NORWAY’S GOLD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 September 1941, Page 2

NORWAY’S GOLD

SAVER FROM GERMAN HANDS QUISLING SPY RING. OUTWITTED BY PATRIOTS. How Norway’s £150,000,000 in gold was carried by patriots through the lines of Quisling spies and German troops to the sea and shipped to Canada is now told —an amazing story of bravery and ingenuity. The night the Germans entered the Oslo fiord and the Norse Government departed, the Finance Minister, Oscar Torp, stayed behind with a hand-picked company of Norwegian soldiers, sailors and patriots for a desperate effort to save the gold. It was packed in 1,500 cases and loaded on 30 motor lorries. The Minister left on the last lorry, and outriders went ahead advising Norse patriots of the coming convoy, 'to prevent ambush by Quislings. Hiding in forests by day and moving by night, the convoy crept slowly northwards to Andalsnes, 300 miles away, where British warships awaited the gold. Quislings assisted the Nazis, and paratroops were dropped between the convoy and the sea in an effort to prevent the gold getting through. One who helped the smugglers told the “Daily Mail” that the convoy spread out and lay low in the forests for four days, and then one by one the lorries crept through the Nazi lines, led by guides, and reached Andalsnes. Some of the cases were shipped aboard a British destroyer, but the rest were ferried across to Molde, where a cruiser lay.

Spies were everywhere, with the result that the cruiser was viciously attacked by bombers while loading. Not only was the quay bombed but Molde was soon a raging inferno, so that the cruiser had to sail to safety. That night, assisted by every patriot man, woman and child, every type of craft still afloat in Molde was manned and the gold put aboard. Until daybreak the vessels crept along the coast while Nazi bombers scoured the fjords. For 400 miles they went thus, to one of Norway’s most northerly ports, where the last of the cases were loaded on a merchant ship. As a precaution against loss in torpedo attack on the long Atlantic voyage, several yachts loaded with gold were hoisted bodily on to the deck and lashed there. When the freighter moved off, many patriots who had sailed their small craft through were left behind, for there was no room for all.