bracing himself against the rear-side of a thick pine. Kershaw was behind a rock by the stream, ducking every time a bullet whizzed past him. Then he saw McAllister, across the stream from Bell. Good, he thought. That'll do.
He picked up a lump of snow and hurled it at Hepworth, who saw him, and began to scurry over. Another snowball caught the attention of the other three. Short bursts of machine-gun fire still spat intermittently above their heads, while cracks of rifle fire rang out. 'We're going to take out those MGs,' said Tanner, to the five men now squatting beside him. 'We cross the stream out of the line of fire, move on sixty yards, then come round the back of them.' The boys looked tense; Hepworth, especially, was wide-eyed and ashen-faced. 'Come on, Hep,' he said. 'You know the drill. We work in pairs. Two forward, two pairs covering. Got enough ammo?'
Hepworth nodded.
Tanner patted his shoulder. 'We'll be fine. Let's go.'
Their bodies crouched low, they made it across the stream and pushed forward until the sound of firing was coming from behind them to the left. He hoped the enemy troops would be too busy with the fire coming from in front of them to have thought of an attack from behind. As he moved up the slope to the almost level ground above, he was glad to see his guess had been correct. Signalling to the others to follow, he pulled McAllister by the shoulder, then signalled for Hepworth to pair off with Sykes, Kershaw with Bell. 'Watch out for our own fire,' he warned.
He pulled out three grenades from his haversack, clipped them to his belt and briefly scanned ahead as a stray bullet whipped up the ground a few yards to his left. They were behind the far left of the German skirmish line. One of the machine-guns was just forty yards ahead, although hidden by trees, while the second was sixty yards to the right of the first. He could hear bursts from a third further away. His intention was to get within twenty yards of the first two and lob grenades at them. The danger would come if the gunners saw them first and turned their weapons on them.
'Sod it,' he muttered. Then, to his men: 'Forget the drill. Stan, you and Hepworth run towards that first MG and hurl a couple of grenades,' he whispered. 'Mac, you and I'll get the other. Bell, follow Sykes and Hep and cover them. Kershaw, you cover me and Mac. On three.'
He gripped the first grenade in his hand, counted down visually with his fingers, took a deep breath, then sprinted through the snow, praying the bullets would miss them once more. Thirty yards to go. A German rifleman was standing firing from behind a tree. Twenty-five yards. Three more riflemen and the second MG team. Twenty yards. Pull the pin from the grenade. One, two, throw. Aim good. A rifleman saw the grenade, looked round in horror, but it was too late. As it detonated, spraying the machine-gunners with shards of searing iron, they cried out and rolled. A second detonation came a split second later, just as Tanner brought his rifle to his shoulder once more, pulled back the bolt and fired, silencing the startled rifleman. Two more bullets fizzed above his head. Tanner ducked but, keeping his rifle tight into his chin, shouted, 'Hande hoch! Hande hoch!'
He was only vaguely aware of McAllister standing a few yards from him, yelling the same instruction. To his amazement, several German troops dropped their rifles and slowly raised their arms. 'Where's the bloody officer?' shouted Tanner, then saw him, crouched by a tree, still clutching his pistol. 'Hande bloody hoch, mate,' Tanner said to him, his rifle pointed at the enemy officer's heart.
Zellner dropped his pistol, his face flexing with anger. ' Waff en nieder!' he shouted. 'Befehlen ist unter alien Umstanden von der Englander zu lei stent'
'Cease firing!' yelled out Tanner. A bullet pinged through the trees to his right. 'Bloody stop shooting. They've surrendered!' he shouted, as he stepped forward and picked up Zellner's pistol.
As the guns fell silent on the mountain above Tretten, the battle continued to rage in the valley below. The day had been every bit as difficult and depressing as Brigadier Morgan had suspected. It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening when he walked out of his makeshift office and stepped outside to smoke his pipe. He realized he'd not had any air all day, yet outside the house the sharp stench of cordite and burnt wood was so heavy he could feel it in his throat. He looked towards the river, but a heavy fog hung over the valley. Through the smoke, however, the sun was trying to break through; he could see it high in the sky, a hazy orange orb. Ahead, shrouded in fog, the battle boomed on. The ground shuddered.
After only a few puffs, he took his pipe from his mouth and tapped it against the heel of his boot. The brief break for a smoke had not been as calming as he'd hoped. He walked back inside, where clerks and the remaining brigade staff were still frantically passing on information and trying desperately to find answers to unanswerable questions.
In his office he sat at his desk and opened his small leatherbound diary. One day, he thought, he would write this up, 'How Not to Fight a War: Lessons from the Norwegian Campaign', and submit it to the War Office. 'The remnants of the three companies of Leicesters, Foresters and Rangers,' he scribbled, 'were attacked in the morning along their makeshift positions west of Oyer and soon fell back. Leicesters' company commander killed, and most of the officers in that mixed force now reported missing.' Morgan's pencil hovered over the pale blue paper. They had been fine men all, he reflected. A bloody waste.
'By midday,' he continued, 'the usual array of aircraft appeared, bombing and strafing their lines.' And flying so low, too. Morgan had clearly seen the pilot of one Messerschmitt. The man's arrogance - sticking up two fingers to the soldiers below - had been hard to stomach. The German artillery had been in on the game too, systematically pasting the village. Most of the buildings in the small settlement were now destroyed, their timbers devoured by raging flames. 'By afternoon, a pall of grey smoke hung heavy over the valley. Spent most of the afternoon fending off desperate pleas for reinforcements and scratching my head, wondering how the devil I could possibly hold the enemy at bay until 15th Brigade joins us.'
Colonel Jansen's Dragoons had arrived, as Ruge had promised, and had been sent forward to bolster the forward positions in the gorge south of the village. 'Had I had just a few guns,' he scrawled, 'it might have been very different.' It was, after all, the kind of defensive position any commanding officer would normally only dream of. But the planes, the shelling and the enemy's armour were too much. What could a few machine-guns and rifles hope to achieve? It was like throwing snow at a stone wall. Indeed, Morgan had wondered, perhaps they should have tried chucking snowballs.
All afternoon he had fretted about a flank attack by German mountain troops. So, too, it seemed, had Colonel Chisholm, commander of the Yorks Rangers, who had been deployed on the far left of their lines on the low slopes above the village. Chisholm had pleaded for more men.
'Damn it, Colonel,' Morgan had told him, on one of the few field telephones that were working, 'I can't muster more men from thin air. Everything we have is thrown into the line. If the Germans try to outflank us, you must simply do your best.'
'And see my battalion destroyed?' Chisholm had fumed.
'Do you think I like leading lambs to the slaughter?' Morgan had asked him.
'Then, with respect, sir, order the retreat.'
But Morgan had been unable to do that. Not at four in the afternoon, just as his forward troops were engaging the advancing enemy. His task was to hold the Germans as long as he could; 15th Brigade was due to start arriving at Andalsnes that evening so help was on its way but, as Ruge had reminded him at their meeting in the early hours of the morning, and as he had repeated on the telephone that day, checking German momentum and slowing their advance was crucial. They were playing for time - time that would allow 15th Brigade to arrive and deploy in strength. That meant every passing hour took on enormous importance. The problem was that soon he would have no brigade left with which to make any kind of stand, as Colonel Chisholm had painfully reminded him.
'Flank attack materialized shortly after 1800 hours,' he scribbled again. 'Ordered forward troops to fall back to the village.' In the mayhem of battle, with field-telephone lines cut and communication between units severely limited, these instructions had, inevitably, been too laic. Indeed, half his staff had been sent forward to deliver messages, but had not been seen or heard of since. What a mess, he thought. What a huge bloody mess.
He closed his diary and went out to the hallway where he found Major Dornley. 'Latest news?'
