Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 (74 page)

Allied warships carried out a number of shore bombardments in late April and early May. Some caused damage, particularly at Elvegårdsmoen, where on April 27 several barracks and a considerable amount of supplies and equipment were destroyed. German casualties were five killed and six wounded. Naval gunfire against targets in Narvik on May 3 resulted in four Germans killed and several wounded.

General Fleischer had recommended a landing near Bjerkvik and General Béthouart had suggested landings at either Øyjord or east of Narvik after his reconnaissance on April 28. The British had promised to study Fleischer’s suggestion; Béthouart’s suggestion was turned down by General Mackesy the same day it was made.

Béthouart came to see Mackesy in Harstad on May 2. He explained the difficulties experienced by his troops in Labergsdal and concluded that the operation would not yield timely results because of very stiff German resistance, difficult terrain and his troops’ lack of mobility in the deep snow. Béthouart stated that it was folly to press the attack under conditions where only the Norwegians and Germans were qualified to operate. He warned that his battalions would melt away from exhaustion and losses. This time he insisted that an amphibious landing be made in Bjerkvik in order to relieve the pressures on his troops.
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General Mackesy was not moved. He met Béthouart again the following day and told him that after a reconnaissance by officers, he had concluded that a landing in Bjerkvik or on the east shore of Herjangsfjord was impossible. The western shore of the fjord offered better possibilities but the homes in this area were filled with civilian refugees including many women and children. A landing there was therefore out of the question. Béthouart suggested an overland move from Bogen and offered a battalion of the Foreign Legion, expected to arrive in Harstad within a few days, for this mission.

There was another meeting on May 4 at Cork’s headquarters. At this meeting the decision was made for French troops on the northern front not to press their attack but only tie down the Germans. This decision was taken without consulting or informing the Norwegians. The 7th Brigade found itself pressing forward alone, increasingly disappointed in the weak support provided by the French. The 7th Brigade’s advance pulled the French forces along as the Germans opposing them withdrew because of worries about their right flank. Nevertheless, the bulk of the French forces were still two miles behind, at the north end of Storevann on May 9 as the 7th Brigade was attacking the high ground on both sides of Læigastind.

Under pressure from London, Admiral Cork decided on a direct attack against Narvik and gave orders for Mackesy to carry it out. The admiral had made a reconnaissance on May 1 and come to the conclusion that the snow had thawed sufficiently that it no longer presented the kind of obstacle it had earlier. The operation was scheduled for May 8 and Mackesy planned to land two battalions on the northern shore, a few kilometers from the city.

However, this was not the end of the British Army’s attempts to delay the attack. Senior army officers, including Brigadier Fraser, the commander of the 24th Guards Brigade, protested to Cork about the planned operation. Their objections fell into three general categories. First, there was an acute shortage of ALCs. Local fishing vessels and ships’ boats would therefore have to be used and their deeper draft limited the areas where landings could be made. Second, continual daylight and a lack of smoke shells eliminated the element of surprise and provided no concealment during the approach to the beaches and the initial period ashore. Finally, the troops in the open boats would be exposed to German air attacks. Even some naval officers, including Cork’s chief of staff, Captain Loben E. H. Maund, argued against the operation.
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It is interesting that the same objections were not raised five days later when it was decided to send the Foreign Legionnaires ashore in Bjerkvik under similar conditions.

Allied intelligence about the situation in Narvik and the surrounding area was woefully inadequate at this stage. The Norwegians had a much better knowledge of the German order of battle but no formal machinery existed for sharing vital intelligence information. The British commanders did not know that Dietl had sent the preponderance of his mountain troops to shore up the northern front or that he had removed some of the naval personnel from Narvik for the same purpose. Von Falkenhorst’s situation report on May 6 termed the situation in Narvik critical, a term used sparingly by German commanders. It is debatable whether better intelligence would have altered the Allied decision.

It may be that Cork was reluctant to overrule his army subordinates or that he had himself become somewhat infected by their caution. In any event, he sent a list of the army objections to his proposed attack on Narvik to London on May 6 for consideration. Before receiving a reply, Cork decided to adopt an alternate operation recommended by General Mackesy and postpone the attack on Narvik until a new army commander arrived.

After the arrival of the French Foreign Legionnaires and the Polish brigade, Admiral Cork had 12 infantry battalions under his command. There were about 25,000 Allied troops when support and service support personnel were included. The British Government decided that the size of the ground forces in North Norway was so large that it warranted the appointment of a corps commander. The ground forces were named the North Western Expeditionary Force and Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck was appointed as commander, on April 28.

Auchinleck was an officer with considerable experience in mountain warfare in India but no experience in amphibious or arctic operations. While the growing size of the international force in the Narvik area undoubtedly warranted a higher ranking ground commander, it was also a convenient way for Churchill and his colleagues to rid themselves of the cautious and recalcitrant Mackesy.

Mackesy was rushed to North Norway on short notice in early April. General Auchinleck, on the other hand, was in no hurry. He arrived in Harstad on May 11. Auchinleck’s “secret instructions,” according to his biographer, were to assume command immediately upon arrival in Norway. His official instructions, signed by Oliver Stanley on May 5, were apparently a watered down version since they told him not to interfere with existing plans “until they have either achieved success or been abandoned.”
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The British Chiefs of Staff wanted to send a message to Admiral Cork encouraging him to launch the attack on Narvik but instead it was decided to ask Cork for his personal views. This may have been a way for Churchill to put pressure Cork, who had written that he would do his best to justify the trust Churchill had placed in him. Cork replied that he favored the attack, although there was no certainty of success, but he had decided to await the arrival of Auchinleck. The Chiefs of Staff, with the approval of the War Cabinet, answered that strong action was favored, that risk-taking would be supported, and that “Auchinleck’s coming should be left out of his calculations.”
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Cork’s answer stated that he had committed himself to the alternate operation recommended by Mackesy. Ironside notes that Churchill appeared to be weighted down by events in Narvik, wanted the city taken, “yet doesn’t dare to give a direct order to Cork.”
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Despite having considered a landing at Bjerkvik out of the question only a few days earlier, Mackesy now ordered General Béthouart to do just that. Some consider that the addition of the Polish troops, now just arriving, gave him more confidence but this is not very likely since he and Cork were already considering sending the 24th Guards Brigade south to meet the German drive from Namsos. It is more likely that he saw that his attempts to delay operations would no longer work and that he settled on what he considered the least dangerous of two courses of action, landing at Narvik or landing at Bjerkvik. The operation against Bjerkvik was also in accordance with an earlier recommendation by General Fleischer and the wishes of his French allies.

The Bjerkvik Landing

General Béthouart was charged with the planning and execution of the landing. He decided to use the two battalions of the 13th Half-Brigade of the Foreign Legion for the landing. The reaction of a legionnaire officer to this mission was probably typical:
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“Ah, it is all very difficult. We are used to traveling on camels across the desert, and here you give us boats, and we have to cross the water. It is very difficult but it will be all right. I think so.” Béthouart also intended to use one of the newly arrived Polish battalions for an overland approach against Bjerkvik from Bogen.

Simultaneously, he planned that the troops on Ankenes Peninsula undertake operations to tie down German forces in that area. Finally, he sought and received General Fleischer’s agreement on May 8 for an attack by the 7th Brigade and the 6th and 14th Battalions of the 27th CA towards Bjerkvik from the north against the 1/139th. The 6th Brigade would attack on the left against the 3/139th on the Kuberg Plateau.

The plan called for the 27th CA to advance along Route 50 to secure the ridgeline from Hill 409 to Hill 416. Having secured Hill 416, the 27th would proceed towards Kvandal, link up with the Foreign Legion at Hill 336 (Skogfjell), continue eastward in the area north of Hartvigvann and make contact on their left with the 7th Brigade and on their right with units of the Foreign Legion advancing eastward from Elvegårdsmoen. The Norwegians were asked to secure the high ground from Hills 664 to 842 and thereafter cut the German line of retreat. Béthouart’s original plan called for the amphibious operation and the Norwegian and French attacks from the north to take place simultaneously during the night of May 10-11. The Norwegians were to launch their attacks at the sound of the heavy guns in Ofotfjord.

The lack of amphibious resources forced Béthouart’s legionnaires to attack the shore in two waves. The 1/13th Half-Brigade constituted the first wave to be landed directly in Bjerkvik while the 2nd Bn, in the second wave, landed at Melby, on the eastern shore of Herjangsfjord. Difficulties in loading the five light tanks that were to support the landings caused one MLC to be damaged beyond repair and this, along with the delay in transporting the Polish battalion from Harstad to Bogen, caused the attack to be delayed for 24 hours. The Polish troops lacked all their medical equipment and much of their means of transportation since these items had been loaded on an unknown ship in Brest.

The operation was postponed yet another day because of transportation difficulties, caused primarily by efforts to shore up the defenses in Nordland Province. The assault force assembled in Ballagen on May 12. The battleship
Resolution
, the cruisers
Effingham
and
Aurora
, and five destroyers constituted the bombardment part of the force. The 1,620 assault troops were embarked on warships, ALCs, and open boats. Cork, Auchinleck, and Béthouart were on the cruiser
Effingham
. Mackesy was ill on May 13.

The naval bombardment began at midnight and lasted intermittently for two hours. It was already so late in the year that there was only partial darkness in the Narvik area and a night landing had little concealment from enemy observation. However, darkness still prevailed in central Norway and it was hoped that the night landing would complicate German air operations from that part of the country.

The bombardment did little to improve relations between the Allies and the Norwegians. General Béthouart wrote later that no movements ashore were observed and he assumed that the Germans had sought shelter in the many homes along the shore. He states that he had received General Fleischer’s assurances that the civilian population had been evacuated.
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The bombardment and subsequent fighting devastated the village, killing 17 civilians and gravely wounding many more. Kersuady quotes a dramatic account by a Corporal Favrel of the Foreign Legion, “Then the assault began and a frightful butchery ensued, in the course of which we slaughtered more civilians than Germans…” He goes on to write that after its capture, Bjerkvik was systematically plundered, just like Namsos, but this time without British participation.

Hovland writes that General Fleischer had repeatedly warned the population via the radio station in Tromsø to evacuate by Saturday, despite the fact that the message might alert the Germans to the forthcoming landing. Most heeded the warning and evacuated, but when nothing happened on either Saturday or Sunday, many returned and suffered in the battle. This unfortunate incident is yet another example of inadequate coordination and cooperation between Norwegian and Allied forces.

The landing went generally according to plans. It took some time to transfer the light tanks from
Resolution
to the MLCs but Co 1 of the 1st Bn landed at 0100 hours. It was planned to land directly in Bjerkvik but machinegun fire convinced the commander to land about one kilometer further west, at the Haugen farm.

The covering fire from British warships became more effective after the Germans opened fire and revealed their positions. The relentless fire from so many naval guns forced the Germans to retire into the hills. Colonel Windisch, who had been alerted to the forthcoming landings by the heavy traffic of warships and smaller craft in Ofotfjord, had planned just such a retirement. The three light tanks brought ashore by the French proved very effective initially and the lead legionnaires were able to clear the shoreline quickly with only light casualties, allowing the rest of the battalion to land and begin its northward advance to link up with the 27th CA. It was intended that the two forces should meet near Tverelven, but the advance from the north was stopped by the 1/139th in the area west of Skogfjell. The tanks became stuck in the deep snow and flanking fire from the heights west of Hartvigvann made movement very difficult for the Legionnaires.