Hitler's Vikings Read online

  One constantly wanted to eat. I often dreamed on the way to work of suddenly finding a box of fat or an entire horse lying around.

  It wasn’t just Leningrad’s desperate inhabitants who were obsessed by food in early 1942. Outside the city in the mud and squalor of the trenches, the besiegers felt hunger too, though nothing like what was happening on the Soviet side. The very drudgery of static warfare also increases the importance of food to alleviate boredom and break up the monotony. A good day in the trench was one where you had plenty to eat and it tasted of something more than the usual ‘giddy-up-soup’ (horsemeat goulash made from the supply of dead draught animals). This, at least, was an aspect of front life that the Scandinavians excelled at. Their homelands were not subject to extensive rationing or Allied bombing raids and food was still relatively plentiful. The result was a steady flow of parcels from friends and relatives packed with delicious goodies. Cheese, butter, pickled fish and jams were all sent to the ever-hungry volunteers, but this situation did not suit everyone. Jan Munk only half-jokingly said:

  I liked the Norwegians a lot, good soldiers and nice to know as were the few Swedes I knew [there was one Swede, one Norwegian and two Danes in Munk’s nine-man recruit squad in Sennheim training camp]. The Finns had a great reputation as fighters, the Danes were good soldiers too, but I didn’t like them much personally as they used to get wonderful food parcels from home but didn’t share them with us!

  The DNL and the Battle of Urizk

  Away from the food, there was no glory to be had in the trenches at Krasnoye Selo. No sweeping charges with massed tanks and aircraft, no grand pincer movements leading to prisoner bags in the tens of thousands. Combat was through shadowy night patrols, or the sudden launch of a brutal trench raid. Snipers abounded, as did artillery observers, ever waiting to unleash a salvo of rounds onto the unsuspecting. Bjarne Dramstad recalled his first experiences at the Front:

  The Norwegian volunteer Bjarne Dramstad’s identification picture from his official Wehrmacht papers, his Soldbuch. (Knut Thoresen)

  The DNL’s Olaf Lindvig in Russia posing with his MP40 sub-machine gun. (James Macleod)

  First I did guard duty at an ammunition storage dump for a few weeks and then I was ‘loaned out’ as an infantryman to 2nd Company. My new platoon commander showed me my post in the trench and then I started my frontline service. This was around mid-March. I can remember a good friend of mine, Olav, was shot in the head – in the middle of his nose. The bullet came right out of his neck and there was a lot of blood.

  It all started with the Russian sniper that killed Ola Strand [a volunteer and friend of Dramstad’s]. Olav, who was one of the best snipers in the Legion, tried to spot the sniper but the Russian was expecting him, and shot him. Olav survived the war, and we actually served together later in Finland, but the Russian bullet gave him brain damage. He ended up living alone in a cabin on the Swedish border until he died in 1980.

  But what I remember most from my first time at the Front was the grotesque sight of the dead Russians in front of our trenches. Their rotting bodies showed up as the snow melted, and blackbirds crawled into their chests to eat, it was horrible.

  As always, infantrymen like Bjarne lived by the motto of ‘keep your head down, dig fast and dig deep.’ But being careful in war just isn’t enough, and it was not long before the DNL started to suffer. In just over a week in the line, five Norwegians (including Ola Strand of course) were dead, and then on 19 March a well-directed artillery strike hit the command bunker of the 4th Company’s 3rd Platoon. The ex-Norwegian Army officer, GSSN and NS luminary Charles Westberg was killed along with three of his men. It was a nasty shock to the still-acclimatising Norwegians, and the event bore a striking resemblance to the death of the Flemish volunteer leader, Reimond Tollenaere, killed just two months earlier less than eighty miles away on the Volkhov.

  After Westberg’s loss, the Front was relatively quiet for the next fortnight, with only sporadic shelling and the odd patrol. 1st Company’s Commander, Olaf Lindvig said of these patrols:

  The orders were not to attack from the front, but to send out recce and fighting patrols which would be backed by infantry support as necessary. The strength of the patrols, which were organised by the company commanders, could range from eight to ten men, or in some cases be of platoon strength. Many of those who volunteered for the patrols used to be hunting enthusiasts back home, and they were undoubtedly among the best we had.

  There were occasional full-on attacks as well, the first of which Bjarne Dramstad remembers vividly:

  Our closest point to the Russian lines was only about 75 metres away and that’s where they attacked from. First we were hit by mortars, and after that came the infantry. We managed to stop them and lost no-one killed or wounded in that attack. It is possible someone was wounded behind us but I can’t remember. The Russians lost several men. They were left behind lying in front of us. I was scared of course, but managed to do my job. Sometimes when the Russians started their bombardments of our positions, to soften us up, I sank down in the mud onto my knees praying to God. It was hell, sometimes I just thought of my mother, but when the attack came I always reacted like a machine, I acted without thinking.

  The beginning of April wrought a change in position and in fortune for the DNL. The town of Urizk (also called Uritsk) was a small place, built at the junction where the main tramline going east from Leningrad to Oranienbaum splits and branches off south to Krasnoye Selo. It does not exist today. Utterly destroyed in the siege it was not rebuilt after the war. Its remnants were absorbed into the still-existent town of Staro Panovo, which stands looking out across the flat, reclaimed land of the area. The Urizk plain is relatively featureless, and criss-crossed with small waterways and drainage ditches. There is little cover and its very nature means a defender has excellent fields of fire. In the late summer of 1941 it was the western anchor of the main Russian defensive line built to protect Leningrad. An average daily total of 125,000 Leningraders expended a staggering 8,757,600 man-days building that line of fortifications, the majority of which fell to the advancing Germans in the autumn. So Urizk was in German hands, or more specifically from the beginning of April 1942, in the hands of 1,200 Norwegian Waffen-SS men. Bjørn Østring was now a Hauptsharführer commanding the 1st Platoon of the DNL’s 1st Company under Olaf Lindvig. He said of the move:

  It was heavenly to get to our new positions at Urizk, with a bunker we could actually stand up in and feel safe at the same time as it had an apparently thick roof. But as the spring progressed and the snow melted, we quickly realized that it was only some boards with snow on top, and that the walls rapidly crumbled because they were made with dirt mixed with ice and snow. What’s more, everything that melted filled the trenches with genuine, wet, Russian mud. Our positions were at the top of a small hill, and so had some drainage. But for more than a kilometre around were wet trenches, from which flowed a continuous stream of muddy water. The result was that we were wet all the time. Often when going out to our positions, we had to wade through water up to our waists, and then stand guard for three to five hours while soaking wet. We then had to walk back to our bunker through the same water, which had then developed a thin layer of ice that we had to break. To rest, we had to climb a tall bank made to keep the water out. But after a while we couldn’t keep all the water out, and sleeping during the day could only be done on the topmost bunk or on boards fastened to the ceiling. We never took our boots off, because our feet were blistered and swollen and we would never have been able to put them back on.

  Under these ‘drowned cat’ conditions we wanted the winter back just to ‘bind the water together’. Interestingly enough nobody became sick during these weeks. But we still had many men wounded or killed. It was very tempting to run along the top of the trench and stay dry, but with the closest snipers only 30 metres away this was the end for many of our men.

  Østvig’s company commander, Olaf Lindvig, agreed with him:
r />   The Russians had set up a network of outposts and listening posts and seemed to have limitless numbers of troopers. They also seemed to have plenty of snipers whose aim was spot on. They would lie still for hours, observing through their binoculars. They were so sharp that they could knock a man’s head off the moment he put it above the trench. The easiest targets were young Norwegian reservists, green and wet behind the ears. Some of whom were so trigger happy that they would sit on the edge of a trench and blast off their weapons. They didn’t last long. The Russians would also send half-a-dozen or so bombers over at any time to attack our rear areas. The best occasion was when two Luftwaffe fighters shot down these nuisances and we were able to capture the crews after they baled out.

  Such conditions have been the bane of soldiers through the ages. Both men would have recognised a description written 230 years earlier by the great British general the Duke of Marlborough, talking about his own men’s experiences in Flanders during the War of the Spanish Succession: ‘… the continual rains, our poor men are up to their knees in mud and water, which is a most grievous sight, and will definitely occasion great sickness.’

  Some things in the army never change. Another one of which is the necessity for any incoming unit, in this case the DNL, to familiarise itself with the lie of the land, and the enemy facing them. Patrolling is the standard method of accomplishing this, as well as beginning the process of dominating no-man’s land and winning the initiative. It was no different for the DNL, so on the night of 15 April, Ragnar Berg led 18 men of his 4th Heavy Weapons Company on a trench raid against their opposite numbers in the Red Army’s 56th Rifle Division. Berg was an experienced officer and the raid was well-planned, but it ended in disaster. In the nightmare ground conditions Østring described above, the assault troop inadvertently wandered into an uncharted Soviet minefield. A volunteer trod on a mine, and the blast alerted the Russians who plastered them with artillery firing on pre-set lines, so-called DFs (Defensive Fires). The Norwegians didn’t have a chance, almost every man was hit and eight were killed outright including Berg himself, although the real miracle was that any survived at all. Under fire, the surviving wounded were brought out of the minefield by volunteers and sent to the rear for treatment. The survivors of Berg’s Company were taken over by another Norwegian officer, Njaal Reppen. The DNL had now lost a company commander, a platoon commander and two dozen men in less than two months; and it would not be long before the entire Legion faced its stiffest test of the war so far.

  To the southeast the Red Army spring offensive on the Volkhov had seen Andrei Vlasov’s 2nd Shock Army crash through the German lines and flood west. In a scrambling defence, Army Group North had halted the advance and pinched off the assault. Every available unit was rushed east including the bulk of the 2nd SS Motorised Infantry Brigade (including by this time the SS-Legion Flandern – see Hitler’s Flemish Lions). This left the siege lines around Leningrad badly stretched. The Russians took their chance to strike.

  With all eyes on the Volkhov, the Leningrad Command thought a swift thrust along the coast through Urizk would enable a link up with the Oranienbaum Pocket. Plans were laid for an assault beginning on 21 April. By then the Norwegians had made some improvements to their positions. According to Bjørn Østring

  … the conditions got somewhat better, which enabled us to improve many of our positions while the sun started to dry everything up. The guard duties were changed and everyone – even the commanders – was able to get some sleep almost every night. But as soon as an attack was imminent we all worked every minute. We worked between flares at night, where we were like ants that took cover and froze once another flare erupted above us in the sky.

  For machine-gun and single soldier positions, new spring enforcements were built into the existing trenches, while ‘Spanish riders’ were moved forward to strengthen the sparse barbed wire fences. This job was extremely dangerous, as the Bolsheviks and us were working on our various projects almost shoulder to shoulder and just metres apart.

  A company of Latvian volunteers helped us out during this time. Their eagerness to work was great, but their hate towards the Russians was so enormous it scared us. They were not like us Norwegians, individuals with independent responsibilities, they did everything as a group. They always needed to have a leader in charge. From this point onwards this was the way we pictured our enemy as well, and we learned who we should go after first when the attack eventually came.

  Bjarne Dramstad agreed with his fellow legionnaire on the quality of these Baltic soldiers; ‘The Baltic nationals were very well regarded as soldiers, good fighters and highly motivated.’ Bjørn Østring fought in the Urizk battle in late April 1942, and while it did not grab the headlines like the bloody mass slaughter going on in the primeval Volkhov swamps at the same time, it was typical of the vicious, intense, small-unit combats that characterised the DNL’s record in Russia. As such it is worth recounting Bjørn’s extraordinarily vivid story of the fight in full:

  Already in the week before the attack we started seeing the first defectors coming across the frontline. We also noticed that the enemy aimed their artillery very differently than they previously had done. Very seldom more than two or three rounds against a given target, and the rounds were fired more often and with much more precision than before.

  During the daytime we also noticed significantly more activity in the open area between us and the city of Leningrad, and during the night new sounds we hadn’t heard before came out of the darkness. Of course the sun and warmer weather could be the reason for some of this. But the number of defectors increased, they seemed much better fed and were obviously new at the front. Their main reason to defect was obvious – the ever-present desire to survive! This was evident. An attack was clearly imminent and their thoughts must have been – ‘If I cross over the mines will still be there and I will also be shot at. If we don’t succeed with the attack, I will also have to withdraw over the same field. Then the NKVD will be in place to fire at the withdrawing troops and I will be shot regardless!’

  And so they came, one or two at a time. They especially used the low ditches, which gave their own people a poor view of their escape across to our side. We started to call these ditches, the ‘Defectors Ditches’. It appeared the Russian soldiers were thinking the same way we did, believing that only the Germans would win in the end.

  The Company was organised with Ole Hjalmar Jacobsen’s platoon on the right as seen from the enemy (Jacobsen was from Vestfold). In the middle was the platoon of Per Wang from Oslo, he had a theology education. My platoon was on the left, and then there was a small open area to the 2nd Company commanded by Karsten Sveen from Biri. The closest platoon to me on that side was led by Sophus Kars from Bergen.

  The positions of our Company had an angular shape, with the right leg defended by the other two platoons. The terrain between them and the Russian trenches about 200 metres in front was relatively flat. The point of the triangle was at the ‘Red Ruin’, and my leg was on the hill with the road between Oranienbaum and Leningrad about 250 metres to our front. The road ran parallel to our frontline and went through the swampy lowlands stretching into town. Ivan’s [Wehrmacht slang for the Red Army] trenches followed Ufer Street’s other side. From my vantage point, at the point of the triangle, I had one trench stretching straight forward towards the enemy positions. From this position we had a backward view straight into the area of Red Ruin. In this area Henrik-Skaar Pedersen and his section had their bunker, which was one of many that we maintained. He was so exposed to the enemy in this position that we twice noticed enemy footprints on the roof of the bunker. At the end of the trench we had a machine-gun position manned by Arnold Schee from Oslo. Just before this machine-gun nest, a separate trench was dug northward on our side parallel to Ufer Street. Every night we placed a listening post here. There was also a period when Ivan controlled this trench during daytime. Because the trench going to Schee’s machine-gun nest was pointing straight
towards the enemy, we had it covered with snow throughout the winter. But now during spring and summer it was just covered with boards and twigs etc, which gave us some sort of secure feeling.

  The second-in-command of my platoon, Naval Cadet Arne-Wilhelm Nilsen from Østfold, was a very capable leader and soldier. He had a good sense of humour and was always calm. The three section leaders were: engineering student Einar-Gill Fasting Jr of Hamar, world traveller Per Bradley from Bergen who had an exceptionally beautiful voice and had held church concerts throughout Norway, and Henrik Skaar-Pedersen from Egersund who used to study at Kotpus. The mortar section was headed by Olaf Hilde, a farmer from Stokke in Vestfold. All of them were top notch soldiers and all very proud to be a part of our platoon as well as being Norwegian soldiers. We were the very first recruits to show up at Bjølsen School, and subsequently formed the 1st platoon in the 1st Company in the first battalion to be set up! This became Viken Battalion of Den Norske Legion. We all knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, but seen from the Germans’ point of view we were probably no parade-ground soldiers. We had all volunteered and were of the opinion that everyone in the Battalion was making an effort to stop the communists taking over Europe. We were also past the stage where we were afraid of becoming casualties of the war, for us this wasn’t about ‘fields of honour’ but only bitter reality. Everyone was either going to be lucky, or unlucky. What we feared most was losing an arm or a leg, or becoming blind. But when the battle rolled on at its worst, we were all thinking ‘and you volunteered for this?’

  The night before the 21st of April we heard the Russian tanks crawling around. During the briefing I had with the Company Commander that morning, I received orders to gather a group of soldiers with Pioneer [assault engineer training that included destroying tanks] training and go out on a hunt over Ufer Street to damage any tanks getting ready to attack us from the road. Straight behind us was a building we called ‘The Dairy’, and our 14th Company (Finn Finnson’s anti-tank company) had an anti-tank cannon nearby which now had to change position. Earlier I had gotten hold of explosives and fuses, which were now put to good use. We also agreed that as soon as the attack started we would get the men as close as possible to the enemy. This was thought to be the best option under the circumstances [to help nullify the effect of the Russian artillery]. I crawled over to 2nd Company’s positions and agreed with Sophus Kars how his men and machine-gun could cover the area in front of us as we were going to move forward. During our conversation an intense bombardment began, which lasted several hours. I had to get back at some point, but this was incredibly difficult as shells were landing all around us. I thought at that time that no matter what I did it would be very dangerous. I was forced to take chances that morning that normally I wouldn’t let any of my men take.