Jut finished watching (or some of it) a series on the WW2 "Heroes of Telemark".



What I found interesting, among other things, was the re-creation of some of their survival techniques, including butchering a reindeer, gutting etc on TV. Normally this sort of stuff is sanitised but part of the programme was to demonstrate what the saboteurs did in the mountains to survive. Also catching and filleting fish etc, plus building rough shelters in the snow.



Refreshing to see, even if the "hunting" scenes were to demontrate survival, that the reality of it was portrayed and not just some throw away line, that they hunted and fished sometimes to survive. Some "reality" TV for urban viewers.

Those guys were real heroes. I still got some first hand reports about the conflict from an old fishing friend of mine who served there for the Wehrmacht, supporting the Finns in their fight against the Sovjets. Quite scary, those times...

NitroX,



The father of a family friend was in the group you mentioned ( Kompani Linge) who eventually sabotaged the "Heavy water" project, which set back the Germans atomic bomb research.



The area where they were air dropped and lived is in a mountain range called Hardangervidda (which is quite tundra like). Many vacations when I was younger were spent up there, and quite a few times we used to sleep over in one of the little cabins that this resistance group used. It's very far into the mountians... One thing that suprised me was that he told me they drank the stomage liquids from the reindeer, since eating just the meat was too hard on their digestion! Apperantly, the already chewed up moss, lichen etc that was in the reindeer stomage was the solution for them, and perhaps gave them their needed dose of veggies...



The group of men who participated in this plan to sabotage the Heavy water plant at Rjukan, were undoubtably tougher than most people back then, not to mention people nowadays. I don't know if the film you saw was filmed at the genuine location, but we are talking about some heavy duty terrain that they had to get down to plant the bombs in the "Norsk Hydro" plant on 27 feb 1943 and then again one year later (19 feb. 1944) on the ship that they blew up.



Had they not succeeded with these assignments, the war might have had a differant ending, or at least lasted longer. Had the Nazis been able to complete their atomic bomb, who knows what might have happend...



Erik D.

One of the best British TV shows for a long time.

The "actors" were two Royal Marines and two Norweigian SF. The RM have trained in Arctic Norway for many years as I am sure Ian F will confirm.

The original Heroes of Telemark must have been tough tough men.

If I remember correctly three of the participants wrote books of their experiences and I've read at least two of them years ago.As I remember their escape was difficult because the various cabins had been stripped of food by the germans and game was unusually scarce.After following the reindeer for many miles they finally got some, and yes they ate the whole thing .This hunt was done when they were already suffering from severe malnutrition. ..There wa s a chase on skis and finally the one german who had not given up had been shot with pistol by the fleeing norwegian. That scene was put into one of the James Bond [Roger Moore] movies....Yes they were heores and the stories were very dramatic, they didn't need Hollywood embelishments !!

Horrible choice to have to make. War is hell - even though it has its heroes on both sides.
- mike