Kurt Nordstrum, as those familiar with this subject will know, is drawn from the real-life figure of Kurt Haukelid, an unassuming, yet courageous man, whose irrepressible will and sense of duty helped pull off the most important and improbable sabotage of WWII. Several others who appear in the book are also drawn from real-life figures as well: Einar Skinnarland, who in fact did make it to the UK by hijacking the Galtesund along with several others; Joachim Ronneberg and Joaquim (Jens-Anton) Poulsson, the leaders of their respective sabotage teams; Claus Helberg, Birger Stromsheim, Hans Storhaug, and Knut Haugland, all part of Grouse and Gunnerside. These men were brave and resourceful fighters who fought Nature as well as the Nazis and deserve their names to be remembered. Nordstrum’s pal, Jens, and the American, Eric Gutterson, were characters invented by me—though Gutterson’s remarkable escape after the raid described in chapter 67, did, in fact, take place, almost as written, but it was Claus Helberg, who survived this harrowing ordeal and ultimately made it back to the UK after three months avoiding the Germans. The characters of Hella, Ox, and Reinar are all fictional as well, though are based on many who contributed to Norway’s resistance in the war. And Natalie Ritter is also fictional, though a well-known German violinist visiting the area at the time and aboard the Hydro did manage to survive, and his instrument case later rose to the surface. And Kristian Kristiansen, the hunter encountered on the vidda by Gunnerside after they waited out the storm, turned out to be a bit luckier in real life, as, against the strong urging of the SOE command in their training, he was not executed but held captive by the men of Gunnerside in a hut and later released. Sadly, Major Leif Tronstad finally convinced SOE command to let him go back to Norway in March of 1945, but he was killed in a botched interrogation of a local collaborator in Rauland.
Real events as they unfold do have their undramatic sides (not always perfect for a thriller), and as the seconds ticked away before lighting the fuses in the high-concentration room of the plant, the bumbling watchman, Gustav Fredrickson, did, in fact, interrupt the countdown to locate his misplaced spectacles, not once but twice. (The first time his eyeglass case turned out to be empty.) And it is hard to fully believe that with such a vital cargo at stake, which the Nazis had gone to inexhaustible efforts to protect, they would not have stationed guards on the Hydro as it sat at the dock in Mael the night before its fateful journey, but they did not.
I came across this story while researching my previous novel, The One Man, and immediately thought it a tale of such extraordinary valor and survival that had not been adequately told. Two or three books and countless historical references were instrumental in the creation of this novel. First, Kurt Haukelid’s own firsthand account: Skis Against the Atom (North American Heritage Press, 1989) as well as The Real Heroes of Telemark, by Ray Mears (Hodder and Stoughton, 2003). Richard Rhodes’s vast and iconic work, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1986), was where I first read of it. Since I started the book, the subject of the heavy water sabotage has received much more attention: a November 26, 2016, New York Times article on Joachim Ronneberg, the last surviving member of the raid; a June 2016 article in National Geographic; and a 2016 BBC series, which to date I have not watched. The 1976 Kirk Douglas action classic, The Heroes of Telemark, on new viewing, remains fun, but dated, as only a forty-year-old, studio-made WWII action drama can be. What is inalterable is that the story of the Norsk Hydro raid and the sabotage of the Hydro ferry were two of the most selfless and stirring acts of the war, in which any sense of logic would have insisted there was almost zero chance of success, but where the stakes were so high and the determination of the participants to succeed so strong, that logic simply took a backseat to daring and courage. It is perhaps the ultimate, yet most pleasing irony of their acts that against such immeasurable odds against them, not a single member of either Grouse or Gunnerside was lost and each of them went on to survive the war.