We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by Stephen E. Ambrose, David Howarth Read Free Book Online

among the hills, hampered by his
wounded foot, he had no idea how far he had come from Toftefjord,
and before he expected it he found himself facing the sea again.
Below him on the shore there were some houses and a jetty, and from
Eskeland's description he recognised the shop. He had crossed the
island already. He remembered that the shopkeeper had a boat, and
he thought of trying to steal it. But the water in front of him was
wide and clear, and the Germans would be over the hill behind him
at any moment. He knew he could not get out of sight in a boat
before they came.
    He went on, down to the shore a little way from the jetty. There
at least was a narrow strip of beach which was free of snow, and he
could walk along it, slowly and painfully, without leaving any tracks
at all. He turned to the left, away from the shop, back towards
Toftefjord. He felt intolerably lonely.
    There were two little haysheds by the shore. He wanted to creep
into one and hide there and burrow in the hay and get warm and go
to sleep. They were obvious hiding places. But even as he began to
think of it, he knew they were too obvious. They were isolated. He pictured himself hidden there in the dark, hearing the Germans
coming along the beach, and their expectant shouts when they saw
the sheds, and himself trapped in there while they surrounded him.
The very uselessness of the haysheds impressed upon him that there
really was no hiding place for him in that dreadful island. If he stayed
on the island, wherever he hid he would be found.

    As he scrambled along the beach he was coming nearer, though
he did not know it, to the sound which Eskeland and the others had
passed through on their way to the shop. It is called Vargesund, and
it is full of rocks, in contrast to the wide open waters to the north and
south. The largest of the rocks is about half an acre in extent. As soon
as Jan saw this little island, he knew what he had to do, and for the
first time he saw a gleam of hope. He hurried to the edge of the water,
and waded in, and began to swim again.
    It was only fifty yards to the rock, and in spite of his clothes and
his pistol and his one sea-boot, he had no difficulty in swimming
across. But when he dragged himself out of the mixture of ice and
water, and climbed over to the far side of the rock, the effect of this
second swim began to tell on him. He had to begin to reckon with
the prospect of freezing to death.
    There was a minute patch of peat on top of the islet, and someone had been cutting it. He got down below the peatbank and started
to do exercises, keeping an eye on the hills of the main land. His bare
foot was quite numb, although running had made an unpleasant
mess of the raw end of his toe. He took off his sea-boot and moved
his one sock from his left foot to his right. It seemed a good idea to
have a boot on one foot and a sock on the other. He stamped his feet,
crouching down below the bank, to start the circulation and try to
ward off frostbite.
    It was only a very short time before the Germans came in sight,
and for the next two hours he watched them, at first with apprehension, and then with a growing sense of his own advantage. They came
slowly, in straggling line abreast, pausing to challenge every stone, with a medley of shouts and orders and counter-orders; and Jan,
watching them critically in the light of his own field training,
remembered one of the many things he had been told and had only
half believed: that the garrisons of that remote part of Norway were
low-grade troops whose morale was softened by isolation and long
inactivity. Gradually, as he watched their fumbling search, he began
to despise them, and to recognize beneath that formidable uniform
the signs of fallibility and even fear. They were probably clerks and
cooks and batmen, dragged out unwillingly at a moment's notice
from comfortable headquarters billets in the town. He could guess
very well what they