Like the other training camps, STS 26 was kept secret and locals weren’t allowed to set foot on the site. (Though the Norwegians did sometimes leave: Norwegian veteran Erling Lorentzen remembers going to nearby Nethy Bridge for dinner and Aviemore for dancing on Fridays). Although the Germans knew of the schools, it was of the utmost importance that they be kept in the dark about specific operations and identities of the agents. The men who trained here faced significant risk: Hitler’s Commando Order of 1942 stated that any Allied agents be executed immediately without trial (a war crime for which obeying officers were later found guilty at the Nuremberg Trials).

Even worse, adds Johnnie’s wife Philippa Grant, who has spoken with many STS 26 graduates, “if the Nazis discovered what they were doing, back in Norway, not only could their relatives have been killed, but their whole villages”.

Courageous company

Now 93 years old, Lorentzen is one of the surviving members of the company, commonly known as Kompani Linge after its first leader Captain Martin Linge, and a graduate of STS 26. He was 17 when he joined the military to fight the German invasion of Norway; by 1942, already a well-established member of the resistance, he was tracked down by the Gestapo and had a narrow escape to Sweden, then to Scotland, where he spent nearly a year training. When Lorentzen returned to Norway, he worked both as an organiser of the resistance and a saboteur. By WWII’s end, at 23 years old, he had become the military leader of a section numbering 800 people.

“I remember Scotland very clearly because when I arrived at the airport, I said out into the dark, ‘Oh, it’s so good to be in England!’,” he says now with a chuckle. “And I got a very clear response out of the dark: ‘You are not in England, sir, you are in Scotland!’.”