Whitson / Orr Sea Dog Bamse

World War II Canine Hero
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85790-045-6
Verlag: Birlinn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

This is the remarkable story of one of the Second World War's most unusual animal heroes - a 14-stone St Bernard dog who became global mascot for the Royal Norwegian Forces and a symbol of freedom and inspiration for Allied troops throughout Europe. From a happy and carefree puppyhood spent as a family pet in the Norwegian fishing town of Honningsvag, the gentle giant Bamse followed his master at the outbreak of the war to become a registered crew member of the mine-sweeper Thorodd. Often donning his own steel helmet as he took his place in the Thorodd's bow gun turret, Bamse cut an impressive figure and made a huge contribution to the morale of the crew, and he gallantly saved the lives of two of them. After Norway fell to the Germans in 1940, the Thorodd operated from Dundee and Montrose, where Bamse became a well-known and much-loved figure, shepherding the Thorodd's crew-members back to the boat at pub closing time, travelling on the local buses, breaking up fights and even taking part in football matches. Mourned both by locals and Norwegians when he died in 1944, Bamse's memory has been kept alive both in Norway, where he is still regarded as a national hero, and in Montrose, where a larger-than-life statue of him was unveiled in 2006 by HRH Prince Andrew. Written from extensive source material and eyewitness accounts, Sea Dog Bamse is a fitting tribute to the extraordinary life of an extraordinary dog.

Andrew Orr worked as a GP in Montrose for many years. He is a founder member of the Montrose Heritage Trust and chairman of the Montrose Bamse Project.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Whitson, Angus

Orr, Andrew

Leseproben

1

Norway’s Nose

The clatter of a handcart’s iron-rimmed wheels on the uneven surface of the cobbled streets drew sympathetic glances from passers-by in the far-northern fishing town. On the handcart lay a little girl, just two years old and desperately ill. She was being taken home from the doctor’s tiny infirmary to die. There was nothing more that Dr Harald Borgeresen could do, and he had broken the news to the frightened parents as gently as possible. The child’s pinched, white face peeped out from blankets piled deep to cushion her from the jolts and bumps of the rough journey. Despite the near sub-zero temperature, her small hand stretched out from beneath the blankets, clutching the hand of her mother, who walked alongside.

It was a short journey from the infirmary to the family home, up the hill past traditional three-storey wooden houses painted dark blue, magenta and cream. In the tight-knit fishing community everyone knew each other; happy events were celebrated and misfortunes were shared by all. Everyone was touched by the little girl’s sickness, from which there seemed small hope of recovery. No one passed the cart without words of encouragement and support, and some came out of their houses to ask after her. The father strained at the cart’s shafts, struggling to ease the rigid wheels over the worst of the ruts. A warm bed heated with earthenware hot-water bottles had been prepared for the small patient, and the mother urged her husband to hurry home out of the bitter weather. The father, no less concerned for their beloved daughter, did his best to calm his distraught wife, pointing out that to go any faster could worsen little Vigdis’ condition. At home, the patient’s older sisters and brother waited apprehensively for their parents’ return, watched over by Bamse, the family’s two-year-old St Bernard dog, who was already showing the reliability and the steadiness of temperament which were to characterise the rest of his life.

Near the top of the hill, where the houses thinned and familiar views over the harbour and the fjord opened out, the makeshift conveyance reached the patient’s home. Bamse’s broad face, staring intently from a front window, disappeared abruptly, and the dog joined the family’s older children as they flung open the front door and trooped out quietly to welcome their little sister home. Bamse seemed to sense the sadness and gravity of the situation, and his normal ecstatic greeting, capering and frisking round the family was subdued. The tawny head pushed over the blankets, and after a couple of confirmatory sniffs his pink tongue licked the little girl’s hand. It was no burden for the father to carry his daughter’s feather-light body to the warm bed, where her mother undressed her. Her siblings went with their father to the kitchen, where he explained the doctor’s prognosis and prepared them for Vigdis’ almost certain death.

In this most northern part of Norway, with its sense of being at the extreme end of the known world, everyone was familiar with death – it is said that at one time every fourth adult male died at sea. These were the days before the wonders of available antibiotics – unlike today, when doctors have a pharmacopoeia of proprietary drugs and remedies with which to attack every illness and ailment. Before World War II, epidemic illnesses were expected and commonplace, not just in Norway, but worldwide. Childhood epidemics, especially, were frequently fatal as doctors had so few means of combating them. The fisher folk of the village were no strangers to adversity, and such deaths were accepted with fortitude and stoicism.

No one had time to give much thought to the dog, who had come into the bedroom with the family and lain down beside the bed. When the girl’s mother had done all she could to ensure her daughter’s comfort, she called Bamse to follow her through to the kitchen and join the rest of the family. But the dog remained where he was, and nothing anyone – not even his master – said or did could persuade him to leave the patient’s side.

From that moment Bamse took charge. Only the mother and the doctor could enter the little girl’s bedroom. As if by some incredible instinct, he seemed to understand that these were the two people best able to care for his smallest charge. All others, including her father, the dog physically debarred from entering. Thus began Bamse’s remarkable vigil, and he did not move from the bedside except to feed and attend the calls of nature. At such times her father and siblings surely snatched a few moments to visit the patient, but made sure they were out of the bedroom by the time the great nanny dog returned.

For 12 days and nights the dog kept his watch. There is only hearsay about the patient’s progress, because the sole person still alive to tell the story is Vigdis herself. As she was so young, she has no memory of coming so close to death, and indeed has never known what she was suffering from. At that age, children sleep much of the day, and the recuperative power of sleep is well acknowledged. To the wonder of the waiting and watching family, the frail child passed through a period of crisis and then gradually began to show signs of recovery, sleeping round the clock and waking only to be fed and changed by her mother.

The prayers of the family had been answered. News of Vigdis’ merciful recovery rapidly spread to neighbours and soon to the rest of the community. The dog’s 12-day vigil, which had begun so hopelessly, ended joyfully with the complete recovery of the little girl who had been sent home to die. Everyone marvelled at Bamse’s intervention, and there was much debate about his contribution to Vigdis’ restoration to full health. Most agreed that it was nothing short of a miracle, and it was an early indication of the dog’s insight and comprehension of human conditions, that developed in such an astounding way in later years.

It seems probable that it was at this point that Bamse began to establish his reputation as a dog far beyond the ordinary. It says something about Bamse that he had the innate confidence to impose his will on his master, and it says something about the father, Erling Hafto, a former naval officer, and presumably not greatly used to being opposed, that he accepted the domestic regime imposed by the family pet. However, something profound must have connected between the two, because in due course they sailed off together to fight a war.

The little girl, Vigdis Hafto, at the time of writing in 2008, is a grandmother in her seventies and a picture of good health. She shows no sign of how close to death she was all those years ago.

If the incidental details of this story have been embellished, in general the events happened as they are told. It all took place in 1938 in Honningsvåg, a fishing and whaling centre and the principal town on the south coast of the island of Magerøya at the extreme north of Norway. It was here that Vigdis grew up with Bamse as her constant companion. Captain Hafto was Honningsvåg’s harbour-master, a job central to the life of the community, and consequently he was one of the town’s leading men. The title ‘captain’ was not a reference to naval rank, but one accorded him as a courtesy in his capacity as harbour-master. It seems strange now that a man of his authority and standing should have had only an ordinary handcart to transport his dying daughter home, but in 1938 Honningsvåg was about as remote a spot in Europe as it was possible to be.

Magerøya Island lies 525 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle - at a similar latitude to Point Barrow in the very north of Alaska - at the very northernmost tip of Europe. There is no landmass between it and the North Pole over 2,000 kilometres away. Almost everything about Magerøya and Honningsvåg – the church, the school, the harbour – always has been, and still is, ‘the world’s most northernmost’. Russian sailors, on their way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Russian port of Murmansk on the Barents Sea, sailed past the steep cliffs of Nordkapp (North Cape) on Magerøya’s north coast, and nicknamed it ‘Norway’s Nose’. In 1938 the only link with the mainland was by boat across the one-kilometre-wide Magerøya Sound, and fishing and agriculture were practically the only commercial activities on the island. Roads were cobbled, and only tracks linked the main town with the outlying villages. Apart from a few commercial vehicles at the harbour, there were no cars. The old town had grown up long before the invention of the internal combustion engine, and its narrow streets were not suited to motor traffic; in any case, Honningsvåg’s whole raison d’ être at that time was fishing and whaling, so boats were the principal means of transportation. Erling Hafto, therefore, could not call for an ambulance to speed his daughter’s journey home from hospital.

Today the island is linked to the mainland by the sub-sea Nordkapp (North Cape) Tunnel. While fishing still forms a core business activity, the island has become increasingly dependent on tourism, and the port of Honningsvåg is a popular cruise-ship destination. It is a land of contrasts: in summer the constant daylight from the never-setting sun brings a surge of energy and activity, while from November until January the sun sinks below the horizon, with the semi-darkness lightened by dazzling displays of the dancing Aurora Borealis, the breathtaking Northern Lights. Mythical bedtime stories of supernatural trolls who steal naughty children’s minds and enslave them contrast with the hard reality of daily life within the Arctic...