We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (20 page)

The advantage of getting Lapps to go, rather than Norwegians,
was obvious at once to Marius and Herr Legland, as it would be to
anyone who knew the Lapps and the country. The only surprising
thing was that anyone in Kaafjord or Mandal should know any Lapps
well enough to have any hope of persuading them to make the journey. The Lapps are very peculiar people at any time, a small primitive
race entirely distinct from anyone else in Europe; and during the war
they were more peculiar than usual. The kind of Lapps they had in
mind are nomads who live by breeding reindeer, and since the beginning of history they have made the same migrations with the reindeer every year. The same families of Lapps come every spring with
their herds to Kaafjord and Lyngseidet, always arriving within a day
or two of the fifth of May. They spend the summer there, in Norway,
and the winter in Finland or Sweden. National frontiers mean nothing to them, because they have been making their journeys since long before the frontiers existed. To stop them would mean that their race
would die out, because the reindeer cannot survive without a seasonal change of feeding-ground, and the Lapps cannot survive without their reindeer. Probably the Germans would have liked to stop
them, if only for the sake of tidiness, but they wisely never tried; and
all through the World War the Lapps wandered unconcerned
between Finland, which was fighting on the side of Germany, and
Norway, which was fighting as best it could on the Allied side, and
Sweden, which was neutral.

One result of this unique situation was that the Lapps themselves
naturally had no interest in the war at all. Probably none of them had
any idea of what it was all about. It was no good appealing to them
on any grounds of patriotism or ideology. They were no more
attached to one of the three countries than another, and they would
never have heard of politics. Neither would the humanitarian
grounds for helping Jan have meant very much to them, because they
do not set a high value on human life. If a Lapp lost the use of his
feet, like Jan, he would know he was useless and expect his family to
leave him alone to die.

All the same, if any Lapps could be persuaded to take Jan to the
frontier, they were much more likely to succeed than any Norwegian
party could possibly be. For one thing, nobody could check their
movements; there was no limit to the time they could be away. Also,
although they knew nothing about compasses or maps, they knew
that uncharted country far better than anyone else. They were able to
survive even the worst of winter weather in the open; and finally, they
had reindeer trained to draw sledges, and could cover much more
ground in a day than a party of men drawing a sledge themselves.
Therefore Marius, Herr Legland and the rest of the conspirators welcomed this suggestion. The first wave of the migration of reindeer
was due to arrive within a week. They would already be somewhere
on their way across the mountains. The message from Mandal had
said that the best ski-runner in Kaafjord was ready to set off, along the migration tracks towards the Lapp settlement of Kautokeino, a
hundred miles away, to try to locate the herds. A message was sent
back, welcoming the idea and asking him to go at once.

Meanwhile, the main problem for Marius and the Furuflaten men
was to get Jan up to the plateau. The place for meeting the party from
Mandal had already been agreed. It was in a shallow depression on
the plateau, half-way between Revdal and Mandal. To get there from
the Revdal side was a steep climb for the first two thousand feet, and
then a more gentle upward slope across about three miles of the open
snowfield. The meeting place itself was at a height of about 2700 feet.
Something of the nature of a stretcher which would be carried would
be needed to get him up the first part of the climb, and a sledge
would be easiest for the last part. They decided to try to combine
both functions by building the lightest possible sledge.

All these discussions and the coming and going of messengers
had been happening in the midst of the German garrison areas in
Furuflaten and Lyngseidet. For building the sledge, the plot was carried even farther into the German camp. The best joiner anyone
could think of was the caretaker of Herr Legland's school. The school
buildings had been requisitioned and the pupils turned out to make
room for the German district headquarters staff, but the caretaker
still worked there and still had access to what had been the school
workshop. He undertook to build the sledge; and he did so, inside the
German headquarters itself. The impertinence of this filled everyone
who knew of it with a kind of schoolboyish glee; and the only disadvantage of such an attractive arrangement was that the joiner could
not take the risk of putting the sledge together, because the Germans
who came in and out while he was working would have been certain
to ask what it was for. However, he made each piece to careful measurements, and was willing to guarantee that when the time came to
assemble it, everything would fit. It was built on a pair of ordinary
skis, and it had a slatted platform about a foot high, eighteen inches
wide and six feet long. Events proved that his workmanship was good. The sledge not only fitted together, but stood up to week after
week of the hardest possible treatment.

It was ready on the third day after Marius had last been to Revdal,
and all the plans were completed on that day too, except that the skirunner from Kaafjord had not come back from his search for the
reindeer. Marius's three neighbours, Alvin Larsen, Olaf Lanes and
Amandus Lillevoll, were prepared to go over with him to Revdal that
night to make the attempt to haul Jan up the mountain. Herr
Legland telephoned to the schoolmaster in Mandal to say in cautiously chosen words, in case the line was tapped, that the parcel he
was expecting was being sent at once. Alvin Larsen was going that
afternoon to fetch the sledge from Lyngseidet; but that very morning
an avalanche blocked the road between Lyngseidet and Furuflaten.

Luckily, the avalanche did not delay him much, and on the whole
it was probably an advantage to their plans. It was also the indirect
cause of an incident which appealed to what might be called the
occupation sense of humour. The local people had been expecting it
to happen. The road just north of Furuflaten runs along the shore of
the fjord below a cliff a thousand feet high, the same cliff which Jan
had been trying to skirt when he got lost in the mountains; and the
snow from the gullies in the cliff always falls and blocks the road
about the last week in April. It happens with such regularity that a
jetty has been built at Furuflaten for a car ferry which provides a
way through for traffic till the danger is past in May. Alvin Larsen
had already arranged to go to Lyngseidet by boat if the avalanche
started before the sledge was ready; but the Germans were not so
well prepared for it, and the sudden blocking of the main road
diverted their attention at that crucial moment from everything else
that was happening.

Alvin got to Lyngseidet without any trouble, and tied up his boat
at the pier. There was a German sentry on the pier who took no
notice of him at all. He went up to the school and collected the bits
of the sledge from the caretaker, together with a bag of bolts and screws, and minute instructions for putting it all together. The bundles of pieces of wood tied together with string and the pair of skis
looked reasonably harmless. He carried them down through the village to the pier. But when he got there the tide was very low, and his
boat was a long way down. He was afraid to throw the wood down
into the boat in case it broke, and if he got down into the boat he
could not reach up again to the level of the pier. So he called to the
sentry to give him a hand. The sentry came over, and put down his
rifle, and kindly handed the skis and the bundles down to Alvin one
by one. Alvin thanked him gravely in Norwegian, and started his
engine and steamed away.

THAT EVENING, the sailing-boat which Marius used crossed over the
fjord again, laden with the gear for the attempt to climb the mountain:
the sledge, still in pieces, a sixty-foot rope, an old canvas sleeping-bag
and two fresh blankets for Jan, two rucksacks full of spare clothing and
food and a bottle of brandy, and the four pairs of skis of the men who
were making the attempt.

The ascent of Revdal was the first of two feats of mountaineering
during Jan's rescue which are possibly unique. It often happens after
climbing accidents in peace time that an injured man has to be carried or lowered a long way down a mountain; but there must rarely,
if ever, have been any occasion before or since to carry an injured
man up a mountain for three thousand feet in severe conditions of
ice and snow. At the time, spurred on by the knowledge that Jan's life
depended on it, the four men who attempted it never dreamed of
failure; but ever afterwards, when they looked up in cold blood at the
mountain wall of Revdal, they wondered how they could possibly
have done it.

When they got to the far shore of the fjord that evening, they
walked up to the hut in some anxiety at what they would find inside,
afraid of the effect which another three days of isolation might have
had on Jan. But they found him more cheerful than he had been the
time before. Physically, he was weaker, and those of the party who had not seen him since they had left him there twelve days earlier
were shocked at the change in his appearance, for he had lost a lot of
weight and his eyes and cheeks were sunken. But he was much clearer
in his head than he had been when Marius saw him, and he had even
regained the vestige of a sense of humour. He told them his feet were
no worse. The toes, of course, could not get any worse, but the gangrene had not spread any farther, so far as he could tell. He said it was
still just as painful; but they could see from his behaviour that he
could stand up to the pain now that he knew he was not abandoned.
All in all, he was a patient whom no hospital staff would have allowed
out of bed for a moment, and looking down at him lying there in his
filth, all four men wondered whether it could be right to take him out
into the snow and subject him to the treatment they intended. All of
them thought it would very likely kill him. But they knew for certain
that it was his only chance.

While two of them put the sledge together, the others wrapped
him securely in two blankets, and then pushed and pulled him into
the sleeping-bag. When the sledge was ready, they lifted him out of
the bunk where he had lain for nearly a fortnight, and put him on the
sledge and lashed him securely down with ropes, so that not much
more than his eyes was showing and he could not move at all. They
maneuvered the sledge through the door and put it down in the snow
outside. While they adjusted their individual loads of skis and skisticks, and ropes and rucksacks, Jan had a moment to glance for the
last time, without any regret, at the hovel where he had expected to
die. Then they took up the short hauling ropes they had tied to the
sledge, and turned it towards the mountain. It was a little after midnight; but there was still the afterglow of the sun in the northern sky
above the mouth of the fjord, and even beneath the mountain wall it
was not very dark. There were roughly fifteen degrees of frost.

The first part of the climb straight up from the hut at Revdal is
covered by the forest of birch scrub. It is not steep enough to be
called more than a scramble in mountaineering terms, but in deep snow it is the most frustrating kind of scramble, even for a climber
not carrying any burden. None of the miniature trees have trunks
much thicker than an arm, but they have been growing and dying
there unattended since primeval times, and the ground beneath
them is covered with a thick matted tangle of rotten fallen logs
which gives no foothold. The trees grow very close together, and
they are interlaced with half-fallen branches bowed down or broken
by the weight of snow. Some trees have died and are still standing,
propped up by the others crowded round them, and these break and
crumble away if someone incautiously uses them for a handhold.
When the deep springy mesh of fallen trees, lying piled on one
another, is hidden by a smooth deceptive covering of snow, the forest is a place where a climber must go with care. It would be impossible to fall for more than a foot or two, but it would be very easy to
break a leg in falling.

Getting Jan up through the forest was mostly a matter of brute
strength and endless patience; but strength and patience, of course,
were two of the qualities Marius had thought about when he chose
his three companions. Alvin Larsen was slight and thin, and only
about twenty-one years old, but he had just come back from the
tough school of the Lofoten fishing and was in perfect training.
Amandus Lillevoll was a little older, a small wiry man with a great
reserve of strength, and an exceptional skier. Olaf Lanes was the only
big man of them all. He had shoulders like an ox, and he hardly ever
spoke unless he had to: the epitome of the strong silent man. As for
patience, all four of them had the unending dogged patience which
is typical of Arctic people.

Within the steep forest, they quickly discovered the technique
which served them best. Two of them would hold the sledge, belayed
to a tree to stop it from running backwards, while the others
climbed on ahead with the rope, forcing their way through the
frozen undergrowth. When the upper pair found a possible stance,
they took a turn of the rope round a tree and hauled the sledge up towards them, the lower pair steering it, stopping it when it threatened to turn over, pushing as best they could, and lifting it bodily
when it buried itself in drifts. Their progress was very slow. There
was seldom a clear enough space to haul the sledge more than about
a dozen feet at a time, and each change of stance meant a new belay
and a new coiling and uncoiling of the icy rope. The leaders, treading a trail through the virgin snow, often fell through into holes in
the rotten wood beneath, and it was difficult to climb out of these
hidden traps. Before they had gained more than a few hundred feet,
they began to be afraid that they had started something which it
would be impossible to finish; not so much because they thought
their own stubbornness and strength would be unequal to the job,
but because they were more and more afraid that Jan would not survive it. It was going to be a long time before they got to the top; and
they had found a new problem which had no answer, and which
nobody had foreseen: the simple problem of whether to haul him
feet first or head first. When they took him feet first, of course his
head was always much lower than his feet, and sometimes in the
steep drifts he was hanging almost vertically head downwards. He
could not stand this for very long, certainly not for hour after hour;
but when they turned him round and took him up head first, the
blood ran into his feet and burst out in new hoemorrhages, and his
face showed them the pain he was trying to suffer in silence. But as
the climb went on, he was more and more often unconscious when
they looked at him. This was a mercy, but it made them all the more
sure he would not last very long. This urgency, together with the
blind faith which he seemed to have in them, made them press on
with the strength of desperation. Every few feet of the forest brought
them up against a new obstacle which had to be surmounted. They
struggled with each one till they overcame it, and then turned to the
next without daring to pause, hoping that Jan would last till they got
to the top, and that then the Mandal men would be able to whisk
him straight over to Sweden.