The Black Baroness (20 page)

The British were probably somewhere about half-way up the coast when they received news of this and apparently they had detached a squadron led by the
Repulse
to follow the
Schamhorst,
while their main fleet had turned south again, arriving too late to intercept the Germans there but in time to sink a number of their transports bringing up reinforcements on the following day. The
Schamhorst
must have arrived off Narvik
at about the time that the other German forces arrived off the more southerly Norwegian ports. She had sent her destroyer flotilla up the fjord to assist in the capture of the town but had herself continued with her escorting cruiser, the
Hipper,
on her northern course with a view to drawing the British away from Narvik and up into the Arctic.

When the
Repulse
had come up it had appeared out of the question to let the
Scharnhorst
get away, so apparently the British Admiral had left his destroyers to bottle-up the German forces in Narvik while he continued with the chase. He had caught the
Scharnhorst
and severely damaged her, but by sheer bad luck she and her companion had managed to get away under cover of the mist and snow. Meanwhile, although his force was inferior to that of the Germans the commander of the destroyer flotilla had decided with a gallantry typical of the British Navy to go in to Narvik and destroy the supply-ships before the enemy could land any considerable quantity of munitions from them.

That was about the size of it. The Germans had acted with such boldness that they had succeeded in pulling the wool over the Allies’ eyes for the first few vital hours of this brilliantly-executed operation. Rough seas and bad visibility had probably greatly hampered the British and they had made the best out of a bad business when they had at last got to grips with such portions of the enemy as had not escaped them. But what Gregory could not understand was why the British Fleet had not been cruising off the Skagerrak all ready to intercept the Germans if they took up the challenge issued to them by the mining of Norwegian waters on the Monday. Even less could he understand what had happened to the British Army. The Germans had made their landings early on Tuesday morning and it was now Friday, but apart from rumours which had been officially denied there was no news of a single British Tommy having as yet set foot on Norwegian soil.

When the doctor came he said that Gregory had been worse shaken by his fall than he had realised and that he must stay in bed for at least three days. As there seemed nothing that he could do for the moment which might give the Nazis a headache, he accepted the doctor’s order quite cheerfully. He loved staying in bed reading, smoking and dozing when he had nothing better to do. Moreover, he knew that while he was there he would have less occasion to move his injured shoulder
and that after the strain of the past few days the rest would do him a lot of good.

During the night it had occurred to him that the Honourable Augustus Langdon-Forbes might possibly be in the hospital, so when the doctor—who spoke quite good English—had finished his examination Gregory made his inquiry. To his delight he learned that Gussy had been brought in on the Wednesday evening and he obtained permission to go along in a borrowed dressing-gown to see his friend, for ten minutes.

He found the diplomat in one of the proper wards. Gussy had a nasty wound, as he had been hit by three bullets from the tommy-gun, but it had been cleaned up at once and was going on as well as could be expected. He had also been slightly concussed by the explosion of the hand-grenade, but he was already over the worst effects of that and his forty hours in bed with excellent medical attention had restored him to his normal philosophic calm.

He was amazed to see Gregory and hear of his narrow escape from death, as when he had come-to and found both Gregory and von Ziegler gone he had naturally assumed that the German had succeeded in getting away and that Gregory had gone after him, so he had imagined that by this time they were probably miles away up the Gudbrandsdal Valley. To his delight, Gregory learnt that the young Norwegian farmer was not dead but also in the hospital, although he was still in danger as one of von Ziegler’s bullets had penetrated his throat.

In a low voice Gregory told Gussy of his understanding with von Ziegler, and Gussy agreed that as the German was now rendered harmless by a broken leg it would be rather an unsporting business to take any steps which would result in his being shot. By this time Gregory’s ten minutes were up, so he retired to his own room and went back to bed; but later he had a talk with von Ziegler, who at once acquiesced in the suggestion that he and Gussy should swap beds so that the diplomat could share the little room with Gregory, and the arrangement was carried out the following morning.

That day the news seemed better, as the British had occupied the Faroe Islands and were guarding Iceland, while the R.A.F. had made some large-scale attacks on the German-occupied Norwegian ports, and on the Friday the Navy had sealed the Baltic with vast minefields; but there was no news yet of any Allied troop-landings.

On Sunday they heard that there had been a second action at Narvik. The 31,000-ton battleship
Warspite
had accomplished a brilliant feat of navigation and led the way up the long narrow fjord with another destroyer flotilla. The squadron had silenced the land-batteries which the Germans had established on the shore and had destroyed every one of the six remaining German destroyers stationed there. The Admiralty also announced that the
Admiral Scheer
had been torpedoed and the
Karlsruhe
sunk; but there was still no news of any Allied Expeditionary Force, although both the British and the French Governments had announced days before that they would render Norway every possible assistance against the common enemy.

As Gregory talked it over with Gussy he was almost in despair. He simply could not understand what the military were up to. The crossing from British to Norwegian ports could be accomplished in some thirty hours and even if they had not had troops ready to sail at once, as it was reasonable to assume that they would have, twenty-four hours seemed ample to embark light elements for a first force which could seize all sorts of small places and strategic points along the coast before the Germans could get to them. Tanks and heavy guns could come later, but even a few companies pushed in here and there would have made later operations on a larger scale infinitely easier.

Neither Gregory nor Gussy could see why the Allies had not had a considerable number of small units in Norway within three days of the German invasion. Such scattered bands could have penetrated inland without waiting for transports, other than their ammunition carriers, since they were operating in a friendly country and so could live on the land. They could have made contact with the Norwegian troops, blown up bridges, seized railway junctions and done all sorts of things to hamper the Germans. Yet a whole week had been allowed to go by in which nothing had been done. Meanwhile, the Germans were not losing a moment but, according to all reports, were constantly reinforcing their Army by air, despatching flying columns upcountry in all directions and digging themselves in at their bases so that they would be ten times as difficult to dislodge when at last the Allies arrived on the scene.

By Monday the 15th Gregory was allowed to get up, but his shoulder still required daily massage. As there had been no further fighting in the Lillehammer district his bed was not required immediately so it was agreed that he should retain it
for the time being in order that he could remain with Gussy, whose wound was progressing well but who it was expected would be confined to bed for another fortnight at least.

Now he was well on the road to recovery again Gregory was naturally anxious to get home. Without any definite plan to follow and no knowledge as to the Allies’ intentions it did not seem that he could serve any useful purpose by remaining in Norway a day longer than he had to, and during the time that he had been laid up he had been thinking a great deal about Erika. The sooner he could get back to England the sooner he would be able to rejoin her and Kuporovitch in Holland and he was convinced that now that Hitler had really started the war in earnest he would not be content with the conquest of Norway. The next act would almost certainly be an invasion of the Low Countries; then, whether the Allies went to their assistance or not, the big scene of the war was due to open, as there would either be a terrific pitched battle in Flanders or, if the Germans were allowed to march through it, on the Franco-Belgian frontier between the end of the Maginot Line proper and the sea.

If he could get into Holland before that opened he felt certain that Erika and Kuporovitch would already have prepared the ground for him to do further useful work, and he was eager to play another hand against the Nazis as he was to have Erika in his arms again, but the devil of it was that first he had to get out of Norway.

To begin with he had assumed that that would be fairly easy, as he had counted on British landings, upon which, by contacting the British he would be able to get back to England via one of their bases; but the Allies had not as yet established any bases and as the days went by the Germans were extending their control from alt the principal ports over larger and larger stretches of the Norwegian coast. Their moves were so swift that no one in Lillehammer knew from day to day which new point they would seize next; so to make for any port now meant running the risk bf walking straight into them. He knew that by once more posing as a German he could evade capture, but that would not help him to get back to England, as each port that the Germans occupied would automatically be sealed to any but their own coastal sea-traffic. It seemed, therefore, that the only thing he could do was to remain where he was until the situation clarified a little.

On the Wednesday, the 17th, they heard that Allied troops
were operating in the region north of Trondheim, and on that following day it was definitely confirmed that the British at long last had landed at Namsos the previous Tuesday. The only ways to get to Namsos were by road up the Gudbrandsdal Valley or to go south again to Hamar, then east to Elverum, where the Norwegian Government had now established their headquarters, and thence up the Osterdal Valley. But both these great parallel valleys ended south of Trondheim and Trondheim was in German hands, so it looked as though there might be considerable difficulty in getting through to the British base.

On consideration it seemed to Gregory that since the Allies had at last come to the assistance of the Norwegians and committed themselves to sending an Expeditionary Force they would have to make other landings further south, otherwise they would virtually be wasting troops to little purpose; and another two days of inactivity proved him to be correct.

On Friday the 19th news came through that a second Allied force had landed at Andalsnes, some distance south-west of Trondheim, and it became clear that the first intention of the Allied General Staff was to execute a pincer movement from north and south with a view to defeating the isolated German forces at Trondheim and recapturing Norway’s ancient capital. It still seemed to Gregory, however, that they would yet have to make a third landing, still further south, if they wished to establish themselves in Norway before the Germans had dominated two-thirds of the country, including all its principal industrial and agricultural centres, so he decided to sit tight for another day or two.

One good thing which seemed to have come out of Hitler’s assault on Norway was that it had put new life into the French. Daladier had seemed a good man, yet there was no doubt about it, from their almost total inactivity during the whole of the winter, that the French were not really bringing a fighting spirit to the war; but the shock of Hitler’s coup now appeared to have shaken them up. The Daladier Government had been replaced by a new ministry under Paul Reynaud, who had come to office, just before the invasion, with such a dubious reception that it looked as if he would not be able to stay the course for more than a few weeks; yet by a magnificent fighting speech delivered at the time of the Allied landings Reynaud had suddenly swung the whole French nation behind him.

The British, it now transpired, had also landed troops near Narvik earlier in the week, although they had not yet succeeded in forcing their way into the town. They were carrying out terrific aerial attacks night after night on the German-occupied Norwegian sea plane-base at Stavanger, while the Germans were apparently employing enormous numbers of their aircraft for attacks on Allied shipping. In the meantime the Norwegian Army had established several ragged fronts in Central Norway and was endeavouring to confine the Germans to the areas they had already occupied; but the Germans were reinforcing their armies by air-borne troops each clay and it was now said that General Count von Falkenhorst had over 60,000 troops at his disposal. The Germans, too, had succeeded in bringing over large numbers of light tanks and armoured vehicles, against which the Norwegians had no adequate protection; so the enemy was spreading out fanwise from Oslo and constantly pushing further north.

On Tuesday the 23rd Gregory learnt that two battles had taken place on the previous day in the Trondheim area. The British had taken Stoeren, thirty miles south of the city, while their Northern Force was advancing along the shore down the inland end of the Trondheim Fjord. However, the Germans had sent warships up the Fjord, which had not only severely shelled the British columns as they pressed forward but had landed troops in their rear, thereby cutting off their advance detachments. The result had been a nasty check for the Allies and they were reported to have sustained many casualties.

On Wednesday, however, he received better tidings. British troops had actually been seen coming down the Gudbrandsdal Valley, so it looked as though sufficient forces had now been landed to take care of Trondheim and also justify an advance to the south. A few more days at most and they should reach Lillehammer, so he could remain there now with a quiet mind and, as soon as they put in an appearance, go down their line of communication to their base, and so home.