The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 67 described the situation in her 1941 memoir, Mission to the North , as follows: “Wives and children of the staff had been arriving so thick and fast that between five and six o’clock, 25 of us had sat down to breakfast.” Finally, instructions arrived from Washington that an evacuation of the entire American legation was to proceed immediately. The Journey to Stockholm Nearly simultaneously with the German attack on Norway, orders from Washington arrived in the defense attaché’s office at the American Mission in Helsinki that Army Major Frank Hayne and Army Captain Robert Losey, his assis- tant, were to leave immediately for Stockholm. They were designated “attachés to Norway and Sweden” to keep watch on the war in Scandinavia. With the Defense Attaché office in Oslo literally under siege, they were to cover both countries from Stockholm. Hayne had been in Helsinki for some time, reporting back to Washington on the ebbs and flows of the Winter War. Losey had arrived in Finland directly from Washington in the middle of February. A young and brilliant officer, Losey had taken two master’s degrees from the California Institute of Technology while serving as a meteorological officer at March Field in California. The Iowa-born son of a traveling preacher, he had lived in sever- al parts of the U.S. before attending West Point, where he fulfilled his dream to become a commissioned army flyer. Both officers hurriedly departed for Sweden. When they arrived in Stockholm, Hayne went to work in the defense attaché’s office at the embassy. Losey, however, was ordered at once to Norway to assist Ambassador Harriman as she managed the evacuation of American staff and dependents from Embassy Oslo. Because Washington had also instruct- ed her to keep close contact with the Norwegian royal fam- ily, Harriman divided the party so that she would be near the Norwegian government and royal family. Under the guid- ance of the Oslo legation’s naval attaché, Lt. Commander Ole Hagen, 17 family members, wives and children, had already departed Oslo for the Swedish frontier to the north- east on April 9, the first day of the invasion. When Losey caught up with Harriman, a few days later, she was in central Sweden, just over the Norwegian- Swedish border. She later wrote, “I ran into Captain Losey on the way to breakfast. I find I have noted in my diary, ‘The new military attaché is a nice, spare young man in a flying corps uniform, and seems in every way acceptable.’” (See photo on p. 66.) They spent the day driving across the frigid mountains and by 9 p.m. reached Särna, where they linked up with the French and British legations from Oslo. By Sunday, April 14, Harriman had still made no contact with the convoy carrying the remainder of the legation families. Fearing they were lost, Capt. Losey told her over lunch that he wanted to press on back to Norway to locate the Hagen party. Harriman agreed and sent him with her own vehicle and driver. They draped the car with a large American flag strung across the top in hopes that prowling German planes would spare the vehicle of a still neutral power. A cable from Stockholm reached the State Department on April 16, 1940, stating that Harriman “… now knows whereabouts of Norwegian government across Swedish border. The roads are open and when Losey returns to her at Salen she will proceed with him to [the] government.” Losey returned that very day, having unsuccessfully tried to locate the missing party. Harriman sent him driving all night to Stockholm to make a personal report to the embassy there. He returned to Salen the following night. Harriman and Losey discussed making a second trip to locate the remaining members of the legation staff, and initially dis- agreed over whether Harriman should accompany the search mission or Losey should go alone. “You might be bombed,” he argued; “the Germans are strafing the roads.” “But so might you,” Harriman replied, “and that would be the worse for you are young and have your life before you, while I have had a wonderful life and nearly all of it behind me.” Losey would have none of it. “I certainly don’t want to be killed,” he said lightly, “but your death would be the more serious as it might involve our country in all kinds of trouble, where with a military attaché’ …” he went on, and finally convinced her. Harriman recalled, “I hated to see him go, Losey traveled from Finland to Norway to assist Harriman as she managed the evacuation of American staff and dependents from Embassy Oslo. J. Michael Cleverley, a Foreign Service officer since 1976, most recently served as deputy chief of mission in Helsinki from 1996 to 1999 and as DCM in Athens from 2000 to 2003. He is now the deputy permanent representative at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Organizations in Rome. This article is excerpted from his book, Lauri Törni, Syntynyt Sotilas, a biography of Finnish and American war hero Larry Thorne, which was published by Finnish pub- lisher Otava in October. The book will come out in English under the title A Scent of Glory this month.