We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (10 page)

The details of these executions are known, but they are not a
thing to be written or read about. Two men were selected for torture
in the hope that they would talk; but the shooting of the other eight
was accompanied by acts of ferocity which were absolutely aimless.
Countries which are civilised and yet have recourse to execution have
evolved the convention of the firing-squad and the one or two blank
rounds. This protects the conscience of people whose duty compels
them to act as executioners. The method the Germans used in
Tromso was the very opposite of this. Yet it was done in strictest
secrecy. There was no question of making use of cruelty as a deterrent to other people. It can only have been done as it was for one possible reason: to amuse the executioners. The Germans made it an
orgy of hideous delight.

It is not known whether one of the men who were tortured gave
Knudsen's and Moursund's names to the torturers. It would not be
surprising if they did, and no one would have the right to blame
them. But it is equally possible that the activities of these two men
were already known to the Germans, and that they were arrested on
mere suspicion of complicity in the Brattholm affair. Both of them
died in concentration camps in Germany, and so did the two fishermen Andreasson and Kristiansen.

So when the shopkeeper played for safety, and the official did
what he afterwards claimed was his duty, their actions cost fifteen
lives. Yet it is not for an Englishman, who has never lived under the
rule of the Germans, to pass judgment on what they did. Their own
countrymen judged them hardly. In a few moments of panic, they both threw away their peace of mind for ever. For the rest of the war,
their lives were made a misery by their neighbours, and after it
ended, the shopkeeper was sentenced by a Norwegian court to eight
years' hard labour, and the official to fourteen.

WHEN EINAR left Jan in the kitchen at Bjorneskar and went to fetch
his father, Bernhard Sorensen, the old man was in bed. Einar called
to him from the bottom of the stairs, and when he woke up and
asked what the matter was, he said, "Come out, Father. I want to talk
to you." He was not sure if he ought to tell his mother.

Bernhard, who was 72 at that time, came down and listened to
Einar's story, leaving his wife upstairs. When he had heard it all, he
went back to his bedroom and began to put on his clothes. Fru
Sorensen asked him where he was going.

"We've got to take the boat out," the old man said. "There's a man
who wants to cross the sound."

"But now, at this time of night?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said.

"It's a terrible night."

"So much the better. We'll go down to Glomma and cross with
the wind. Now, don't worry. He must get across, you see. It's one of
those things we mustn't talk about."

When he was ready he left her, with no more reassurance than
that, to the traditional role of women in a war. She spent an anxious
night at home, waiting for Bernhard, to whom she had then been
married for fifty years.

But he was enjoying himself. Jan had been worried at asking a
man of his age to cross the sound on such a night of wind and snow.
It was a row of ten miles across and back. But Bernhard laughed at
his fears. When he was a young man, he had rowed to the Lofoten
fishing and back every year, and that was two hundred miles. He did
not think much of the rising generation. "In my day," he used to say,
"it was wooden ships and iron men, and what is it now? Iron ships
and a lot of wooden men. Why, do you know," he said, as they went
down to the boathouse at the water's edge, "do you know, there was
a young fellow taken to hospital sick only the other day. And do you
know why he was sick? Because he'd got his feet wet. I've had my feet
wet for over seventy years. Come along boy. Across the sound is
nothing. We'll swindle the devils out of one corpse, eh?"

The old man's good humour was catching, and Jan himself was
elated at the prospect of reaching the mainland. The news of the fate
of his friends had not shocked him very deeply in itself. Like everyone who took part in that kind of operation, they had all left England
with a small expectation of life, and death loses its power to hurt
when it is half-expected. Besides, he had thought of them as dead
ever since he had seen them lying on the beach in Toftefjord. It distressed him more to learn they were captured alive and had lived for
another three days, because for their own sakes and from every point
of view it would have been better if they had been killed in action.

But apart from the matter of emotion, the story had a minor lesson to teach him. Hitler himself had just issued an order that everyone who took any part in this kind of guerilla action was to be shot,
whether he was in uniform or not. They had all known this before
they left England; but if the order was meant to be a deterrent, it was
accepted as a compliment. So far as Jan knew, this was the first time
since the order was made that a crew had been captured, and he had
still had a half-formed belief that a uniform might give some protection. He was still dressed as a sailor himself; but now it seemed rather absurd, on the face of it, to try to cross Norway in such a conspicuous
rig. But to change it was easier thought of than done. It had been simple enough to swap underclothes with the Pedersen family, but it was
different to ask someone to give him a whole civilian outfit when he
had nothing to give in exchange and no money to offer. But anyhow,
when he came to think of it carefully, it could not make very much
difference. The Germans knew he was still at large, and he could never
pass himself off as a local civilian without his civilian papers. If he
kept out of sight of the Germans, his uniform might be a disadvantage; but on the other hand, he thought to himself, it was warm.

But at that particular moment when they got into the boat and
took up the oars, the naval uniform was an embarrassment, because
Einar and Bernhard took it for granted that he was a naval rating,
and he felt that he ought to offer to row. He had rowed before, but
only on lakes when he was trout fishing; and when he tried one of the
heavy sweeps in the high sea which was running off Bjorneskar, all he
managed to do was knock the tops off the waves and splash the old
man who was sitting astern. He had to make the lame excuse that he
was too tired, and Bernhard took over, probably not surprised to find
that the navy was not what it had been.

Bernhard referred to the Germans as devils. Devil is one of the
few serious swear words in the Norwegian language, but he used it
with a lack of emphasis that made it rather engaging. It was as if he
could not bring himself to utter the word German. "You see the point
of land over there?" he would say to Jan. "That's Finkroken. There are
seventy devils there. They've some damned great cannons, and
searchlights. We'll give them a wide berth. And down there ahead of
us, that's Sjursnes. That's where the patrol boats lie. A whole company of devils there too. But don't you worry. They won't get you this
time, boy. We'll swindle them. We'll steer between them." And he
chuckled with joy, and heaved on his massive oar.

Jan was more than content to leave it to Einar and Bernhard to get
him across the sound. This was the second consecutive night he had been without sleep, and he had been on the go all the time. He was
too tired to take any notice of the flurries of snow and spindrift, or
the steep seas which bore down on them out of the darkness to starboard, or of the searchlights which endlessly swept the sound and
sometimes appeared as a dazzling eye of light with a halo round it
when a beam passed over them. Einar and his father were sure they
would not be seen, so long as the snow went on falling, and they were
not bothered about the patrol boats, although they were crossing
their beats. "No devils at sea on a night like this," the old man said.
"There's not a seaman among them"

Jan did not care. The mainland was close ahead, and Einar had
given him the things which he coveted most in the world just then:
a pair of ski-boots and skis. In an hour or so, he would finish with
boats and the sea, and enter a medium where he would feel at home.
Among the snow mountains on skies he would be confident of outdistancing any German. He could go where he wished and depend
upon no one. Even the Swedish frontier was only sixty miles away:
two days' journey, if all went well; and the Germans had lost his trail.
He needed one good sleep, he thought, and then he would be his
own master.

It was about three in the morning when Bernhard and Einar
beached the boat on the southern shore. Jan jumped out thankfully.
The others could not afford to wait. To take advantage of the wind on
the way back home, they would have to row close under the devils'
gun battery at Finkroken. They thought they could bluff it out if they
were seen, so long as they were not too far away from home, but it
would be better not to have to try. So as soon as Jan was ashore with
his skis, they wished him luck and pushed off and disappeared: two
more to add to this list of chance acquaintances to whom he owned
his life.

There were small farms along the water's edge just there, with
houses spaced out at intervals of two hundred yards or so. The people who owned them pastured sheep and cattle on the narrow strip of fertile land between the sea and the mountainside, and eked out a
living by fishing. The Sorensens knew everyone who lived there, and
had said he could go safely to any of the houses. They had specially
mentioned a man called Lockertsen. He lived in a farm called Snarby,
which was a little larger than the rest, and he had a thirty-foot motorboat which might come in useful.

Jan would gladly have set off there and then without making further contacts. He felt guilty already at the number of people he had
involved in his own predicament; and besides, this series of short
encounters, each at a high pitch of excitement and emotion, was
exhausting in itself. He longed to be able to sleep in barns without
telling anyone, and take to the hills again each morning. But before he
was fit to embark on a life like that, he had to have one long sleep whatever it cost him, and that night he could only count on a few hours
more before the farms were stirring. He reluctantly put his skis on his
shoulder and went up through a steep farmyard to the house which
was nearest. He crept quietly round the house till he found the door,
and he tried the handle. It opened. As it happened, this was Snarby.

Fru Lockertsen said afterwards it was the first night she had forgotten to lock the door since the occupation started. In ordinary
times, of course, nobody thought of keys in a place like that; it was
not once in a year that a stranger came to the door. But now, when
you could always see a German patrol ship from the front windows
of Snarby, you felt better at night behind a good lock; and when she
was woken by blundering footsteps in the kitchen, the first thing she
thought was that some German sailors had landed. She prodded her
husband and whispered that there was somebody in the house, and
he listened, and dragged himself out of bed, and went to see what
was happening.

Lockertsen was a big heavily-built man like a polar bear. He was
a head taller than Jan and looked as though he could have picked him
up and crushed him; and probably that is what he felt inclined to do.
He was intensely suspicious. Jan told him his story, and then told it all over again, but every time he told it Lockertsen had thought of
new doubts and new questions. He simply refused to believe it, and
Jan could not understand why. But the fact is that Jan was so sleepy
that he hardly knew what he was saying. His explanation was muddled and unconvincing, and the way he told the story made it sound
like a hastily-invented lie. The only thing that was still quite clear in
his head was that he must not say where he had come from.
Somebody had brought him across from Ringvassoy, he insisted; but
he refused to say who it was and could not explain why he refused to
say it. To Lockertsen one naval uniform was probably much the same
as another, and Jan had obviously landed from the sound; and the
only navy in the sound was German. It seemed much more likely that
he was a German deserter. Even the toe would have fit that explanation. Everyone had heard of self-inflicted wounds.

The argument went on for a solid hour, and it only ended then
because Jan could not talk any longer. His speech had got slow and
blurred. He had to sleep. It was a pity, and he was resentful that the
man did not believe him. But he was finished. He had taxed his
endurance too much, and left himself without the strength to get
away. Let him report him if he liked; there was nothing more to be
done about it. He lay down on the rug in front of the kitchen stove.
He heard Lockertsen say: "All right. You can stay there till half-past
five." At that, he fell deeply asleep.

Lockertsen spent the rest of the night pacing up and down the
kitchen and trying to puzzle things out, and stopping from time to
time to look down at the defenceless, mysterious creature asleep on
his floor. Many of the doubts which had afflicted the shopkeeper
came to him also, and they were strengthened for him by the fact that
the stranger had come from a place where he knew there were
Germans. But Lockertsen was a man of difficult calibre. He had
plenty of courage. He was only determined to get the truth out of
Jan, if he had to do it by force. He was not going to act one way or
the other until he was sure.

Some time while Jan was sleeping the big man went down on his
knees on the hearthrug and searched through his pockets. There was
nothing in them which gave him a clue, and Jan did not stir.

He had said he could sleep till 5.30, and at 5.30 he shook him
awake. The result of this surprised him. Jan was subconsciously full
of suspicion, and leapt to his feet and drew his automatic and
Lockertsen found himself covered before he could move.