Fish Oil?

(Do chase this Source, it's the basis for this part of the story!)

Newly-promoted Unteroffizier Georg Schülze stood by the window to the small office in the building they used as their headquarters. It was snowing, again.

January 1941 was three weeks old and all was quiet. Leutnant Bär, though a continuing pain in Schülze's arse, hadn't bothered the locals all that much during his tenure in Litenhavn¹. The town was far too small for Bär's ambitions, he spent most of his time in Oslo, "consulting" with his superiors. At least someone in that city recognized that Schülze was the de facto face of the German occupation in this small slice of Norway, hence the promotion.

Winter and Ahrens were in the village's sole business, a combination café, dry goods shop, and apothecary. Birgitte Otness, or Enke² Otness as the villagers called her, was a fetching lady in her early-forties, both Winter and Ahrens were trying to win her favor. The men who covered the overnight hours would have probably been vying for her affections as well, but when they were on duty the widow was either asleep or tending bar in the café. With not much else to do in the village, most of the menfolk were also in that bar. Looking askance at any German who paid too much attention to her.

Schülze liked the pace of life in this small place, cold and forbidding though it was in winter. The people, while not overly friendly, were at least respectful. The Germans left them to their fishing, making scant demands upon either their property or their livelihood. The dispatch on his desk, brought in before the snowstorm, might change all that.

"Fish oil," he mused. He had a rough idea of its many uses but why would the Reichsministerium für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion³ be interested in how many barrels of fish oil were produced in Litenhavn?

Major Thomas Gillespie, formerly of the Grenadier Guards, sat up at his desk. He had been working in signals intelligence since the beginning of the war had recalled him to active service. A field posting was right out, missing a hand and an eye certainly made one ineligible for service in the field.

He had been put on half-pay as a captain after his wounding in 1918. He had enough family money to not work but he had grown bored with managing the family estate and when the war had started up, he had pulled strings at Horse Guards to get this posting.

Though he was horrible with mathematics and couldn't break a code if his life depended on it, someone had to decipher all of the material the code breakers passed along. One thing Gillespie had was a phenomenal memory.

Berlin was inquiring of its outposts in Norway about the production of fish oil. Gillespie knew that one of Norway's big industries was fishing, they must produce a lot of fish oil, but why would Berlin care?

Walking over to one of the many file cabinets in the office he used the hook on his left hand to pull the cabinet open. Rifling through the files he couldn't find what he was looking for, so he called out to Mary Whitworth, his assistant.

"Mary, do you remember that report we intercepted regarding production of artillery shells? Believe it was in '38 as I recall."

Mary Whitworth hustled into the room and noticed that the major was in the wrong cabinet. "It's over here Major, that cabinet concerns requests from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht⁴ to its field units not involved in operations, this cabinet, " she said as she opened a drawer, looked inside and pulled a file from within, "is where we file information concerning their Production Ministry.

Gillespie cocked an eyebrow in Whitworth's direction, she turned and said, "I saw that Major, don't question our filing methods, they have worked well for us. If you can't find something, ask."

Gillespie, suitably chastised, nodded and said, "My apologies ma'am." Then he bowed from the waist and swept his hand from left to right. A member of Louis XIV's court would have approved.

This time Whitworth cocked an eyebrow as she handed the file over to the Major, "And it's a wonder you never married ..."

Gillespie, after reading the file to refresh his memory, went upstairs to his boss, Group Captain Roger Kensington.

"Sir, you need to see this." Gillespie said, handing over the file.

Kensington let his spectacles slide down his nose and looked over them to read the file. "Bloody specs, still not used to 'em. Eyesight is fine close in, can't see a sodding thing at any distance. Age ya know. Gets to all of us."

"Some sooner that others. Sir."

Kensington looked up, smiling, "You always were a cheeky bastard Tommy. What have we here?" The Group Captain focused on the document for a long few minutes. Gillespie waited, patiently, Kensington was a thorough man, a clever man, which is probably why he held his current post in Intelligence.

"Hhmm, why d'ya suppose the Huns are worried about ammunition production? Bombs I can understand, but this document expresses a lot of worry over artillery ammunition. Why does the bugger need more artillery shells, d'ya think?"

"Russia, Sir."

"But those buggers Hitler and Stalin are allies ain't they?" Kensington liked to play things close to the vest, he liked letting his subordinates come to the same conclusion he had. Or disagree if they could make a case for it.

"Hitler's been an anti-Communist his entire life. Have you read Mein Kampf⁵, Sir?" Gillespie asked.

"Turgid bloody mess, I tried to, couldn't get through the damned thing. But one of my aides read it and gave me a damned good summary. You're right, this Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is a marriage of convenience. Bastard's planning to invade, isn't he?"

"That's my thinking, Sir."

"Fish oil?"

"Glycerin Sir, you can distill fish oil to make it, and from that ..."

"Nitroglycerin! Have you run this by the boffins⁶?"

"Not yet, Sir. But this report, " he handed Kensington another folder, "confirms that. A scientist before the war indicated that we should be careful with Norway. As he put it, "Sweden has the ingredients for steel, Norway for explosives." He made a rather convincing case, which someone from the War Ministry didn't agree with, so the file was archived."

"Mary found that one, didn't she?"

"She did Sir, the lady is brilliant. We don't pay her enough."

"You'll get no argument from me on that score. I need to get this off to SOE, an operation like this would be right up their alley."

"Sir?"

"Forget it Major, forget what I just said."

"Very good, Sir."

In the Scottish hills above Achnacarry, Private Damian Krempa, late of the Polish Army, late of the French Army, turned to his Sergeant, Bartosz Podbielski, and groaned, "Is that the only word that bastard knows in Polish?" As Corporal Bill Winston of His Majesty's Royal Commandos barked out, "Szybciej, szybciej!"

"Let us not find out," Podbielski answered in English, a language he was learning fast, though his accent was still very heavy.

The five Poles and their French companion, who pretended to be a Pole, had heard of the commando forces being formed. They had all volunteered, for as Jean-Yves (Jan-Iwo in Polish) Cahun had said, "We will never get back to kill Nazis at the rate things are going, these commandos will go in sooner, of this I am sure."

All he really had to say was "kill Nazis" and they would have volunteered, but the kicker is that the British were looking for tough men who knew how to operate behind the lines and get home again. Something the little band of Poles and one Frenchman had already done.

Little did they know that within a few weeks, they would be returning to the Continent, to perhaps not kill Germans but to get intelligence on, of all things, stocks of fish oil in Norwegian ports.

Of course, if they could get away with it ...

¹ Literally "Little Harbor," a fictional fishing village in Norway. It's the same fishing village I've mentioned earlier, I just decided to name it.

² Widow (Norwegian)

³ Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production

⁴ High Command of the Armed Forces

⁵ Book written by Hitler before the war, he basically laid out his plans for Europe in it. Hard to read.

⁶ British slang for a scientist or technical expert.

⁷ SOE - Special Operations Executive was a secret British Second World War organization created in July 1940. Following the fall of France in June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill tasked Hugh Dalton with forming SOE with the instruction to 'set Europe ablaze' by helping local resistance movements and conducting espionage and sabotage in enemy-held territories. (Source)

⁸ Faster, faster! (Polish)