Nordahl Grieg - Wartime Activities

Wartime Activities

Once in Britain, Grieg served in Norway's government-in-exile and participated in making patriotic radio programs in England. He was commissioned into the Norwegian Armed Forces and served as a war correspondent. At the time of his death he was a Captain. His work involved visiting Norwegian units around Britain and experiencing their duties, in order to make his reports. He also travelled outside Great Britain to meet Norwegian servicemen on duty in Iceland and other more remote outposts. In the summer of 1942 Grieg spent several weeks on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen in the Atlantic Ocean, writing the poem Øya i Ishavet ({The Island in the Ice Sea). Like other war correspondents he joined operational missions over occupied Europe, and it was in the course of one of these that he lost his life.

On the night of 2–3 December 1943, Grieg was one of several observers for an Allied air raid on Berlin. He was attached to 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), which was based at RAF Binbrook. Grieg joined the crew of a Lancaster Mk.III (serial number LM316, squadron code "AR-H2") captained by Flying Officer A. R. Mitchell, RAAF. Berlin was always a tough target as it was the capital city and so was well-defended, but also because it lay far in the east of the country, which meant that crews were not only flying on the limits of fuel and of their own endurance, but had to pass over through the ranges of many night fighters on the way and from the target. 460 Sqn lost five aircraft that night and one of them was LM316; 37 airmen had been on board these aircraft and only eight survived being shot down (and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp). None of the eight survivors came from LM316. In addition to Grieg, the seven crew members: four Australians and three Britons, went down with the aircraft and were killed. Grieg was neither the only correspondent shot down that night, nor the only Norwegian: an Australian reporter flying with 460 Sqn was also killed, a British correspondent with another squadron became a POW and among nearly 300 Allied aircrew (in 44 aircraft) lost on the raid were two Norwegians. For a population as small as that of Norway, such losses were significant, but the loss of a figure as famous as the poet Nordahl Grieg was an extra blow.