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Knut Haugland

By lex, on December 29th, 2009

Via Betsy’s Page, the obituary of a remarkable man.

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December 29th, 2009 | Tags: | Category: History

25 comments to Knut Haugland

  • AW1 Tim
    December 29, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    A remarkable man, indeed, from an era where such things seemed commonplace.

    God Bless them all.

    • virgil xenophon
      December 29, 2009 at 2:18 pm

      As a child I was enthralled by reading “Kon Tiki” and also saw the “Heroes of Telemark” in the original. What a life! Another good book which details the general Norwegian resistance by back country skiiers and includes many details of operations Knut took part in as part of a larger resistance picture is a book entitled: “Two Eggs On My Plate.” I last read it in the 5th grade in ’55, but still remember it fondly.

      • virgil xenophon
        December 29, 2009 at 2:24 pm

        Just checked–still avail on Amazon. By Oluf Reed Olsen–a resistance fighter who knew and worked with Knut. Reed the comments–some by other resistance fighters still alive.

      • Ron Snyder
        December 29, 2009 at 6:31 pm

        Virgil, I too remember reading “Kon Tiki” while quite young. Remarkable accompishment -they were truly going into the unknown, with many pundits/experts telling them it could not be done. Enthralled is an apt description.

        KT is one of the books on my “Best of List” due to the quality of the writing, the sense of adventure, and, being exposed to people who were willing to press beyond where others said they could go.

        If ever I am in Oslo I would love to see the raft.

  • SSG Jeff (USAR)
    December 29, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    Wow. Just that… wow.

  • Kris, in New England
    December 29, 2009 at 2:24 pm

    Humbled. That we all walked the same Earth as men like this – I feel incredibly insignificant. As I should.

  • Snake Eater
    December 29, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Knut and the iron men like him established the gold standard for all subsequent special operation forces…RIP. Best

  • david foster
    December 29, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    A book I’d strongly recommend is “Between Silk and Cyanide,” by Leo Marks…who at the age of 23 became Codemaster for Special Operations Executive. He briefed dozens of agents before their departures to the field, and remembers them vividly. There’s a lot of technical stuff about cryptography in the book, but the human stories are what it’s really about, and the crypto stuff can be easily skipped or skimmed.

    I also just posted an item about Jeannie de Clarens, who was recently honored for her French Underground service during WWII. See also the links about Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan.

  • John
    December 29, 2009 at 7:42 pm

    Okay, it was all guts and bravery and victory over the enemy back then.

    Try that today and the EPA would be all over their case about the release of heavy water without a permit and approved environmental impact statements. And, this d@mn criminal thug had a gun in a gun free hospital zone! I mean, really, what sort of example is he setting for The Children with his violating of government regulations and all?

    Sarc off.
    A real hero. Wish we had more now, and that they were encouraged by our elected leadership.

  • James
    December 29, 2009 at 9:02 pm

    I had lunch with Knut every day for months when I researched my thesis on the Norwegian Resistance at the Museum in Oslo, he was an marvelous man. He used to like to go to the Kon Tiki Museum and listen to the guides explain what happened on the trip, he said they seemed to know far more about what went on then than he did, which seemed odd since it was such a small raft. I spoke to him about his time in the Resistance, he laughed about the things that he got medals for, it’s not that they weren’t dramatic, but as he saw it at the time, there weren’t any good options, surrender and they will shoot you after a longish session with the Gestapo, shoot and scramble and run like hell and maybe you might get out. If you have to disappear then go up into the hills in Oslo and live in a snow cave or ski to Sweden, cold as hell and nothing to eat but it was better than a bullet in the head.

    When I asked him why he did it, he gave me an odd look and just said “Wouldn’t You?” and then he would laugh and say he was crazy then. A true patriot and a great man. I was privileged to know him.

    • virgil xenophon
      December 30, 2009 at 1:59 am

      James, this is one of the few times I can say that I wish I knew you personally if only to be said to have “shaken the hand that shook the hand.” What interesting stories of his you could relate! (especially over mucho cervasas!) How privilidged you must have felt!

      “…he would laugh and say he was crazy then.”

      Weren’t we all when we were young and at war? And almost every day a matter of literally do or die? There is a reason war is a young man’s game.. That’s why in Vietnam I always stood in awe at the time of the 55 yr old guys for whom it was their second or third war. I was young, single and it was all new to me and one big adventure.

      For them, many of them grandparents, it was no thrill–just a very dangerous duty to perform. The toughest psychological duty of all…. With us it was all new–with them they knew all too well what was around the corner, but did it anyway…Heroes in their own right…

      • James
        December 30, 2009 at 7:50 am

        The interesting thing was the contradiction, on the one hand he could have been a celebrity, present for most of the big events, friends with the leaders of the various strands of the resistance, the action guys, the underground press, the boys in the woods, was the subject of movies, not just Kon-tiki but also the heavy water attack and on the other hand he was just a man in the crowd by the time I met him. He had a wife, kids, house in the suburbs, summer place in the country, nothing special or out of the ordinary and that was all he wanted. And yet, ask him about some incident in the war; like when they blew up the ships in Oslo harbor, and a flood of detail would emerge, who did what, what they thought at the time, little details, context, what they wore, how they got away or didn’t. No drama, till I’d think about it later, just explaining how it was.

        He did mention one problem the young guys had after the war, he said some of them got hooked on the adrenalin and when the war ended they didn’t transition well, not really PTSD, just the let down of a return to normalcy, the older guys handled it better. How do you go from being a vital player in a deadly game to being the junior copy editor of the local paper.

  • xformed
    December 30, 2009 at 6:06 am

    He, however, refused to call himself a hero, saying: “I never use that word about myself or my friends. We just did a job.” He preferred to remember those who died on the missions which he survived.

    We need to clone more of him from his DNA to offset the “heroes” on the sports fields and in the political arena, whose “heroism” is confined to saying “I’m not going to vote with you.”

    Kon Tiki…one of my early memories in all these years of reading fantastic stories. What a man.

    • lex
      January 1, 2010 at 9:46 am

      Professor, I just wanted to point out that your article on General Kaspar has led me on a merry trip through Wikipedia, in which I ended up exploring the Paris Commune, Emile Zola, Freemasonry, Tino Rossi and the Dreyfus Affair. Along the way I also learned about Boulangism, Bonapartism, Legitimism and the Orleanists.

      All of that started with an obscure reference to Sommerville’s fleet, and the dimly remembered (for me) sinking of the Vichy fleet at Mers el Kebir.

      I ended up visiting the village of Herpenden where Esterhazy died via Google Earth, discovering that Herefordshire has one of the longest continually running agricultural experimentation sites in the world.

      Strange place, these internets.

      • SCOTTtheBADGER
        January 1, 2010 at 9:50 am

        Verily, ’tis amazing how far afield a set of links will lead you. The internet is the greatest plaything for the mind imaginable.

        • Ron Snyder
          January 1, 2010 at 11:18 am

          Like the encyclopedia books of old, which I now rarely use, the information and resources of the Web allow me to go

          most anywhere, and at any point in time. I still remember our family buying the first set of encyclopedias back

          when I was eight or so, and the “window into the world” that it represented. Just grab any book, go to any page,

          and the adventure began.

          Just this past Thursday I purchased a new (well, new to me) world globe –from a lady in Florida that I found using

          the Web- that is twice the size of my current one. I refer to the globe quite often to better understand events

          that I am reading or hearing about.

          More effective time management on the computer is one of my goals for the New Year. ;)

      • virgil xenophon
        January 1, 2010 at 11:21 am

        Good morning, Lex! Happy New Year–if such a thing can still be said in the Age of Obama. Yes, stream-of-consciousness blogging takes one many interesting place, as SCOTTtheBADGER says below, the WWW is certainly a knowledge expander. But the question occurs; when viewing such men as Gen Kaspar and Knut Haugland, what about today? Look at our leadership in the armed services today. Would such men even be allowed to remain, let alone advance in today’s politicized, bureaucratized, top-heavy, PC environment? Of course, being men of their caliber, perhaps they would have successfully adjusted, trimmed their sails as necessary, so to speak, in order to advance–even as they tried to maintain their essential values, attitudes, etc. But would they then really be the same sort of men in the event? One wonders….And further, one reflects on what the “system” does to men with such DNA today. Are they “molded” all out of recognition? Or do they eventually leave in disgust even if not forced out? One wonders….

      • David Curp
        January 1, 2010 at 3:19 pm

        Dear Captain (and Virgil),

        Well oh my gosh, my golly, how fun that my post helped prompt your omnivorous journeying (the web is even worse when you have access to JSTOR and academic literature search engines – then the danger becomes that one can spend more time gathering information than every reading any of the articles or books that comes one’s way – I have about 130 or so articles on the former Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania that I now am now officially despairing of getting through).

        I also find your choice of subjects interesting since I fear getting to know France’s modern history might be worthwhile for Americans for practical purposes, since we might need to know
        1. how to manage in a democracy where the partisan divides are pretty much beyond healing and finely balanced
        2. what to do in a situation of relative decline and growing complexity in international affairs (while negotiating 1)
        3. how such a society survived a knock-down/drag-out total war in the midst of 1 and 2.

        And Virgil, if it is any comfort, I think our enemies aren’t quite up to snuff either – if we have systems in place that make it all but impossible for the Haugland’s and the Kaspar’s to rise, the international environment is unlikely to produce opponents of Rommelesque, Stalinesque or Yamamotoesque stature either (and it is worth noting that we still pass the most important test that few of our opponents can deal with well – be the bears, inscrutable middle-kingdomers or mooj – we play well with others. Our system might be dysfunctional, but we can interface with allies who just might be capable of producing their own versions of Haugland and Kaspar.

  • virgil xenophon
    January 1, 2010 at 11:34 am

    PART II:

    And while I full well realize that it’s perhaps unfair to compare men of different times, generations etc., just as football players in the 30s, while most could not play today’s game at any level in the way they did in their own day, would, if born today, also be very different men than their 1930s selves by dint of better diet, nutrition and training techniques, so who is to say that if brought forward into the future with all the futures advantages they still would not be competitive? So it is with men like Knut and Miroslav I guess it can be argued. They would have evolved under present standards and thus perhaps the “fish-out-of-water” argument is, as the current academic argot would have it, “overdetermined.” But I still wonder…..

  • Ron Snyder
    January 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    Apologies for the formatting on my previous post. Still recovering.

    • virgil xenophon
      January 1, 2010 at 12:20 pm

      Too much of the nectar of the Gods, eh, Ron? And at your age, too… Tisk, tisk. And quit trying to horn on my territory, ok guy!? :)

  • virgil xenophon
    January 1, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    er, “horn in” the “conger gods” must be angry with me too… :)

  • Ron Snyder
    January 1, 2010 at 12:36 pm

    I’ll be o.k. after my nap Virgil. :)

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