Raid on Litenhavn

(Source)

As the small Norwegian fishing boat sailed from the Shetlands to Norway, the men learned something about their instructor. It turned out that Corporal Bill Winston of His Majesty's Royal Commandos did know more than one word in Polish.

"My mother is Polish and my father, an Englishman, worked in the Foreign Service. He had met my mother when he was posted to Warsaw, which is how I learned Polish. Now how I came by my ability to speak Norwegian is a bit different."

Sergeant Bartosz Podbielski grinned at his fellow teammates, two Norwegians, four Poles, one Frenchman, and three British soldiers, Winston being one of the three Brits. Podbielski lit his pipe and sat back, in addition to being a hard taskmaster in training, Winston had a wealth of stories. He told them well.

"Dad was stationed in Oslo, at the Embassy, my mother was back home in Norwich raising my baby brother and sister, twins they were. Too young to travel, so Mum said, so Dad took me along to Oslo. I was fifteen."

"Well, Dad had a maid. She wasn't much older than me, very pretty she was. She taught me Norwegian, and a few other things which ..."

"All right you lot, stand to, we're getting close to the coast! Cap'n wants everyone to get below." Lieutenant Oswald Mosier barked from the pilot house. He was in command of this mission, the goal of which was to determine whether or not the little fishing village of Litenhavn contributed much in the way of fish oil to the Norwegian fishing industry. Which Mosier found odd.

His commander had confided in him that the real goal of the mission was to see how these newly-minted commandos behaved in the field. A rather low risk mission as Litenhavn was reported to have a minimal garrison of Germans, less than a platoon, perhaps as few as ten. The captain had told him, "Good way to blood the chaps, give 'em a taste of commando work."

"So Georg, has anything happened here in my absence?" Leutnant Bär looked and sounded more than a little drunk.

Unteroffizier Schülze looked past the inebriated lieutenant at the man who had driven him to Oslo and back, one Gefreiter Hermann Bauer. The corporal simply shrugged, as if to say, "What can I do? He's an officer, I'm just a soldier."

"Things have been quiet Herr Leutnant. We did receive a message asking for a report on the villages stock of fish oil."

"Fischöl?¹"

"Ja, Herr Leutnant. Fischöl."

"Strange. Well?"

"Sir?"

"What is the village's stock of fish oil? What did you report?" Bär was thinking how this could possibly be career-enhancing. He didn't care what the answer was, only that it made him look good. Not the unit. Him.

"At the moment Sir, the village has ten 200-liter barrels of fish oil. Normally a truck collects them each week, but since the winter set in, no truck has arrived." Schülze answered, sensing that Bär wouldn't like the answer.

"Ten? Why hasn't the truck come?  Weather?"

"No Sir, I believe the Army might have requisitioned the truck for their own purposes."

"And Berlin wants to know about the fish oil?"

"Yes Sir." Schülze felt like he was explaining things to a little child, a not very bright child at that.

"Well, we shall see about that truck. I shall be in my quarters, contact Oslo, tell them we need a truck for the fish oil."

"Uh, where do we send ..."

"Oslo will know, take care of it Unteroffizier. Das ist ein befehl!²"

Schülze snapped his heels together and said "Of course, Herr Leutnant."

Lars Knudsen, owner and captain of the small fishing vessel, throttled back and nodded at his first mate, Leif Bolstad. "Be ready with that boat hook, Leif!"

The passengers on the boat, though used to danger, looked at the numerous rocks jutting above the surface of the small bay with a certain amount of worry. Though the weather was calmer inside the bay, the wind and the tide was still pushing them rapidly towards the rocky shore. In the fog they couldn't see much beyond fifty meters.

Reversing his throttles, Knudsen brought the boat nicely up to the small dock which seemed to appear out of nowhere. There was nothing but a broken down shack in the vicinity. The shed stood in a small open area backed up by a sheer cliff.

Bolstad leaped ashore and secured the boat to the dock.

"I'll wait until three in the morning, then I must put to sea." Knudsen explained to Lieutenant Mosier. "Follow that narrow path to the top of the cliff, then bear west and you'll eventually come to Litenhavn. What you're looking for should be in a shed on the town docks. I doubt very much that the Germans guard that shed."

Mosier nodded and waved his men ashore, "Cahun, take point. Dziadosz and Bickford, bring up the rear."

Schütze Ernst Becker was bored and cold. It was another frigid day and he was posted down at the warehouse by the small harbor. None of the boats were out today as the weather beyond the mouth of the small fjord was brutal. He could see the waves lashing the outer rocks. He was cold, but being here on land was better than being out there.

The new lieutenant was talking about sending men out on the fishing boats to keep an eye on the fishermen. As far as Becker could tell, the Norwegians went out all day (and sometimes all night) and came back with their holds filled with fish. Then the smell began as they processed the fish.

He hated that smell, so did most of the men. He'd asked a German-speaking Norwegian how he could stand it, all the man had said was "You get used to it." He supposed the man was right, after all, he'd hated the Army at first, but he got used to it. The fact that he hadn't seen any combat in his ten months in the Army helped.

"A single sentry from the looks of it." Winston handed the field glasses back to his lieutenant.

Mosier thought for a few minutes, then hissed back to Podbielski, "Two men sergeant, Mierzejewski and Ellingsen."

Sergeant Podbielski nodded at the two men, one Pole, one Norwegian. Mierzejewski grinned as he crawled past his sergeant. Suddenly Podbielski almost felt sorry for that German sentry.

When the two men reached their lieutenant he explained what he wanted. Before they set out Agnar Ellison had said, "You know we have to kill that man." He said it so matter-of-factly that Mosier felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There were times when these men frightened him.

Mierzejewski spoke up in his very poor English, "I do it, break neck. Niemcy, think, how you say ...?"

"Accident, an accident." Ellison finished for him.

Mierzejewski looked puzzled, then Winston chimed in, "Wypadek³, Klaudiusz."

Mierzejewski grinned again and nodded as he made a gesture to suggest snapping a chicken's neck, "Tak, wypadek."

Becker had spent all of his time in the village working the 1500 to midnight watch, so he knew very few of the locals. When he saw two men stumbling towards him, giggling like a pair of school girls, he simply shook his head. When the boats couldn't go out, the villagers liked to drink.

"Hey, go back to the village, you can't be down here!"

One of the men suddenly bent over and began to make retching noises while the other walked to the edge of the dock and began to loosen his trousers as if to piss into the harbor. Becker turned to the "pisser" as he thought of the man. "Du kannst nicht ..."

Ellingsen turned to the German, smiled, and said, in slurred but nearly perfect German, "Awful night to be out, mein Herr, neh?"

Hearing his native tongue relaxed Becker, he started to respond when he felt two powerful arms seize him around the neck. He tried to break free, but the man was far too strong.

He felt himself being half-pushed and half-dragged towards the edge of the pier, he half expected to be thrown into the frigid water. He never expected that the man behind him would slam Becker's face into one of the pilings holding the dock up.

Becker went limp. He lay outstretched on the dock, Ellison checked for a pulse. "He's still alive."

"Not for long," Mierzejewski hissed as he pressed his right boot onto the back of the German's neck. Within seconds the German gave a sigh, Ellison checked again, "He's dead, let's check the warehouse."

Within minutes Ellison had confirmed the presence of ten barrels of fish oil inside, there were a number of empty barrels nearby. As no one saw fit to lock the warehouse (Who was going to steal fish oil? Norway was awash in the stuff), access had been easy.

When Ellison came back out, he noticed that Mierzejewski had poured some water on the dock from his canteen, it had frozen quickly. He had also had the presence of mind to scuff the ice, to make it appear that the man had slipped and hit his head.

"Should be good," Ellison said in English to Mierzejewski, "soldiers, not police." He pointed towards the village. A cop might be suspicious of the circumstances, but Ellison assumed these men were soldiers.

An innocent mistake.

The boat was back out to sea well before Knudsen's deadline. Lieutenant Mosier was still angry, killing the German, he felt, had been unnecessary. He thought Ellison's explanation of "we made it look like an accident" was ridiculous. The Germans were a thorough people, they would investigate, maybe bring in actual policemen from Oslo, Germans or quislings, it didn't matter.

He feared that the villagers would suffer reprisals.

His fear was justified.

¹ Fish oil (German)

² That's an order! (German)

³ Accident (Polish)