Patrick Dalzel-Job - From Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy: The Extraordinary Wartime Exploits of a Naval Special Agent

As I have written earlier, I have received three memorable compliments in my life. The first came from Ginger Boyle (Lord Cork and Orrery) after the landing of the Expeditionary Force in North Norway; the second came from the wounded soldier of the Foreign Legion near Narvik; the third came many years later.

Bjrg, my blue-eyed girl from the Arctic, was the perfect naval wife when I was with the Canadian Navy after the war so everybody said. We had many interesting and indeed often very exciting experiences together. Bjrg was always without fear. Our only son spent his childhood with his mother in a remote log cabin in the Canadian bush; later in life he was to be a Company Commander in the Battle of Mount Tumbledown in the Falklands.

In 1960, after Canada, we came back to settle in the West Highlands of Scotland. In her Arctic home-town, the only gardening that Bjrg had known had been her mothers indoor house-plants, but she turned our totally neglected five acres by the shore into a woodland garden visited and admired by thousands of people from all over the world. Until the onset of her terrible illness, she was out in the garden every day at dawn. I was only the gardeners boy and handyman.

Patrick and Bjrg in their West Highland home in 1967.

Bjrg was the village Brown Owl, loved by all the children as she loved them. She organized the girls section of the Duke of Edinburghs Award and Meals on Wheels for old people who also loved her. She sang in the Gaelic choir and was well known to most of the great pipers of the world; the music of the Highland bagpipe, which she had first heard played, very badly, by me when she was twelve years old, was her greatest interest in life. Her spoken English was, if anything, better than mine, and I relied on her for the correct spelling and pronunciation of difficult English words.

One summer day, only a few years before Bjrg died, some idiot visiting our woods threw a lighted cigarette into the peat bank by the shore. By the time that the sweet-smelling smoke was noticeable at the house, the smouldering fire had taken hold and was spreading fast. We rushed with pails of water between house and fire and sea, but after an hour of this hard labour we knew that we could do no good by ourselves. Bjrg telephoned for the fire brigade.

The Knights Cross of St Olav which was awarded to Patrick by the King of Norway with the kings personal thanks.

In an astonishingly short time, the fire engine arrived at our top gate. They were all retained firemen, not regulars, and had to gather from their places of work before driving six miles along a narrow and winding mountain road. In charge was big Freddie, our Scaffie (dustcart driver), who was also vice-chairman of the local British Legion branch. They manhandled their very heavy portable fire-pump down through the woods to the shore, and pumped two thousand gallons of seawater on the fire.

While I was away inspecting the damage, Bjrg apologized to Freddie for calling them out but said she did not think I could have been expected to do any more; I had been working very hard at the fire for an hour.

Ay, said Freddie, hes a tough old bugger.

MAPS

North-West Europe (Norwegian Sea)