We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (21 page)

When they cleared the forest at last, at a height of about a thousand feet, they had to rest. They slewed the sledge round broadside to
the hill and dug in one runner so that it stood level, and collapsed in
the snow beside it. Jan was awake, and they gave him a nip of brandy,
and sucked some ice themselves, and looked down at the way they
had come. The climb had already taken nearly three hours, and it was
day. The dawn light shone on the peaks above Furuflaten across the
water, and Jaeggevarre glowed above them all on the western skyline.
The fjord below was still, and there was no sign of life on it. In the
shadow of the hill, the air was very cold.

Immediately above the treeline was a sheer face of rock, but to
their right it was broken by a steep cleft with the frozen bed of a
stream in the bottom of it. Each time they had crossed the fjord they
had gazed up at the face as they approached it, and the cleft had
seemed the most likely route to the summit. From closer at hand, it
still looked possible. To get to the bottom of it they would have to
traverse a steep snow slope about two hundred feet high and perhaps
a hundred yards across. The slope was clean and smooth at the top,
where they would have to cross it, but at the bottom it vanished in
the forest. It had a firm crust on it, and there seemed to be no particular danger about it. When they had got their breath they gathered
themselves together to attempt it.

This was the first time they had tried to traverse with the sledge;
and crossing the slope turned out to be like a nightmare, like walking a tightrope in a dream. Three of them stood below the sledge
and one above it. To keep it level and stop it rolling sideways down
the hill, the three men below it had to carry the outer runner, letting
the inner one slide in the snow. Very slowly they edged out across
the slope, kicking steps and moving one man at a time till the whole
slope yawned dizzily below them. It was impossible then to stop or
go back. The sledge, resting on a single ski, moved all too easily.
While they could keep it perfectly level, all was well, but they could
feel that if they let it tilt the least bit either way, either down by the head or down by the foot, it would take charge and break away from
them, and then in a split second the whole thing would be over.
Kicking steps in a snow slope always demands a fair degree of balance
because there is nothing whatever to hold on to. It is impossible to
resist a sudden unexpected force. If the sledge had begun to slide they
could have saved themselves by falling on their faces and digging
their hands and toes into the snow; but they could not have stopped
the sledge, and when it crashed into the trees two hundred feet below
it would have been travelling at a speed which it was horrifying to
imagine. Perhaps it was just as well that Jan, lying on it on his back
and lashed immovably in position, could only look up at the sky and
the rock face above him, and not at the chasm down below. Before
they reached the other side of that slope, the men were sweating and
trembling with the effort and tension. At the foot of the cleft, where
the gradient eased, they stopped again thankfully and anchored the
sledge with ski-sticks driven into the snow, so that they could relax
till their strength came back. From there, Jan could see the cleft soaring above them.

When they looked up at it, it seemed to be steeper than they had
expected. The walls of it were sheer, and it was about thirty feet wide.
The snow in the bed of it showed all the signs of being about to avalanche; but it was safe enough on that western slope just after dawn.
The cleft curved gently to the left, so that from the bottom they could
not see very far up it; but having seen it from the fjord they knew it
had no pitch in it too steep for the snow to lie on, and that it led
almost all the way to the easier slopes on the upper half of the mountain. It was certainly going to be difficult and it might be impossible,
but now that they had come so far there was no alternative.

After a very short rest, two of them began to lead out the sixtyfoot rope. They went up side by side, kicking two parallel sets of steps
for the second pair to use. Within the cleft, they were able to use the
full length of the rope for the first time, and the leaders did not pause
till the whole of it was stretched up the snow above the sledge. Then they dug themselves as deep a stance as they could and braced themselves in it and took the strain of the weight of the sledge while the
others down below them freed it from its anchors. So the first pitch
of a long and heavy haul began.

In some ways, going straight up the slope was not so hard as trying to go across it. The balance of the sledge was not important: it
hung at the end of the rope like a pendulum. But the physical effort
was greater and more sustained. At each stance the two leaders
hauled the sledge up towards them while the two men below followed it up the steps, pushing as best they could. At the end of each
sixty feet it was anchored afresh; but the ski-sticks could not be
trusted to hold it alone, and even the effort of holding it was so
exhausting that they could not afford to pause.

Beyond the bend, the cleft swept smoothly up to a skyline
appallingly far above, and there was nothing in it which offered a
chance of a rest: no boulder or chockstone, and no break in the vertical walls on either side.

Somewhere in the upper reaches of the cleft, Jan came as near a
sudden death as he had been anywhere on his journey. All four of
the climbers by then were in that extremely unpleasant dilemma
which is experienced sooner or later by every mountaineer, when
one knows one has outreached one's strength, and it is too late to go
down by the way one has come, so that one must either win through
to the top, or fall. It was at this stage, when they knew they could
never manage to lower the sledge to the bottom, that what they had
dreaded happened. Somebody slipped, somebody else was off balance: in a fraction of a second the sledge shot backwards. But
Amandus happened to be below it. It hit him hard in the chest and
ran over him, and somehow he and the sledge became entangled
together and his body acted as a brake and stopped it, and within the
second the others had it under control again. The climb went on,
and Jan did not know what had happened because he was unconscious. For the rest of the climb and long afterwards Amandus suffered from pain in his chest, and in retrospect it seems likely that
some of his ribs were broken.

They got to the skyline; but it was not the top. The cleft ended,
and ahead of them they saw a frozen waterfall. The ice hung down it
in smooth translucent curtains. But at the bottom of it, more welcome than anything else in the world could have been, there was a
boulder projecting through the snow, and with a final effort they
heaved the sledge on top of it and wedged it there, and were able at
last to rest.

They sat down in a group round the sledge, and looked up at the
next pitch. It seemed as if it might be the last difficulty, but it looked
the worst of all. The boulder was in the middle of a little cirque or
bowl of rock and ice which enclosed it all round, except for the narrow gap where their own tracks plunged down out of sight into the
cleft. This gap framed a distant view of the fjord waters, now gleaming far below, and the sunlit peaks beyond them. Almost all of the
rim of the bowl was as steep and inaccessible as the waterfall itself.
But just to the right of the waterfall there was one possible way of
escape, up a narrow slope which had an ice cornice at the top. The
acute angle of this slope suggested that the whole of it was ice, like
the fall, and not snow; but it was the only way out of the bowl which
was even worth attempting.

As it turned out, this was the only part of the climb which was
really rather easier than it looked. Hard ice would have stopped the
party altogether, because none of them had ice-axes, and all they
could use to cut steps was the toes of their boots and the tips of their
ski-sticks. But when the leaders got on to the slope, they found it was
made of hard ice crystals which could be dug away without very
much trouble and compacted firmly under their weight. They went
up it methodically, side by side as before, hacking out two sets of
steps. The slope was too long for the sixty-foot rope, and they had to
stop when they had taken out all they could, and did themselves in
again to haul the sledge up after them. This was the only dangerous moment. Again, the place was safe enough for the climbers themselves. If they had slipped out of their steps, they would certainly
have gone down to the bottom of the bowl without being able to save
themselves, but it would not have done very much harm. For Jan,
trussed up on the sledge, it was a very different matter. If they had let
him go, he would have gone down much faster, head first on his back,
and certainly broken his neck at the bottom. But they took the risk
and got away with it again. The second pair anchored the sledge
about thirty feet below the cornice. The leaders set off once more,
and standing below the cornice in their final steps, they hacked at it
with their sticks till they brought a length of it crashing down. They
hauled themselves through the gap which they had made, and got to
their feet and looked around them. They were standing at last on the
icy windswept edge of the plateau. Ahead, the slopes were gentle and
the snow was firm.

As soon as the sledge was clear of the cornice, the men put on
their skis and the climb took on a totally different aspect. On skis
they felt far more at home than on their feet, and more able to cope
with any new crisis which might face them. The dilemma of which
way up was less painful for Jan was also solved at last, and with his
usual resilience he soon began to recover from the rough handling
they had given him. The main remaining worry on their minds was
simply the matter of time: the climb had taken hours longer than
they had expected, and with a thousand feet still to go they were late
for the meeting with the Mandal men already. Jan was spared from
this worry, as he was from so many others. As he had been unconscious on and off ever since they started, he had no idea how long
they had been on the way.

The fear of missing the Mandal men made them press on without
another rest. All four of them made themselves fast to the sledge with
short ropes tied round their waists, and they started at top speed
inland across the plateau. They had no further doubts about the
route. To get to the rendezvous they had to go through a shallow dip which leads up to a chain of small lakes on the watershed between
Revdal and Mandal. This dip can easily be seen from across the fjord
at Furuflaten, and though none of the four men had ever been up
there before, the distant view of the place had been familiar to them
all their lives. When they were clear of the dangerous corniced edge,
they struck off diagonally to the right up the gently rising ground.
The surface was ice, covered here and there by ripples of powdery
windblown snow.

Within half an hour the dip in the skyline was in sight. They
climbed up into it and entered a little valley among low hillocks of
snow. When this valley closed in about them, and cut off the view of
the fjord and the distant mountains behind them, they began, each
in his own way, to sense for the first time the threatening atmosphere
of desolation which oppresses every one of the few people who have
ever ventured on to the plateau in winter. The size and the barren
loneliness of the plateau appals the least sensitive of travellers. From
Lyngenfjord it stretches away into Sweden and Finland, far to the
eastward towards the border of Soviet Russia, and then on again
beyond the narrow lowlands of Petsamo, to the White Sea and the
vastness of Siberia. The valley which they entered that early morning
is only on the very verge of it, and yet it is unlikely that any human
being will set eyes on that place from one decade's end to the next.
Whoever does so, especially when the plateau is under snow,
becomes bitterly aware of the hundred of miles of featureless wilderness beyond him, the endless horizons one after another, and every
one the same; the unimaginable numbers of silent ice-bound valleys
and sterile, gaunt, deserted hills. Mankind has no business there. It is
a dead world, where the affairs of the human race are of no account
whatever. In war or peace, it is always the same, and also so fiercely
inimical to life that one has to think of it, when one is enclosed
within it, as an active malignant enemy. One knows that the human
body is too frail a thing to defend itself against that kind of enemy,
which attacks with hunger and frostbite and storm-blindness. One knows all to well that the plateau can kill a man easily and quickly
and impartially, whether he is English or German or Norwegian, or
patriot or traitor. Into these dreadful surrounds the little group of
men crept silently, dragging the passive, half-conscious body of Jan
behind them.

It had not been very easy to decide on a place for the meeting,
because hardly any spot on the plateau can be distinguished from
any other, and because there was no map which showed anything
more than its outline. But from Furuflaten a single steep bluff could
be seen in profile on the far horizon, and for want of anywhere better they had told the Mandal men to meet them at the foot of it.

They came on the place almost unexpectedly, as they breasted a
little rise in the valley floor. Before them was a level area, a hundred
yards or so across, which was probably a lake or a bog in summer.
Beyond it the valley rose again to the watershed, which was still out
of sight. On the right was the bluff. It was quite unmistakable, the
only piece of black, naked vertical rock in sight. On top of it there
was at thick snow cornice like the icing on a cake of festive richness,
which they had seen with a telescope from the other side. But down
below, at its foot, in the valley, nobody was waiting.