Rescue in a Fjord

Out of the North Atlantic into Norwegian territorial waters one day last week came a bulky grey German vessel of some 12,000 tons. She looked like a merchantman: some said she flew the Nazi naval flag; at any rate from her name, Altmark, anyone at all conversant with World War II must have known that she was the armed tender for the late raider Admiral Graf Spee, a ship sought .furiously by the British Navy because she was reported to ' carry, in verminous prison quarters below decks, between 300 and 400 British seamen taken from the Spee'?, seven sunken victims (TIME, Jan. 29).

One version was that Norway's customs authorities at Bergen went aboard the Altmark but, honoring her service flag, did not search her. Norwegian officials claimed that the ship was stopped first outside of Trondhjem Fjord, did not call at any port. A Norwegian gunboat was assigned to escort her through Norway's territorial waters as she made for her home port, Hamburg.

Whether they are official or not, the British Navy has sharp-eyed friends in Norway. The Altmark had not proceeded more than 100 miles south of Bergen, closely hugging the craggy, fjord-bitten coast, before three big British reconnaissance planes swooped low over her. Soon after, with express Admiralty orders to do so, into Norwegian waters from their stations on North Sea patrol raced a British cruiser and five destroyers. The destroyer Intrepid halted the Altmark, but while Captain Philip Louis Vian of the senior destroyer Cossack had words with the Norwegian gunboat's commander, the Altmark slid into Joesing Fjord, a deep, narrow, dead-end harbor five miles long. Another Norwegian gunboat appeared, joining the first to bar the fjord to the British.

Captain Vian said he had orders to rescue British prisoners from the Altmark. He suggested that the Norwegians join him in putting guards aboard her, taking her back to Bergen for examination. The Norwegians explained that their authorities had found the Altmark to be unarmed, were unaware of any prisoners aboard. Would the British please respect Norway's neutrality, withdraw from her waters? Captain Vian & mates pulled out beyond the three-mile limit where they lay watchfully, awaiting further Admiralty instructions. While they waited, along came the German tanker Baldur which, accosted by the destroyer Ivanhoe, scuttled and fired herself.

After dark came the Admiralty's command: go in and rescue the Altmark'?, prisoners, with or without Norway's permission. Captain Vian at once took his Cos sack into the fjord again. He went aboard the Norwegian gunboat Kjell, invited her commander to lead a British boarding party which would find out for certain about prisoners on the Altmark. The Norwegian declined, but went aboard the Cossack, which proceeded up the moonlit fjord to its precipitous end, where the Altmark had got fast in pack ice.

As the Cossack approached, playing its searchlights, the Altmark broke free, tried to swing around and ram the Cossack. The latter darted alongside and grappled.

The Cossack's second-in-command, Lieut.-Commander Bradwell Talbot Turner leapt over the railings at the head of a boarding party, brandishing his revolver, shouting "Follow me!" He knocked aside a Nazi guard, dashed to the bridge and signaled full speed astern, ramming the Altmark firmly on rocks under the fjord's wall. As Lieut.-Commander Turner burst into the Nazi Captain's cabin, a revolver fixed as a booby trap exploded, wounding him in the arm.

The fjord now rang with lively gunfire. Five Nazis fell dead, five were wounded (two fatally). Some of the Germans swarmed overside, got up on the cliff and shot back at the British, who potted two Nazis running over the ice. Bullets whizzed through the little fishing village of Joesinghavn. Some of the Nazis, surprised in their nightclothes, didn't stop running till they were ten miles away. Those remaining on the Altmark surrendered.

The boarding party attacked heavy chains and cables which fastened down the Altmark' s hatches. Wrenching off the covers, they called: "Are there any British down there?" Up to the deck and over onto the Cossack scrambled 326 survivors of the Ashlea, Newton Beech, Huntsman, Africa Shell, Trevanion, Doric Star, Tairoa. They were haggard, tattered, bearded, verminous. Some had stomach ulcers from the scrawny diet -- mostly black bread and tea -- on which they had lived since as long ago as early December.

One had leprosy. They said they had stopped at Bergen and had tried to make the Norwegian inspectors hear them by shouting, banging on the ship's sides, shoving a Union Jack out through a crack. Nobody else said they had stopped at Ber gen. After they entered Joesing Fjord, their captors set a time bomb in the prisoners' quarters which might have destroyed them had help not come when it did.

The Cossack took no Nazis prisoner but steamed at once out of Joesing Fjord, across the North Sea to Leith, Scotland. Airplane escorts which flew out to meet her averted disaster by spotting four mines in her path. Ovations and ambu lances awaited the rescued men, Admiralty plaudits their rescuers. Then came the repercussions of as fine a night's work as the British Navy could ask.

In Oslo, Premier Johan Nygaardsvold of Norway was on as hot a spot as any neutral statesman could imagine. Ger many was foaming at the mouth, demand ing to know why Norway had not resisted Britain's "criminal," "bestial" raid inside her waters. Mr. Nygaardsvold protested in person to the British Minister, but in London, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax did not even wait to hear from Oslo. He demanded to know why Norway had failed to discover that the Altmark carried pris oners and was armed with two pom-pom guns, four machine guns !

In this Altmark affair, international law was fractured. First, Great Britain argued that Norway violated international law when the Altmark was allowed to pro ceed through neutral waters with concealed prisoners of war. Moreover, said Britain, the Norwegian authorities obviously shut their eyes to the Altmark'?, true character. The British Admiralty, in ordering a raid in neutral waters, certainly was breaking international law right & left, regardless of its excuses. While Berlin snarled horrendous but vague threats of reprisal at both Britain and Norway, the London Times heartily observed that the Battle of Punta del Este would have lacked a fitting sequel if, "after the lion [Spee] had been destroyed, the jackal [Altmark'] had escaped with the prey." Come now what might, Britons felt that nothing could be worse than a parade of 326 British captives through the streets of Hamburg.

Norway was good and mad. Early this week Norwegian Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht, in a special statement before the Storting, let Great Britain have a piece of the Norseman's mind: "Lord Halifax was of the belief that the Altmark had been in Bergen although the ship had not been in any Norwegian harbor. ..." Further snapped Foreign Minister Koht: ". . . The British Government is of "the opinion that it can neglect ordinary international law. . . . The [Norwegian] Government cannot believe that the British Government, when having thought the case over, will not acknowledge that it is in open conflict with the principles of which it has itself so many times proclaimed." The Foreign Minister's clincher: "There is no international rule at all forbidding a war power to transport prisoners through a neutral area, in so far as navigation itself is not illegal."*

-- Besides the homing Altmark and Baldur, the British and French last week intercepted and captured two out of six Nazi ships trying to slip home from Vigo, Spain. Germany's first and big Altmark revenge was torpedoing the destroyer Daring with loss of 157 men.

-- L. Oppenheim's well-known International Law, A Treatise, agrees. Although shipments of war prisoners through neutral territory (but not neutral waters) is forbidden, "prisoners of war on board [belligerent warships] do not become free by coming into the neutral port, so long as they are not brought on shore."

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