“And me,” said Jens.
One by one, they all agreed. All that was left for Ronneberg was to add, “We leave here at twenty hundred hours, to give ourselves enough time. Claus, you’ll lead the way from here to the power line road. After we leave our skis, he’ll also take us down the gorge and up to the railway tracks. There’s a change of guard on the suspension bridge every two hours, on the hour. At half past midnight, we start our attack.”
34
Before the war, when Nordstrum was in engineering school in Oslo, no one knew, in spite of the troublesome events taking place on the mainland of Europe, if Norway would be dragged into the widening war.
The country had managed to stay neutral in the last war, and Sweden and the king tried to hold firm to that again, despite both the British and the Nazis escalating tensions by clashing in their sovereign waters.
Waiting those last hours before leaving the hut, Nordstrum remembered those days.
The liberals rallied around France and Britain. Others railed at the Brits for threatening to mine the harbors of Bergen and Narvik. They saw the Germans as the saviors of Europe. Both factions turned their eyes to the country’s north, with its ice-free ports and overland transport routes for the valuable iron ore from Sweden.
The night of April 8, 1940, made everyone take sides. Germany surprise-attacked by sea and air. In days, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik were overrun by advance troops from German destroyers. An enemy detachment headed down the Oslofjord toward the capital.
In a day, the city was in turmoil. Everyone knew Norway’s army had no chance against the Nazi blitzkrieg. But to a true Norwegian, their homeland was their mother. Overnight, arguments over beers in the pubs in Oslo escalated into impassioned recruitment rallies. They cheered when the artillery and torpedoes sank the German flagship Blucher in the Oslofjord, allowing the king and his family to flee the city and set up a government in Elverum.
Pandemonium reigned. Students were signing up in the king’s army; others fled to the supposed safety of the north, or to the east and to Sweden. Nordstrum, a person whom his peers always seemed to look up to, felt pressure both ways. His father had begged him not to do something rash. The king’s army was no match for the Germans. In the end, they would all be killed or put in prisons. In his heart, Nordstrum knew what he had to do. What all true patriots were doing.
But he also had to think of Anna-Lisette.
They had known each other two years—she was in her final year in economics—and they had talked of getting married after her graduation.
“We’ve got to make sure you’re safe,” he said in the apartment he shared with two other students near the university. Oslo had become a maelstrom of fear, false information, people fleeing ahead of the German advance amid overtures of welcome by Vidkun Quisling and his Nasjonal Samling party, who had seized control of the public radio station in an ill-timed coup.
“I have an uncle in Malmo,” Anna-Lisette said. “The trains are still running. If we leave now, we will be safe. They’d never dare invade Sweden.”
They threw their belongings into suitcases. The city was rapidly becoming a ghost town. The Nazis could be there any day.
“I have a friend,” Nordstrum said. “A Jew. His family is leaving for Stockholm tomorrow. You could go with them.”
“You could go as well, Kurt. When I spoke of Sweden, I was speaking of both of us, not just me.”
It only took one look at him for her to see he had already made up his mind. “You won’t be coming, will you?”
He let out a helpless breath. “Anna-Lisette…”
She sat next to him and put down the sweater she was folding. Her eyes seemed to reflect the same worry raging in his own heart. “You’ll only get yourself killed, you know. You all will. But if you won’t go, neither will I. I speak some German. They’ll need someone here to help with getting information through the lines.”
“The fighting won’t be here,” Nordstrum said. “It’ll be up north. I’ve talked to Gries and Karlsson. They’re sending people up to hold the lines at Narvik.”
“So that’s where you’ll be heading?”
“Yes.” Slowly he allowed himself to nod. “Tomorrow.”
“You knew all this, Kurt, and yet you didn’t say?”
He put his hand to her face. “I can take you part of the way by train. As far as Lillehammer. Your folks are there. You should be safe. I can’t imagine what the Germans want with a bunch of cows and ski trails. If we can’t stop them at Narvik, I’ll make it back there and we’ll cross over the mountains to Sweden together. I give you my word.”
She looked at him and smiled, wanly but bravely, filled with both affection and inevitability. “I know you, Kurt. You’ll never join me. You’ll keep fighting. Until someone wins.”
He put his arms around her and pulled her close. “You’re wrong. I will.”
She buried her face into his sweater. He felt tears there. He sensed there was something she was holding back from him. Like she knew then. Knew better. “No, you won’t.”
They took the train the next day, and he went on to the north to fight.
And she was right. After Narvik it was Honefoss. And then after Honefoss it was Tonneson, Haugsbygda, and the Gudbrandsdalen valley.
What she held back from telling him in Oslo never reached him.
Who knows, maybe she didn’t even know right then. It’s not just me, Kurt. And would it have made a difference? The fight needed him. Needed anyone who could shoot and had the nerve to hold a line.
It was almost a year, months after she’d been killed, that the letter finally reached him, passed along by friends, soldiers in other regiments.
From her mother, Regina, who Nordstrum always liked, who wrote him that Anna-Lisette had been carrying their child.
*
They sat around waiting for 8 P.M. They checked their guns and waxed their skis one last time, filled their rucksacks with tins of food, compasses, flashlights, bandages, chocolate bars, waterproof maps made of Chinese silk, extra bootlaces, and gloves. Nordstrum and his demolition group packed up their explosives, fuses, detonators, spools of wire, lighters, and small-nose pliers. Those in the covering detail took extra ammunition, hand grenades, even knives. Storhaug had a large wire clipper that he had brought with him from England. “You watch,” he made sure everyone saw it, “you’ll thank me for lugging this damn thing around.”
Everything of foreign origin that might betray where they’d come from was destroyed. Empty food tins, fruit and chocolate wrappings, cigarette packs. To fill the time, a few of them cleaned their weapons. Others smoked and talked about family and heading home one day, so close were they to those they loved that it was painful not to be able to visit them, even for an hour, or get word to them that they were here.