Category: History

Jan Baalsrud MBE (1917-1988) SOE Norwegian Section

(Image source Unknown)

In early 1943 Baalsrud was part of Operation Martin consisting of three other Norwegian agents who were taken to Norway by a clandestine fishing boat with a Norwegian crew of eight. Their mission was to destroy a control tower at a German airfield at Bardufoss and then recruit and establish a resistance movement.

They had been given the name of a resistance contact who ran a small shop but after making contact were unaware the shop had been bought by a man with the same name. Fearing for his life and believing it was a German trick the shopkeeper reported the agents to the police who passed the information to the Germans and the Gestapo started an investigation.

The following morning their fishing boat that contained over 100 kilograms of explosives for the attack was intercepted by a German gunboat and under fire the agents placed timing pencils into the explosives to destroy the vessel and cause confusion whilst escaping in small boats that were quickly sunk by the gunboat and the survivors begun swimming ashore in the icy Artic waters. Baalsrud was the only one not killed or captured and by the time he reached the shore he was freezing cold, missing one boot and then ran into a snow gully where he was confronted by a Gestapo officer who he shot dead with his pistol before continuing his escape.

Whilst evading German troops Baalsrud wandered through a snowstorm for three days, his feet froze and used a knife to amputate nine of his frost-bitten toes to stop the spread of gangrene, an avalanche then buried him almost to his neck and was entombed in snow for four days. After being found by Norwegian villagers he was tied to a stretcher and for seven weeks was close to death as they dragged him across mountains in the snow.

 A villager contacted the resistance and was told to leave him on a high plateau on his stretcher and people would be sent to rescue him but because of bad weather and many German troops in the area he was there for 27 days suffering from snow blindness, he had not eaten and was close to death. After being found by the resistance he was carried to the border with Finland where villagers put him on a reindeer sledge and eventually reached neutral Sweeden.

Baalsrud then spent several months in a Swedish hospital before returning to England aboard an RAF aircraft. After being passed fit to be an instructor he helped train and select recruits for the Norwegian Section at the SOE phase two training school on the remote Scottish Highlands and after learning how to walk with only one toe with a walking stick, he volunteered to return to Norway as an agent and continued his clandestine work until Norway was liberated in May 1945.

Jan Baalsrud died on 30 December 1988 at the age of 71 in Kongsvinger, Norway.

Four Square Laundry: Northern Ireland (Operation Banner) surveillance and intelligence during the 1970s.

Intelligence operations during Banner remain a closely guarded secret, true accounts have often been replaced by Sinn Féin/IRA propaganda and the Four Square Laundry is a good example of the propaganda found in pro- Sinn Féin/IRA publications.

To combat terrorism by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in 1972 the British Army created the Mobile Reaction Force (MRF). This clandestine unit was based at Palace Barracks, Hollywood Northern Ireland and consisted of around forty men and women from the army who were specially trained and selected for intelligence and surveillance operations which journalist at the time called plain clothes soldiers.

Four Square Laundry (Intelligence Museum)

Four Square Laundry collected washing from parts of Belfast where terrorists were known to live and before being cleaned and returned to customers were forensically examined for traces of explosives and gunshot residue.

Double agents Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee.

Two MRF double agents, Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, were discovered by PIRA and whilst being tortured for information provided details about the army operation, both were later shot in the back of the head and their bodies were thought to have been buried somewhere in the border region of South Armagh.

Sapper Edward Stuart (Royal Engineers whilst serving with MRF)

On 2 October 1972 the laundry van was being driven by Edward Stuart whose home unit was the Royal Engineers and was accompanied by Lance Corporal Sarah-Jane Walker. Walker was returning laundry to a customer and standing at their front door when a car drew close to their van, three gunmen got out whilst the driver remained in the car ready for a quick getaway and Sapper Edward Stuart was killed instantly by automatic weapons thought to be Kalashnikovs recently supplied by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya.

According to Sinn Féin/IRA propaganda Sarah-Jane Walker ran into the house hysterically screaming Protestant paramilitaries were trying to kill them and was given refuge, but this is not true.  During the first sound of gunshots Walker turned round, faced the terrorists and engaged them with her 9mm Browning HP automatic pistol and the gunmen fled. Plain clothes officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary in an unmarked car quickly arrived and secured the area. It is also not true undercover soldiers were hiding in the roof of the vehicle and were killed or wounded, Stuart and Walker were alone when they were ambushed. The following year, Sarah-Jane Walker, which for security reasons is not thought to be her real name, was awarded the Military Medal by the Queen and the first awarded to a WRAC serving in Northern Ireland.

According to the Guardian dated 8 September 2015: “DNA tests have confirmed the remains of two bodies found in an Irish bog are those of Séamus Wright and Kevin McKee, two of the IRA’s “disappeared.

The men, who were members of the Provisional IRA in west Belfast, vanished in 1972. They were believed to have been kidnapped, interrogated, then shot dead by the PIRA. Their bodies were buried in secret across the border in the Irish Republic.

The organisation in charge of locating the remains of 17 people whom the IRA killed and then disappeared during the Northern Ireland Troubles said DNA examination of samples taken from the bog in County Meath proved they were Wright and McKee.”

Alan Malcher

The effects of Shell Sock during the First World War (1914 to 1918)

Shell Shock has been described as a reaction to to the intensity of bombardment and fighting that caused a feeling of helplessness that could result in panic, fear, flight or an inability to reason, sleep, walk or talk. It was also referred to as bullet air, soldier’s heart, battle fatigue, war neuroses and operational exhaustion.

As seen in this short clip by Pathé News Shell Shock sometimes caused serious damage to the nervous system.

Irish Soldiers: the Battle of Mons during the Great War of 1914 to 1918.

The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force of the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, during which the allies fought the Germans on the French border.

I don’t know the source of this short film documentary and consequently I am unable to credit the film maker.

French Resistance: 27 members of the resistance. The men were executed shortly after this photograph was taken.

I would like to thank Dr Christine Quintlé for the following information.

Twenty seven members of the French Resistance being taken away for execution after a trial before a German military tribunal in Paris on 14 April 1942.

The trial has been called “Procès de la Maison de la Chimie” (trial of the House of Chemistry) as it took place there. Twenty-three of the accused were executed on 17 April at Mont Valérien. André Kirschen, the son of a Romanian Jews was only fifteen at the time of the trial and could not be sentenced to death under German military law. Simone Schloss, who was Jewish, was beheaded in Cologne on 2 July 1942. The image is as still from a German propaganda film.


The young man sticking his out tongue out in defiance after the trial is Jean Quarré who had been with the students and school teenagers who demonstrated against Germany at the Quartier Latin, Paris on 14 July 1940 and on the on the Grands Boulevards, Paris on 13 August 1940. He joined the Résistance in 1941. The other man is Karl (Carlo) Schoenhaar.

Four recipients of the Victoria Cross during the Great War. IWM image dated 1917.

From left to right:

Private Michael O’Rourke VC, MM 7th (1st British Columbia) Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force, awarded the VC in France on 15/17 April 1917.

Sergeant James Ockendon VC,MM of the 1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, awarded the VC in Belgium on 4 October 1917.

Private William Boynton Butler VC, 17th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, awarded the VC in France on 6 August 1917.

Corporal Ernest Alfred Egerton VC, 16th Battalion Sherwood Foresters, Awarded the VC in Belgium on 20 September 1917.

British Homefront during WW2: Bomb Disposal.

Colourised image by DB Colour but original B&W source not indicated.

Lieutenant Robert Davies GC, Royal Engineers standing on a 1,200 lb bomb after a Luftwaffe air raid on London. Photograph taken on 25 November 1941 in Dalston, London after Davies defused the bomb.

By DB Colour (original source not known)

London Rifle Brigades during the Great War, December 1914.

Colourised image by DBCoour. Original B&W source not listed)

Members of the London Rifle Brigades in Ploegstreet Wood, Armentieres Belgium. According to the London Rifles Association during the Great War 10,016 were killed during enemy action, 2,644 wounded and 303 captured. Part of the wood is now used by the Commonwealth War Greaves Commission.

Alan Malcher

Mosquito Aircraft (RAF and RAAF) attacking shipping in Norway. 5 December 1944.

Whilst looking for German shipping hiding in Norwegian fjords, Coastal Command aircraft were forced to dive steeply between precipitous, snow-capped mountains. On December 5th, 34 Mosquitoes of Coastal Command, Banff Wing, armed with cannon and rocket projectiles, attacked enemy shipping lying in the eastern end of Nordgulen Fjord Norway. The aircraft dived from a height of 5,000 ft to mast height at an angle of 45 degrees at a speed of over 300 miles an hour. They also had to run the gauntlet of flak from merchant vessels averaging 3,000 tons each and two escort vessels were attacked – all the ships were left burning. (Film includes good aerial shots of a Mosquito of No. 248 Sqn RAF and attacks on ships in fjord.)

Another clip of the same attack.