Ceasefire - a WW2 story from north Norway
When U-711x returned to Harstad on Feb 24 1945 she carried an unexpected load in her starboard torpedo tube. It was the body of an Englishman but this man wasn’t dead as they’d expected when they’d picked him from the freezing Barents Sea, he was, miraculously, alive. They should never have taken him on board. They’d surfaced, briefly, as the wind had begun whipping the sea into a foam-flecked gale. They had wanted to see the wreckage of their victim. A British corvette. They knew they’d hit her. Everyone in the boat had felt the detonation. They had cheered. It was their first real success. No one liked to think too much about the fishing vessel they’d stopped late in the previous summer. It had had eight civilians on board – Norwegians, heading for Shetland – though they refused to admit their destination. Five men, a woman and two children. They’d sunk the boat and landed the people in Lodingen. They didn’t need to take them all the way back to Hammerfest. They hadn’t come from...