Through the Woods to the Sea

Following the presentation by Gaute Dyrdal at the crash site, We then headed downhill from the landing site, towards the gap between two small hills, the gap that the crew had been told to go through to get to the coast. We walked along the track followed by the crew after their encounter with Magnus Askvik and after hearing his advice to head for the coast. That track is now a gravel road but in 1944 was probably a path across the cow pasture.

At the bottom of the hill we turned right, into the woods, walking through a marshy, moss-coloured green wonderland so beautiful and peaceful that it was impossible to imagine the apprehension that the crew must have felt as they walked through this place to a destination to which they had been sent by a man they had known for only a few minutes.

From the road, we followed the route of the old power line through the woods and saw the remnants of the power line that had been taken down by the trailing antenna of the Wellington.

The path through the woods took us long the inland edge of, and around, the small inlet of Vargavågen. Midway through the woods, we came to a rocky outcrop on which Bjarne Øvredal pointed out carvings thousands of years old, carvings of long-boats and their crews. What had this land been like then? The forest was young, the countryside new and the population growing, no longer pastoral. What would it be like only 75 years from now?

After a brief stop we headed on, walking through marshy ground and up the hlil to Bjørnavegen, the road to Bjørnen.

At the edge of the woods we came to the road, a new road with new houses, called Bjørnevegen. To the north lay the harbour at Halhjem, which had housed a German garrison 75 years earlier. The crew had not taken that road, but some of our group did, walking to the harbour to board the ship MIDTHORDLAND.

The rest of us turned to the south, following this new road, with many new houses, through a gap in the hills (perhaps the guide for the crew) to the houses that the crew had been seeking, the homes of Marta Bruarøy and her aunt, the English-speaking Ingeborg Bjørnen. (Even Google Earth has not been this far down this road).

How had the crew found this place? We had guides, gravel and paved roads and knew that there was an end to this road. They had just miraculously survived a crash-landing, spoken for a few minutes to the local school teacher, and headed across an unknown land to a place that they had never been before, to meet someone who may have no interest in helping them.

We had followed fairly level ground. According to the stories, the crew had more than once climbed hills to get a better view of their surroundings and to find their way to the house where Marta lived, where Maurice Neil was either chosen, or volunteered, to see if he could make contact with a friendly resident who could offer them the help they needed.

After a stop outside the house of Marta Bruarøy to bring us up to date on the crew’s adventures so far, and hearing about the trip from there up to the cave, we followed the road to find this cave.

In the first part of 2019, Mats had set out to find the “cave”, based on the accounts of the rescue and his knowledge of the local geography, and became confident he had found it. That is where we were taken.

The stories tell of the crews hiding in a cave in the woods during that first night in Norway. George Deeth says they were told of a “large cave … located near the hilltop” but after climbing up the hill, found a “small cave”. Harvey Firestone says the “cave … turned out to be a small depression in the side of the mountain”, with little room for more than one person. Arnfinn Haga uses the same words, likely adopting Firestone’s description of the cave. Haga’s early version refers only to a “cave in the wood”. Ingeborg Bjørnen refers to the location as a “slope of large boulders.

Mats and his team of local guides took us down the road a few hundred metres, and then up and across steep slopes, tangled bush and moss-covered rocks to and up the mountain to the spot that he had found, a small flat area on the hillside which faced a mountainside covered with fallen, weathered boulders, some tumbled on top of others to form the sort of structures left by pre-historic societies.

We took a break here, enjoying an excellent, and appropriate, snack of pannekaker (made by Marthe Reidun Haugland) and blueberry jam, together with what some referred to as ex-communist (or Polish) blueberries, all made by our Norwegian guests hosts and carried up the hill to be served at the cave, with local blueberries, a reminder of what the crew had been fed on their first day in Norway.

We had an opportunity to squeeze our way into this small structure formed by three or four large rocks, and wonder what it would have been like to spend several hours in those rocks, only a few hours after a forced landing in an enemy-occupied territory.

It was difficult to appreciate how six crew members could fit into that small space, which was not so much a cave but a cluster of rocks with a flat stone tumbled over the top of them. It was easy to get in, but a little bit more difficult to get out. The ground is covered with deep moss which made it difficult to see where your feet were, and there was more than one fall into the soft mossy ground.

We followed our guides, who were careful to keep us from falling down the hill, from the area of the cave along the edge of the hill, through dense forest through which we could see glimpses of the fjord below. This was to path that the crew had followed, guided by Ingeborg and Johannes Ferstadvoll down to a small cove at Tryneviko. Here the crew had been picked up in the Oselvar rowing boats.

Here is a Video of the hike from Haugeland to Bjorne, following the route of the crew, with a trip up to the cave where they were hidden on their first morning in Norway.