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

would think of having to hunt a desperate armed
bandit among ice and rocks and snow.

    It was dusk when the first party of them came along the beach,
but he could see them clearly because they were using torches which
they flashed into dark crevices. They passed his island without a
glance behind them out to sea. So far, it seemed not to have crossed
their minds that he might have swum away.
    When it was dark, the confusion increased. They were scattered in
small groups all over the hills. Each group was signalling to others
with its torches. Men were shouting their own names, afraid that
their friends would mistake them for the bandit. Now and then a single shot echoed from hill to hill. That could only mean that nervous
men were firing at fancied movements in the dark. Slowly it dawned
on Jan, with a feeling of intense elation which gave him new strength
and courage, that for all their numbers, they were afraid of him.
    That opportunity to study the German army at its worst was
worth months of military training, because after it he never again
had the slightest doubt that he could outwit them till the end.
    At the same time, he was becoming more aware of the dangers of
his natural surroundings. A human enemy, however relentless and
malevolent he may be, has human weaknesses; but nobody can trifle
with the Arctic. In immediate terms, Jan knew that if he stayed where
he was in his wet clothes, he would be dead before the morning.

    Of course, there was only one alternative: to swim again. He could
swim back to Ribbenesoy, among the Germans, or he might conceivably swim across the sound, to Hersoy, the next island to the eastward. One way or the other, he had to find a house where he could
go in and get dry and warm. He had only seen two houses on
Ribbenesoy, the shopkeeper's and the one in Toftefjord, and both of
them were out of the question. He knew from the chart that there
were others farther west, but by that time they were probably full of
Germans. Across the sound, on Hersoy, he had seen a single lonely
house, but he had no idea who lived there.
    He looked at Vargesund, and wondered if it was possible. In fact,
it is 220 yards across, but it was difficult for him to guess its width
in the darkness. The far shore was only a shadow between the shining water and the shining hills. The surface of the sound was broken here and there by eddies: the tide had begun to set. In health
and strength he could easily swim the distance; but he could not
judge the effects of the tide and the cold and his own exhaustion.
He stood for a long time before he made up his mind. He did not
want to die either way, but to drown seemed better than to freeze.
He took a last look behind him at the flashing torches of the soldiers, and stumbled down the rocks and waded in and launched
himself into the sea again.
    It is a mercy that the ultimate extremes of physical distress often
get blurred in memory. Jan hardly remembered anything of that
third and longest swim, excepting an agony of cramp, and excepting
the dreadful belief that he was just about to die; an experience most
people encounter once or twice in a lifetime, but one he had had to
face so many times on that single day. It was after he had given up any
conscious struggle, and admitted his defeat, and was ready to welcome his release from pain, that some chance eddy swept him ashore
on the farther side and rolled his limp body among the stones, and
left him lying there on his face, groaning and twisted with cramp,
and not able to move or to think of moving.

    Seconds or minutes later, in the mists of half-consciousness, there
were voices. There were footsteps on the beach, and the clink of
stones turning. He wondered with a mild curiosity whether the
words he could hear were German or Norwegian, and from somewhere outside himself he looked down with pity on the man who lay
beaten on the shore and the people who approached him; because if
they