Struggle for Trondheim

Last week the Allies' Northwestern Expeditionary Force (its newly announced official name) tried to scramble aboard Norway by way of the slushy, slippery, narrow, air-vulnerable ports left to them by the Germans above and below Trondheim. Its main effort was to get ashore and stake first military claim to the northwest coast of mid-Norway. Before the week ended the issue became whether German-held Trondheim was to be a beleaguered post in an Allied-held sector, or the key post of a German-held mid-Norway which the Allies had rashly invaded.

Two hundred charred heaps (where houses had stood) and a hospital (untouched) were all that remained last week of the coastal town of Namsos (see map). In the snow outside the hospital French doctors had stained a giant crimson cross, which German bombers respected. The Germans' ability to aim was proved by gaping holes in the little (800 ft.) town quay, where some 15,000 British and French troops had landed from small boats, from big transports (including the 21,833-ton Empress of Australia, see p. 25) that had to anchor out in the fjord.

Few troops were hurt in the first landings, which were made at night. But in the wooded hills from Namsos to Steinkjer at the head of Beitstad Fjord, and from there along the shore road toward Levanger, where the Germans were supposed to be waiting, advance detachments of the N. W. E. F. soon found that fighting "Jerry" in Norway was no taffy-pull.

First Stab at Trondheim. The narrow, rutted roads were knee-deep in late-April slush. German bombers and attack ships roared low over the pinetops. From southeast of Steinkjer, smashing echoes rolled into the mountains from the guns of German destroyers and a pocket battleship (probably the Liitzow) bottled up in Beitstad Fjord, as the Germans moved them up to support their land forces.

First Allied troops to encounter these obstacles were a battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and a battalion of Territorials, about 1,500 men in all, sent ahead to relieve the beleaguered Norse garrison down in Hegra fortress. The Nazi naval guns and bombing planes were specially deadly because the Allied advance force had no artillery, no anti-aircraft batteries, no air support, no anti-tank guns. They did not even have white capes for snow-fighting. They were shocked, and shot up, when they met the Germans only three miles below Steinkjer, at Vist. For most of the British boys it was their first fighting, after only one year of training. They soon lost half their men--dead, wounded or captured--and survivors were lucky to retire north of Steinkjer after the Germans had landed reinforcements in their rear from warships.

By week's end the N. W. E. F. had some fighter planes operating belatedly, launched from carriers off the coast and based on the ice of Lake Snaesa. German raiding diminished and went up to 10,000 feet instead of swooping in fearlessly at 500 feet. French Alpine troops and some of the Foreign Legion arrived, and with them came anti-aircraft guns and artillery. Thus the Allied Army north of Trondheim finally found its poise, gathered itself for an organized drive. But its early stumble cast a shadow over the whole enterprise, a shadow stretching back to London (see p. 29).

Push from Andalsnes. More important in the Allies' plan was the drive farther south. Troops landed on the quays of Molde and Andalsnes reached Dombaas by train from the Andalsnes railhead. From Daambas junction they advanced in two directions. One force pressed north toward Storen to aid in besieging Trondheim from the south. Another contingent hurried southeast to brace the retreating Norse at Lillehammer (famed resort, home of Novelist Sigrid Undset) who faced the main German Army. In the Dovre Mountains around Dombaas. German bombing planes, unopposed by Allied fighters or antiaircraft, again raised hob. They furiously strafed transports and harbor facilities at Molde and Andalsnes, blasted stations and rolling stock along the railroad, rendered precarious the communications and supply between both Allied advance parties and their slower-moving main force. When Allied airmen improvised a landing field on a frozen road southwest of Andalsnes, the Nazis destroyed or damaged eleven fighter planes parked there.

Power Drives. Meantime, from Rena up the O"sterdal (Glomma River Valley) and from Lillehammer up the Gudbrandsdal (Laagen River Valley), the Germans launched two mechanized columns which again showed the world, as in Poland, how a modern juggernaut can open the road to war. These spearheads, to be followed by heavier forces from the growing Nazi troop-pool in the Oslo district, drove to reach their comrades at Trondheim before the floundering Allies should surround that town and close the roads to reinforcements. One struck north to the copper town of Roeros at a speed which excited correspondents called "lightning"--actually about 50 miles in one day, which is excellent for tanks and lorries moving through mountain country if the retreating defenders are blowing out bridges, touching off landslides. When the Oesterdal spearhead reached Roeros it consisted only of five armored cars, 15 trucks, carrying 150 shock troops, 20 motorcycles with two men each. But they were escorted by warplanes overhead, which scattered the handfuls of Norse troops guarding the way, panicked the populace. The Nazis captured police chiefs and ministers, held them as hostages to get gasoline. They promised total bombing to the villagers if there was any sniping. In one day no German transport planes were seen flying men and supplies up to Trondheim.

The invaders camped overnight south of Roeros. Then they smashed ahead to a wild, rocky gorge. Here ensued the second preliminary struggle for Trondheim, with Allied artillery at last planted on the commanding mountainsides.

In the Gudbrandsdal, after the main Nazi power-drive had plowed through Lillehammer, the Norse and British who escaped capture there fell back on Allied reinforcements for a stand where the valley narrows at Otta and Kvam, only 35 miles south of Dombaas. Norwegian General Otto Ruge rallied his men with this message: "Now the time for withdrawing has passed," he said. "Stand by and keep together and we shall fight the battle to victory."

And then it was learned that parts of the Nazi thrust up the Oesterdal had split off northwestward from Alvdal and Tynset, slogged over the mountains by precipitous trails believed unpassable after the heavy snowfalls. When these forces got through to threaten the Dombaas-Stoeren line at Hjerkinn and Ulsberg, another race began, to save Trondheim's south approaches for the Allies. Outcome of this race might determine the fate of N. W. E. F.'s whole first effort, for without Daambas, nothing between there and Trondheim would be tenable. With it, the Allies had the Nazi juggernaut stalled.

From the Sea into Trondheim Fjord lay one more avenue of assault for the Allies, obstructed by Germans in the harbor forts at Agdenes and Nazi field guns ranged along the fjord's inner shores. Allied warships hurled, Allied bombers dumped tons of destruction here but not enough to break in last week. Allied bombers were busy elsewhere trying to paralyze the German air arm at its sockets in South Norway and Denmark. Scores of heaviest R. A. F. planes, after warning Oslo's populace, concentrated on great Fornebu Field near the capital, on an oil refinery near Moss, on Stavanger and new German beachheads below Bergen. But still Nazi bombers and troop planes poured up through Norway's valleys. Still troop and supply ships slipped through the Allied sea blockade. And still angry swarms of Junkers and Heinkels dived at the ships and trains bringing Allied men and guns in force to the Dombaas-Stoeren sector. Over the weekend, the Germans claimed hits on no less than 13 Allied troopships and five cruisers. Grimly the Allies would admit damage only to two trawlers.

Nothing was heard during last week of strong Allied forces reported as having landed at Laerdal, to reach the Bergen-Oslo rail line still held by the Norse. Methodically the Germans went to meet this threat with columns converging on Fossheim fortress above Fagernes. Nazi ships landed troops in the upper reaches of Hardanger Fjord, for an overland attack upon the towns of Voss and Myrdal, along the Bergen-Oslo railroad.

Two Weeks' Advantage. All these events were depressing to the Allies. The reaction at home in Britain was due to previous overoptimism. In the first stage of the campaign the Germans had two weeks alone in Norway with little opposition. Not till last week, when the second stage of the campaign opened with Allied landings, were they sufficiently strong and well organized to make any progress toward Trondheim. Allowing for a moderate degree of air opposition, according to ordinary military schedules they could not in less than four days to a week land a division with all its artillery, munitions and equipment and transport the whole from Namsos or Molde to face the Germans in force.

The Allied advance guards made contact with the Germans in both sectors in less than 48 hours. That they were rolled back by the Germans should have been expected in Britain. They could not possibly meet the Germans on equal terms until this week at earliest. The date of such equality may be further postponed because of German air superiority. The Allied danger was that before they could catch up, the Nazis' grip on mid-Norway would become unbreakable.

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