Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 by Henrik Lunde (popular e readers .TXT) 📗

ferry. Company 2 of the Irish Guards was unable to cross the river and made a 30-kilometer march through very difficult terrain to Langset.

The Irish Guards and the Independent Cos reached Finneid early on May 27. The unit history relates that those unaccounted for at Rognan arrived throughout the day in twos and threes. By evening, all were accounted for except 20 members of the battalion staff. One eventually reached Fauske alone. The British remained in Fauske until the following night when they moved eight kilometers further west.

The advance of the 2nd Mountain Division through Nordland Province won the forthright admiration of their enemies. Churchill writes:

At Bodo and Mo, during the retreat of Gubbins’ force to the north, we were each time just too late, and the enemy, although they had to overcome hundreds of miles of rugged, snow-clogged country, drove us back in spite of gallant episodes. We, who had the command of the sea and could pounce anywhere on an undefended coast, were outpaced by the enemy moving by land across very large distances in the face of every obstacle. In this Norwegian encounter, our finest troops, the Scots and Irish Guards, were baffled by the vigour, enterprise, and training of Hitler’s young men.16

The Evacuation of Bodø

As the British and Norwegians were fighting at Posthus, the Germans made their breakthrough to the Channel Coast in France and the desperate British evacuation from Dunkirk was about to start. Churchill decided that all available resources had to be concentrated on the defense of Great Britain. Part of this decision involved the evacuation of Bodø, which was ordered on May 25, the first day of the fighting at Posthus. The British were still reinforcing Bodø that day with the arrival of the last company of the South Wales Borderers. It is rather ironic that the destroyer bringing this company to Bodø also brought Colonel Dowler from Harstad carrying the evacuation order for all British forces.

The original plan was to bring the German northward advance to a halt at Finneid. As pointed out by Ash, this was the best defensive position during the whole campaign with water in front and on the flanks, anchored against high mountains in the east, stretching to the Swedish border, about 30 kilometers away. The Norwegians considered it imperative to halt the German drive in this location in order to provide General Fleischer time to eliminate the Germans in the Narvik area and thereafter switch his forces against General Feurstein. For that reason, Lieutenant Colonel Roscher-Nielsen had concentrated the remnants of the withdrawing Norwegian forces and the newly arrived battalion from Bardufoss in this area.

The Norwegians were therefore dismayed to see the British forces withdraw westward to positions that were less suitable for defense and did not cover the route to Narvik. To the Norwegians, who were again not informed about the evacuation, the westward movement of the British forces was, in the words of Sandvik, “incomprehensible and ominous.” General Fleischer was notified by a telegram, copied to General Ruge, late in the evening of May 28. Gubbins made no mention to Roscher-Nielsen about the British evacuation decision, taken three days earlier. The same applies to a conference Major Lindbäck-Larsen had with Colonel Dowler at Harstad after the latter’s return from Bodø on May 26.

Lindbäck-Larsen reported his conversation with Dowler to Roscher-Nielsen on May 28, and to Fleischer, and Ruge the following day. Dowler had promised that British fighters would operate from Bodø, a lengthy deployment of British aircraft carriers to the Bodø area, eight Bofors guns for the Norwegians to use at Finneid, additional reinforcements, and that the Finneid line would be held.

The Norwegians redeployed their forces when the British moved their defense line to the Fauske area. A Norwegian force was sent towards Langset to delay the German advance. One company that had been sent to Sulitjelma earlier, to block the eastern and more mountainous route into the Finneid area, was ordered back to Fauske in order not to be isolated by the German advance, now that Finneid was not to be defended. The commander was told that Norwegian forces would attempt to hold the road through Finneid open until the following day (May 29).

The German advance was more rapid than anticipated and the Norwegians were forced back across the bridge at Finneid in the evening of May 28, after which the bridge was destroyed. The forces at Sulitjelma were isolated and Roscher-Nielsen ordered them to withdraw over the mountains and the glacier of Blåmannsisen to Røsvik.

Defensive positions south of Djupvik were prepared and occupied by two infantry companies from the 1/15th Inf, an artillery battery, two mortar platoons, and an engineer platoon. Brigadier Gubbins had promised Roscher-Nielsen that he would send his chief of staff to the latter’s headquarters to arrange details of future cooperation. The chief of staff never appeared.

The Luftwaffe attacked Bodø in strength on May 27, in a continuation of a series of bombing raids that began on May 20. The Germans began by dropping heavy explosive bombs and thereafter a large number of incendiary bombs. The attack lasted for two hours. The two remaining Gladiators were quickly put out of operation and the Germans reduced the town to rubble. Fortunately, most of the civilian population had evacuated when German air raids began a week earlier, and as a result, only 15 civilians were killed. Nothing was spared, including the hospital where a large number of wounded Scots Guards were located.

Roscher-Nielsen had a telephone conversation with Brigadier Gubbins after the German raid and when asked about the situation, Gubbins gave an ambiguous answer. Roscher-Nielsen came away from the conversation with the understanding that the British were still holding their positions in Fauske but he noted that Gubbins also made it clear that the Norwegians should remove their own units as quickly as possible.

Colonel Finne, the Norwegian liaison officer at the British headquarters in Harstad, was finally told on May 29 that the British were about to evacuate Bodø. General