Jan Baalsrud
| Jan Baalsrud | |
|---|---|
| Born |
13 December 1917 Kristiania (today Oslo), Norway |
| Died | 30 December 1988 (aged 71) Kongsvinger, Norway |
| Allegiance | Norway |
| Years of service | 1940 – 1943 |
| Rank | Fenrik |
| Unit | Company Linge |
| Awards |
Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) St Olav's medal |
| Other work | Chairman of the Norwegian Disabled Veterans Union (1957 — 1964) |
Jan Sigurd Baalsrud, MBE (December 13, 1917 – December 30, 1988) was a commando in the Norwegian resistance trained by the British during World War II.
Jan Baalsrud was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), and moved to Kolbotn in the early 1930s, where he lived until the 1950s. He graduated as an instrument-maker in 1939.
During the German invasion of Norway in 1940, he fought in Vestfold. He later escaped to Sweden, but he was convicted of espionage and expelled from the country. He eventually arrived in Britain in 1941, after having travelled through the Soviet Union, Africa and the US, where he joined the Norwegian Company Linge. In early 1943, he, three other commandos and the boat crew of eight, all Norwegians, embarked on a dangerous mission to destroy a German air control tower at Bardufoss, and recruit for the Norwegian resistance movement. This mission was compromised when he and his fellow soldiers, seeking a trusted resistance contact, accidentally made contact with an unaligned civilian shopkeeper of the same name as their contact who betrayed them to the Germans.
The morning after their blunder, on March 29, their fishing boat Brattholm – containing 8 tons of explosives intended to destroy the air control tower – was attacked by a German vessel. The Norwegians scuttled their boat by detonating the 8 tons of explosive using a time delay fuse, and fled in a small boat; however the small boat was promptly sunk by the Germans.
Jan and others swam ashore in ice cold Arctic waters. Jan was the only soldier to evade capture and, soaking wet and missing one sea boot, he escaped up into a snow gully, where he shot and killed the leading German Gestapo 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 at Revdal, which he called Hotel Savoy, that Jan was forced to operate his legs with a pocket knife. He believed that he had blood poisoning and that drawing the blood out would help. Not long after that Jan was left on a high plateau on a stretcher in the snow for 27 days due to weather and German patrols in the town of Manndalen, Kåfjord, his life hanging by a thread. It was during this time while he lay behind a snow wall built round a rock to shelter him that Jan amputated nine of his toes to stop the spread of gangrene, an action which saved his feet. 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 people of northern Fenno-Scandinavia) who with reindeer pulled him on a sled 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.
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