A Typical SOE Story: The Unknown Warriors of the Norwegian Resistance

The author was born with a cover operation. He had at least three false identities in official records during the first ten days of life. The context was the Nazi occupation of Norway. People in the Resistance had to act in unusual ways. Some even had to give away their own children to protect them. The author was protected by adoptive parents who were secretive. After their death the author spent years attempting to research his enigmatic early life. Official wartime sources contained only false information about his father, and his mother was dead. An investigation seemed unlikely to find a father who had been present in Trondheim on the day of conception, the 27th of June 1942, probably with brown eyes and from the North of Norway. Historical research in the Resistance gave new information about secret work during WW2 and the stay behind organization in the early postwar years. His father was a secret agent of the British organization SOE. He was on operation to establish groups for subversive warfare as the illegal cover for the early attempts of sabotage against the battleship Tirpitz. His mother was the link between an Allied source for naval intelligence and the W/T agent. His father was captured by the enemy and subjected to torture for 63 days without cracking. The story documents the limited efficiency of torture. He died six days before his son was born with a cover operation to protect individuals in the Resistance connected with the agent. The book presents many individuals of the Resistance. One of them was the Dean of the Trondheim Cathedral, instrumental in establishing the early Resistance and credited for the cover operation protecting the author at birth. Another is the British intelligence officer Frank Stagg, active in both world wars and the early cold war. The author's father was sent to an SOE operation that had been penetrated by the enemy already in April 1941. Following his arrest SOE returned the compromised organizer to the field of operation. This disastrous decision led to the shooting of a young Swede in the Norwegian Legation in Stockholm. The tragic death in 1944 has been suppressed by the authorities of three countries. In this book there is a mixture of heroism and horror revealed by an author who discovered that these operations shaped his life. For some readers the discovery of the author's own identity after half a century in ignorance, will be their main interest. Many readers will concentrate on the theme of an adopted child discovering his biological family. For other readers the main interest is the story of the Resistance in Norway and of SOE's efforts in the war behind the front lines with the organization's legacy for postwar years of occupation preparedness.