“Don’t worry, son.” Wilson gave Nordstrum an amiable slap on the back. “Your chance will come soon enough.”
But “soon enough” didn’t come to be as quickly as Nordstrum or anyone hoped. Throughout the summer the company continued to sharpen their skills, while back home, the long days and high visibility made flying in low and landing a team on the vidda far too dangerous. Word filtered down through the ranks that the people upstairs were planning something big. But when, they all wondered, eager to test their skills.
So they continued to train: nighttime parachute practice in the Highlands; wilderness survival; how to best blow up a bridge or a factory; how to detonate explosives in a matter of seconds. They were timed and retimed until they could thread wires to a fuse and trigger an explosive mechanism in the time it would take some to light a match. Then they did it again, all to shave off precious seconds.
At a castle in the New Forest they learned the arts of coding, radio transmission, and microphotography. Near Manchester, they went over the preparation of drop zones and how to avoid capture and withstand interrogation. They knew this specific work was being drummed into them for some purpose, but even as summer turned into fall, what that was never became clear. Separated from their home by the expanse of the North Sea, one thought burned in Nordstrum’s mind each night before sleep: that the Nazis had tightened their yoke on his homeland, and that those who remained there must be wondering, agonizing: Where are our boys who left to continue the fight? Who is left to stand up to the Nazis?
Word reached them that several of their fellow resistance fighters had been captured or killed in the fighting. Nordstrum’s own thoughts never strayed far from his father. No doubt they’d be keeping their eye on him—by now those Hirden bastards surely knew who had hijacked the ship. He’d already seen once in this war what the Gestapo and their NS underlings did to those whose family had resisted.
It only made his will to get home even firmer.
11
In late September, the purpose of all their training finally became clear. Nordstrum was asked to the trophy room of the lodge in Glenmore. Several others he knew from the company were there too, including Jens. No one had any idea why.
Colonel Wilson stepped in, accompanied by a stout, mustached Scottish commander named Henneker, and told the group that they’d been chosen as the advance party for a very important mission.
Advance party … Nordstrum caught Jens’s eye with excitement.
Wilson said, “You’ve all been singled out for your physical abilities and mental toughness, your various technical skills, and your nerves under duress. What we have in mind will be demanding, but you should know it will have as critical an importance as any mission that will be conducted in this war.”
This was it! At last, they were getting their chance to prove their worth.
“You called us the ‘advance’ party?” a tall, lean fighter named Poulsson asked the colonel. “Can I ask, in advance of what?”
The ex–Royal Highlander clasped his hands behind his back. “You’ll be informed. Right now it’s our job to get you ready to be sent back.”
“Ready,” Jens said defiantly. “What have we been training for all these months if we’re not ready?”
“Yes, I admit you’re skilled,” Wilson agreed. “From this point on, though, your training will become a bit more … technical.”
Sent back. The words surged through Nordstrum just as surely as if he’d swallowed a shot of aged Scotch. Each man looked around with anticipation. These were the precise words they all longed to hear.
In addition to him and Jens, there was Claus Helberg; Knut Haugland; Joachim Ronneberg; Arne Kjelstrup; a fellow Rjukan native, Joaquim Poulsson; and an American everyone was curious about.
Poulsson was a man that commanded all their respect. He was tall and gaunt with sharp blue eyes, as experienced an outdoorsman as Nordstrum had ever met, as at home in the wilds of the vidda as in his own family yard. His journey from Norway to England alone told the story of his determination and character: north through Finland to the Soviet Union, then down the Dnieper to Turkey, on to Syria, Lebanon, then Palestine and Egypt, where he boarded a cargo ship to India that took him across the Atlantic to the isle of Trinidad, where he hopped a flight to Canada, and finally rode on one of the supply convoys back across the Atlantic to England.
And all only for the chance to continue the fight against the Nazis.
Claus Helberg was a member of the Norwegian Mountaineering Club, and had been captured by the Germans north of Oslo and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. Escaping, he fled to Stockholm. At a time when there was no wireless transmission setup, it became Helberg’s job to smuggle messages back across the border to Sweden so they could be passed on to London.
Knut Haugland had been a radio operator on a merchant marine ship before the war, and was as skilled at W/T transmission as anyone in the group. Quickly transferring messages into code and ensuring timely transmission under stressful conditions was a vital skill in the field. Communications had to be quick and concise; the German W/T units monitoring them were a constant threat. The longer one transmitted, the greater the chance of being fixed upon and caught. Even the act of changing batteries in the frozen wild was no easy task: both hands and batteries froze quickly, not to mention the need to always lug around thirty pounds of weight. The job took nerves, dexterity, and a knack for quick thinking—qualities Haugland possessed abundantly.
Joachim Ronneberg was tall and thin and as unflappable under pressure as they came. He’d been training with the Linge Company since ’41, after he’d commandeered a small fishing vessel and crossed the North Sea.