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 1930ies to the 1950ies. 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 onslaught and, soaking wet and missing one shoe, he escaped into up a ravine and shot and killed a Nazi soldier. He evaded capture for roughly two months, suffering from frostbite and snow blindness. He failed in his bid to reach the border of neutral Sweden and cast himself on the mercy of some Norwegian citizens who happened to have access to the Norwegian underground. While hiding in their barn, he amputated a significant portion of his own frostbitten toes with a knife.

These citizens smuggled him closer to the Swedish border and were forced to leave him in a snow cave for roughly two weeks before they returned and managed to deliver him to a reindeer herder who finally brought him over the Swedish border to safety.

He spent seven months in a Swedish hospital before he made his way back to Britain via South-Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and America in order to continue his service.

After the war Baalsrud made a substantial contribution to the local scout and football asociations in addition to the Norwegian Disabled Veterans Union of which he was chairman from 1957 to 1964.

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.