THE COLD WON’T BOTHER YOU AGAIN AFTER READING HOWARTH’S TALE OF WARTIME ENDURANCE

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We Die Alone CvrImagine you’re living on the outskirts of a small rural village or in an isolated farmstead – in Nazi occupied Norway, north of the Artic circle.  On a bitterly cold, dark, mid-winter evening there’s a knock on your door. You open it to find a wounded and disheveled stranger, close to exhaustion. He’s on the run from the Nazis. He needs you to feed and shelter him. You know that if you do, you will be tortured and killed if found out. Not only you, also your children – who are sleeping upstairs – could also be killed to make an example of “collaborators” or transported to a ‘labour’ camp.

What would you do?

This is the recurring real-life dilemma faced by housewives, fishermen and villagers when Jan Baalsrud lands on their doorstep in this month’s book, it’s We Die Alone by David Howarth.

Jan Baalsrud is not a fictional character. He was a Norwegian commando sent from England as part of an under-cover sabotage mission to organize and supply the Norwegian resistance during World War II.   The mission goes horribly wrong when, having sailed from Scotland to a remote bay north of Tromso, the leader of the mission reveals their identity to a local store owner who they have been told is a trusted contact. Too late they realize that their contact has died a year earlier and the new owner of the store, who has the same name, is terrified.  The message on a poster in his own shop: “Contact with the enemy is punished by death” is no idle threat. He calls a friend in the Department of Justice. Next morning a German gunboat sails into the bay.

The ensuing battle results in 11 of the 12-man commando unit being killed or captured (and subsequently executed).  Only Jan – wounded and minus a boot – escapes into the adjoining snow-covered hills.

So begins Jan’s epic 68-day escape journey across artic Norway to eventual safety in neutral Sweden.  Actually, epic doesn’t even begin to describe it. Add heroic, superhuman and phenomenal and we get a little closer – but it is difficult to find the superlatives to truly do justice to what Jan Baalstrud endured over these 68-days.

Jan's Jrny

The Route of Jan’s Epic Journey

 

Evading capture was only one of his many challenges. The harsh conditions of the Artic mountains presented an even more formidable threat.  Caught in an avalanche, he survives a 300ft fall that leaves him concussed, hallucinating and snow-blind.  He suffers severe frost-bite and starvation. Unable to walk because of a gangrenous leg, he endures days on a mountain lying in a hole in the ice under a boulder – his “snow grave”.  His physical perseverance is phenomenal, but even more impressive is his mental resolve and determination – superhuman is what comes to mind.  What other word adequately describes the level of resolve required to methodically amputate his own toes to rid himself of gangerene while lying, wet and cold, under a rock? Or to doggedly maintain a daily routine of basic survival tasks when convinced that he has been abandoned?

Jan’s courage and bravery are without any doubt exceptional and deserving of fulsome admiration, even adulation. But it is those who help him – the housewives, fishermen and

Jan Baalsrud

Jan Baalsrud

villagers mentioned above, the ordinary Norwegians on whose doorstep Jan appears – who truly deserve the accolade of ‘heroic’.  With the sole exception of the aforementioned shop owner, every single person who Jan seeks help from gives it willingly. They hide him, provide him with food from their meagre war rations, haul him in a stretcher up a mountain, drag him in a sled across a treacherous plateau – all the while putting themselves in mortal danger of being caught and executed and endangering their families. And when Jan reaches safety in Sweden, they remain with this danger still hanging over them like a sword of Damacles. For two more years they continue to live with the constant threat that an inadvertent word or an accidental comment might alert the Germans to their ‘treason’. Jan’s courage and bravery was motivated by a powerful desire to survive. The bravery of the men and women who ensured his survival was selfless. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Without doubt they are the real heroes of this amazing story.

 

And the most amazing thing? It’s NOT fiction – it all actually happened. These were real people who acted with astonishing bravery and selflessness to help a stranger who could not have survived without their help.  In this instance, truth is not only stranger than fiction but also much, much more wonderful.

David Howarth

David Howarth

The author, David Howarth, had a direct connection with the story. He was one of the commanding officers of the secret naval base in the Shetland Islands from which the boat that brought Jan and his ill-fated comrades to Norway embarked. After the war he re-traced Jan’s escape route with him and interviewed the people who helped him. This first-hand knowledge is evident throughout – and adds to the readers sense of witnessing inspiring real-life events.

 

Written in 1955, this was the third of 18 books on military history written by the English author, the others included Sledge Patrol (1951), Shetland Bus (1951), Thieves Hole (1954), Dawn of D-Day (1959), Sovereign of The Seas (1974), The Dreadnoughts (1979) and Nelson: The Immortal Memory (1988). We Die Alone was made into a movie “Ni Liv” (Nine Lives) in 1957 and inspired a 5-part Norweigan TV series in 2012.

The book retains a freshness and immediacy largely due to Howarth’s fast-paced, journalistic writing style. There are a few ‘time-warp’ issues that reflect attitudes that would not be tolerated today but were almost universally accepted at the time – e.g. some comments on the Lapps generate a ‘gulp’ in today’s reader – but these do not detract from the inspiring humanity of the story.

Read this book. It’ll restore your faith in human nature. And as we face into months of ear-bashing by Donald Trump’s hate-filled invective we need to be reminded that we have the capacity for empathetic heroism.

THE FATHER OF NORWEGIAN CRIME FICTION IS ON THE VERGE OF INHERITING A WHOLE NEW FANBASE

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We Shall Inherit the Wind BF AW.inddDid you know that in the 2013 peace index – a measure of peacefulness among 162 nations according to 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators – Norway was ranked 11th, since then it’s slipped six places to seventeenth in the 2015 index. This is probably not surprising considering the rise in popularity of it’s crime fiction. Thus bringing us on to the second book of this month, it’s ‘We shall Inherit The Wind’ – by Gunnar Staalesen, published in June by Orenda books (www.orendabooks.co.uk).

Ten pages into this book I was thinking “this guy is copying Steig Larsson”.  The atmosphere, characters and settings were all reminiscent of Larsson’s “Girl with a Dragon Tatoo” Millenium trilogy. A quick Google search revealed that I was very wrong. If anything, it’s the other way ‘round. Steig Larsson was copying Gunnar Staalesen.

My mistake was one that no Norwegian would make. Hailed as one of the fathers of Nordic Noir, Gunnar Staalesen has been

Gunnar Staalesen

Gunnar Staalesen

writing successful detective thrillers since 1977 and is Norway’s answer to Raymond Chandler. His series of novels featuring the private investigator Varg Veum have sold millions of copies and spawned twelve film adaptations. However, only six of these novels have been translated into English – which probably explains why he is relatively unknown in this part of the world. If the calibre of ‘We Shall Inherit the Wind’ is anything to go by, that’s definitely our loss.

When we first meet Varg Veum he’s 65 and at the hospital bedside of his long-term girl friend, Karin (yes, girl friend – like Philip Marlowe, Veum has a problem with commitment!). She’s seriously ill and it’s all his fault. Flipping back in time, the story of how he has gotten into this predicament unfolds.

Although Veum has a rule against taking on marital investigations, as a favour to Karin he agrees to investigate the disappearance of her friend’s husband, Mons Maeland. Karin’s friend, Ranveig, is Maeland’s second wife, his first wife having disappeared, assumed drowned, over 15 years previously. Prior to his own disappearance, Maeland was evaluating a plan to erect wind turbines on an island in the rugged, scenic landscape of Gulen in the western fjords. Needless to say, this plan is vociferously opposed by local environmentalists, including Maeland’s own daughter, and supported by local businesses and politicians. Against this backdrop of feuding families and communities, Veum unearths more secrets than anyone involved wants.

While not as compelling or as gritty as ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo’, this is an absorbing story with sufficient suspense and twists to engage and maintain the reader’s interest.  The characterisation of Veum himself is a big part of the story’s appeal. A non-conformist outsider, he says-it-like-he-sees-it, often inappropriately and to his own – and others – detriment.  But he’s no Philip Marlowe. There’s little black-and-white moralizing here. The complexities and nuances of situations and characters are explored and readers are often left to decide for themselves who, if any, are the good guys and bad guys.

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But the real mother lode of this book is not the plot, Veum’s characterisation or the nuanced approach to social and personal issues. What brings it out of the realm of yet another professionally executed detective story are the descriptions of the west Norway landscape and its communities. I’ve a fairly long list of places to visit on my bucket list and, up until now, Norway wasn’t on it. But Staalesen’s word pictures of the rugged, wild, bleak beauty of the Gulen area has made me re-think.  I would have loved if a map had been included in the book so that I could follow Veum’s journeys among the fjords and islands.

Equally beguiling are the portrayals of the ancillary characters living in this area. They inhabit west Norway in this book, but I’ve met them in the west of Ireland.  You thought that answering a question with a question was a unique characteristic of people from Kerry? If so, there’s a brilliant description of a Kerry woman living on an island in Gulen. Or maybe you thought that finding out that the person you sat beside on the bus to Connemara is related to your first cousin was a uniquely Irish experience? Well, they’ve imported this phenomenon to west Norway too.  I definitely need to go there – it’ll be just like home!

I have one quibble with Staalesen’s portrayal of Veum, though. In one scenario, Veum is sexually propositioned by an attractive, high-flying businesswoman who’s half his age. This smacks of tired old-fashioned male fantasy to me. Or is it a key difference between life in Norway and Ireland? One thing for sure, if it happened in Ireland it’s unlikely that the opportunity would be turned down!

This minor quibble apart, I’ll be looking out for the next two installments Where Roses Never Die and No One Is So Safe in Danger promised for 2016 and 2017 from Orenda Books . Will we found out what 190344 means?

Hat’s off to the translator, Don Bartlett. There wasn’t a moment where I was conscious of this being a translation from the original Norweigan. It read as if it was written in English.