Siege of Narvik

"In Northern Norway, we still hold our strong positions, and with help that is promised us we shall succeed in reconquering the rest of our country. ... I and my Government are determined to carry on till the whole country has been freed."

So spoke tall, tired King Haakon VII of what was left of Norway last week, by proclamation to his captive people. He was somewhere above the Arctic Circle, in Harstad, Tromso or Hammerfest, far north of Narvik, where a British destroyer carried him last fortnight when he narrowly escaped from Molde at the mouth of bomb-battered Romsdal Fjord below Trondheim.

The days must have dragged for King Haakon. Nights were now only twilight and almost every day fresh blankets of spring snow fell to impede the progress of Allied and Norse troops seeking to wrest Narvik from the stubborn clutch of some 3,500 Austrian ski troops under General Eduard ("The Bull") Dietl, entrenched on towering Rombak Heights southeast of the town. Through the snow swirls, shielded more than blinded, came steady streams of Nazi planes to drop food, munitions, more men to the beleaguered invaders. They revived and reinforced a second Nazi contingent on the north side of Rombak Fjord, at Elvegardsmoen. They bombed Allied warships which prowled off the town to shell the heights, and added mines to the battle wreckage in Narvik harbor which prevented those ships from closing in. They even managed to land and take off on one glacier-like mountaintop.

Adolf Hitler deemed Narvik important enough, as the main outlet for Swedish iron ore, to spend one-third of his destroyers trying to secure it. From conquered southern Norway his ground troops now pushed northward towards the battered iron port. Nazi parachute troops appeared at Mo, more than halfway up the coast highway from Namsos to Bodo, beyond which 47 miles of road end in trackless mountains stretching another 87 crow-line miles to Narvik. They were hurried ahead to cut off a Norse contingent and some 300 remnant British who, retreating north from Namsos, delayed the Nazi column's progress by blasting and barricading the narrow highway.

This week the parachutists captured the remnant British.

Not British soldiers, but French Chasseurs Alpins ("Blue Devils"), gave Haakon continued hope for Narvik. Also on hand was a contingent of Poles. The French cruiser-minelayer Emile Berlin escorted them north and got bombed a bit doing so.

The tough little Frenchmen were landed south as well as north of Narvik. Dragging their mountain artillery through profound snowdrifts, up incredible declivities, they slowly encircled Rombak Heights, moving patiently from crag to crag to blast German machine-gun nests on crags opposite.

Their plan was, with the Norse troops working on lower levels, to complete a ring around Narvik, then press westward until they drove the Nazis down from the heights to the fjord, where the warships could polish them off.

P: After being smuggled hither & yon through the mountains, narrowly escaping capture, Norway's remaining gold reserve (much of which had already been exported before the invasion began) .was spirited safely away from Molde in a British warship at about the same time as King Haakon. It went to vaults in Great Britain. Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht, in London and Paris last week to take counsel and to call back exhortations to the Norse, announced that Norway had purchased for her stand in the north "huge quantities" of supplies and munitions from the British, enough grain to feed her soldiers for a year. Of Norway's six Army divisions of one month ago, four were gone--killed, captured or interned in Sweden. A fifth was decimated and scattered.

The sixth was still intact and in action around Narvik. Some 12,500 strong, based on Kirkenes (550 miles by sea northeast of Narvik), it was the best equipped, having been made ready for action during Finland's trouble last winter. Last fortnight Nazi air scouts flew even up to Kirkenes and dropped a few preliminary bombs, preparing to obey their Fiihrer's order to make his conquest of Norway complete.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.