Paul Donahue's Reviews > We Die Alone: A WWII Epic Of Escape And Endurance

"If Jan had stopped to think, everything would have seemed hopeless. He was alone, in uniform, on a small bare island, hunted by about fifty Germans. He left a deep track as he waded through the snow which anyone could follow. He was wet through and had one bare foot, which was wounded, and it was freezing hard. The island was separated from the mainland by two sounds, each several miles wide and patrolled by the enemy, and all his money and papers had been blown up in the boat."

That is the first paragraph of the third chapter in what is truly the most incredible -- and true! -- story I have ever read. Jan Baalsrud ultimately survives and escapes.

Jan is a Norwegian commando in 1943 on an undercover mission in the very north of Nazi-occupied Norway, with the aim of establishing and training a resistance squad to take out a Nazi air base. His mission is almost immediately compromised (in an absurdly coincidental way) and he soon finds himself the only remaining part of the team not killed or captured. Once he escapes the Germans' initial search, he encounters a series of patriotic Norwegians willing to risk their lives and sacrifice much to get him a step closer to safety.

These characters and their sacrifice drive the book as much as Jan does. In remote 1940s Norway, people fish, farm, and trade, and little else. No one is poor, but no one is by any means rich – they seem to live such that they have exactly what they need and nothing more. The people who helped Jan took precious money out of their pockets and food off their families' tables. They all knew what the Nazis would do to them and their families if they were caught. But though they were aware of the war effort, they were far removed from it, and many looked at assisting Jan's escape as their contribution.

The book is very poorly edited – way too many unnecessary 'thats' and 'hads' and 'whichs' and 'ands' that nearly make reading about Jan's actions unbearable. I counted at least 20 typos, including a brutal two/to mixup and one in a photo caption. I don't understand how that happens. Really the only reason this does not merit a coveted 5-star rating. But once the author sets about describing the next stage of scenery and conveying the idea of just what Jan was up against, it's mesmerizing. Several times I had to doublecheck just to make sure the story was true. It really is a "what else could possibly happen to make this worse?" kind of story…and then it does. Stephen Ambrose writes the preface and has to almost implore you to believe that yes, this story really is true.

Once Jan is given a set of skis, it seems imminent that the expert skier would zoom to Sweden, about 40 miles away, in no time. He even buzzed through a village and within arm's reach of off-duty, disinterested Nazi soldiers. But that pesky avalanche, which sends him falling 300 feet and leaves him wandering aimlessly, delirious and hallucinating from a concussion, and completely snowblind. He somehow stumbles across a cabin inhabited miraculously by another patriotic Norwegian.

And so on, and so on. Each new part of the journey becomes more incredible than the last. The author explores the depth of human endurance, suffering, loneliness, and hopelessness with moving acuity. It is tough to tell which is more amazing: Jan's will and ability to survive, or the string of Norwegians – such simple but dedicated people – who risked everything for a stranger, but a fellow countryman. It truly is an inspirational story. The next time something seems hopeless or too difficult, I can think of Jan, alone, frostbitten, starving, unable to move, on a barren Norwegian mountain, and that he lived to be 71 years old.