We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (22 page)

They stood there aghast for a moment at this failure of their
hopes. Their first thought, of course, when they saw the empty valley, was that in spite of all their efforts they had arrived too late and
the Mandal men had gone. But it only needed a minute or two of
search to show that there were no ski tracks anywhere in the valley
bottom. Nobody had been there at all, certainly since the last storm
had abated, and probably for years.

They all jumped to the conclusion then that something had gone
wrong with their instructions about the meeting-place, and that the
Mandal men were waiting somewhere else. They had a hurried discussion, grouped round the sledge in the valley below the bluff. It
seemed extremely queer that the others should have missed the
landmark, which had turned out to be even more conspicuous than they expected. A forlorn hope struck them that the men might be
somewhere quite close at hand, hidden perhaps in one of the shallow deceptive hollows in the valley. Someone suggested they should
raise a shout. They were strangely reluctant to do so. It seemed rash
to break the deathly silence of the plateau. They had been so secretive for so long that they all felt the same absurd fear: that if they
shouted, they might be heard by someone who should not be
trusted. Yet of course they knew it was inconceivable that anyone
could be within earshot except people on the same business as
themselves. After a moment's superstitious hesitation, they all
shouted in unison. But the sound fell dead, muffled by the blanket
of the snow; and nobody answered.

After this, each of them set off in a different direction to search
for the Mandal men, leaving Jan lying where he was. To hunt for a
party of men on the plateau was not such a hopeless project as it
might seem. It was not a matter of finding the men themselves, but
of looking for their tracks. If the men had been standing still, it
would have been perfectly futile, but a party on the move would leave
tracks which could be seen from hundreds of yards away; and in fact
a search parallel to the Mandal valley could not miss them if they
were there at all.

While Jan was left lying there alone, lashed to the sledge and staring at the sky, he had time to get over whatever disappointment he
may have felt at the failure of the meeting, and to make up his mind
to the worst that could possibly happen. As he had taken no part in
the arrangements, perhaps he was not so surprised as the others that
something had gone so obviously wrong. He felt it had been too
much to hope for all along that there would really be men waiting for
him up there, ready to take him at once to Sweden. He had never seriously pictured himself safely across the border within the next day or
two. Besides, after the agony he had suffered while he was being
pulled up the mountain, to be allowed to lie still was such an acute
relief that nothing else seemed to matter. To lie still and rest, and perhaps to doze a little, was all he really wanted. He even felt rather
glad that there was going to be some delay, and that he had not got
to set off again at once. And one thing was perfectly clear to him;
whatever happened, even to save his life, he simply could not face
being taken down again.

When they came back, one by one, he could see from the face of
each of them before he spoke that there was no sign of the Mandal
party. Amandus was the last one to return. He had been right up
across the watershed, and down to the head of the tributary valley
running up out of Mandal, which was the route they expected the
Mandal men to take. There were no tracks leading out of it. To make
doubly sure, he had skirted right round the head of it and gone out
on to a sheer bastion of rock which divides the side valley from
Mandal itself. From there, leaning out over a vertical drop of nearly
three thousand feet, he had looked down the whole length of valley.
There was no sign of life among them.

Jan knew that the four men had stayed with him already far
longer than was safe. They had to get home, quickly, or their absence
was perfectly certain to be discovered, and that would be the end of
them, and of him as well. Marius and the others, for their part, also
knew what Jan had already made up his mind to tell them; that it was
out of the question to take him down again. It would take an impossibly long time; they had not enough strength left to do it; and finally,
they were quite certain, as he himself was, that he would not get to
the bottom alive.

Thus the decision to abandon him on the plateau did not need
very much discussion. There was nothing else whatever to be done.
It was a bitter decision for them all, especially for Marius, who
blamed himself because the meeting had been a failure. He promised
Jan he would get a message through to Mandal the moment he got
home, and do everything he could to make sure that the Mandal men
would come up and find him the next night. But he made this promise with a heavy heart, because he did not really believe that under the open sky Jan would last through to another day. He thought all
the efforts he had made were going to end in failure, and that his
hopes of redeeming his own inactive part in Norway's war were
never to be fulfilled.

They searched for a place to put Jan where he would have a little
shelter, and they found a boulder where the wind had scooped out
a hole in the snow. The hole was four feet deep, and exactly the size
of a grave. They took off their skis, and lowered him down into it,
sledge and all, and then untied the lashings which held him down.
They gave him what little food they had, and the remains of the bottle of brandy.

After the last of them had climbed out of the hole, they stood
grouped round it, looking down at the haggard, bearded, emaciated
face which grinned up at them. Jan said he would be all right, and
thanked them as best he could. They hated what they were doing,
and illogically hated themselves for doing it. But neither Jan nor
Marius nor any of the others felt like being histrionic about it. One
by one they said good-bye, and turned away to put on their skis
again. Amandus, as it happened, was the last of them to go, and he
always remembered the last words that were spoken, because they
were so absurd.

"There's nothing else we can give you?" he asked Jan.

"No thanks;" Jan said. "I've got everything. Except hot and cold
water."

They began the descent, feeling sure they had left him to die.

THE WAR had not had very much effect upon Mandal before Herr
Legland's urgent message was delivered. The place had had no interest for the Germans and they had left it alone, so that its placid and
rather primitive and impoverished life went on much the same as
usual. It is quite difficult for a stranger to see how the Mandal people can manage to make a living and feed and bring up families in
such a forlorn and isolated home. There are millions of people, of
course, even in Europe, who live happily enough without any road
to connect them with civilisation, and a good many of them even
prefer it. But the situation of Mandal seems to have nothing in its
favour. The men go fishing, but their jetty is far away from either the
fishing grounds or the open sea or the markets. They also farm, but
their land is snow-covered and frozen for eight months of the year
and the valley faces north: on every other side it is so steeply
hemmed in by hills that the sun only shines into it when it is high.
Only a little distance to the west, the Lyngen Alps attract tourists
who provide a rich annual harvest; but Mandal has no spectacular
allurements to offer to visitors, and so any stranger who comes there
is a nine-days' wonder.

But in spite of all this, between six and seven hundred people do
live there, and they do not want to live anywhere else. They are far
from rich, but their houses and farms are neat and tidy, and they themselves are not by any means lacking in self-respect. Their houses
are scattered all up the valley for a distance of about ten miles from
the jetty and shop at the seaward end. There is a road which connects
them, and at least one motor truck which runs up and down it in
summer but can never go farther afield. A mile and a half up from
the jetty is the school; and it was this school which became the headquarters of Mandal's efforts in rescuing Jan.

The schoolmaster, Herr Nordnes, was a local man himself and he
had lived there all his life. He was another disciple in learning of Herr
Legland, which no doubt was the reason why Legland chose him to
organise the rescue. He knew everybody who lived in the valley, and
almost everything that went on there, and practically all the young
men in the place had received the whole of their education from him
and regarded him still as their teacher. He himself was in middle age,
but there could not have been a better choice for a job which called
for the mobilisation of the valley's youth.

When he got Legland's message and had given himself time to
think it over, he went to call on a few of his recent pupils and told
them what he had heard and what was needed. They responded
eagerly. In spite of the isolation of Mandal, and the fact that most
Mandal people had not seen a German soldier or a German ship or
even an aircraft, and had heard no authentic news of the world outside for years, there was much of the same feeling there as on the west
side of Lyngenfjord: that nobody had had a chance so far to show
what he could do to help the war. Nordnes had no lack of volunteers.
His only embarrassment, in fact, was to prevent the news spreading
too quickly, and to avoid having too many people who wanted to take
some part in this novel adventure. Yet their enthusiasm was surprising, because the appeal for help, as it reached them, was quite impersonal. They did not have the incentive of having seen Jan, and had no
idea what kind of person he was. The whole story was third or fourth
hand. Not even Legland had seen him, and nor had the messenger.
The only reason for thinking that he deserved their help at all was that Legland had said so, and had told Nordnes that the man who
was in trouble had come all the way from England.

The Mandal men would have been more than human, in these
circumstances, if they had not pointed out, as their first reaction, that
to take an injured man to Sweden was not so easy as it looked. The
people in Tromso and Lyngseidet, they thought, probably had no real
idea of the difficulties of what they were asking Mandal to do. They
might have looked at a map and seen the frontier on it, twenty-five
miles away, and imagined some kind of fence with Swedish frontier
guards who would take care of Jan on the spot. They probably did
not realise that there was nothing there whatever, except cairns at
intervals of miles, so that you could cross the border without ever
knowing you had done it, and plunge down into endless forests on
the Swedish side where you might be lost for weeks without seeing a
house or a road. There were no defences on the frontier simply
because it was so difficult to cross that no defences were needed.

Having registered their protest, and suggested quite rightly that
Lapps were better qualified to make the actual journey, they were
perfectly willing to try it themselves if it was really necessary; and
they were willing in any case to meet the Furuflaten men at the rendezvous they suggested, and to look after the injured man when he
was handed over. They almost certainly felt some satisfaction at
being asked to pull chestnuts out of the fire on behalf of a place like
Furuflaten, which had always affected to despise Mandal because it
was not on the road.

During the week which elapsed after the first message from
Legland, while the gale was blowing which imprisoned Jan in Revdal,
the Mandal people heard nothing more about what was happening.
They went on with the ordinary chores of early spring, and probably
their first enthusiasm faded. The whole story only existed for them in
the form of a single sudden visit by a messenger. It began to seem
likely that the organisation had found some other way of moving
their man, or that he had died or been captured, and that they were not going to be asked to do anything after all. It was disappointing,
and made them feel a little foolish.

This was the situation when the second urgent message arrived by
telephone. It was very obscure: the parcel Herr Nordnes was expecting was being sent at once. It told them nothing of what was happening in Furuflaten, whether the Germans were hot on the trail, or
whether the man they were expected to look after was seriously ill or
not. They understood, of course, that it was impossible to say more
on the telephone, but it did leave them entirely in the dark. The only
shade of meaning it conveyed was one of urgency; and urgency, in
that context, suggested that the Germans were suspicious.

However, what it asked them to do was clear enough, and Herr
Nordnes rounded up his first party of volunteers and told them the
job was on again. They were all men in their early twenties, whom
he had chosen because they had been intelligent and resourceful at
school, and because they were fit and strong. There had never been
any question of him climbing up to the plateau himself, partly
because he was a generation older than the climbers he had chosen
and would only have held them back, and more especially because
he was one of the very few people in Mandal who had to be at work
exactly on time in the morning. But his volunteers were still willing,
and all said they could make the climb that night. There was still no
news of the Lapps from the ski-runner who had set off from
Kaafjord to find them; but at least they could take charge of
Furuflaten's stranger till they heard if the Lapps were coming. Each
of them went off to make his preparations: to change his clothes and
wax his skis and pack a rucksack, and perhaps to get a little sleep
before he started.

It was at this precise moment that a strange boat was sighted
approaching Mandal. This was a very rare event, and plenty of people watched the boat, some with telescopes and binoculars, from the
houses near the bottom of the valley. As it approached the jetty, they
saw something which was to put the whole valley in a state of turmoil and apprehension: there was a party of German soldiers on board it.
The boat reached the jetty, and the Germans came ashore; and a
number of people who were in the know put on their skis and pelted
up to the schoolhouse to warn Herr Nordnes. As the news spread up
the valley, all the people he had consulted began to converge on the
school to talk about this sinister development.