Odd Valentino Bjerke was born in Oslo, Norway in October 1924. In 1940, after the Germans occupied his country, he found his way to Britain where he joined the Norwegian Free Army. After his basic military training in the Scottish Highlands he was assigned to the 4th Mountain Company, stationed in Dumfries. In January 1941, he was transferred to the “Norwegian Ski Troop” based in Iceland. His duties were to train Allied ski troops in skiing and winter warfare. In early 1941 he was selected, with a team of meteorologists and soldiers, to occupy the barren arctic island of Jan Mayen to maintain and protect a crucial weather station. In late 1942, he was transferred back to Scotland where he was inducted into 5 Troop (Norwegian) No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, with whom he would serve until the end of the war in Europe. His commando activities saw him serving in Norway, Lapland and Holland. He was shot several times at the battle of Kapelsche Veer in Holland in 1945, ending his wartime activities. He would go on to a new, initially covert, life in America, drawing on his wartime experiences to train USAF crews in survival and evasion.