War Escapes

Two books and two films about harrowing escapes during World War 2. One story is about Jan Baalsrud, a British-trained Norwegian commando, who escapes over snowy mountains (with the help of Norwegian resistance) from German-Occupied Norway to Sweden.

The other story is ghostwritten about Polish prisoner-of-war Slavomir Rawitz and 8 companions, who escape from Stalin's Soviet Gulag to India. Snow and mountains. deserts and death.

Jan Baalsrud, Norway to Sweden, 29 March to 1 June 1943

We Die Alone (book)

by David Howarth, 1955 and 1999 / Beaverton lib 940.5472 HOW

Operation Martin, leader Løytnant Sigurd Eskeland

ship MK Bratholm

• https://no-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/MK_%C2%ABBratholm_I%C2%BB?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

• p62 15 Norwegians tortured and murdered by Germans, collaborating shopkeeper and official sentenced after war to 8 and 14 years of hard labor

Table on page 204 , many names do not translate

map by reader

The 12th Man (2018 Norwegian Harald Zwart film)

Beaverton lib DVD 12th

More Later

Slavomir Rawicz, USSR to Mongolia, Gobi Desert, China, Tibet, and India

The Long Walk (book)

The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

Slavomir Rawitz (London ghostwriter Ronald Downing) 1956 and 2006 / West Slope lib 940.5472 Rawicz

• 001-011 interrogation and hot-tar-on-hand torture in Lubyanka prison

• 012 Trial

• 016 asked about wife Vera, married 5 July 1939 in Pinsk, brief visits, not involved in trial (like the movie)

• 022 sentenced to 25 years forced labor, then properly fed and bathed, transported mid-November 1940
• 038 called up in 1937 while studying architecture and surveying in Warsaw, cavalry trained, back to graduate in 1938
• 039 then 2nd lieutenant, then home, then mobilized 1 March 1939
• 040 September 15?, last cavalry charge in modern warfare

• 043 back to "present", train stops 8 miles past Krasnoyarsk

• 045 3 days in cold, then fufaika padded jackets, then 60 wood-burning army trucks

• 046 5000 prisoners 100 trudging men chained behind a truck, avoiding towns

• 058 40 days march, blizzard last week of January 1941, Ostyak reindeer herdsmen

• 064 15 miles per day p065 Camp 303, north side of Lena River, 200 to 300 miles southwest of Yakutsk

• 069 commandant Colonel Ushakov: First build barracks
• 070 Politruk Colonel arrogant and insulting. "When is spring?" "Don't ask stupid questions"
• 072 fortnight later, two lines of ten huts finished
• 075 Bread and korizhki tobacco (made from leaf veins) were camp currency
• 078 ski making volunteers, extra bread, eventually 160 pairs of skis per day
• 081 volunteers to fix Commissar's radio, wife Ushakova friendly, later suggests escape
• 086 Anastazi Kolemenos, 27 yo Latvian
• 089 Sigmund Makowski, 37 yo Polish captain
• 093 Anton Paluchowitz, 41 yo Polish sergeant
• 094 Eugene Zaro, 30 yo Yugoslav clerk
• 095 Zacharius Marchinlovas, 28yo Lithuanian architect
• 096 Mister Smith, American engineer (7 total)
• 100 April, all in the same hut
• 101 Ushakova gifts axehead, 102 travel bags, sheepskin jacket
  • gubka moss for tinder
• 103 leave camp at midnight, early April 105 inner wire, fence, 12 foot palisade fence p109 snow cave
• 110 5 night marches, holed up daytime
• 111 9th day Lena River 113 break through ice, small fish fountain up 114 thirty miles, 10 hours per day
• 117 kill stag deer, stay a day and eat
• 121 middle of May, first signs of spring 122 reach Lake Baikal

• 123 Chichevka Siberia

• 128 17yo Polish Kristina Polanska, deported kolhoz laborer, escapes rapist foreman

• 135 Swim river, southwards 50 miles east of Baikal

• 137 Bargusin river, end of May

• 145 June, steal/smoke pig . 148 Trans-Siberian Railway, hours later river . 150 Buryat Mongols Buryatia

• 153 Enter Mongolia, leave Siberia, 1200 miles in 60 days, ponder final destination, not sure of location

• 156 Kentei mountains

• 158-162 Mongol caravan, gift food, page of Red Star newspaper

• 163 forced marches in great heat from water to water, helps free sampan, given melons, meal with viyuni

• 166 helps thresh grain . . p171 catch and smoke fish
• 173 locusts. Crossing Outer Mongolia in 6 to 8 weeks. Gobi desert entry not abrupt. p175 tea with fat
• 177 Gobi Desert (500km north south), daytime only because directions at night confusing (stars?), ran out of dried fish 5th day
• 181 oasis, trees and water pool, find metal wire
• 187 Kristina falls repeatedly . . p189 no heartbeat, buried with cross made of her walking stick
• 193 Sigmund Makowski dies
• 195 oozing mud-stream, stick in mud, drops of moisture (13 day old thirst), found puddles downstream
• 199 catch snake, four feet long, thick as wrist . . 202 diarrhea . . 203-205 more snakes
• 206 Zaro finds water spring . . 208 lived on snakes for three weeks
• 209 grass and sheep . . 211 shepherd and gruel and ewe's milk
• 213 make handle for shepherd's cauldron with wire, roast a sheep

• 215 perhaps Kansu/Gansu China

• 218 village, Russian-speaking Circassian mayor(?)

• 220 warning about Chinese soldiers
• 230 encounter 70yo German-speaking, suspicious European missionary
• 233 large lake, near the end of November . . 234 Marchinkovas (28-9 yo) dies, now 5
• 236 23 December, large 40 house village, teacher speaks French with Zaro
• 240 snow cave in storm . . 241 late January Brahmaputra . . 242 February last village, hosts guides them to best trail
• 247 climb with rock weight on rope tossed to crevices above
• 248 hear dog bark on downhill traverse, old shepherd
• 251 Paluchowicz loses shoe, Zaro chases it, sliding, the rest follow
• 253 March 1942 nearing India . . 254 more days over mountains . . ten hour 5000 foot descent

• 257 abandoned cave, fleeces and meat . . 258 tall distant wild humanoids . . 260 Abominable Snowman

• 261 anchor rope pulls loose, Paluchowicz vanishes into cleft
• 263 down the hills, 8 days without food, see six native soldiers with an N.C.O.
  • Smith holds hand out for handshake, "We are very glad to see you"
• 265 walk with patrol to road . . 266 smokes and can of peaches, ten miles in 5 hours
• 267 hot meal, louse-ridden clothing and shaved hair burned, well fed and clothed
• 269 Smith taken to American authorities, other three to hospital . . orderly and Zaro spoke French
• 270 Rawicz zonks out for month, then hoards food, climax 10 days later
• 272 Rawicz leaves to board troopship, join Polish forces in the Middle East

• 274 1997 edition: England March 1944, trains as Tiger Moth fighter pilot, finishes training as war ends

• 275 meets and marries English wife, 5 children, 11 grandchildren, dictates book to Ronald Downing, published 1956

• dies 2004

The Way Back (2010 English Peter Weir film)

A film is not a book, they adapt stories to different audiences (and must achieve different financial outcomes). That said, the film wonderfully captures the spirit and struggles that Slawomir Rawicz (and his English-adept ghost writer) described in his very moving book "The Long Walk".

The struggles and bravery of the female character were moving in both film and book. Her written story actually made me cry, and the film would have had I not already explored my feelings reading the book. See the film, read the book, enjoy both as masterpieces.

Another (perhaps neurotic) emigre claims the book was made up or plagiarized, and by implication the story of this film. That slander was thoroughly debunked by a New York Times investigative reporter, but slanders endure long past their rebuttal. Communism-as-slander (as opposed to voluntary, generous, collaborative economic production) endures today.

Memory is a trickster, and months of starvation followed by decades of verbal re-tellings will change any story. So, a real story actually happened, a misremembered story was written many years after the event, and a somewhat different story was filmed 65 years after the event. I am horrified that millions endured such stories in the gulag, but glad that the stories in the book and the film were both told so movingly.

I rate this 9 stars to acknowledge that there are many reasons other viewers would dislike it, and subtract only one because I care more about Rawicz and his companions and the book story and this movie story than I care about the unhappy viewers. :-P

I care most about the MILLIONS who suffered in the gulag (a friend spent his first 14 years there), and those suffering in modern equivalents.

Lastly, an ending "spoiler". In the film, the protagonists reach India, and are welcomed by a throng (in the book, a small British army patrol). Two of the protagonists are questioned and reply in English.

In the book, only the American "Smith" knows English, though the others know Russian and Polish and Ukrainian and German and French among them. The book continues with a hospital stay, followed by training for combat in the Polish legion of the British Army near the end of World War 2. The real-life protagonists arrived as walking skeletons, and needed months (and a few weeks comatose) to recover.

The hospital recovery ending makes for a better book, but a lousy film.

All that said

This BBC magazine article suggests there was a similar walk by 3 gulag escapees - but Rawicz wasn't one of them. He was imprisoned in the Gulag ... for killing an NKVD officer. He was released in 1942 to rejoin the Polish Army.

Sigh.