Evenes airfield was recaptured on 6 August by a Norwegian brigade and their comrades in the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force, though about one-third of the Soviet parachutists escaped to the lines their compatriots had set up to cover Andoya. This was good news for Commander, North Norway, and CINCNORTH, but each knew that bad news was on the doorstep. The first of the Soviet divisions crossing Finland was rapidly approaching the Norwegian frontier on the Finnish wedge, with another immediately behind. The northernmost invading Soviet division completed its crossing of Finnmark on 9 August, when all three began a concerted drive which was held only by committing every Norwegian soldier from Bardufoss to the north. Next day, the Soviet amphibious force turned shoreward towards Bodo and began to smash a passage through the minefields to a landing near the airfield.
The mine clearance operation was very costly to the invaders, and they suffered, too, from the guns of the Norwegian coastal forts. What triumphed was dogged persistence: the Soviet naval assault force continued to move ashore, even into the heart of Bodo, landing opposite the hotel belonging to the Swedish civil airline SAS from whose shell-broken concrete tower black smoke was rising. Air attack included chemical weapons. The guns of Northern Fleet warships fired with what seemed an unending supply of shells to cover the merchant transports moving to the quay. Warship and merchantman alike were assailed by Norwegian fast-patrol boats and there was further sinking and damage to vessels at sea. Even so, by the evening of 11 August, sufficient Soviet forces were in and around Bodo to constitute two motor rifle regiments with supplies landed to provide for at least a week’s high activity. A Norwegian brigade was redeployed from Evenes and the British Marine Commando from further north joined them to buttress the Bodo sector. The main road, E6, connecting north Norway to the south, was in danger of being cut.
On the 12th, word came of the Strike Fleet’s movement eastward through the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. If the aircraft from the carriers could have intervened in the battle over north Norway on that day, the land defence might have been able to stand its ground. But the aircraft could not yet do so. As a fourth Soviet motor rifle division deployed into Troms, complemented by an air assault brigade, the defence began to feel its lack of numbers and, no less vitally, the dwindling of its supplies, particularly gun and mortar ammunition, so heavily used and with so much lost to air attack. Grimly, Commander, North Norway, ordered the withdrawal of the Allied land forces north of Bodo, while he reinforced the lines checking the Soviet force struggling vigorously to reach the E6. By the 14th, he had pulled his little army back.
En route, several attempts to delay or divert the withdrawal had been made by detachments of the Soviet special forces, wearing Norwegian uniforms, speaking accentless Norwegian. All had been negated by the vigilance and prompt reaction of the Norwegian Home Guard. South of Narvik, for example, one such attempt was dealt with in just under two minutes:
‘Who are you?’ asked the elderly Home Guard company commander at Morsvik, challenging a ‘Norwegian captain’ who seemed to be giving contradictory orders to vehicle drivers. The ‘captain’ showed his identity card and told the Home Guard to mind his own business.
‘Who sent you here?’ The Home Guard was not going to be shaken off.
The answer he received was unsatisfactory to him. He ordered his soldiers to close in from the brief summer darkness to cover the ‘captain’ and his two supporters, who abused and threatened by way of response.
‘We can soon settle this,’ said the Home Guard. ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Kristiansund.’
‘That’s fine, the telephone is working to the south. Give me the name and address of your family or a friend there and we will telephone the local Home Guard. It will only take a few minutes.’
The ‘captain’ sprang into his car and drove off to the south.
‘You’ve let him go,’ said one of the Norwegians deployed on the road.
‘Not really. Ole Nilsen’s section is covering the road down there. There’s no other route. He’ll either stop or be shot.’
There was the sound of rifle fire.
‘Ah, he didn’t stop,’ said the Home Guard commander.[13]
When the field army had withdrawn south, the Home Guard remained behind, drifting into the mountain uplands to continue the war in their own way.
Meantime, just after midnight on 14 August, a staff officer found Commander, North Norway, in a village close to the E6, to give him this news:
‘The Marines have arrived, Sir.’
‘The British commando? Surely, they have already moved south.’
‘No, Sir, the Americans. They are landing now at Trondheim.’
‘With their air wing?’
‘With everything.’[14]
The United States Marines had made many dramatic entries in their distinguished history: none more timely than this. Dedicated in peace to the defence of Norway, a series of events had delayed their despatch by sea and air to their disembarkation area round Trondheim. Some units had been in process of roulement; some had begun deployment to the Middle East only to be halted en route, unloaded and obliged to wait for other transportation back to their bases. But now they were actually forming up on Norwegian soil, the land force together with its important air component. Here was the substance of the counter-attack force that Commander, North Norway, had been seeking to put together. He had already positioned the Canadian brigade groups and Norwegian 12 Brigade — the only two formations that had had a chance to rest and refit during the past twenty-four hours — for such a task but, of themselves, they had insufficient weight of fire power, specialized anti-armour weapons and mobility to destroy the Soviet mechanized forces. With the United States Marine brigade in their midst, they had every chance of accomplishing an important tactical riposte.
At Trondheim, the port and airfields were working to capacity. The Regional Air Commander was already alarmed at the number of aircraft packing Orland and Vaernes bases — air defence fighters and fighter-bombers from the north, the local complement, now also US Marine Corps squadrons flying in. In consultation with the Commanders of South and North Norway, he arranged for some of this mass of machines to move south to the Bergen air base, Flesland, to Sola at Stavanger and Lista. The remnant of a Norwegian F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron was posted to Rygge, the often battered but yet surviving air station at the southern end of the Oslo fiord.
These arrangements were getting under way during the following day, 15 August, just at the time that the Deputy Director of Plans, Colonel Romanenko, having received his instructions from his chief, was sending out orders to put his plan for the landings in south-west Norway into effect with the results that we have seen.
Fairly full details of what had happened had come to CINCNORTH as he returned to Oslo from a visit to Trondheim that afternoon. He had been in the latter city when raids were attempted by Soviet bombers on Orland and Vaernes and had seen these fail. The Soviet raiders, weakened by their encounter with the Swedish Viggens, had entered the Norwegian target area alerted by Swedish radar reports — reports now freely and promptly available from the Swedish authorities — to be defeated by a fighter defence reinforced by the US Marines. The raids on the south-western areas in support of the airborne assault landings had failed similarly. The air transports carrying the parachutists suffered further loss. They eventually landed about two battalions at Flesland and a weak battalion at Sola and Lista, air bases on each of which Ignatiev had expected to settle a strong brigade group. The local field forces, backed by the Home Guard, swept these intruders away by the early morning of 21 August.
13
From ‘The Norwegian Home Guard in the Third World War’, one of a series of articles by B. Ramstedt featured in Aftenposten, Oslo, May 1986