For the best part of three hours they stood shivering at the roadside trying to induce the drivers of the occasional vehicles that passed going westwards to stop and give them a lift; but the men all shrugged their shoulders with a helpless gesture and drove on. At last one of them pulled up half a mile down the road to examine his engine so Gregory raced after it and tackled him. He then learnt why the others had refused to stop. The orders were that the troops were to treat the civil inhabitants with every consideration and render them every possible assistance which did not interfere with their own duties; but they were forbidden to give any refugee a lift on an army vehicle.
Gregory pleaded that as he and Gussy were Englishmen they were in an entirely different category, but the driver refused to risk it. He said that if Gregory could get an order from an officer he would take them willingly, but not otherwise, and on the lonely stretch of road no officer was available.
As Andalsnes was over seventy miles away it was not a jolly prospect to set out on foot, but Gregory decided that it was the only thing to do, so they started to trudge down the long, bleak road which followed the line of the railway upon which no trains were now running.
While they plodded on round curve after curve that disclosed seemingly endless vistas of misty mountains they discussed the military situation, although they knew little about it. As far as they could judge there was probably only about a Brigade operating in the Gudbrandsdal Valley, and from what they had heard it seemed that the British had not as yet penetrated to the Osterdal Valley at all; so if the Germans were coming up that as well, and had no opposition to face, it seemed quite on the cards that they might come round behind the British somewhere south of Trondheim; in which case the British would be caught between two fires.
Gussy remarked how lucky it was that a great mountain-range separated the two valleys, as otherwise the German Eastern column might have crossed the watershed and made a descent direct on Dombaas, thereby cutting the British off days earlier and much more effectively. But owing to the snow on the heights, and the almost impassable roads, that, fortunately, seemed out of the question.
Gregory devoutly hoped that Gussy was right, but it seemed to him that the whole German drive was being conducted with such brilliant initiative that he would not have put anything past the German General Staff, and about three o'clock in the afternoon his pessimistic forebodings were confirmed through a totally unexpected happening which proved an extraordinary stroke of personal good luck for them both.
At the wail of a Klaxon behind them they moved to the side of the road to get out of the way of an oncoming car, automatically turning their heads as they did so. As the car raced by Gussy caught a glimpse of its solitary passenger; it was his friend, the Staff Colonel, and the Colonel was looking straight at him. A hundred yards further down the road the car slowed up and, as the Colonel had no hesitation in breaking a regulation for two Englishmen, one of whom was a member of His Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service, they were taken aboard.
As soon as they were settled they gave the Colonel an outline of their adventures during the forty-eight hours since they had last seen him, and asked how things were going.
He looked tired and despondent and said quite frankly that he did not at all like the look of things. The fact that the Germans were able to come and go in the air without the least opposition was proving little short of disastrous. Our men were game enough, but no sooner had they established themselves in a position than the Germans bombed them out of it and machine-gunned them from the air. The company of Leicesters in Lillehammer had been almost annihilated and their supporting troops had fared little better. For the past two days the Germans had been driving ahead, up the Gudbrandsdal Valley, smashing all resistance with their tanks and aircraft, while they had raced up the Osterdal Valley to Tolgen without meeting any opposition at all, so that they were now only about seventy miles south of Trondheim. Worse; with almost unbelievable daring they had launched a four-pronged attack over the mountain-range and were already reported to be nearing Dombaas and Stoeren. Orders had been issued for an immediate withdrawal from the Gudbrandsdal, but with the railway cut in a dozen places and the Dombaas road-junction rendered impassable by constant bombing it was going to be touch-and-go as to whether the British would succeed in getting out of the trap.
The Colonel had not been out of his clothes for a week and they could see from his drawn, lined face how the strain of his responsibilities was telling on him. Soon after he had told them the bare facts he dropped off to sleep, in spite of the bumping they sustained from the ruts of the road which had been badly cut up by the heavy military traffic.
Twice during the afternoon German planes came over and machine-gunned them from the air, but even that did not wake the Colonel, and the chauffeur seemed already to have had sufficient experience of this form of attack to evade it by clever alterations of his pace from a crawl to sudden spurts, which put out the Germans' aim until they flew off to find easier targets. Gregory and Gussy, too, dozed between these strafings as they were both feeling the effects of the restless night they had spent, and neither the general situation nor the grey, wintry-looking afternoon was an encouragement to cheerful conversation.
At seven o'clock they drove into a small town and the car pulled up in front of a good-sized brick building which had the appearance of a school; but there were no children about. One of its wings had been shattered by bombs, and a British sentry was posted on the gate, beyond which were parked a number of camouflaged cars, so Gregory rightly assumed that the place had been taken over as a British military headquarters. As the car stopped the Colonel roused himself and, glancing round, told them that they had arrived at Andalsnes.
'Thank God for that nap,' he muttered as he got out. 'I'm feeling lousy now, but after a cup of tea I'll be myself again, and I don't suppose I'll have a chance to shut my eyes for another forty-eight hours if I'm to get through the work that our new movements will entail. Come inside and I'll arrange for somebody to fix you up with permits to get out of this damned country; I'm sure you'll understand if I have to leave you in someone else's hands from now on.'
As they thanked him Gregory thought what a lot of utter nonsense was talked about the cushy jobs of the gilded staff. However desperate a battle the troops could generally doze for a few hours during the nights and had to be taken out of the line to rest after ten days' fighting as the absolute maximum, but in an operation of this kind the staff had to work on indefinitely, day and night, with the responsibility for every move on their over-burdened shoulders.
The Colonel passed them on to a hollow-eyed captain, who attached a special chit to each of their passports, then took them into a Mess where he told an orderly to look after them and said that they had better wait there until they were sent for.
No regular meals were being served in the Mess but there were plates of sandwiches and biscuits laid out on the table and the orderlies fetched them a fresh pot of tea. Staff-Officers came in from time to time, munched a few sandwiches, gulped down cups of steaming tea, exchanged laconic remarks and hurried back to their work again. The evening had closed in grey, wet and cold, a misty rain streaked the windows and it seemed to Gregory and Gussy that they sat there for an interminable time.