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NEIGHBORS: Vistan spent WWII as thorn in the side of Germans
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Frode Suhr of Vista and several of his friends sabotaged German efforts during World War II. (Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle - Staff photographer)
Frode Suhr is finally getting around to telling his war stories. And he has quite a few to tell.
The Vista resident was not even 17 when the German army rolled into his native Denmark in April 1940 during World War II. The occupation came despite a treaty of nonaggression signed by the two countries the previous year.
The stunning invasion was not something Suhr and his friends were prepared to accept without a fight.
"My friends Vagn Pedersen Bach and Thue Thuesen got together. We were all aggravated over the situation and we were thinking about what we could do to annoy the Germans and cause them damage," Suhr said.
They came up with a few options.
It started with casual surveillance of German positions and anti-aircraft batteries. Suhr, somewhat of a photographer in town, would take photos of Nazi troop movements and installations, then send them off to Sweden on fishing boats stationed in the harbor at Aalborg, Suhr's hometown.
Those photos were then delivered to the British embassy in Stockholm.
After realizing they needed a better way to send information to the allies, Suhr and company built a radio receiver/transmitter from parts they purchased with money from an English sympathizer.
Once completed, the group transmitted messages from the tower of a church in town, as well as from the top of the 180-foot Aalborg Tower.
It was dangerous work. German patrols used electronic sweeping devices to detect radio transmissions. And the tower was just 250 feet away from a German barracks housing 300 soldiers.
"We rode up on a creaky elevator. We were afraid we'd be heard," he said. "I was sure they could hear the noise. It was so obvious. But they probably thought nobody would be so stupid as to go up the tower at night."
Suhr and friends didn't know at the time whether their messages got through. After the war, Suhr learned that the embassy in Stockholm had received transmissions from Aalborg.
One night in 1941, Suhr was part of a group that sabotaged damaged German fighter planes in a nearby railway yard. The planes were awaiting transfer back to Germany for use as replacement parts. Sneaking into the yard, Suhr estimates they smashed 200 monitors in the planes' instrument panels.
In time, Suhr connected with other intelligence operatives, one of whom had been a former scout leader in his town. That led to his most harrowing adventure, during which he was told to go to a nearby town to meet a group of German officers who were working with the Allies.
"I was met by a staff car carrying high-ranking German officers. I identified myself and jumped into the car," said Suhr. "We dressed in mechanic's overalls and drove back to Aalborg."
The presence of the Germans allowed the group to breeze through checkpoints as they headed for the nearby airfield where four fighter planes were being stored. The top officer told the mechanics on hand to take the weekend off, giving the group free rein to take pictures of the planes.
They then took one into the air, skimming the ground at about 300 feet, recalled Suhr.
"We took pictures of the German lines. They were waving at us, and we waved back," he said. "They probably thought we were sending the pictures back to the Fatherland."
Another mission took Suhr to the harbor where a German U-boat was berthed. With help from a pair of street girls who lured the German guards away, a group of operatives was able to remove about eight nickel-cadmium batteries from the submarine.
Suhr accidentally dropped one into the water ---- "It made a helluva splash" ---- but the group got away without detection. That U-boat remained idled in the harbor for several months, Suhr said.
His luck ran out in 1943, when a shipment of photographs seized by the Germans was traced back to him. Suhr was arrested, tried in an SS court and sentenced to death by firing squad. It was only the intervention, at the behest of Suhr's family, of the German general in charge of the Danish occupation that got him a second trial, at which he was sentenced to six years of hard labor.
By April 1945, Suhr had spent time in a half-dozen concentration camps, including Neuengammen, where 40,000 prisoners were killed. His weight dropped from around 150 pounds to 90 pounds. He battled pneumonia, dysentery, lice and a throat infection.
A Nazi guard smashed his toes with a rifle butt. Another flung a forestry saw at him, gashing his thumb practically to the bone.
After his time at Neuengammen, Suhr was sent by train with other prisoners to a prison camp in Denmark. En route, Suhr jumped off the train and raced away as a German guard fired away at him with a rifle. One bullet grazed his left arm, but otherwise he was unharmed.
"I guess I was too skinny to hit," he said.
Suhr got assistance from a family in a nearby home. Being fluent in German, he was able to chat his way past German patrols searching for him. After that escape, he fought against SS troops in Copenhagen until the war ended.
He looks back at that time with a sense of some amazement.
Still, he feels a sense of accomplishment.
"That U-boat that lay in the harbor because it didn't have batteries. That may have saved some ships. The 200 instruments we destroyed in their planes going back to Germany. It must have retarded the manufacture of more," he said. "Maybe a little behind the scenes, I did something that saved some lives."
After the war, Suhr helped develop a diagnostic tool to improve radio signals in Denmark. He then spent time in Illinois and Toronto doing various engineering and electronics work, eventually starting his own engineering consulting company.
He moved to a home overlooking the Vista Valley Golf Course late last year with his wife of 54 years, Doris. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, he is now trying to create some kind of permanent collection of his life stories.
"I hope to find someone to make a book. I think it's a very exciting story," he said.
Contact staff columnist Jeff Frank at 760-740-5419 or jfrank@nctimes.com
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