Jan Baalsrud

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Jan Baalsrud
1917-1988
Place of birth Norway
Allegiance Norway
Unit Company Linge

Jan Baalsrud (born 1917 – died 1988) was a commando in the Norwegian resistance trained by the British. He was born in Oslo and lived in Kolbotn from the 1930s to the 1950s. He arrived in Britain in 1941 where he joined the Norwegian Company Linge. In 1943, he and numerous other commandos embarked on a dangerous mission to destroy a German air control tower and recruit for the resistance movement. This mission was compromised when he and his fellow soldiers, seeking a trusted resistance contact, accidentally made contact with an ordinary civilian who betrayed them to the Nazis who were occupying their country.

The morning after their blunder, their boat – containing 8 tons of explosives intended to destroy the air control tower – was attacked by a German vessel. The Norwegians scuttled their boat by exploding their payload. They fled in a small boat. The boat was promptly sunk by the Nazis and Jan and some other surviving soldiers fled.

Jan and others swam ashore in ice cold arctic waters. Jan was the only soldier to escape the Nazi attack and, soaking wet and missing one shoe, he escaped into up a ravine and shot and killed the leading German officer with his pistol. He evaded capture for roughly two months, suffering from frostbite and snow blindness. His deteriorating physical condition forced him to rely on the assistance of Norwegian patriots. It was during this time in a wooden hut, he called Hotel Savoy, that Jan was forced to amputate nine toes to stop the spread of gangrene. Not long after that Jan was left on a high plateau on a stretcher in the snow for eighteen days, his survival hanging in a thin thread. After that it was thanks to the efforts of his fellow Norwegians that Jan was transported by stretcher towards the border with Finland. Then he was put in the care of some Sami(the native tribe of the arctic) who with reindeeer pulled him on a sledge across Finland and into neutral Sweden where he was safe at last. From Saarikoski in northern Sweden he was collected by a seaplane of the Red Cross and flown to Boden.

He spent seven months in a Swedish hospital in Boden before he was flown back to Britain in a Mosquito aircraft of the RAF. He soon went to Scotland to help train other Norwegian patriots who were going back to Norway to continue the fight against the Germans.

After the war Baalsrud made a substantial contribution to the local scout and football associations in addition to the Norwegian Disabled Veterans Union of which he was chairman from 1957 to 1964. He lived happily in Tenerife from 1962 until his death on 30th December 1987. His ashes are buried in Manndalen near the grave of Aslak Fossvoll and others whose efforts made possible his successful escape to Sweden.

An annual remembrance march in his honour takes place in Troms in July where the participants follow his escape route for nine days. A meadow in Oppegård is named Baalsrud plass in his honour.

Contents

[edit] Books

  • We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance, by David Howarth – 1955 – ISBN 1-55821-973-0
  • Defiant Courage - Norway's Longest WW2 Escape by Astrid Karlsen Scott and Tore Haug (authors), Nordic Adventures, 2001. ISBN-10: 0963433989; ISBN-13: 978-0963433985

[edit] Movies

[edit] External links

[edit] References