Loaned to the British

Abstract

The next morning I began a round of calls, starting at the Norwegian headquarters. Refugees had been trickling in from a variety of directions, and all had to come to London to get a fresh start. Being anxious to hear the latest news from Norway, I joined a small group waiting in the lobby. Here I got a fine bird’s-eye view of the general situation. Many seamen who had sailed in foreign ships had left their ships, some without observing customary procedures. Most of them had joined in convoy work, but a few had insisted on being enrolled in the armed forces. Some brave men and women had set out in fishing smacks across the North Sea, but not all had managed to escape the Luftwaffe. The majority of the refugees found their way through woods and wilderness into Sweden. A few of them, if they qualified as high-priority cases, came out by the Stockholm airlift, but the bulk got stranded in Sweden, halfway between home and destinations:

• Scenes pure though full of peril

• You left—no turning back.

• Your goal was arms and freedom—

• Closed too that forward track.

• You, in mid journey stranded,

• With other thousands caught,

• To halfway life seem fated,

• Twixt what you lost and sought.⁴⁵

Each venture is a new beginning.

—T.S. Eliot, East Coker