Another Man''s Shoes

Sven Somme

Description

First-hand account of a Norwegian scientist''s escape from German custody during the Second World War after his arrest for spying

Sujets

• Military intelligence
• Norway
• Germany

Informations

• Publié par: Polperro Heritage Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780954423384
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Another Man’s Shoes
Sven Sømme
with an Introduction by
Ellie Sømme
This book is dedicated to the men and women of Norway who fought for the freedom of their country.
Foreword
Another Man’s Shoes vividly captures the atmosphere of life in occupied Norway during WW2. Lovers of nature and the free outdoors life, Norwegians were never going to be willingly oppressed. In this moving account of the courage, determination and self-sacrifice exhibited by the Norwegian resistance movement, I found a timely reminder of how important it remains to oppose tyranny and dictatorship.
Ray Mears                    
Acknowledgments
To Corinne Souza, author of Baghdad Spy for her support and encouragement; to Linda Cracknell, writer and mountain goat, for her courage and fortitude; to my brother Bertie, son Oliver and sister Yuli, my dearest companion to the end. To our cousin Sven for help in the planning of our route retracing Pappa’s footsteps; to Oddmund who showed us the way and to all our new friends in Norway who were so welcoming and helpful. To Mum for her memories; my husband Keith for his patience and love, and to our son Sven who bears Pappa’s name. To Mike Dickins for his belief in the story; to Anne and Paddy Beresford who were the first to read it; to Jan Tystad for the translation and for bringing the story to the Norwegian public’s attention; to Ray Mears for his interest, and to Lauritz for his unstinting support and help in planning the route and for giving us Iacob’s speech.
CONTENTS

Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Sven’s Story
Chapter 1 This Quiet Countryside
Chapter 2 Things Begin To Happen
Chapter 3 The Victorious Wehrmacht
Chapter 4 The Germans Take Over
Chapter 5 We Start Afresh
Chapter 6 An Illegal Newspaper
Chapter 7 A Friend Pays A Visit
Chapter 8 Secret Work
Chapter 9 Thin Ice
Chapter 10 The Crack
Chapter 11 Events Unfold
Chapter 12 Under Arrest
Chapter 13 The Escape
Chapter 14 Across The Mountains
Chapter 15 More Mountains
Chapter 16 Respite
Chapter 17 Onwards To Sweden
Epilogue
Iacob’s Story
Plates
Copyright
Introduction
The wave of emotion hit me and for a moment I held back. Then I let the tears fall.
“Pappa’s shoes,” I whispered.
As the room fell silent I looked at Selma, standing in front of me. “Pappa’s shoes,” I whispered again. In her sunlit sitting room with our new-found friends and the waiting journalists gathered around I hugged her. This courageous old lady had kept the shoes for over 60 years, worn and with the laces still tied they bound us together; they had even survived the fire which engulfed her home ten years earlier and which was still too difficult for her to talk about. They were the shoes Pappa wore when the German commandant had said: “You’ll be shot for this, you know that don’t you, you’ll certainly be shot.” The shoes he wore when he was handcuffed and marched with an armed guard through his home town of Molde. The shoes he wore when he escaped from the ship and walked past the armed German guards with a friendly wave. And the same shoes he had worn when he made his way through the snow to the small community of Isfjorden where a young girl and her friends had risked their own lives to offer him help.
“You can’t go into the mountains in those shoes,” Selma’s brother-in-law Henry Berg had said to my father. “I have a new pair of mountain boots, we can swap.”
Selma had said in her letter to me three weeks earlier: ‘I have a present for you’. And here I was with my sister Yuli, brother Bert, my son Oliver and Yuli’s friend Linda with Selma and her family and the waiting journalists.
Selma gave a little talk while we ate the cakes and drank the coffee she had prepared. She spoke of her work in the Norwegian resistance during the war and of the help they had given to escapees trying to reach Sweden, my father being one of them. And with her voice breaking with emotion she told us about the fire that had destroyed her home. Then she crossed to the old piano standing in a corner and, giving herself a note, she sang a hymn to us, in her still strong, beautiful voice. We listened in silence, and then she said: “I have a present for you”.

*
To my shame, I didn’t read my father’s account of his escape until nearly 20 years after his death from cancer in 1961. I was busy with my family and work and there was always another book to finish reading first. Mum had mentioned it a few times and it was one of those things ‘I must do’. And so time had gone on, and I remember when I first picked it up I read as far as his arrest and then it took me another six months before I could finish it. Silly really. I knew he had survived, I was born long after the war but somehow I feared for him even though I knew. I grew up with the story, knew that my father was a hero (aren’t all fathers?) but like all small children I was busy with friends and with school.
We lived on the West coast of Norway just outside the small market town of Molde where my father had also grown up. His father had been the local doctor who ran the hospital from 1920. Pappa was the youngest of five: Ingrid, Iacob, Knud, Helene and him, Sven. When he was born in 1904 his family lived close to the town of Lillehammer in the eastern part of Norway. His father, Iacob Dybwad Somme (1866-1923) was one of the founding physicians at the Mesnalien Sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis. The fresh forest air of the area was part of the cure. Patients took daily walks in the forest, or spent several hours on the terrace every day, even when the temperature fell below zero and they had to be covered in sheepskin blankets. The sanatorium was known for its high quality and comfort. According to Dr. Sømme, nobody should reduce their standard of living because they were unlucky enough to get tuberculosis.
Of the five brothers and sisters, Iacob was perhaps the most involved with the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War. As head of intelligence for Milorg, the military organization of the resistance movement, he developed methods for espionage, and had important messages sent by radio to Britain or by courier to Sweden. He was arrested in October of 1942 and spent nearly 18 months in prison. His New Year’s Eve speech to his fellow prisoners on the 31st December 1943 became famous [see Iacob’s Story]. It was full of hope for the nation’s future freedom but, tragically, he was taken out with six other prisoners on the 2nd March and shot in reprisal for the bombing of the heavy water by the resistance at Rykan.
Sven’s sister Ingrid was also engaged in resistance work during the war, but had to leave for Sweden in 1942. In Gothenburg she was active in organizing the so-called Norway aid. Large quantities of food were sent to Norway as a supplement to the strict rationing enforced by the Germans. She also collected and sent supplies for the Norwegian resistance movement through secret ship passages.
Sven’s eldest brother, Knud, was a civil engineer and spent most of his career working in paper mills and cellulose factories. During the war he too was involved with the resistance and played an important role in helping Sven escape in 1944. As a result he received a warning from the resistance that he may be wanted by the Germans; he knew too much and would be subjected to torture if he was arrested. He and his family were ‘invited’ to flee and subsequently met up with Sven at the refugee camp in Sweden in August of that year.
Although Sven’s youngest sister, Helene, did not participate in the resistance movement, she supported Ingrid and her three brothers in their work. They would often meet at her house, which on some occasions also served as a refuge for people on the run from the Gestapo.

*
A typical Norwegian, my father Sven loved the mountains and the fjords and would spend his holidays skiing, swimming, fishing and hunting and studying the wildlife. He became a marine biologist, just like his elder brother, Iacob, and travelled to England in the early 1920’s to study. There he met my English mother, Primrose Tozer. She was just seven and he was a young man of 20 but she loved him with the innocence of a child. He was such fun to be with and, like her, he loved the animals, the insects and the flowers and birds. They were to meet again after the war when he was already married and she had lost her fiancé, Frank. Sven’s marriage to Olaug, also a marine biologist, was one of convenience rather than love. They were friends and they married with the understanding between them that if either should meet someone else and fall in love they would be free to marry. And when Sven met Primrose again Olaug agreed to the divorce.
They married in the spring of 1950 and I was born two years later. We moved to Eiksmarka on the outskirts of Oslo and two years later Bertram arrived followed by my sister Yuli in 1956. My father, who was by now working for the Norwegian government as the fishery inspector for Norway, bought a beautiful old house that was in great need of repair on the outskirts of a small village near Molde. We children were strong and healthy, playing in the woods, rowing across to the islands to swim in the summer holidays or skiing and making snow huts in the winter. Then there was school, a long uphill walk and in the winter a great downhill homecoming on skis. An estate was built around our old house, Tondergard, and with our friends we went blueberry and mushroom picking and swapped paper serviettes that we collected.
In the summer I danced for the tourists that came into the Molde fjord on the cruise ships. I belonged to a small troupe of dancers at the Romsdal Museum. We were taught all the old Norwegian folk dances by Mali Furuness, a wonderful old lady whom we all adored, and a man called Jendem accompanied us on his fiddle. We all wore the traditional bunad, national dress, some from different districts