Tanner ground the gear-stick into reverse, and was inching back when he became aware of a middle-aged man running towards him, waving his hands angrily.
'We'd better get out of here, Sarge,' said Hepworth. 'I don't think Granddad's too happy about us nicking his truck.'
Tanner thrust the gear-stick into first, and began to move out of the yard.
'Hey! That is my truck,' the man shouted in English. 'What do you think you are doing?'
'Sorry,' Tanner yelled back, 'but I'm requisitioning it. We need it to help defend your country.' He sped past the incredulous man, through the archway and out into the street. 'Poor bastard.'
'If we hadn't taken it the Jerries would have done, Sarge,' said Hepworth.
'We should have our own damned trucks, rather than having to cart around taking transport off Norwegians. It's bloody chaos here, Hep. Absolute bloody chaos.'
Not that it showed on the streets of Lillehammer that Monday morning, 22 April. Barely a soul stirred as Tanner drove through the deserted town to a warehouse next to the railway station. There, two platoons from B Company and a working party of Sherwood Foresters had been unloading stores since shortly after midnight. Most of these had now been taken out of the warehouse, but large piles were still strewn along the platform and in the yard, waiting to be taken away.
As Tanner came to a halt the quartermaster, Captain Webb, strode over to him. A squat man in his late thirties with a ruddy complexion and a large brown moustache, he called, 'Ah, there you are, Sergeant. At last! Where the bloody hell have you been?'
'We were as quick as we could be, sir. There're not many trucks about, though.'
'Any fuel?'
'Just over a quarter of a tank. We could start taking cars, perhaps.'
The quartermaster sighed.
'Better than nothing, sir,' Tanner added. 'And it's more transport.'
'Let's get this loaded first. The sooner we can get it going, the sooner it can come back for another trip.'
Another German aircraft thundered over. 'Bastards!' shouted Captain Webb, shaking his fist.
Tanner called over some men and they began loading the truck with boxes of ammunition, grenades and a number of two-inch mortars. When it was full, Webb despatched it, and Tanner took the opportunity to sit down for a moment on a wooden crate of number 36 grenades until another lorry returned. He blew on his hands and rubbed them together. It was cold but not freezing, not in Lillehammer. He was exhausted. Neither he nor any of the men had slept more than a
few hours since they'd landed nearly four days before.
Orders, counter-orders and confusion had dogged them every step of the way. He supposed that someone somewhere knew what the hell was going on, but if they did, it certainly hadn't percolated down the ranks. Trondheim, they had been told on the voyage over: they were going to head north to Trondheim. Instead they had halted, been sent south, then further south. And every time they had moved, battalions had become more and more mixed up, equipment had had to be loaded and unloaded. No one seemed to have the faintest idea what they had or where it was.
He lit a cigarette, and rubbed his eyes. He was gripped by a sense of impending doom, that they had come to this cold, mountainous country, still white with snow, completely unprepared. Christ, what a disaster the sinking of Sirius had been. Trucks, armoured cars, ammunition, guns, mortars, rations - not to mention their kit bags - all now lay at the bottom of the North Sea. Three infantry battalions were fighting the enemy with nearly half their equipment gone. It wasn't a problem the enemy appeared to share.
Sykes was walking towards him. 'All right, Corporal?' he asked.
Sykes yawned and stretched. 'If I had a bit of grub and a kip I might be.'
'Here,' said Tanner, offering him a smoke, 'take a pew for a minute.'
'Cheers, Sarge,' said Sykes, sitting down beside him on a box of Bren magazines. 'Fiasco this, isn't it?'
'Too right.' It was now nearly thirty-six hours since they had reached Lillehammer station. Tanner winced as he thought of their arrival. As a sergeant, he had travelled on one of only two coaches, but the rest had been forced to endure the slow, winding journey in closed goods wagons. Exhausted men had stumbled off the train, and loaded with the kit of their full marching order they had begun banging into one another. For a while they had stood on the platform wearing dazed expressions, stamping their feet against the cold and blowing on their hands. What pained him most, though, was seeing Brigadier Morgan, commander of 148th Brigade, and the Norwegian commander, General Ruge, watching. With a stiff, high-collared blue-green tunic, pantaloons and black cavalry boots, Ruge had looked like a relic from the Great War, but while there had been no doubt of his military bearing, his disappointment at seeing such a tired, poorly equipped bunch of troops stagger with bewilderment from the train had been obvious. 'Christ,' Tanner muttered now. It had been humiliating.
'What, Sarge?'
'Oh, nothing. I'm just wondering what the hell we're playing at here.'
Sykes shrugged.
'I mean, for God's sake, the entire battalion's mixed up and no one knows what the hell is going on except that we're getting a pasting. Why on earth we ever bothered trying to help the Norwegians, I really don't know. Did you see them last night?'
'Not exactly inspiring, Sarge.'
'That's an understatement. I saw one machine-gun team, but otherwise I didn't see a single man carrying anything bigger than a rifle.' And as the Norwegians had trudged back, so the Rangers' C Company had been sent forward to reinforce A Company to the south of Lillehammer. Tanner had watched them head off towards the fray. Aircraft, like black insects, had swirled over the lake to the south. Smoke had pitched into the sky. Explosions, some muffled, some sharp, had resounded up the valley. By the time dusk finally began to fall, the remains of A Company had been streaming back to Lillehammer too. Apparently, the newly arrived C Company had tried to hold the line as A Company withdrew, but since then news had been scarce. With no radios, each company had been depending on civilian telephone lines; they had now been cut.
As darkness had fallen, the sounds of battle had died down. A sense of defeat had hung heavy over the town. Sure enough, just after midnight, Hepworth, the platoon runner, had reached the warehouse with news from Battalion Headquarters. General Ruge had ordered a general withdrawal to a position a mile north of Lillehammer. The stores that Tanner and the rest of Four Platoon had spent an entire day unloading were to be moved to the new position with all urgency.
That had been nine hours ago, and still piles of boxes lay stacked in front of the warehouse and along the platform. Sykes flicked his cigarette clear of them, then said, 'Better see where the rest of the boys are,' and stood up and walked off.
Tanner rubbed his eyes again. Lillehammer lay perched on the lower slopes overlooking Lake Mj0sa. It was a small town - Tanner guessed the population was probably no more than a few thousand - and like every other town and village he had seen so far, the houses were mostly made of wood and brightly painted. It was one way of cheering up the drab two-tone landscape, he supposed. It was another grey day, but above the high, steep outcrop known as the Balberg, there was a patch of blue. Smoke still rose into the sky from the south and Tanner peered up again at the town, prettily snug against the mountain, and wondered how long it would stay that way once the Luftwaffe were bombing the place. Stretching away above, the mountains were covered with snow-clad pines. The whole country, it seemed, was the same: deep U-shaped valleys, wide rivers and mountains. He had fought in mountains before, in the North West Frontier between India and Afghanistan, but those had been quite different: jagged, dry and dusty. Here, everything seemed so much closer: the report of a gun could be heard reverberating across the valley, while the roar of aero-engines seemed to suck in all the air around them, blocking out any other noise.