Hometown talk on Saturday as ‘Fire and Ice’ takes a break for Christmas

History Press author Vincent Hunt gives his final talk of the year this Saturday December 12^th on the scorched earth destruction of Norway, telling stories from his book ‘Fire and Ice: the Nazis’ scorched earth campaign in Norway’ (ISBN: 9780750958073)

 The talk will take place at 11am at Didsbury Library in south Manchester. It’s his first UK appearance since a successful book tour of East Coast USA last month, where he spoke to Norwegian-American audiences in New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC.

Hunt will tell how he left the streets of Manchester for the far north of Norway pursuing a story that became darker with almost every step.

During two months of October and November 1944, German fire patrols burned down every building in the north of the country – 11,000 houses, 6,000 farms and countless churches, hotels, hospitals, fish factories and lighthouses – and forcibly evacuated the 75,000 local population.

It’s thought 25,000 fled the forced evacuation and hid in caves, in the mountains or on islands. 50,000 Norwegians were transported south out of Finnmark and the north, mostly to the south and the Lofoten Islands. 10,000 were left behind in Russian-liberated areas and 8,500 Sami indigenous people were not evacuated.

More than 1,800 evacuees were crammed onto the boat Karl Arp, a Scottish-built cargo ship refitted for the Nazis after being sunk at Dunkirk. There were only two toilets and within hours people were becoming sick. Dysentery and typhoid broke out and lice spread like wildfire.

By the time the boat reached Narvik it was a floating hell, with dead, sick and injured everywhere. The final death toll from the Karl Arp was 29 dead, mostly the old and young, many of whom were buried in Narvik.

Many of those refugees passed through Tromsø and would have seen the one-time pride of the German fleet –the battleship Tirpitz – upside down in the fjord alongside the town, having been caught in an open fjord by RAF precision-bombing Lancasters.

As Hunt travelled across the Arctic seventy years later gathering stories from people who were there or whose families were affected, he uncovered some of the dark secrets of the time – and there were plenty.

Soviet PoWs were worked to death building Nazi defences in the Norwegian mountains for a glorious last stand that never came, when some prisoners were so badly starved they resorted to cannibalism; the children of German soldiers who massively outnumbered the local population were victimised and humiliated and the children who grew up during the war in the north were traumatised for life – that’s if they weren’t maimed and killed by the ammunition dumped by the Nazis as they fled the north.

Vincent Hunt’s talk begins at 11am and is free. More details about the author at www.vincenthunt.co.uk. Read his blog here: https://scorchedearthstories.wordpress.com and follow his tweets @scorchedvh

‘Fire and Ice’ talk on Saturday December 12^th at 11am. Location: Didsbury Library, 692 Wilmslow Road, Manchester M20 2DN, 0161 227 3755

Horror of Karl Arp cargo ship journey for 1,800 refugees remembered as ‘Fire and Ice’ US tour winds up in Washington

The final stop in my ‘Fire and Ice’ tour of Norwegian America was just outside Washington DC, in the town of Fairfax, Virginia, where the local branch of the Sons of Norway group are based.

They have their headquarters in a lovely two-storey building on the edge of town and their President Burt Koske was kind enough to pick me and son Martins up from the subway.

It was an excellent night and we really enjoyed the company and the hospitality. There was a lavish buffet laid out for everyone and we were invited to eat and drink until we’d had enough. When everyone had finished, we began the talk.

I began by outlining the area of Norway affected by the scorched earth burning and the systematic and very thorough destruction of the northern county of Finnmark by the Nazis.

During two months of October and November 1944, German fire patrols burned down or destroyed more than 11,000 houses, 6,000 farms, 4,700 barns, 27 churches and 140 houses owned by religious organisations; 53 hotels and inns, 420 shops, 21 hospitals and medical buildings, 306 fish factories, 106 schools and 60 local administration buildings. 230 buildings for craft and industry, 350 bridges, 350 motor boats and thousands of rowing boats, 180 lighthouses – and boats, telephone poles and harbours.(1)

Before dealing in detail with the evacuation of the civilian population, I told the story of finding the diary of the destruction of Hammerfest. Small sections of the town were destroyed in November 1944 until one night the wind picked up when part was being burned and fanned the flames until the fire spread and took the churches too, which apparently wasn’t supposed to happen: there were German dead in the graveyards. After the war the Catholic church in Hammerfest was rebuilt from contributions sent from Germany.

But what happened to the people who lived in the north? The statistics for the scorched earth clearance of people are staggering.

The operation to forcibly evacuate 75,000 civilians from Finnmark began on October 26 1944 through a ‘Hitler order’ which had to be obeyed.

It’s thought 25,000 fled the forced evacuation and hid in caves, in the mountains or on islands. 50,000 Norwegians were transported south out of Finnmark and the north, mostly to the south and the Lofoten Islands. 10,000 were left behind in Russian-liberated areas and 8,500 Sami were not evacuated.

Between 1 – 21 November 1944, 35,000 refugees passed through Tromsø, the main evacuation centre in an operation co-ordinated by Tromsø hotelier Ragnar Hansen. People coming off the boats were found somewhere to stay, fed and put up overnight before the second phase of relocating them began, usually to relatives living further south.

Many of those in Tromsø at the time of the clearance of the north would have seen the one-time pride of the German fleet – Tirpitz – upside down in the fjord alongside the town, having been caught in the open while in Tromsø by RAF precision bombing Lancasters.

But the story that drew most attention is that of the Norwegians who were loaded onto one of the transport ships that called at the main fjords on the way south west to Tromsø. There were more than 1,800 people crammed onto the boat Karl Arp, a cargo ship built 25 years earlier in Scotland which had been bombed and sunk at Dunkirk while serving for a French shipping line.

The German cargo ship Karl Arp seen in 1972 in Turkey as ‘Karaman Dogan’. She was sold for scrap in 1975 after 55 years in service. Picture by Robert J Smith from http://www.shipspotting.com

Salvaged by the Germans and registered in Hamburg the boat’s name was changed from Cap Tafelneh to Karl Arp and she was sent north to help evacuate refugees from the far north of Finnmark. But the boat was a cargo ship, not a passenger ship and the evacuees had to go in the hold.

There were only two toilets and within hours people were becoming sick. Dysentery and typhoid broke out and lice spread like wildfire. By the time the boat reached Narvik it was like a floating hell, with dead, sick and injured everywhere. The final death toll from the Karl Arp was 29 dead, mostly the old and young, many of whom were buried in Narvik.

At the end of the war the Karl Arp was seized as a war prize and returned to its French owners where she resumed service under her former name of Cap Tafelneh. In 1950 the boat was sold to a Turkish shipping company and again in 1957 to a second Turkish owner and renamed Kahraman Dogan. The ship is pictured in Istanbul in 1972 towards the end of her life. She was scrapped in 1975.

It was only in 2012 that a memorial was placed in Narvik to the people who died on the Carl Arp, thanks to the efforts of a determined local man Olav Sørensen whose family were on board.

At the end of my talk we had a short question and answer session which covered some of the other ways the war affected Norwegian society – the vast outnumbering of the local population by the Nazi military machine, for example; the issue of the lebensborn, the children born of liaisons between Norwegian girls and German soldiers.

It can take a while to realise that these issues are all part of the same story, as is the trauma suffered by the children of Kirkenes that many are still living with, even a generation or two later.

Signing books afterwards with Jinaan Larssen and Burt Koske, organiser of the night.

Martins and I said our goodbyes to Burt Koske and the Sons of Norway in Fairfax, having had a thoroughly enjoyable evening and cast an envious eye at their library, featuring some of the books that I used as source material for ‘Fire and Ice’ and had shipped over to the UK.

When I got back to the UK several days later, I received an email from Lars Nilssen, the co-chair of the Norwegian Immigration Association in Brooklyn (http://niahistory.org/) and a gentleman with roots on Vadsø who had been at my talk in Brooklyn at the start of my week.

He told me he’d been reading ‘Fire and Ice’ with great interest, particularly the chapter about the evacuation of civilians from the north on the Karl Arp.

His grandfather Nils Betten had been the deputy in Vadsø and had tried unsuccessfully to head for the forest and so dodge the round-up of civilians onto the Karl Arp. He sailed south to Trondheim where he’d stayed with his sons before they were sent on to Sweden for the duration of the war and returned to Vadsø just before the war ended.

So even 71 years later there are still stories being told about the Karl Arp and the evacuation of 50,000 Norwegians into an Arctic winter. Incredibly, the vast majority survived – and the stories I’ve collected in ‘Fire and Ice’ are helping people on the other side of the Atlantic find out more about their family history today.

Thanks to everyone involved in the American ‘Fire and Ice’ talks, especially Burt Koske in Washington DC, Victoria Hofmo in Brooklyn and Jorgen Flood and Frode Kjersem in Philadelphia, as well as Alisa Myles, Donna Gusty and Judy Musto at Newtown Library, PA. Special thanks to Martins Vitolins, photographer for the trip.

1. Figures from Norway at War: Liberation (Norge I Krig: Frigjoring)

Tears still being shed for Guri the horse; refugees sing as they sail past their burning homes, the pain still felt today

When I was in Norway researching for my scorched earth book ‘Fire and Ice’ I knew how powerful the stories were, but it’s surprising how a little distance and a different audience can make a writer realise the depth of the emotions involved in what people have told them.

The second stop of my ‘Fire and Ice’ speaking tour of the East Coast USA was a library in a pretty town called Newtown PA, an hour south of New York. This was an event organised by my friend Alisa Myles,  a specialist reading teacher in schools in the area who has close links to the library, run by a wonderful group of very motivated, well organised and generous women.

Newtown is what you might call ‘Small Town America’. It’s a town in the Pennsylvania countryside an hour north west out of Philadelphia: the kind of place where you can hear freight trains coming from a long distance away.

Alisa and I had circulated the details around the local community and the Norwegian organisations in the area and we were delighted when a small but significant crowd of representatives of both groups of people turned up for my talk.

Because this was a local event rather than a Norwegian occasion, I switched some of the topics in my talk so non-Norwegians would be able to relate to them.

We began with a couple of stories from Kirkenes, liberated by the Russians in October 1944, six months before the rest of Norway. The town, Norway’s most north-easterly settlement, had been attacked repeatedly for years by the Red Air Force as it was a supply port for the Nazi offensive into the Soviet Union.

Ships brought men, machines and munitions into Kirkenes all year round as its waters didn’t freeze, so the Soviets launched round-the-clock air attacks during the summer of 1944 to try to halt the build-up of troops ahead of their devastating and successful assault involving nearly 100,000 men on the German front line just west of Murmansk. This is known as the ‘Petsamo-Kirkenes Offensive’.

The bombing absolutely traumatised the civilian population, the children of Kirkenes told me when I visited. I read a couple of stories told to me by the remarkable Karin Johnsen, who roamed the area as a youngster in the 1960s with her brother and their gang looking for old ammunition to blow up.

‘You would get a crisis psychiatrist or medical help if you went through that kind of traumatic experience nowadays,’ Karin said. ‘You’d be in therapy for years. But there was nothing. That’s why the kids took over, and we were ruling the town. Because we knew the grown-ups had their problems with screaming and shouting and drinking and everybody was more or less nuts, so that’s what happens.

‘When it was a clear sky in the winter, my grandmother would say, ‘Look out, it’s bomb weather.’ And when there was a thunderstorm she’d say, ‘Put your boots on and go to the basement because now we are going to die.’ She’d have these flashbacks and if there was a big explosion or planes passing low over town, she’d be hysterical. I’m still scared of thunderstorms.

‘My grandfather was crazy too. He taught me how to use a Luger. He said I had to bend my arm or the recoil from it would break my arm. He had a bayonet that he’d stolen from the Germans during the war. He sent me home once with it to scare my grandmother after getting me drunk.’

I can see shudders in the audience. What did the scorched earth destruction in the north of Norway actually mean for tens of thousands of people, I asked them? In reality they were ordered out of their homes at short notice into an Arctic winter and either forced onto boats heading south or they walked, cycled or made their own way out of the area. As they walked, they could see behind them the smoke rising from where they used to live as their homes burned.

One place that I visited during my research was a beautiful area alongside the Lyngenfjord, to the north west of Tromso. There I met an artist, Grethe Gunneng, and she showed me the area alongside the coast where her family had lived for generations. This town, Djupvik, had been occupied quickly after the German invasion in 1940 and heavily fortified. Checkpoints had been thrown across roads, barbed wire and minefields were laid along approaches from the fjord, anti-aircraft positions had been constructed and enormous gun batteries were built along the coast to shell any approaching invasion force. The gun positions are still there in Djupvik. Have a look at the paintings of the British war artist Stephen Bone who was there just as the war ended.

I told my audience about events in Djupvik, and the stories Grethe had told me about how everyday life gradually got darker and darker under German rule from the initial occupation of 1940 to the point where the prisoners of war were brought in to do the construction work.

The prison camp was built to hold them and local people could see how they were becoming malnourished so they’d leave food out ‘for the animals’ so the prisoners could eat it, despite the Germans having strict orders not to allow this. And then local officials like Grethe’s grandfather, the postmaster, would get invitations from the German commandant to go up to the camp on a Saturday evening to witness the hanging of prisoners – a sick night out which he tried to decline.

That was everyday life: going through checkpoints, being ordered around, witnessing the maltreatment of Soviet prisoners – and all this in a part of Norway that is picture book beautiful. This fjord is transformed during the summer months nowadays as motorists cruise around it enjoying the Midnight Sun. It’s one of the big modern tourist destinations, but it has such a sad recent past.

When Hitler ordered the scorched earth clearances in October 1944, all the people in the towns around Djupvik were ordered to report to Birtavarre, a small settlement a little further south on the fjord where there was a landing stage big enough to take a reasonable-sized boat.

Happier times before the Nazis: Grethe Gunneng’s mother and some of her sisters together with Guri the horse and foal.

Many people started to walk the 20 kms to Birtavarre with their animals in the cold weather but one of Grethe’s uncles wasn’t going to let the Germans have his much-loved horse, Guri.

He couldn’t face the prospect of Guri being badly treated by the Germans, so he took an awful decision to spare her this. This is how Grethe told the story in ‘Fire and Ice’.

“My uncle told me about the time they had to go as refugees. The Germans told them to bring all their animals to Birtavarre [a town on the same fjord about 10 km south] so they went there along the road. But he didn’t want the Nazis to take his horse Guri, because he loved her so much. He said he would prefer to shoot Guri himself than let the Germans take her and maybe mistreat her.

“So he took a gun and walked with Guri to the field and shot her. Afterwards, some of the neighbours said they wished they’d done that to their animals too. My uncle was 70 when he told me this story and he was crying as he told me.”

As I was telling this story I realised I was becoming a bit upset myself. Imagine a young lad shooting his own horse so the Nazis wouldn’t have her? I looked up and saw a couple of people in the audience were dabbing away tears too.

At Birtavarre, there were scenes from hell. The animals the people living in the area had brought were being slaughtered for food and the river flowing into the fjord was running red with blood. In the middle of all this activity – houses being set on fire, soldiers ordering people to leave animals here and line up there, children probably upset and bewildered crying – people were being loaded onto boats away from this.

The refugees from Djupvik sail past the shore where they have lived their whole lives, their homes burning, their animals slaughtered – and burst into an impromptu song of the north: ‘Oh I know a land far away’. It’s the stuff that films are made of…

One of the most powerful moments of my research trip to Norway came when Grethe and I were standing looking out across the Lyngenfjord. She told the story of a boatload of refugees from Djupvik being sent to Tromso who realised they were sailing past the small area of coastline that had been their home for so many years; a picturesque stretch of land edged with mountains alongside a fjord that had been transformed by war from a place of natural beauty to a nightmare.

As the boat drew level with Djupvik one of the men in the boat, a teacher, began to sing one of the songs of the north which everyone knew and which is, in effect, a northern national anthem: ‘Oh I know a land far up north’ [A eg veit meg eit land’].

And as he sang, everyone in the boat being torn from the the land they loved, the place they had grown up in, sang too:

‘Oh, I know of a land far away to the north

With a shimmering beach between mountains and fjords

Where my heart wants to stay, when I’m far, far away

Tied with the finest, finest bands.

Oh, I remember, I remember

I remember this land so well!

And I long to see this land so often, and it tugs at me gently when I am far away.

With awakening spring my longing turns strong

So that all I can do is cry

All I can do is cry’

I remember at the time Grethe was telling me this story that the emotion – quite naturally – seemed to be getting to her. I wrote about an extraordinary moment that happened at this time.

“We both gaze at the spot in the fjord where such a dramatic and emotional moment happened. As we look, a shard of sunlight breaks through the clouds and lights up the waves exactly where we’re looking. It’s like a scene from a film: a boat carrying people forced to leave their village – their world – having shot their much-loved animals themselves to spare them cruelty and mistreatment, their homes burned or destroyed, possessions buried, having walked to Birtavarre where the fjord is running red with the blood of butchered animals.

As they sail past the homes they had to leave, the teacher bursts into a song of their much-loved homeland they are now leaving and they all start singing too. It’s impossibly heart-rending and powerful against the backdrop of this grey, misty fjord with its single ray of sunlight. Grethe stares out across the fjord with a faraway look in her eyes and says: ‘My mother says to me: “When I die, play this song at my funeral.”’

Now, as I’m telling this powerful story to a room full of people on the other side of the world. I can feel the emotion is rather getting to me too, not least because of Guri the horse. I stop, and pause, and notice that one or two people in the room seem to be feeling the same way.

So not only did the story of Guri the horse have Grethe’s uncle crying 70 years after he spared her mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, it had Grethe crying as she told me. It’s  had me crying ever since and now I’m telling people and they are crying.

Guri’s unfortunate end in a field high up in the Arctic Circle 71 years ago hasn’t lost the power to touch people.

Relaxing after an emotional hour. left to right: Martins, Alisa, Violet, the author

At the end of the talk I was delighted to meet several Norwegian ladies who live near Newtown who have quite an active group and then after a couple of photographs we all enjoyed the cakes and refreshments that Alise and the library staff have so kindly laid on. Then it was back to the station for Martins and myself for a late train to Philadelphia, where we had a day off to look around a city about to be voted UNESCO most important city in American history just a day or two later.

Next and final stop: With the Sons of Norway, Fairfax, Virginia (a Metro ride to the edge of Washington DC then a short ride in a car.)

With many thanks to the Board and staff at Newtown library, Alisa Myles and daughter Violet.

On first night of US-Norway book tour tales of Finnmark kids, ammunition and Gestapo men begging for mercy

Beginning my talk to the Leif Ericson Society in Brooklyn, introduced by Carl Hedlund.

I have taken my stories of the scorched earth destruction of wartime Finnmark and the far north of Norway on the road during the past few weeks: opening a literary festival in Merseyside at the beginning of the month and then as a guest of the Manchester and Liverpool Historical Association, an active group of history lovers in the north west of England.

Wherever I’ve taken the book so far in the UK the response has been similar to mine before I wrote it: I knew something of wartime events in Norway, such as the Heroes of Telemark, the Resistance in the south and the sinking of the Tirpitz.

But the stories I gathered on the road in the north of Norway which I tell in ‘Fire and Ice: the Nazis’ scorched earth campaign in Norway’ – of the trauma of the people of Kirkenes from the bombing by the Red Army Air Force and the families scattered by the forced evacuation of Finnmark, to the cruel treatment and suffering of the Soviet prisoners of war worked to death building roads and military bunkers .. this is new to my audiences.

So I boarded a plane for the United States wondering what Norwegian-Americans would make of these stories.

My first stop was Bay Ridge in Brooklyn thanks to the wonderful Victoria Hofmo, who is an active organiser for the Norwegian-American community there and who runs the Scandinavian East Coast Museum (http://www.scandinavian-museum.org/about.html) Victoria was also kind enough to interview me at length for the Norwegian-American Weekly, which she contributes to.

On the way to the ‘Fire and Ice’ talk in Brooklyn.

The venue for my ‘Fire and Ice’ talk was a church dead in the centre of one of the largest and oldest populations of Norwegians in America. Bay Ridge was once home to 60,000 Norwegians and Scandinavians and had been established 300 years before by settlers from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, dominating that tip of Brooklyn. At the end of that section of land the enormous Verrazano Narrows Bridge was built, and it was Norwegian homes that had to be cleared for its foundations and approach roads.

Slides and stories from Finnmark transplanted to Brooklyn.

Under the auspices of a meeting of the Leif Ericson Society – named after the Viking who first landed in America in 1000 AD and who almost gave his name to that enormous bridge – an audience of Norwegian-Americans gathered, mostly from the south although with one descendant of the former Sheriff of Vadsø, a small settlement in the north near Kirkenes.

I began with extracts of Knut Tharaldsen’s stories of watching the Red Army pushing the German Army out of Jarfjord, witnessing the death of several soldiers at close hand and of others fatally injured waiting to die, and then closing with his assessment of how that immediate trauma affected him and others for the rest of his life.

Then I moved on to Karin Johnsen’s shocking tales of how she and her brother used to collect live ammunition from around Kirkenes and either throw it on fires, when it would explode, or smuggle it into the family home in her rucsac. I could sense the same feeling of utter shock and disbelief among my audience as I had felt when Karin first told me these stories.

Sometimes, when I’ve had a break from these stories and then come back to them, I underestimate the emotional impact they might have on people hearing them for the first time. All of a sudden I realise that what went on in the north of Norway during the war is quite heavy duty material.

The children blown up by live ammunition. The Soviet prisoners starved and worked to death, resorting to cannibalism in their pitiful camps in the mountains near Tromsø. The ‘lebensborn’ children born of German fathers who were badly treated, abused and victimised after the war.

I mentally search for stories that might lift the mood. How about the Norwegian-American hero pilot Bernt Balchen who flew supply drops to the Resistance and later airlifted essential supplies into post-scorched earth Kirkenes? Yes, that anecdote about him watching some Red Army soldiers clearing a section of the airfield with a bulldozer and warning the Colonel in charge that there were mines laid in that area. And no sooner had the words come out of his mouth than the bulldozer hit a mine which exploded, killing the two men.

‘Not to worry,’ said the Colonel. ‘We have plenty of men and the Americans have plenty of bulldozers’.

Hmm. Maybe not. How about a rescue, maybe of Norwegians who defied the Nazi round-up of the population of Finnmark? The biggest rescue happened on the island of Sørøya, when 1,000 people took refuge in caves .. but they thought it would only be a matter of days before the Allies landed and rescued them, and in the end they found themselves starving and completely unprepared for winter, and had to send a boat out for help, which came in the form of Royal Navy destroyers running the gauntlet of German U-boats to get them off the island.

In the end I settle for a story told to me by Gunnar Jaklin, son of a Tromsø newspaper editor who fled with his family to Sweden when he discovered the Gestapo wanted to question him for a second time following a spell in a prison camp. Mr Jaklin volunteered for the Norwegian ‘police’ set up in exile in Sweden and sent into the north of Norway to re-establish Norwegian sovereignty in Finnmark, which seem in actual fact not far short of special forces commandos.

He told me a funny story about rounding up Gestapo agents after the capitulation and transporting them by boat to Narvik for further processing. The Gestapo men were lined up on either side of the boat’s main hall and as one of Mr Jaklin’s colleagues came through the door he accidentally caught his thumb in the trigger of his semi-automatic machine gun and fired a burst of bullets through the roof of the boat.

But the Gestapo agents thought this was simply a burst of gunfire before they were executed and dumped into the sea, and they began to cry and beg for their lives.

‘Can you believe it?’ Mr Jaklin said. ‘Gestapo?’

The story has the desired effect and a ripple of laughter spreads through my audience. I’m relieved. Perhaps I have under-estimated the content of my talk….

America’s Norwegian population dates back 300 years. In tonight’s audience were people with relatives who had been involved in events in Finnmark and those working to document the history of Norwegians who migrated to America. It was a fascinating evening.

All of the stories in ‘Fire and Ice’ affected me deeply – that’s why I included them. But perhaps the story that affected me the most, and increasingly chokes me up, is that of the 23 year old Luftwaffe ‘helferin’ or secretary Erika Schöne, who died in what remains the worst crash in Norwegian aviation history, that of an overloaded Luftwaffe Condor which broke up over a fjord in the north in October 1944 killing all 51 people on board, most of whom were women.

Erika’s story was told to me by Lakselv author Roger Albrigtsen who runs a website piecing together the historical landscape of the war in Finnmark and the north called FKLF.no which can be found at the website (http://krigshistorisklandskap.blogspot.co.uk/). This was a resource I relied on heavily when researching ‘Fire and Ice’ and Roger – part of a network of military historians and enthusiasts in the north – was extremely generous with his help.

Erika died in the plane crash but her family contacted Roger quite recently and asked if he’d take a picture of her grave when he was next in Narvik, where there is a German cemetery. This he did, laying a rose on her grave before taking the picture. Erika’s family were very grateful and shared with him the contents of Erika’s last letter home to her sister and young niece in which she described how she’d grown to love the north of Norway and if she didn’t make it back she would be buried there. It’s almost as if she knew. Roger was interested in this as the book he was writing at the time was called ‘Last Letters’.

The part of the story which chokes me up though is how the family reacted to Erika’s death. For years afterwards her father would scan the skies, as if looking for Erika’s plane to come back. There’s a grave for Erika in Germany, but of course, she’s in Norway. To me this shows how grief and loss lasts a lifetime and that the theme of remembrance can reduce war to individuals caught up in it – and a tragedy like that of Erika Schöne is a tragedy we can all as humans relate to.

After the talk, author and audience sat down to a meal of Swedish meatballs, pasta, salad and cakes which was delicious and very welcome, before my son Martins and I walked back to our hotel through Bay Ridge, once a bustling area of Scandinavian life which – 40 minutes from Manhattan on the ‘R’ subway – is mentally miles away from the frantic pace of life in New York.

I would certainly love to go back to Bay Ridge again, and I’m very grateful to Victoria and the Leif Ericson Society for hosting my talk. The next day we moved on to Philadelphia and then to Washington DC, so stay with my blog for details of our visit there.

‘Fire and Ice’ is published by The History Press and distributed in the US by Trafalgar Square Publishing (www.ipgbook.com) It is available online and in all good bookshops. More details at http://www.vincenthunt.co.uk/ Buy the book here: http://bit.ly/1ONpYON Read a fascinating in-depth author interview with writer Roz DeKett at her blog: Tweets about the book at: @scorchedvh and a Facebook page too where you can contact the author.

‘Fire and Ice’ US speaking tour takes shape with New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC talks

Award-winning British journalist Vince Hunt will be giving a series of talks in the USA later this month on the writing of his book about the scorched earth destruction of Finnmark in World War Two.

Hunt speaking at Den Norske Klub in London earlier this year.

The writing of ‘Fire and Ice – the Nazis’ scorched earth campaign in Norway’ took BBC documentary maker Hunt across the Arctic north of Norway, interviewing people who lived through or grew up with the consequences of the burning of Finnmark in October 1944 by German troops retreating from the Red Army.

In a journey from Kirkenes west to Tromso he uncovered tales never before told in English about life in the occupied north, of families traumatised by relentless bombing, of Soviet prisoners starved so badly they were reduced to cannibalism, of a PoW death camp alongside the fabled Lyngen Line, where fanatical Nazis planned a glorious last stand should an Allied invasion come.

As many as 50,000 Norwegians were forcibly evacuated south so they would not help Soviet troops pursuing the Nazis.. and once they’d gone their houses were doused in petrol and torched.

The burning of Hammerfest: picture taken by a German soldier as the town was torched.

On Monday October 26^th – in the week of the 71^st anniversary of Hitler’s orders to burn the north – Hunt will be the guest of the Scandinavian East Coast Museum and Leif Eriksson Society at The First Free Church, on 66th Street & 6th Avenue, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Contact victoriahofmo@aol.com to reserve a space. 7pm start.

The following night Tuesday October 27^th, he’ll be at the Newtown Library, 114 E. Center Ave, Newtown, PA 18940, starting at 7pm. Reserve a space via librarian@newtownlibrary.com.

Then on Friday October 30 he’s the guest of the Washington Lodge of the Sons of Norway in Fairfax, VA. The meeting starts with a dinner at 7pm at The Washington Lodge (Norway House) 3846 Meredith Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030, with the talk starting at 8pm. Reserve places with Lodge President Burton H Koske (kobur@cox.net)

Remains of one of the gun batteries at Gamvik. The garrison was 135-strong, so there were two villagers for each soldier.

‘Fire and Ice’ is distributed in the USA and Canada by Trafalgar Square Publishing (www.ipgbook.com) and is available online and in all good bookshops. For review copies and further details, contact Bridget Costin at bcostin@ipgbook.com

‘Fire and Ice’ tells stories from the Nazi scorched earth retreat from northern Norway in 1944. Virtually everything was destroyed to stop te Red Army pursuing the retreating Germans. Bridges, harbours, towns and houses were blown up and set on fire and fifty thousand people were forcibly evacuated. Seventy years later, the author crosses the Arctic gathering dramatic stories of this terrible time: of relentless bombing, sudden death and survival in sub-zero temperatures.

More details at http://www.vincenthunt.co.uk/ Buy the book here: http://bit.ly/1ONpYON

Read a fascinating in-depth author interview with writer Roz DeKett at her blog:
Tweets about the book at: @scorchedvh and a Facebook page too where you can contact the author.

Inside stories from my Norway scorched earth history book ‘Fire and Ice’ in Manchester this weekend

My book tour of northern England and the East Coast of the USA rolls into Manchester this weekend.

On Saturday October 17 I’ll be telling stories about the destruction and forced evacuation of northern Norway by the Nazis in 1944 and the writing of my book about this time: ‘Fire and Ice – the Nazis’ scorched earth campaign in Norway.’

Almost every building in the region known as Finnmark was torched. Entire towns were blown up, with bridges, harbours and ports put out of action so the Red Army couldn’t pursue the Nazis retreating from their front line in the far Arctic north around Kirkenes and Murmansk.

I travelled across the region meeting people who were there or who had lived with the consequences – and the stories they told me were shocking. Soviet prisoners were treated so brutally and starved so badly some resorted to cannibalism: 50,000 Norwegians were forced out of their homes into the sub-zero winter; a community of fishermen was murdered by Nazi commandos just two days before the war ended.

Kare Tannvik, whose family was burned out and who now runs an Ice Hotel in the far North of Norway told me: ‘1944 is Year Zero here. We don’t have a history.’

History of War magazine said of my book: ‘Hunt’s book is a huge success. Packed withdetail, meticulous research.. it’s absolutely essential reading.’

Last weekend I was the opening speaker at Wirral Bookfest, an amazing week of book-related events and guest speakers on Merseyside – and at the end of the month I’ll be giving some talks in New York and Washington DC to Norwegian-American groups.

Come and hear true stories of the scorched earth destruction of Norway and tales from my journey across the Arctic on Saturday October 17th at the Friends’ Meeting House, Peter Street, Manchester starting at 12 noon. Entrance is £2. Or check my website at www.vincenthunt.co.uk

See you there.

‘Fire and Ice’ ready for Wirral Bookfest with Manchester and Washington DC dates in the diary – and discount voucher news too

The final preparations are being made for Wirral Bookfest, a celebration of all things literary in NW England. I’ll be the opening speaker on the afternoon of Saturday October 10^th talking about ‘Fire and Ice – the Nazis’ scorched earth campaign in Norway.’

I’ll be telling stories about what happened in 1944 in northern Norway, the people that are in the book and the journey I made across the Arctic gathering the stories from people who were either there or who have lived with the consequences of the destruction and forced evacuation of an entire region.

I’ll be showing slides and answering questions as well as signing copies of ‘Fire and Ice’.

The venue has now been confirmed as Moreton Library in Pasture Road, Moreton
Wirral, CH46 8SA starting at 2.30pm. There’s a map here: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Moreton+Library/@53.4025366,-3.1117981,14z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x487b28849466f26d:0x3fd621d85c5f3db5

Wirral Bookfest is a brilliant week-long literary gathering organised by Wirral Council featuring national and local writers, poets and historians who will be giving talks, appearing at drop-in sessions and signing books.

The big ‘Bookfest’ name this year is Brian Patten, one of the trio of Liverpool Poets who published ‘The Mersey Sound,’ considered one of the most significant poetry anthologies of the 20th century. The three – Brian Patten, Roger McGough and Adrian Henri – changed perceptions of what modern poetry could do and what it should be about, so this is a rare opportunity to hear Brian talk about his work.

The Wirral is also a beautiful part of the country, so I’ll be getting in my car early to walk along the coast at Hoylake and if the tides are right, walk the causeway to Hilbre Island. There’s nothing like a bit of sea air on a Saturday morning….

Utter destruction: Hammerfest in 1945 after the scorched earth burning. Picture copyright the Hammerfest Museum of Reconstruction, used with permission.

The following Saturday, October 17^th I’m in my home town, Manchester, for a 12 noon start as guest speaker at the Manchester and Liverpool Historical Association’s AGM.

This will be held at The Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount Street in Manchester city centre. This historic building is directly behind the Central Library on St. Peter’s Square and visible from the Midland Hotel.

There’ll be stories, slides and signings, so be there if you can. If you’d like a copy of the book and can’t get there, I have vouchers for a discount price with The History Press.

The following week I’m in the United States and I’m working now on arranging some guest events with Norwegian-American Associations and Sons of Norway Lodges on the East Coast. I’ll be in New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC.

I have a firm date in the diary though that I’m looking forward to very much. I will give a talk on the evening of Friday October 30^th at the Sons of Norway Lodge in Fairfax, just outside Washington DC. More details including a map nearer the time, but it’s a 7pm start with the talk beginning at 8pm.

If any readers in the US would like vouchers for a 30% discount code from my American publisher, please email me through my contact form or via Facebook. The same goes for UK readers.

I hope to see you on the road….

‘Fire and Ice’ tells stories from the Nazi scorched earth retreat from northern Norway in 1944. Virtually everything was destroyed to stop the Red Army pursuing the retreating Germans. Bridges, harbours, towns and houses were blown up and set on fire and fifty thousand people were forcibly evacuated. Seventy years later, the author crosses the Arctic gathering dramatic stories of this terrible time: of relentless bombing, sudden death and survival in sub-zero temperatures.

More details at http://www.vincenthunt.co.uk/ Buy the book here: http://bit.ly/1ONpYON
I tweet about the book at: @scorchedvh
and I have a Facebook page too where you can contact me.