Rating: 
Summary: Insiring!
Review: "We Die Alone" is the stirring story of the escape and evasion of Jan Baalsrud, a commando inserted into Nazi-occupied Norway in World War 2. This reviewer finished WDA in one sitting this past Christmas night. The resolution, which is not revealed here, will be readily obvious yet this does not lessen reader interest one iota. WDA is not spellbinding but the undercurrent of suspense stays constantly with the reader. The stark facts tell their own story. The setting is bare bones and sparse-perhaps in keeping with the bitter Norway cold. "Cold" is a key word in describing WDA because Mr. Baalsrud spends lots of time outdoors in it! At one point he is all but buried alive in snow, as a desperate Norwegian Resistance has nowhere else to conceal him from pursuing Germans. No review of WDA would be complete without giving homage to the fierce Resistance, which tied down some 280,000
German troops. Military history fans seeking a fresh angle on WW2 and especially those who enjoy tales that deal with positive thinking, refusal to quit, and dedication to duty should enjoy WDA. Mr. Baalsrud had more of those qualities than any 10 of us will ever demonstrate. Unhappily, WDA possesses one huge weakness-no MAP! This is a common failing in all too many military stories but is inexcusable here. Geography is critical in Baalsrud's eastward flight to neutral Sweden. The inability to follow it without a map, or at least a World Atlas at hand, was frustrating. This is shameless insensitivity on the publisher's part and justifies subtracting a star from the above rating. By all means, read WDA but have a good map of Norway handy when you do.
Rating:
Summary: Understanding the Psychology of Survival
Review: 'We Die Alone' was written by David Howarth in the mid-1950s, drawing on his Second World War experience of running espionage operations sent into German occupied Europe. The book recounts the experience of Norwegian Jan Baalsrud, the sole survivor from an abortive attempt to land a commando team on the coast of northern Norway. Baalsrud made his way across Norway in the depths of winter, eventually to find safety in neutral Sweden. The heart of the book is about Baalsrud's amazing capacity to endure extreme hardship, frostbite, and long weeks of isolation in Norway's unbelievably harsh northern plateau region. Ultimately his survival rested on the willingness of the Norwegian people to feed and find him shelter even through the penalty for harbouring a spy was certain death should the German occupiers find out.After the war David Howarth built a successful career for himself as a popular historian. For this book his admirably clear writing style has been paired down to match the absolute simplicity of Norway's stark winter environment. The writing is unadorned and spare. It perfectly suits the context, describing in a matter-of-fact way Baalsrud's incredible survival story. Here is a man who amputated nine of his own toes to prevent the spread of gangrene as he lay alone for three weeks in a shallow snow cave waiting for his rescuers to organise an escape to Sweden. Reading about such events naturally leads to a sense of puzzlement about how Baalsrud survived hardships that would have killed most people put into a similar situation. David Howarth makes no direct attempt to explain this puzzle, but does explore his subject's psychology. It was as if Baalsrud simply could not conceive of giving up. Even well beyond the point when his Norwegian helpers imagined that he must have died from exposure, Baalsrud doggedly focussed on staying alive hour by hour until, close to death, nomadic Laplanders took him by reindeer-drawn sledge to safety. 'We die alone' has been through many printings. The absence of a map spoils my 2000 edition from the UK publishers, Cannongate. But readers can follow Baalsrud's journey with any large scale map of Northern Scandinavia.
Rating: 
Summary: A well-written story of escape and survival
Review: 12 men set out in a boat from the Shetland Islands. They are expatriate Norwegians, on a mission to organize, train and supply the Norwegian Resistance against the Nazis. But, they were betrayed, and everything goes horribly wrong. Only one man survives, and it is up to him to complete the mission. He is helped along the way by villagers, who will be shot if they are caught helping him. It's a story of heroism and adventure, and very hard to put down once started. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Wonder of the human will!
Review: A riveting book that i could not put down before the last page.
Rating:
Summary: We Die Alone
Review: An extraordinary story of courage and determination. One of the great survival stories of World War II. Well written with precise details about this heroic effort to escape capture. Howarth used first hand information obtained through his military service. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a survival classic
Review: first read this incredible tale of one man's refusal to die alone forty years ago--have been recommending to people ever since. jan baalsrud--a norwegian patriot during wwII--captured my imagination in the page's of david howarth's riveting book, and his story of survival under the relentless pursuit of the nazi's, is maybe the best to come out of that war. page after page, the twists and turns, the chance meetings and narrow escapes, the unrelenting suspense...a book you simply can't put down. and written well enough that it doesn't matter if you're a seventh grader, as i was four decades ago, or a senior citizen, as i'm rapidly becoming. its just a great read. you'll never forget jan baalsrud..guaranteed.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: I first read this when I was teaching high school English. A fellow teacher of Norwegian heritage recommended it. It blew me away, and now twenty-five years later, I read it again. I had forgotten most of the details, but the effect remains--it is an incredible story of human survival. It is a testimony to the law that says in war nothing goes as planned and if something can go wrong, it will. It is also a testimony to the basic humanity and courage of ordinary people--the many who risked their lives to help Jan Balsrud when they could easily have left him for dead, as indeed he almost was. His suffering, determination to survive, and ultimate acceptance of what seemed to be certain death before his final rescue are inspiring to those of us who have not been so tested. The photographs that were included in the later edition were helpful and one can believe the entire story because of the documentation. This is a book that makes fiction pale beside it.
Rating:
Summary: A well-written story of escape and survival
Review: I rarely bother with adventure stories, but Howarth's fine prose swept me into this tale and kept me at it. The last half of the book I took in one sitting. We hardly care about the protagonist, Jan Baalsrud, as a personality. He has remarkable courage and incredible physical stamina but little spiritual depth. In the hands of a lesser writer, his story could easily have degenerated into a limp survival yarn of the sort regularly published in Reader's Digest. But Howarth gives meaning to the story both through his fine description of the harsh natural world and by his sympathetic treatment of the dozens of volunteers who came to Baalsrud's rescue. Their attempt to rescue one soldier at the risk of their lives became a political as well as a humanitarian cause, virtually the only blow these Norwegians could strike against German invaders in the wastelands of northern Scandinavia.
Rating:
Summary: Strange Tale
Review: I'm not a compulsive reader of fantastic true survival stories, though I was raised in the Colorado Rockies and enjoy a bit of moutaineering. But this one was available on tape from the public library. It started with a lot of bullets over the head and exploding boats and boots lost in the snow and frostbite -- many, many good people who risk their lives for something intangible. The book, I feel, is very good at expressing the states of mind of the people involved -- it's not a simple recounting of events. But there's one major event that starts about 2/3 of the way through the book, which was so fantastic that I sort of didn't believe it... until I met two of the people involved in the organization that rescued him. And I think what the fact of that event conveys to me is the power of the human mind -- how much our thought and will do, after all, determine things like whether we live or die. The story has a way of sticking in your mind. One other thing that sticks in my mind about the book concerns the Lapps. It's an odd story. The Norwegians are good skiers and strong people by modern civilized standards (I mean that little itsy country beat the whole world in the winter Olympics). The story relates how they tried several times to get him across the Swedish border, but just couldn't get the sledge that far given the weather and time constraints and geography -- had to keep turning back. They tried to involve the Lapps early on, but they have a fundamentally different approach to such things -- the Lapps among other things, like most nomads leave those who are too weak to travel behind to die in the snow. Then after a month of futility on the part of the Norwegians, a Lapp decide to show up and see if the story was true. Horwath describes how he just stands there for 3-4 hours staring at him in the Arctic snow, and then finally resolves to take him across into Sweden. He and his friend receive some brandy in gratitude, drink several bottles in one night and seem none the worse for it in the morning, and then kind of non-chalantly pull off what the Norwegians could not. That combination of ability to do something what their more sophisticated neighbors could not combined with the lack of sense of urgency interests me. Jan Baalsrud was born and raised in Kapellveien 4, Kolbotn, Oslo, Norway.
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Survivor
Review: In a plain and straightforward manner, David Horwath recounts the incredible true story of a Norwegian commando sent back to his defeated homeland to sabotage a Nazi airfield. The mission is discovered and compromised before it really gets started--but the story has just begun. The commando, Jan Baalsrud, embarks on an incredible journey as he attempts to escape back to friendly lines. He is aided here and there by his countrymen, who risk their own lives and the lives of their families and villages to save him, long after, by all odds, he should be dead. As I read the book I was reminded of Ken Follett's "Eye Of The Needle", but with two distinct differences: Jan Baalsrud is a hero, not a villan. And this is a true story, not fiction.
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