Free We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by Stephen E. Ambrose, David Howarth Page B

falling snow played
havoc with the searchlights. The wind was rising, and it might be
worse before morning.

    About midnight, Einar went to fetch his old father who lived in
the house next door; he thought it would take two of them to row
over the sound that night. Before he went out, he took Jan to the
kitchen to wait. The two boys were still there with their mother,
though they should surely have been in bed. They asked Jan to tell
them a story, and he sat down by the fire and the younger one
climbed on his knee. He was deadly tired, and he was sick at heart
because the boys' father had just told him the terrible story of what
had happened to Per and Eskeland and all his other companions. He
put out of his mind this story of murder and treachery, and put his
arm round the boy to support him, and tried to think back to his
own childhood.
    "Well, once upon a time," he began slowly, "in a far away country,
long ago ..."

     

5. THE TRAGEDY IN TROMSO
    EINAR HAD come back that afternoon from a visit to Tromso.
Everyone there had been talking of Toftefjord and its sequel; and
although the people were used to brutality, they were aghast at the
pitiless drama which had reached its grim climax in their town. In
fact, what Einar told Jan that night is a sombre story of inhumanity.
It is told here not because there is pleasure in telling it, but because
without it the full contrasting picture cannot be drawn of the compassion and kindliness of the people who helped the only survivor;
for all of them were familiar with the German technique of occupation and knew quite well what punishment they would suffer if they
were caught.
    Although Einar, and everyone else in north Norway, knew the
outline of the story a day or two after it happened, it was not till the
end of the war that its details were discovered. They were given then
in evidence in trials in Norwegian courts.
    When the shopkeeper made the fateful decision after his sleepless
night and telephoned to his friend the official, the official himself was
faced with a dilemma. He was a member of the Norwegian Nazi
party, whose leader Quisling had been appointed head of the puppet
government by the Germans; but this fact did not mean in itself that
he had Nazi inclinations. Soon after the occupation of Norway began
many people in minor Government posts received a circular letter from the Germans simply saying that unless they joined the party
they would be dismissed from office. In the south, a lot of them were
able to consult each other when they got this ultimatum, and they
agreed to reject it. So many refused to join that they succeeded in
calling the Germans' bluff and retained their offices. But in the scattered districts of the north, where it might be two days' journey for
one of them to visit another, each of them had to face this problem
on his own; and a great many of them decided, or persuaded themselves, rightly or wrongly, that if they did sign on as members they
would be able to protect the interests of the people, whereas if they
refused they would be replaced by a German nominee. The man the
shopkeeper knew was one of these.

    In any case, Nazi or not, it was certainly his nominal duty, as a
Government servant, to report any story so strange as the one which
the shopkeeper told him that morning. Perhaps he did it unwillingly.
Perhaps he argued that already a dozen people had heard it, and that
now the shopkeeper had begun to talk there was nothing to stop him
from telling everyone. More over, the shopkeeper had told it to him
on the telephone, and most of the telephones there were on party
lines. Anyone could listen to interesting conversations, and everyone
did. The story was bound to spread, and the Germans were bound to
hear it; and then the official himself would be the first to suffer.
    At all events, as soon as the shopkeeper had rung off, the official
put in a call to Tromso. With what feelings he did it, nobody