Reverend Christian Christiansen, affectionately known as “Little Chris,” was born in Norway on October 8, 1859, worked as a Norwegian sailor in his youth, immigrated to the United States in 1881, labored ten hours a day for $1.50 while studying at night at Union Park Seminary in Chicago, and was ordained a Lutheran minister on May 22, 1888. He came to Gardner in 1897 and ministered there for ten years, then served a Wisconsin congregation for 23 years before being reassigned to Gardner despite not wanting to move and despite the financial loss it meant. During World War II, after reading in the Chicago Tribune about the Nazi heavy-water facility in the Norwegian mountains, he realized he could help because he had been born in that region, had explored its mountainous terrain as a youth, and had navigated its fjords and rivers as a sailor. He contacted the U.S. Navy Department, and military strategists soon came to his house on Jackson Street in Gardner, where Norwegian maps were spread across his living room floor and the heavy-water plant was pinpointed. He provided detailed information on how to reach and destroy the site, and this information was passed to the British military, which trained the commandos who destroyed the Nazis’ heavy-water plant in the February 1943 raid known as Operation Gunnerside. His efforts, along with those of the raiding party, may have helped save the world from nuclear destruction. He was also active in the Norwegian underground and, while trying to help family members in occupied Norway, was able to assist many others through his knowledge of the area and terrain. After his death, his family received a thank-you letter from the King of Norway and only then learned of the full extent of his secret wartime work.