Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Alone on the Mountain - An Amazing Story of Courage and Survival

The next time you’re going through a hard time, when you have the feeling that “it can’t get any worse and I can’t take it anymore,” you ought to read David Howarth’s We Die Alone. I just finished it - the most amazing survival story I’ve ever read.

In March of 1943 twelve Norwegian commandos set sail in a fishing vessel from the Shetland Islands north of Great Britain for the northern coast of Nazi-occupied Norway. Their mission was to organize the Norwegian resistance and to sabotage an airbase.

Unfortunately the commandos were betrayed almost as soon as they arrived. A German warship intercepted them, and they abandoned ship, transferring to a small dinghy while detonating their ship’s eight tons of explosive cargo. Soon the dinghy was riddled with machine gun fire, and they dived into the icy waters to try to swim 70 yards to shore. All but one of the men were killed or captured. Later it was learned that the captured men were tortured and executed.