The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

By the spring of 1942, the Churchill Club has twenty members, active and passive. Uffe Darket, a friend of Eigil’s, joins and becomes an important member. Knud and Jens continue to hide their activities from their family, which is made easier by their parents’ absorption in church work and the boys’ isolated rooms in the monastery. Mogens, or “the Professor,” continues his attempts to create a small explosive, using a room at the monastery as a lab. The other boys tease him about his failure to produce a bomb thus far. The boys often taunt each other and bicker but remain united: “[F]aith in each other and our mission held us together” (55).

Knud spots a rifle hanging unattended in the window of a German barrack. The boys decide they must snatch it in daylight when the barracks are empty. When they arrive to steal it, they are startled by the presence of a German soldier. Knud steals the rifle while the German is distracted with cleaning a window, Børge wraps the rifle in a raincoat, and Mogens Thomsen bicycles away with it. Knud notices a postman and two women watching and realizes they must have seen the whole thing.