make contact with the Grouse team (who were still hiding out in the snow) and launch their attack on Norsk Hydro.
Gubbins remained unconvinced as to the feasibility of such an attack. ‘You can’t do that, it’s too difficult,’ 19 was his first reaction when John Skinner Wilson outlined his plans, particularly when he learned that the men were to be landed by parachute. He knew from experience that Norway presented severe difficulties for air operations. ‘Possible dropping zones are thickly clustered, precipitous and angry, the broken countryside throws up air-pockets and atmospheric currents.’ 20
Wilson agreed that it was ‘a task of some magnitude’. 21 He also knew that parachuting the men into Norway was merely the first of countless difficulties to be overcome. A far greater hurdle was the fact that Norsk Hydro was constructed in the fashion of a medieval fortress, perched atop a 700-foot shaft of vertical rock. Three of its sides were sheer, plunging deep into one of the most spectacular gorges in Norway: ‘So deep,’ wrote Margaret Jackson, who was involved in the planning, ‘that the sun never reached the depths of it.’ 22 There was but one point of access: a narrow suspension bridge that was kept under twenty-four-hour armed guard. It was completely inaccessible to a group of saboteurs.
The only other option was to scale the gorge, but even if this was successfully achieved, a forced entry into the plant was almost impossible. The machinery was housed in the bomb-proof basement built of reinforced concrete. The place was also heavily guarded by the Gestapo and the garrison had been greatly strengthened in the wake of the abortive commando operation.
There was good reason to abandon the very idea of such a foolhardy mission, but Churchill and the War Cabinet were insistent that it be given the highest priority. Gubbins was left with little alternative but to start planning.
The disastrous commando raid had taught him an important lesson: ‘it was essential to use only Norwegians. A British person parachuted into Norway, however well he spoke the language, would at once be recognized as a stranger and would arouse intense interest and speculation.’ 23 He also felt that British saboteurs were ill-equipped to survive the punishing physical hardships that the Norsk Hydro team would have to endure.
The planning began within hours of Gubbins approving the mission. Joachim Rønneberg was working as an instructor at one of the Scottish physical endurance centres when he was summoned to a meeting with a military adviser named Major Hampton. ‘He said he had just got a telegram from London asking if I could take on a job in Norway and if I could pick five of the unit to go with me.’
Twenty-three-year-old Rønneberg accepted immediately. Ever since fleeing from Norway two years earlier, he had been waiting for the moment to strike back at the Nazi occupiers of his country. Now, he had his chance.
Rønneberg was a graduate of Sykes and Fairbairn’s training course at Arisaig and it had left a deep impression. Sykes’s techniques were so violent that Rønneberg admitted ‘it was a bit difficult to sleep’ after one of his lectures. He had also been taught how to stab a man to death with the Fairbairn-Sykes knife, ‘which was a terrible weapon’. He was told that if you thrust it deep into the chest, it wouldn’t stop until it had sliced through the heart and hit the back of the ribcage. He was appalled at the casual way that Sykes and Fairbairn spoke of murder. ‘Having been a very, very quiet innocent boy back in Norway, never been in any fight at all, I felt: “What are you doing? And what are they doing to you?”’ 24
Yet his desire to rid Norway of the hated Nazis overrode all other sensibilities. He put more effort into his training than any other student and his physical stamina left a deep impression. One of Sykes’s infamous endurance exercises was a three-mile run from Arisaig to Meoble, a run that included a punishing 1,800-foot climb over the top of Sgean Mor while carrying a full pack. One trainee was struggling up the scree-strewn path when he turned his gaze upwards. He saw ‘the incredible sight of a tall young man galloping up the hill like a stag’. 25 This was Joachim Rønneberg, who was so fit that he shaved fully nine minutes off the record time to cover the three miles. He graduated with such good grades that he was offered the job of instructor at the Aviemore training school, established specially for Norwegian guerrillas.
Now, he was asked to select five men to accompany him on an as yet undisclosed mission to Norway. Rønneberg knew exactly which five he wanted and called them to a meeting. ‘I have been offered a job,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it is yet. Do you want to follow?’ 26 Their loud cheers were the only answer he needed. He selected the cool-headed Birger Strømsheim as his second-in-command. The others were Knut Haukelid, Fredrik Kayser, Kasper Idland and Hans Storhaug. All six had already undergone punishing physical training. ‘We learned to use pistols, knives and poison,’ said Knut Haukelid, ‘together with all the weapons nature had given us – our fists and feet.’ There was one constant refrain: ‘“Never give a man a chance” were words we were always hearing. If you’ve got him down, kick him to death.’
Haukelid felt himself an expert after graduating from the course. ‘It’s incredible what a man can do with a handful of explosive placed at the right place at the right time. He can halt an army or devastate the machinery on which a whole community depends.’ 27
Rønneberg and his team now headed to London where they learned that their goal was the destruction of Norsk Hydro. They were also informed of the disastrous first mission and the fate of the captured commandos. ‘They told us everything,’ said Rønneberg, ‘that those who had survived the crash were shot or experimented on, and that some were thrown into the North Sea. They told us that we would be given poison capsules so that we would not have to suffer the same ordeal.’
There was one thing they were not told, and that was the importance of heavy water. ‘No one ever mentioned nuclear weapons,’ said Rønneberg. ‘I certainly hadn’t the faintest idea that Churchill was taking an interest in the raid.’ 28
After the London briefing, the men were driven straight to George Rheam’s fiefdom at Brickendonbury Manor, arriving on the morning of Saturday, 12 December. They had precious little time for training: Gubbins hoped to parachute them into Norway before the end of the month.
Colin Gubbins had been able to furnish Rheam with an unusually complete dossier of information about Norsk Hydro and it had come from three impeccable sources. The first of these was Professor Leif Tronstad, a pioneering atomic scientist who had worked at Norsk Hydro during the 1930s and overseen the production of heavy water. A fervent patriot, he had baulked at the Nazi demand to increase the quantities being produced. Instead, he had tried to sabotage the existing stocks by adding drops of cod liver oil. The Germans soon began to suspect him and he had little option but to flee to England in the summer of 1941, delivering to Gubbins a detailed account of the factory’s layout.
Gubbins soon found himself with even more up-to-date information. Professor Tronstad’s place had been filled by Jomar Brun, another Norwegian patriot who secretly took microphotographs of the plant, concealed them in toothpaste tubes and managed to get them smuggled to London. When Brun came under suspicion, he also fled to England and offered his services to Baker Street.
The most extraordinary coup had come just eight months earlier, when Einar Skinnarland, a twenty-three-year-old engineer at Norsk Hydro, pitched up in London. His story had all the ingredients of a Boy’s Own adventure. He had told his German employees at the plant that he was in desperate need of a holiday. Granted two weeks’ leave, he and five comrades hijacked a 600-ton coastal steamer, Galtesund , and ordered its captain at gunpoint to sail for Aberdeen. Once ashore, Skinnarland made his way to London, warned Gubbins of the huge increase in production of heavy water and hand-delivered him the latest plans of the factory, along with all the operational activities.
Gubbins might reasonably have rewarded Skinnarland by giving him a desk job in Baker Street. Instead, he persuaded him to be parachuted back into Norway. He was to return to Norsk Hydro after his soi-disant ‘holiday’, so that he could continue to supply Gubbins with the latest information about the factory, its sentries and its points of access. Skinnarland did exactly that, arriving for work after two weeks’ absence and cheerfully informing his colleagues that he had enjoyed a relaxing break.
Rønneberg and his men were put through an intense training programme as soon as they arrived at Brickendonbury Manor. George Rheam had been given the most up-to-date dossier on Norsk Hydro. Now, he used his methodical brain to work out the best plan of attack. He had long believed that a small team of ‘thoroughly trained men will always produce better results that a large number of semi-trained’, especially on a mission of such complexity. 29 He also knew that there was little option for the saboteurs but to scale the gorge, break into the site, force an entry into the heavy water room and blow up the machinery. All this would have to be done in darkness.
The only sure way to train for such an attack was to build an exact replica of Norsk Hydro’s heavy water room, including its plant machinery and elongated metal cylinders. With the help of Jomar Brun and Professor Tronstad – and at great speed – Rheam had one of the outbuildings in the stable yard completely remodelled, so that Rønneberg and his men could familiarize themselves with the machinery and conduct practice attacks in the dark.
The men were also given exact plans of the rest of the factory, down to the very last detail. Professor Tronstad even told them where to find the key to the lavatory, in order that they could lock up one of the plant’s Norwegian night guards. ‘None of us had been to the plant in our lives,’ said Rønneberg, but after the intense training at Brickendonbury Manor, ‘we knew the layout of it as well as anyone.’ 30
Much of the training was done in darkness, for nocturnal sabotage was Rheam’s particular speciality. A favourite item on the Brickendonbury syllabus was the simulated night attack, ‘in which the students were dropped about a mile from their objective; they then had to make their way to the target which was guarded by sentries, gain access to it and place their charges on what they considered was the vital machinery’. 31
After a few days at Brickendonbury, the firearms instructor handed Rønneberg and his men some new weapons and told them to familiarize themselves with them while he went off to finish his other duties. Rønneberg watched the others ‘taking the loading grip and pressing the trigger and everything – “click, click, click” all round the place – and everyone seemed happy’. But when he pulled his trigger, he was in for a surprise. ‘It didn’t say click – it said “bang!” and there was a big hole in the wall.’ Brickendonbury’s adjutant burst into the room, demanding to know what was going on. Rønneberg smiled sheepishly and said to him: ‘We have new weapons and I have tried mine and it works!’ 32
The time spent at Brickendonbury was physically gruelling, even for men at the peak of their physical fitness. Rheam was not prone to dispense praise, but he told Gubbins he had never met such a professional team. ‘This was an excellent party in every way and each member has a thorough knowledge of the target and the methods of dealing with the different sections.’ He had found that ‘their demolition work was exceedingly good and their weapon training outstanding.’ He believed that ‘if the conditions are at all possible, they have every chance of carrying out the operation successfully.’ 33
Rønneberg made every effort to have the men kitted out with the best equipment, which was no easy matter in wartime. He was all too aware of the harshness of the Norwegian winter, when temperatures often dipped below minus thirty. He commissioned the bedding manufacturer, Hamptons of Knightsbridge, to make special Arctic sleeping bags, while the men’s skis were bought from a specialist Norwegian store in Dumfries. Rønneberg also got watertight boots and the very best snow goggles. He had previously suffered from snow blindness and knew it was both dangerous and painful. ‘It feels,’ he said, ‘like you have a kilo of sand in your eyes.’
He and Rheam put much care into choosing what guns the team should take. Aware that they would possibly have to fight their way into the plant, and out again, they chose Colt revolvers and tommy guns, ‘partly because they used the same ammunition, but also because they were really good stopping weapons’. 34
George Rheam put much thought into the explosive charges too. After much consultation, he suggested four sets of specially manufactured nine-and-a-half-pound charges, linked with double Cordtex and attached to two-minute delay detonators. The explosives were sausage-shaped and housed in a flexible casing: they were remarkably similar to Cecil Clarke’s Aero-Switch and he may even have had a hand in designing them. They were to be strapped to the heavy water canisters on very short fuses. The men would have just two minutes to make their getaway.
The last piece of kit was also the smallest: the death pill gave the men a jolt back into the real world. Knut Haukelid was morbidly fascinated by the pill, which ‘was cyanide enclosed in a rubber cover’. The cover enabled it to be kept in the mouth. ‘Once bitten through, it would ensure death within three seconds.’
There was only one thing missing from the training. None of the men had yet been told why heavy water was so important to Nazi Germany. One day, Knut Haukelid was chatting with Professor Tronstad when the latter gave him some inkling of the importance of the mission. Heavy water, he was told, ‘can be used for some of the dirtiest work that can be imagined. If the Germans can solve the problem, they’ll win the war.’ Haukelid was still confused until the professor, either by accident or design, ‘turned over some papers in the briefcase’. Haukelid only saw them for a few seconds, but realized that his mission ‘had to do with splitting the atom’. 35
Professor Tronstad had something else to say to Haukelid, a message that he wanted transmitted to all the men. ‘You must know that the Germans will not take you prisoner,’ he said. ‘For the sake of those who have gone before you and are now dead, I urge you to make this operation a success. You have no idea how important this mission is, but what you are going to do will live in Norway’s history for hundreds of years to come.’ 36
After completing their gruelling training at Brickendonbury Manor, the six men were sent back to their base station in Cambridgeshire. They now had to wait for the necessary conditions for them to be flown to Norway. Haukelid had the feeling ‘of being fenced in and protected at every point from the dangers and difficulties of this world, so that we might be used for one single purpose at home in Norway’.
He soon discovered that being ‘fenced in’ had its advantages. The men were able to enjoy the company of the girls who worked at St Neots. Haukelid dubbed them Gubbins’s fannies – he meant FANYs – and assumed they had been hired to entertain him. The girls did little to persuade him otherwise. ‘They were always willing to come to Cambridge in the evening for a little party.’ One of them would drive the men to a Cambridge pub; the rest would drink champagne ‘at the expense of the War Office’. Rønneberg stayed as sober as possible and did his best to persuade everyone to return to their base before matters got out of hand. But Haukelid and the others were in no hurry to go to bed, ‘and the girls agreed with us that there was both time and necessity for another bottle’. 37
The late-night merriment would continue around the piano at Gaynes Hall, although the gaiety was always overlaid with a touch of melancholy on these eve-of-mission soirées. Sue Ryder noted that the favourite songs were ‘All Our Tomorrows Will Be Happy Days’ and ‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’. There was always a sense that the men would not be coming back.
Rønneberg’s team were due to be parachuted into Norway on 23 January, but the flight had to be aborted due to thick fog. It was deeply disappointing, for the waning moon meant that the next flight wouldn’t be for another month.
Rønneberg was increasingly concerned that the men were spending too much time drinking and too little time keeping fit. The others disagreed, although they did accept that jogging across the Cambridgeshire levels was not suitable preparation for the snow-covered peaks of Norway. Rønneberg requested a transfer to Scotland in order to knock his men back into shape. ‘The muscles used when running on roads and fields are not the same as marching in broken and hilly countryside,’ he explained. 38
Baker Street answered his call, sending them ‘to a solitary place’ in the north of Scotland where there were no pubs, no girls and no sunshine. 39 They spent their days training, tracking deer in the relentless rain and waiting for the next moon.
At last, on 16 February 1943, Operation Gunnerside was again given the green light. The men were to be dropped into Norway that very night. Professor Tronstad came to see them off at Tempsford airfield. The rain was tipping down from the sky, soaking the white camouflage suits they were wearing in readiness for the snow on landing.
Pilot Officer John Charrot couldn’t believe how much equipment they had: so much that they had to be brought to the airfield in a lorry. He could only wonder what sort of operation they were due to undertake.
The kit was hurled aboard and then the men climbed into the Stirling IV aircraft. The plane’s navigator was intending to use dead reckoning navigation to hit landfall after 700 miles crossing the North Sea. A single error in his calculations and Rønneberg and his men would be heading to disaster.