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We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance
 
 
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We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance [Paperback]

David Howarth (Author), Stephen E. Ambrose (Introduction)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
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Product Description

From Amazon

If this story of espionage and survival were a novel, readers might dismiss the Shackleton-like exploits of its hero as too fantastic to be taken seriously. But respected historian David Howarth confirmed the details of Jan Baalsrud's riveting tale. It begins in the spring of 1943, with Norway occupied by the Nazis and the Allies desperate to open the northern sea lanes to Russia. Baalsrud and three compatriots plan to smuggle themselves into their homeland by boat, spend the summer recruiting and training resistance fighters, and launch a surprise attack on a German air base. But he's betrayed shortly after landfall, and a quick fight leaves Baalsrud alone and trapped on a freezing island above the Arctic Circle. He's poorly clothed (one foot is entirely bare), has a head start of only a few hundred yards on his Nazi pursuers, and leaves a trail of blood as he crosses the snow. How he avoids capture and ultimately escapes--revealing that much spoils nothing in this white-knuckle narrative--is astonishing stuff. Baalsrud's feats make the travails in Jon Krakauer's Mt. Everest classic Into Thin Air look like child's play. In an introduction, Stephen Ambrose calls We Die Alone a rare reading experience: "a book that I absolutely cannot put down until I've finished it and one that I can never forget." This amazing book will disappoint no one. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

This 1955 volume is one of the most remarkable survival stories ever written. Jan Baalsrud was the only survivor of a Norwegian commando team ambushed by the Nazis during World War II. Wounded and with the Germans in pursuit, Baalsrud escaped and miraculously fought his way through the Norwegian tundra to a distant village, where he was saved by locals who helped spirit him to Sweden. Baalsrud suffered frostbite and snowblindness, came through an avalanche, and lived to tell the tale. This edition has a new introduction by Citizen Soldiers' author Stephen Ambrose.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews

40 Reviews
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4.6 out of 5 stars (40 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars We Die Alone., Feb 16 2012
This review is from: We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (Paperback)
Book was recommended as the most exciting story of survival...It was interesting, and I do recommend but not the MOST exciting. Fast paced, easy read which informs us on how much we can really endure with a positive attitude.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written story of escape and survival, Dec 9 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (Paperback)
I rarely bother with adventure stories, but Howarth's fine prose swept me into this tale and kept me at it. The last half of the book I took in one sitting. We hardly care about the protagonist, Jan Baalsrud, as a personality. He has remarkable courage and incredible physical stamina but little spiritual depth. In the hands of a lesser writer, his story could easily have degenerated into a limp survival yarn of the sort regularly published in Reader's Digest. But Howarth gives meaning to the story both through his fine description of the harsh natural world and by his sympathetic treatment of the dozens of volunteers who came to Baalsrud's rescue. Their attempt to rescue one soldier at the risk of their lives became a political as well as a humanitarian cause, virtually the only blow these Norwegians could strike against German invaders in the wastelands of northern Scandinavia.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Strange Tale, July 16 2003
By 
Margaret Magnus (Francestown, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (Paperback)
I'm not a compulsive reader of fantastic true survival stories, though I was raised in the Colorado Rockies and enjoy a bit of moutaineering. But this one was available on tape from the public library.

It started with a lot of bullets over the head and exploding boats and boots lost in the snow and frostbite -- many, many good people who risk their lives for something intangible. The book, I feel, is very good at expressing the states of mind of the people involved -- it's not a simple recounting of events.

But there's one major event that starts about 2/3 of the way through the book, which was so fantastic that I sort of didn't believe it... until I met two of the people involved in the organization that rescued him. And I think what the fact of that event conveys to me is the power of the human mind -- how much our thought and will do, after all, determine things like whether we live or die. The story has a way of sticking in your mind.

One other thing that sticks in my mind about the book concerns the Lapps. It's an odd story. The Norwegians are good skiers and strong people by modern civilized standards (I mean that little itsy country beat the whole world in the winter Olympics). The story relates how they tried several times to get him across the Swedish border, but just couldn't get the sledge that far given the weather and time constraints and geography -- had to keep turning back. They tried to involve the Lapps early on, but they have a fundamentally different approach to such things -- the Lapps among other things, like most nomads leave those who are too weak to travel behind to die in the snow. Then after a month of futility on the part of the Norwegians, a Lapp decide to show up and see if the story was true. Horwath describes how he just stands there for 3-4 hours staring at him in the Arctic snow, and then finally resolves to take him across into Sweden. He and his friend receive some brandy in gratitude, drink several bottles in one night and seem none the worse for it in the morning, and then kind of non-chalantly pull off what the Norwegians could not. That combination of ability to do something what their more sophisticated neighbors could not combined with the lack of sense of urgency interests me.

Jan Baalsrud was born and raised in Kapellveien 4, Kolbotn, Oslo, Norway.

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