Battle of Hegra Fortress

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Battle of Hegra Fortress
Part of the Norwegian Campaign
Norwegian 7,5 cm gun in action during the battle.
Date 15 April to 5 May 1940 Location Hegra, Norway Result Hegra Fortress capitulated May 5 after all other Norwegian forces in southern Norway had laid down their arms.[1]
Belligerents
Norway	Nazi Germany
Commanders
Major Hans Reidar Holtermann[2]	15-20 April: Oberst Weiss[3] 20 April-5 May: Generalmajor Woytach[3]
Strength
Positional artillery:[4] 4×10,5 cm guns and 2×7,5 cm guns under Captain Evjen with 25 men Field artillery:[4] 4×8,4 cm guns under 2nd Lieutenant Reitan with 10 men Total force:[5] 250 volunteer soldiers and one female volunteer nurse, most of whom had had a short national service with Artillery Regiment no. 3 (AR 3) before the war	15-27 April: 138. Gebirgsjägerregiment[3] 27 April-5 May: 181. Infantry Division[3] Troops involved: Force levels were on average ca. one battalion and one reinforced company of infantry, as well as an artillery unit with numerous mortars, cannon and howitzers[6]
Casualties and losses
6 KIA and 14 WIA[7]	Around 150 KIA and WIA[8]

Nazi occupation of Norway Drøbak Sound – Midtskogen – Dombås – Namsos – Åndalsnes – Hegra – Vinjesvingen – Narvik – Gratangen – Operation Archery – Norwegian heavy water sabotage – Telavåg

Hegra fortress (Norw., Hegra festning) is a small mountain fort in Hegra, Stjørdal, in the county of Nord-Trøndelag, Norway.

Hegra Fortress gained international recognition when it in 1940 for twenty-five days withstood repeated German assaults and constant bombardment, and in early May was one of the two last strongholds of Norwegian resistance in southern Norway, the other being Vinjesvingen.

Contents 1 The opposing forces 1.1 Norwegian force 1.2 German force 2 Before the battle 2.1 Mobilisation 2.2 Friendly fire incident 2.3 German plane driven off by ground fire 3 The Battle 3.1 The German capture of the surrounding area 3.2 Attack on Hegra village 3.3 The fortress artillery intervenes 3.4 Skirmish on the fortress road 3.5 End of the first battle day 3.6 Day two 3.7 The first German charge 3.8 The second attack is aborted 3.9 Siege 3.9.1 Evacuation of wounded 3.9.2 Attempts to storm the fortress are abandoned 3.9.3 Artillery duels, aerial bombing and patrol engagements 3.9.3.1 Værnes Air Station 3.9.4 International media attention 4 Surrender 4.1 Preparations and influencing factors 4.2 Capitulation 4.3 The garrison as PoWs 5 Casualties 6 See also 7 Footnotes 8 Literature 9 External links

[edit] The opposing forces

[edit] Norwegian force

The Norwegian defenders were 250 volunteer soldiers and the volunteer nurse Anne Margrethe Bang.^[9][5] Most of the volunteers that served at Hegra were from the area Hegra/Stjørdal/Trondheim, but they also included three Swedes.^[10]

The garrison at Hegra was equipped with small arms (Krag-Jørgensen rifles and carbines), as well as Madsen and Colt M/29 machine guns.

The fortress also had artillery, four 10,5 cm and two 7,5 cm positional pieces of reasonably modern make in half-turrets; as well as four Krupp m/1887 8,4 cm field guns.^[11][12] The artillery had a maximum range of between six and nine kilometers.^[13]

Many of these men had been mobilized to Artillery Regiment no. 3 at Øyanmoen army camp at Værnes Air Station and were brought to Hegra to continue the mobilization after the Germans had reached their camp. The fortress at Hegra was originally only intended as a temporary refuge for the artillery regiment, but ended up as the centre of the volunteers' war in 1940.

[edit] German force

The attacking force initially consisted of gebirgsjäger of the German/Austrian 138. Gebirgsjägerregiment (part of the 3. Gebirgsdivision), which landed in Trondheim on 9 April.^[3]

Later, from 20 April to 27 April, the Germans substituted the 138. Gbg. Rgt. with units from the 181. Infantry Division and the 138.'s gebirgsjägers where sent north to try and relieve their comrades at the Narvik Front.^[3]

[edit] Before the battle

The old mothballed fort at Ingstadkleiva that was to become known as Hegra Fortress was not intended by any of the parties as a battlefield. It only became of importance when the Norwegian artillery major Hans Reidar Holtermann started organising troops to resist the German invasion forces that had been landed at Trondheim. Holtermann first travelled to the army camp at Værnes to mobilize his Artillery Regiment no. 3. This mobilisation began at 1400 hrs on 9 April 1940 but the Germans landed at Stjørdal Rail Station the very next day, and by 1030 hrs approached the camp. As his forces were not combat ready Holtermann had to evacuate and move to what was at that point known as Ingstadkleiva Fort to complete his mobilisation.^[14] Thus, at 1500 hrs on 10 April 1940, most of the personnel and equipment under Holtermann's command arrived at the small mountain fortification of Ingstadkleiva Fort. At this point Holtermann was given orders to proceed with the mobilisation and otherwise do what he himself thought best.^[15] Holtermann thus began to gather and equip a fighting force of local volunteers. After arriving at the fort Holtermann first took residence in the buildings outside the mountain fortifications, not intending to defend the facility, only use it as a temporary base.^[16]

[edit] Mobilisation

By 10 April Holtermann already had fifty volunteers under his command and a steady stream of mostly local men kept being drawn to the fort.^[17] On 11 April men of Holtermann's unit returned to Værnes to remove more of the materiel and provisions stored there. Due to poor security amongst the German forces stationed at the camp the Norwegians were able to carry out their mission undetected. The reclaimed supplies were taken partly to the fortress and partly to a number of nearby farms.^[18] When a force of 250 soldiers had been assembled Holtermann had to turn away further volunteers due to the fact he could not arm or equip any more soldiers than those he already had under his command at that point. From 12 April work was carried out to reactivate the fortress' artillery, which was found to have plentiful ammunition but no direction systems or charts for indirect fire.^[18] Only a few maps with 1:100,000 ratios were available at the fortress.^[19] The actual artillery charts for the fortress were stored in Trondheim and fell in to the hands of the Germans on 9 April and was used by the Wehrmacht during the siege to deploy artillery in places that the fortress could not hit. The same day troops of Holtermann's unit were positioned around Hegra railway station and Mælen bridge, and the first German attempt at making the fortress surrender was carried out. A German Major approached the fortress together with two Norwegian officers who had given up the same day. Despite the best efforts by both the German officer and the two surrendered Norwegians Holtermann refused to capitulate.^[20] The next day, 13 April, Major Holtermann achieved contact with his superiors at the 5th Division for the last time during the Norwegian Campaign. Through a telephone conversation the commander of the force at Hegra is told to act as he saw best and, if possible, to hinder the Germans in gaining control of the Meråkerbanen railway line to Sweden. In response to these orders twenty soldiers were sent to the village of Flornes to set up field fortifications and block the road and railway to Meråker.^[21]

[edit] Friendly fire incident

On 14 April reports came in to the troops stationed at Hegra village stating that a train loaded with German soldiers had left Hell railway station and was on its way to Hegra. Not long after a train approached Hegra Station and ignored signals to stop. In response to what was interpreted as a German troop train trying to force its way through the soldiers guarding the station opened fire on the approaching train. In what turned out to be a tragic incident of misidentification a civilian train carrying Finnish refugees on their way home after the end of the Winter War was fired upon with one Norwegian man killed and two Finnish women wounded.^[22][21] Later that afternoon the garrison's sole female came when nurse Anne Margrethe Bang from Trondheim arrived at the fortress bearing a load of medical supplies with her. The daughter of a doctor and an educated nurse, Ms. Bang would stay in the fortress for the duration of the siege, helping two military doctors in caring for the sick and wounded. ^[23][9]

[edit] German plane driven off by ground fire

The first shots fired by the fortress' defenders occurred on 14 April when a German plane flew over the fortress and was fired upon by a heavy machine gun. The plane took damage and was driven away. More equipment and ammunition was removed from Værnes and brought to the fortress the same day.^[24]

[edit] The Battle

[edit] The German capture of the surrounding area

[edit] Attack on Hegra village

At 0530 hrs on 15 April April the German attack on the Norwegian positions defending Hegra railway station, Hegra road bridge and Mælen bridge began, supported by artillery fire. Having been partly caught by surprise the Norwegian forces at Hegra road bridge and the railway station made a fighting retreat to the fortress over a two to three hour period. Early on in the fighting the Norwegians demolished the Hegra road bridge,^[25] forcing the German infantry to cross the precarious ice of the frozen Stjørdal River under fire.^[26] At Mælen bridge the guards withdrew to the south.^[27] Four Norwegian soldiers fell in and around Hegra while one lost his life at Mælen bridge.^[28]

[edit] The fortress artillery intervenes

As the German attack developed the artillery pieces at Hegra Fortress opened up to support the Norwegian troops under attack in the valley below, and later covered their retreat. The Norwegian artillery fire was directed at German artillery positions, machine gun nests and convoys of trucks pushing east towards the Swedish border. The telephone operator at Hegra telegraph station acted as an observer for the artillery men at the fortress. As a result of the bombardment from the fortress three German guns were knocked out and casualties inflicted on the attacking force.^[27]

[edit] Skirmish on the fortress road

As the Norwegian infantry force pulled out of Hegra and up the road towards the fortress the Germans pursued them until they reached a number of field fortifications blocking the road. At this position the Norwegians held their ground and inflicted fatalities on the attacking force. Amongst the German fatalities was the attacking platoon's leader, Oberleutnant Hans-Joachim Herrmann. As the Norwegian were going through the area to seize German arms and equipment they found the German Gefreiter Hugo Bayerle. Bayerle had been hit in both thighs, with one of his thigh-bones broken in half, and was bleeding profusely. The Norwegian troops brought him on a ski sled to the fortress for medical care.^[29][27]

[edit] End of the first battle day

At the end of the first day of serious fighting the Germans pushed on along the Meråkerbanen railway line and broke through the blocking position at Flornes. The troops holding Flornes withdrew first to Meråker, then further north to join other Norwegian forces. As night fell German troops had occupied the areas around the villages of Hegra, Avelsgaard, Flornes, Ingstad and Sona. During the day Luftwaffe aircraft had repeatedly overflown Hegra Fortress. The Norwegian troops had fired on the planes with both rifles and machine guns, damaging one plane which crashed while performing an emergency landing at Værnes.^[27]

[edit] Day two

The day after the German capture of the area surrounding the fortress Luftwaffe planes repeatedly attacked with bombs and machine gun fire. German infantry probed the approaches to the fortifications but were driven off by artillery and heavy machine gun fire. A German mountain howitzer brought up to Avelsgaard bombarded the fortress, destroying most of the houses outside the walls. One Norwegian soldier was killed by a shell hitting the fortress parapet. He was the last Norwegian fatality of the battle^[28]

[edit] The first German charge

17 April began at 0700 hrs with a bombardment from the air and by the howitzer position at Avelsgaard At 0900 hrs a large force of German infantry attacked from the north-east, supported by machine gun positions situated a mere 150 meters north of the fortress. The progress of the attack was only halted when it reached the barbed wire entanglements directly in front of the Norwegian trenches. At this point the attacking force was subjected to heavy fire at close range from artillery, machine guns and riflemen and thrown back. German bombers kept on hitting the fortress throughout the day, knocking out both the telephone line and the electricity supply. Neither came back in operation during the siege.^[30] From then until the end of the battle all light inside the Norwegian tunnels and halls was provided by candles and nine kerosene lamps.^[31]

[edit] The second attack is aborted

The day after their first unsuccessful attack the German forces made another attempt at storming the mountain fortress. In preparation the fortifications were subjected to heavy machine gun and mortar fire during the early daylight hours. A battalion of infantry was brought forward towards the fortress, but was hit by a blizzard while marching through no man's land. As the attacking units lost their bearing in the storm fire fights erupted between groups of Germans mistaking each other for Norwegian patrols and the whole enterprise collapsed before reaching the Norwegian positions. Planes and heavy calibre artillery pieces kept up a steady fire against the fortress throughout the day.^[32]

[edit] Siege

[edit] Evacuation of wounded

In the evening of 18 April two Norwegian doctors, Sigurd Aarrestad and Peter Berdal, approached the German commander of the Hegra-Son area and requested permission to pass through the German lines to evacuate wounded soldiers from the fortress. During the previous days' fighting many German wounded had been brought to Hegra village and the doctors feared that there had been numerous casualties on the Norwegian side as well. Permission for the mission was granted and the shelling of Hegra Fortress temporarily suspended while local volunteers made their way up to the fortress, pulling ski sleds for the wounded. While Aarrestad led the expedition Berdal was held hostage by the Germans to ensure that the Norwegians returned from the fortress after finishing their mission. When Aarrestad returned from Hegra Fortress a few hours later he brought along nine wounded Norwegian soldiers and Gefreiter Bayerle, who was released by his captors and sent along with the wounded Norwegians.^[33] As part of the agreement the Norwegian wounded did not become POWs.^[32]

[edit] Attempts to storm the fortress are abandoned

From around 25 April the Germans gave up taking Hegra Fortress by storm. The pressing need to remove the Norwegian force ended in large part when the important town of Steinkjer fell to the Germans on 21 April and the allied advance from the north was checked. The southern arm of the allied counter-attack had never swung north from Åndalsnes and had instead been sent to the Gudbrandsdal to support the Norwegian forces there. As the immediate crisis had passed for the German force in Trondheim they preferred to push south to link up with forces coming up from Oslo rather than dealing with a small fortress tunnelled into the mountains and covered by more than a meter of rotten snow. The focus of the Wehrmacht became to bombard Hegra Fortress with artillery and air power to try and pummel it into submission.^[34]

[edit] Artillery duels, aerial bombing and patrol engagements

For the remainder of the battle the Germans did not again try to storm the fortress. Fighting consisted of aerial bombing of the fortress, duels between the fortress' guns and German field artillery and skirmishes between German and Norwegian ski units doing reconnaissance and bringing in supplies of food, ammunition and fuel. To counter German guns placed in the positional guns' blind zones the Norwegian artillerymen positioned their two 8,4 cm field guns to cover areas the fixed guns could not reach. Over the days the Norwegian guns targeted machine gun nests, gun positions, command posts and ammunition depots in the surrounding area. On 23 April one of the 7,5 cm positional guns was knocked out, one of the fortress' command towers was destroyed and the water line was broken. The second 7,5 cm gun was destroyed on 24 April. The fortress was under constant artillery fire and held out chiefly to be in a position to support the allied offensive expected from the north.^[35]

On 25 April the Germans employed a new weapon against the fortress when a seaplane dropped a 1,800 kg bomb, annihilating the houses outside the walls with bomb pieces ending up Hegra village several kilometres away.^[36] From 29 April the artillery bombardment steadily increased in strength with German guns reinforced by captured Norwegian 12 cm howitzers from the armoury in Trondheim and the next day one of the three 10,5 cm guns at the fortress was knocked out.^[37] During the siege a total of over 2,300 shells rained down on Hegra Fortress.^[38]

[edit] Værnes Air Station

One way that Holtermann wanted to directly support the main war effort in Norway was to bombard Værnes Air Base, the northernmost airfield in German hands and vital for the support of German forces north of Trondheim. This was particularly so for the Narvik front that could not be reached by aircraft flying from further south than Værnes. Recognising this, the Germans had hired some 2,000 Norwegian collaborationist labourers to work full time at expanding and improving the air strip. Bombarding Værnes would both have disrupted this work and impaired the bombing raids being flown against Norwegian forces fighting to the north. However, since Værnes is 11,5 km from Hegra and the fortress' guns only had a maximum range of some 9 km this was impossible. For accurate shooting the effective range was a mere 6,9 km, as that was the range of the artillery's height angle meter.^[39] Efforts were made at the fortress to increase the elevation of the guns from 19° to 26° by removing part of the gun shields,^[40] and part of the baseplate,^[39] but these failed as no welding equipment could be acquired to carry out the modifications.^[40] Even though no modifications could be carried out one of the 10,5 cm guns at Hegra opened up in the direction of Værnes on 22 April. With the gun firing at maximum elevation the rounds still fell hundreds of metres short of their target.^[41]

The earliest attempt by the Hegra garrison to attack the airfield at Værnes had occurred on 14 April when a Norwegian dog sled patrol spotted massive German air activity at the air base. Plans were made to manhandle one of the fortress' 8,4 cm field guns to a nearby hill called Blankhammeren and from there bombard German target out of range from the fortress itself, including the strategically important airfield. The plan however could not be carried out before the German attack of 15 April brought large German infantry forces into the area and rendered the plans infeasible.^[42]

[edit] International media attention

During the siege the struggle of Hegra Fortress was in the attention of the international media, with articles such as those in The Daily Telegraph on 22 April^[43] and 2 May,^[44] and that in The Manchester Guardian on 16 April.^[45] The fortress was also mentioned in articles in Time Magazine on 6 May^[46] and 13 May.^[47]

[edit] Surrender

[edit] Preparations and influencing factors

As news came in over the radio on 2 May of the allied retreat from the Åndalsnes area, that the Germans had seized control of the Dovrebanen railway line from Dombås to Støren and of the surrender of the Norwegian 4. Brigade in Vestlandet. This came on top of increasing supply problems, with the bread supply already having run out on 30 April. The next day, 3 May the garrison started demolishing the artillery ammunition in preparation for surrender.^[48] The three Swedish volunteers that had endured the siege with the Norwegians were also released from their duties and guided across the mountains to the Swedish border by a ski patrol. During the day a radio message from Colonel Ole Berg Getz, the Norwegian commander in the Trøndelag area, was broadcast. Getz had surrendered his forces in Nord-Trøndelag and advised all Norwegian forces in Trøndelag to lay down their arms as the situation had become hopeless after the British retreat from the southern parts of Norway. The decision to surrender Trøndelag had been influenced by Neville Chamberlain's radio message that day announcing the end of the allied campaign in Southern Norway^[49] On 4 May destruction of radios, machine guns, carbines and other small arms was initiated and ski patrols were sent out carrying loads of important documents. By 1350 hrs that day confirmation of Colonel Getz's capitulation was received and the destruction of the fortress' artillery began.^[50]

[edit] Capitulation

In the early hours of 5 May the situation was that there was very little food left and water for only a few days, all other allied forces in all of southern Norway had been withdrawn or had surrendered and Hegra Fortress was the last remaining pocket of resistance south of Nordland.^[50] At 0500 hrs Major Holtermann had his men assemble in the tunnels and relayed to them his decision to surrender the fortress. In a short speech he thanked them for their efforts and then led them in singing the Norwegian National Anthem. By 0525 hrs the white flag was raised over the fortress and at 0630 hrs a force of 60 German soldiers and three officers,^[51] led by one Hauptmann Giebel,^[52] arrived to accept the surrender. Later that day 190 men and one woman marched out of the fortress and into captivity.^[53] At the surrender the garrison at Hegra Fortress consisted of 14 officers, one technical officer, seven sergeants, one officer cadet, six corporals, 161 privates and nurse Anne Margrethe Bang.^[52][9]

[edit] The garrison as PoWs

After the surrender the Norwegians were marched down to Hegra railway station from where they were transported by train. In Trondheim the officers and Anne Margrethe Bang were taken off the train and interned at Trondheim katedralskole secondary school while the NCOs and soldiers continued their voyage to Lundamo in Gauldalen valley.^[54] At Lundamo the prisoners where interned in a barn for the night. The next day, 6 May, the prisoners from Hegra were forced marched for 50 kilometers to Berkåk where a PoW camp was established.^[54] At Berkåk the prisoners were set at work at building an improvised road from the river Orkla near Berkåk across the woods to Brattset. The road was intended to help the German logistic system that had been severely hampered by the numerous bridges that had been blown by the Norwegian Army during the preceding month. Due in part to the poor physical condition of the prisoners after the harsh siege they had just experienced the road was never completed despite threats of punishment made by the German camp commander.^[55] At the end of May the German High Command in Berlin announced that Adolf Hitler had personally ordered the release of Norwegian PoWs as an act of recognition of the defence they had put up under difficult conditions.^[55] The release of the prisoners from Hegra happened in groups and by mid-June the last PoWs had been let go.

[edit] Casualties

Six Norwegian soldiers were killed in action during the battle, with 14 wounded.^[7] All the Norwegian fatalities occurred during the first two days of the fighting.^[56] In the first years after World War II Norwegian estimates of the number of Germans casualties were exaggerated, some spoke of up to 1,100 dead or wounded. Later research has however led to a somewhat lower number, at about 150^[8] to 200^[7] Wehrmacht soldiers KIA and WIA at Hegra.

[edit] See also

• Namsos Campaign
• Norwegian Campaign

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] Literature

• Arnstad, Johan: Beleiringen av Hegra Festning 10. april - 5. mai 1940, F. Bruns bokforhandels forlag, Trondheim 1965 (Norwegian)
• Brox, Karl H.: Kampen om Hegra - festningen tyskerne ikke greide å ta. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo 1988 ISBN 82-05-17716-3 (Norwegian)
• Grimnes, Ole Kristian: Kampen om Hegra 1940, Forsvarets Pressetjeneste, Oslo 1994 (Norwegian)
• Soldat 31358-38: Rapport fra Hegra Fort, Foreningen Hegra 1940, Trondheim 1985 (Norwegian)

[edit] External links

• Official Norwegian Defence Forces web page (Norwegian)
• Web page on the battle of Østfold that mentions the fortress (English)