Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 (73 page)

It is obvious that Auchinleck began to take a slightly more aggressive attitude with respect to Mo than was demonstrated in his briefing to Brigadier Fraser on May 13. He sent a message to Colonel Gubbins on May 16 telling him not to abandon Mo. This came on the heel of a message from Brigadier Fraser on May 15 stating that it was militarily unsound to hold Mo. Auchinleck’s amplifying instructions were sent with the ill-fated South Wales Borderers on May 17.
³³

Auchinleck received a note from Admiral Cork late in the afternoon on May 15 about moving the South Wales Borderers to Mo. This probably influenced Auchinleck to try to hang on to Mo as long as possible more than the visit the following day by the two Norwegian generals. The admiral told him that they had to hold Mo for six more days until the squadron of aircraft at Bardufoss became operational.

The Norwegian generals came away from the conference on May 16 with some mixed emotions. While some administrative matters were cleared up and Auchinleck had expressed understanding and agreement with their desire to hold the Germans as far south as possible, the promises were no more definite than those made by the British Government and commanders shortly before the sudden withdrawals from Åndalsnes, Namsos, and Mosjøen. An arrangement for coordinated operations in the southern area was not achieved, only a promise that the Norwegians would get copies of British operational directives.

British Strategy Changes and Mishaps

General Feurstein’s troops had advanced 270 kilometers in nine days over terrain that Allied commanders had considered impassable. They had covered about half the distance to their beleaguered comrades in Narvik and there was no indication that their forward progress would slow. The British authorities had finally become alarmed. Churchill writes, “It would be a disgrace if the Germans made themselves masters of the whole of this stretch of the Norwegian coast with practically no opposition from us in the course of the next few weeks or even days.”
³⁶
This was written before the Germans captured Mosjøen. Since then, they had captured another 70 kilometers of coastline and the British commander at Mo reported that it was militarily unsound to hold that town. According to Ironside, Churchill’s own feelings about further commitment of significant ground forces in Norway without adequate air support is partially to blame for this situation. He writes on May 2:

Allied operations in Norway were hamstrung by lack of air power from the very beginning. One aircraft carrier was kept on duty in the Narvik area but it proved inadequate for the task. The British began the construction of an airfield at Skånland but it never became usable. There were Norwegian airfields at Bardufoss and at Bodø but the British were slow in making them operational. They had been in the country almost a month before they decided to use Bardufoss. It took some time to clear the snow from the runway and it was not in operation until the end of May. Survey teams were sent around to other airfields such as the ones at Bodø and Mo. Although quick actions were called for, reports were submitted and decided on in a fashion more appropriate to a peacetime environment. This was no way to counter the tempo of German operations.

The Germans captured Værnes on April 10 and employed a large Norwegian work force to clear the snow. The airfield was operational by April 12 and reinforcements began landing the following day. OKW stressed the need to establish landing fields along the route of advance to support operations. An airfield at Hattfjelldal, southeast of Mosjøen, was ready for use by late May as a refueling point for aircraft returning from Narvik and the nearly completed airfield north of Mo was captured when Mo was evacuated.

Colonel Dowler and Brigadier Fraser discussed the problems of reinforcing the Mo area with General Auchinleck and they described the situation there as becoming critical. Auchinleck decided to change Mackesy’s plan to send the 1st Irish Guards to Mo. Instead, Brigadier Fraser was ordered to take the battalion to Bodø. He also announced that he would send South Wales Borderers to the same location. He reasoned that it was not possible to supply the force by the mountain road over Saltfjell since it was still closed by snow. Mo was at the end of a long fjord and Admiral Cork was reluctant to supply the forces there since ships would be exposed to air attacks in confined waters. Auchinleck directed Fraser to hold the Bodø area “permanently” and to try to establish contact with the forces in Mo “if he could.”
³⁵
Moulton’s statement that the intent was to send the 1st Irish Guards and 2nd South Wales Borderers by road from Bodø to Mo is therefore somewhat misleading.

In a letter to General Dill on May 13, Auchinleck announced that he intended to give up on the use of the Independent Cos in a guerrilla role. This is an interesting statement since he had never used them in that role. He stated that he intended to coalesce them into a light infantry unit under Gubbins and place the whole force under Brigadier Fraser‘s command. The inevitable outcome of the decision to send Fraser to Bodø was to give up Mo and to surrender another 150 kilometers of excellent defensive terrain to the enemy. The decision left no British combat forces in the Narvik area. Operations in that area became a joint Norwegian-French-Polish effort. Operations in the south became a British-Norwegian effort. There continued to be no unity of command in either area.

Misfortunes continued to plague the British. They decided to send the 1st Irish Guards to Bodø in the Polish transport
Chobry
. The Norwegians had suggested that the troops be transported in fishing vessels to reduce the exposure to German air attacks and to avoid navigational mishaps in the treacherous approach to Bodø. This advice was rejected according to Kersaudy. The ship was attacked by a German aircraft when it reached the southern tip of the Lofoten Islands at 0015 hours on May 15. The regimental history states that three Heinkel aircraft carried out the attack and Moulton implies that there was more than one aircraft. It has since been established that only one aircraft was involved in the attack and that it dropped its bombs during its second pass over the ship. Auchinleck’s biographer writes, “There was more than a suspicion that there had been a leakage of information before the ship sailed.”
³⁹
This is another example of the unfounded accusations that did so much to poison the relations between the British and Norwegians. The Germans would surely have sent more than a single aircraft if they had known about the ship and its cargo.

The bombs hit the transport amidships. The explosion killed the battalion commander and most of the senior officers. The ship was on fire and began to sink. In an outstanding example of the discipline in the British Navy and among the Guards, 694 men were successfully transferred from the sinking ship to the escorting destroyer
Wolverine
while another escort, the sloop
Stork
, remained nearby to protect against further air attacks. The transfer was accomplished in 16 minutes. The battalion lost all its equipment along with the only three British tanks in the country. Adams and Derry write that the soldiers brought along their weapons as they were transferred, but Auchinleck, in a letter to General Dill, wrote “They had no rifles, machine-guns or anything.”
³⁶
The escorts transported the troops back to Harstad. Here they were reorganized and reequipped.

The next disaster was not long in coming. It was decided to send the 2nd Bn, South Wales Borders to Bodø in the cruiser
Effingham
, commanded by Captain J. M. Howson. The cruiser was part of a five-ship task force that also consisted of two antiaircraft cruisers, and two destroyers. All troops were embarked on
Effingham
. The ships departed Harstad at 0400 hours on May 17. The warships proceeded west of the Lofoten Islands at top speed. Rather than following the normal approach to Bodø, it was decided to make a shorter back-door approach in order to minimize the submarine threat.

The first ship to hit the Flesene shoals about 12 miles from Bodø was the destroyer
Matable
, which struck only a glancing blow, losing its starboard propeller but remaining afloat. The antiaircraft cruiser
Coventry
also touched bottom but the damage was minor.
Effingham
, traveling at 23 knots, hit the shoal hard, tearing open its bottom. By great good fortune, there were no casualties. The troops were transferred rapidly and in an orderly way from the sinking cruiser to the destroyer
Echo
. All equipment, except that carried by the troops, was lost, including the Bren-gun carriers. Even some individual weapons were abandoned.
Echo
transferred the troops to
Coventry
and went back to rescue the
Effingham’s
crew. It was not possible to salvage the cruiser and it was sunk by torpedoes.

There was again an attempt to place blame where it did not belong. Adams writes:

There was no Norwegian pilot on the cruiser. The British had a Norwegian navigational chart, and the report of the cruiser’s loss admits that the chosen channel was “more foul of navigational dangers than the normal approach.” It also notes that it carried a remark that vessels with local knowledge could make the passage, implying that it should not be attempted without such knowledge. The report states, however, that the qualification concerning local knowledge is commonplace on Norwegian navigational charts outside the main shipping lane and that “hitherto, experience had shown that no extreme regard need be paid to it, provided normal pilotage precautions were observed.”
³⁸

The Germans claimed they sank the British cruiser. A photograph in
Signal
, Hitler’s wartime picture magazine, shows the wreck of
Effingham
. The caption claims that the cruiser, damaged by German bombs, was beached, and finally capsized.

T
HE
B
JERKVIK
L
ANDING AND THE
M
OUNTAIN
O
FFENSIVE

“Ah, it is all very difficult. We are used to traveling on camels across the desert, and here you give us boats, and we have to cross the water. It is very difficult but it will be all right. I think so.”

R
EACTION BY AN OFFICER OF THE
F
RENCH
F
OREIGN
L
EGION WHEN TOLD THAT HIS UNIT WOULD MAKE THE FIRST AMPHIBIOUS LANDING OF
W
ORLD
W
AR
II.

Pressures on the Allied Commanders to Act

Churchill and his colleagues in London were understandably exasperated by the lack of initiative displayed by their military commanders at Narvik. The Norwegians were also baffled by the unwillingness of the Allies to use their enormous firepower and clear numerical advantage. London continued to exert pressure on the field commanders to get them to act but some of the messages reveal that the officials in London were out of touch with realities on the ground. On April 28, Churchill sent a message to Admiral Cork in which he maintained that the focus of effort must be on Narvik and the Gallivare ore fields.

Churchill was still thinking of advancing 250 kilometers through a winter wilderness at a time when a brigade of British professionals had great difficulties operating along a coastal road. The following comments by Professor Hubatsch, while directed primarily at the Germans, apply to the Allies to an even greater degree, “In the Norwegian Campaign more than in any other theatre of war, we see the fascinating problem of how different the impressions gained by the men at the front could be from those held by the High Command.”
²

Churchill kept up the pressure on Admiral Cork.

Admiral Cork and General Mackesy had been engaged in a debate about strategy since they arrived in Norway. Some of the blame must be placed on those who issued instructions that were conflicting and not coordinated at the highest levels.

The possible window of opportunity for a landing in Narvik closed rather quickly and the Norwegians never suggested that the Allies should attempt a direct landing in Narvik. Lindbäck-Larsen concluded that a direct attack on Narvik was impractical within a few days after the destruction of the German destroyers on April 13.

Mackesy’s reluctance to launch an attack against Narvik in the first week or two after his arrival has considerable validity as long as the 24th Guards was the only force at his disposal. His arguments quickly lost their soundness after the Norwegians began their offensive in late April and with the arrival of significant reinforcements. He appears haunted by fears of a disaster long before committing his forces to battle. In one dispatch quoted by Derry, he talks about the “snows of Narvik being turned into another version of the mud of Passchendaele.” Moulton observes that this was,
“…
strange and hysterical language for a military commander, and symptomatic of long-suppressed fears and doubts of the ability of traditional infantry to attack at all … British soldiers were helpless to act, and in the end left the fighting to others.” Mackesy was not a lone holdout. A number of army and navy officers supported his arguments. Cork, for his part was unwilling to overrule Mackesy on land operations, especially after he experienced personally how difficult it was to move in snow up to his waist.