Tore Wiig was a Royal Norwegian Army; attached as a liaison officer to the 7th Battalion The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) 1943-1945. From Oslo office clerk to volunteer fighter for Finland’s independence, he returned to Norway to combat the German invaders of his homeland.Under the German occupation he joined the Resistance and was captured by the Gestapo. After escaping to neutral Stockholm, he reached the UK where he joined the British Army in the liberation of Europe. Into his short life he crammed several lifetimes of action.
Tore Johan Christoffersen Wiig was born in Bodø, Norway on 28 July 1916 to Julie Caroline and Nils Kristoffersen Wiig (died 1947). Tore’s mother, Julie died when Tore was 13 years old. He completed his middle school and commercial college education in Oslo in 1934.
In 1920 the Wiig family moved to Oslo and by 1940 Tore was living with his father and working as a clerk at the State Grain Monopoly. In the depths of the Scandinavian winter in 1940, Tore joined the volunteers fighting for Finland in the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union (Russia). He came back to Norway in April 1940 with 150 other volunteers without knowing that Norway herself was now under attack – by Nazi Germany.
The day after he came home, Tore left to join the Norwegian forces fighting at Trandum and Gløvik north of Oslo. He went on a mission to report on the German positions. Despite being wounded in the head he was able to deliver his sketches and was taken to a field hospital. The Germans captured the hospital and moved Tore to hospital in Lillehammer and then Nordseter. He left hospital after a few days, but the Norwegian Armed Forces in southern Norway had surrendered to the German invaders.
Within days, Tore had returned to his work in Oslo. Meantime his father, Nils had been distributing illegal anti-German propaganda and was arrested in July 1940. Shortly after, Tore was arrested and both were kept captive in Oslo by the Gestapo. Tore was offered his freedom if he betrayed his father, but on convincing the Gestapo that he knew nothing about his father’s resistance work, he was released. He went home and immediately burnt all the papers he could find and left for neutral Sweden in 1941. The following May, Tore flew to the UK, first to Shetland, then to London and offered his services in the liberation of Norway.
The account above is from Tore’s own report now in Norway’s Resistance Museum. We are very grateful to Ingeborg Johanne Alsaker Krabbesund of Norway’s Resistance Museum for summarising and translating into English Tore’s original 1942 report.
It is very tempting to speculate what Tore was doing in that “gap year”. It is hard to imagine that such a man of action could stay away from the war for long. Was he working in secret in Norway and left that out of his report in case he endangered his comrades still trapped in Nazi-occupied Norway? His army records show that Tore stayed at the Shaftesbury Hotel, room 106, in London while being debriefed.
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Cameronians in winter training, Cairngorms, Scotland, January 1944 watercolour by Fred Tuck
South Lanarkshire Council museums collection |
In the meantime, 7th Battalion The Cameronians was based in the UK undergoing training as a mountain warfare unit. In January 1943, Tore joined the Battalion as a liaison officer. Intensive training followed at the Army ski school at Glenfeshie in the Scottish Cairngorms. Tore often said that this was his happiest time in Britain. In a cosmopolitan atmosphere with trainers from Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria joining British instructors, 80% of soldiers reached a standard suitable for military purposes. 10% reached a high standard. For many working class British men this was their first experience of skiing. Of this time a Cameronian, Major William Tinto MC later recalled:
“the merry laughter on the ski slopes at Glen Feshie, and the songs of Turo [Tore] Wiig as we waxed our skis in the, lamplight of the bothies”
Lt Wiig also excelled at cross country running and came first from 40 starters when he
“set a standard which the remainder of the runners were quite glad to admire but not to emulate”.
His absence was always noticed as his unit fell from first to 4th place in the Battalion games when he was away on leave or on a course. Tore attended many military courses in motorcycling and military driving, German interrogation and various refresher courses to help develop his liaison role with the Cameronians.
The 7th Battalion, with Tore Wiig attached as liaison officer, landed at the Belgian port of Ostend in the first half of October 1944, but with many of their vehicles missing. At once they were ordered to take part in a crucial operation to liberate two Dutch islands. The major Dutch port of Antwerp had been liberated earlier, but the Germans prevented ships and supplies reaching Antwerp from their heavy artillery positions on the islands of Walcheren and South Beveland. All supplies and petrol for the Allies had to come from Normandy and was slowing up the Allied advance.
The assault was amphibious, meaning that the attack was made across a stretch of water. The 7th Battalion were ordered into action later and by this time the German resistance had stiffened and the Battalion lost many men killed and wounded. Only a small pocket of Germans remained at the Dutch coastal town of Veere.
On 6th November 1944 Tore Wiig went forward with a small patrol and when he saw the Germans about to blow up the canal lock gates he ran forward on his own, armed only with a pistol, and drove them off. At great risk to himself, he removed all the fuses and detonators. His action prevented the Germans blowing up the gates and led directly to the capture of Veere. For this action he was awarded the Military Cross (MC) by Britain and the Medal of St Olaf with Oak Branch by Norway. Tore’s MC was the first won by the 7th Battalion in WW2.
The fighting had resulted in much of the islands being flooded by seawater trapping 2,000 British Commandos and about 800 German soldiers and several thousand Dutch civilians, to say nothing of the very best of the local breed of Frisian cattle. The 7th Battalion was tasked with evacuating everyone as well as opening up communications. Their task was made much more difficult by the German “schu” mines. These were made mainly of wood and very difficult to detect. 47 men were badly injured doing this crucial work.
When this campaign was over the 7th and the 6th Battalions of The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) had captured 1,950 prisoners for the loss of 200 killed and wounded. The Regimental History records;
“morale, discipline, and fighting spirit of the troops remained excellent throughout the campaign.”
After Walcheren and up until the time Tore left the Regiment in January 1945 the 7th Battalion moved to the only part of Germany occupied by the Western Allies.
The Norwegian government’s second request to have their liaison officers with British units recalled to Norway was granted and Tore went to Norway to take up a new military posting dealing with the thousands of Germans stranded in the Trondheim area with the impending end of the war in Europe. After serving at the District Command Trondelag, he took up a posting at the District Command Oppland, north of the Norwegian capital, Oslo on 20 August 1946.
Nine days later, when he was given the news that his friend, decorated Norwegian war hero and engineer Captain Christian Roll Lund had been murdered, Wiig collapsed and died of a heart attack at the age of 30.
His Cameronian comrades heard the grim news of his death
“with a great sense of shock and deep regret”.
His obituary in The Covenanter lamented that
”we have lost a fine soldier and a great gentleman and many of us a good friend”
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Tore Wiig
Photo: courtesy of The National Archives of Norway |
Acknowledgements:
Mona Røhne, Norwegian Consul, London
Ingeborg Johanne Alsaker Krabbesund, and Olav Christoffer Bogen - Norway’s Resistance Museum - Norwegian Armed Forces, Oslo, Norway
Simon Trøan, The National Archives of Norway, Oslo, Norway
Aftenposten 02/09/1944
Translations of Norwegian military service records
AB Consultants, Isle of Arran.
