William Tilley 

William Tilley was one of the many firemen on board the HMS India and his job, along with the others, would have been to tend to the massive coal-stoked fires that would have run continuously to keep the steam engines that drove the boat running.

William was 21 when the ship was torpedoed but had been onboard since 1914, before the war, when the ship was still a member of the P & O fleet. He was one of the many that was rescued by the Trawler Saxon. William Tilley can be seen in several photographs from Jørstadmoen including the one of all the crew sitting on the hill where he can be seen with his head poking through the HMS India life ring. He can also be seen in many of the football photographs.

Tilley was one of the small group of men who married a Norwegian lady. William and Agnethe Haugen, one of the camp’s cooks and a native of Fåberg, were married on 19 October 1918 and had only a brief time together before William was repatriated and sent back to Britain. His certificate of discharge from the Royal Navy is dated 28 January 1919 and from there he went back to his hometown, London and investigated joining the police force.

On returning to Norway to collect Agnethe he changed his mind and decided that he and his wife should remain in Norway and with a recommendation from Commander Kennedy, he applied for and was given a job on the Norwegian State Railways. After gaining Norwegian citizenship in October 1921, William and Agnethe settled into married life and had seven children.

But things were not to remain settled for long. William became involved in the Second World War after the Germans invaded in 1940 and this is where his story becomes more interesting. He was still working with the railways and was given the job (with several other men) of moving the engines to Lillehammer. This was achieved even though the Germans attacked several times during the move.

Soon after the English troops arrived and William Tilley was asked to assist as interpreter and guide. Late in April 1940, William was given the task of driving the engine of a train that was taking a Norwegian major to Hjerkinn on the Dovrebanen right through the section that Arnold and his other fellow internees had helped to build.

They never made it to their destination due to German bombing raids, but William’s skill and affinity with the English language led to him being promoted to locomotive-foreman and he worked in transporting the troops before escaping to London.

When he eventually escaped to London, he wrote a seven-page report on his activities during this period, but some of these were a lot less detailed than others and I  suspect he was not only helping the British troops but was also involved in the train movements that enabled the Norwegian Government to rescue its Gold reserves and get them to the coast at Åndalsnes, from which a Royal Navy cruiser carried them over to Scotland.

Tilley and a companion reached Åndalsnes on May 1st and although they had been promised passage on a ship, they soon found themselves held under armed guard by nervous troops who thought they were spies. Luckily, they were spotted by a major who they had helped earlier and were taken to General Paget, the Officer commanding, who strongly recommended that Tilley should leave Norway and his family as the Germans would certainly shoot him if he was captured.

So, he sailed away from Norway on board H.M.S Calcutta on 2 May and reached Scapa Flow the following day.

 Research uncovered that William returned to his hometown in London (West Ham) and assumed the role of an air raid warden, but this was not to last for long as in January 1942 he is released from this role to take up the position of Head Porter and senior fire guard at the Shaftesbury Hotel.

The Shaftesbury Hotel was in central London and was managed by the Norwegian Government. Roger Partridge questions whether William was working in the jobs he was listed as doing or whether this was a cover for some other military or undercover work, but by April 1943, William has left London and has joined the Norwegian Army. He was certainly having a busier war the second time around than he did the first time and it still was not over.

William survived an emergency landing in a plane in Sweden in 1945, where he lost everything but his life. Luckily for him and everyone else, the war was over about a week later and William was able to return to his wife and children in Norway. He had not seen them for five long years and had only been in contact through Red Cross Mail.

It must have been such a relief to finally settle down to family life again. William Tilley spent the rest of his working life on the Norwegian State Railways and died in 1976 and is buried in the Hamar valley region—not too far from Jørstadmoen.  (Much of this research and writing was undertaken by Roger Partridge, a gentleman who had a keen interest in the HMS India story and who had bought many of my grandfather-in-law’s letters).

Late in the writing of my book I was contacted by Linn Tilley Brandt, one of William Tilley’s grandchildren, seeking information on her grandfather.

I asked Linn to alert me to any inaccuracies in William’s story. She wrote that “all the information seems to be correct” and then went on to say that “World War Two was extra difficult for the family because William was English and they would not talk about it, so my father could not tell much. He did not know anything about his English relatives, the only contact he got was birthday cards from his grandmother.”

I was also contacted by Kjell-Arne, one of William’s other grandchildren and he reassured me “your story seems to be close to my walk down the memory lane.”