The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [105]
On a clear day, it is just possible to see Falsterbo’s buildings on the horizon. But on a dark night the distant village would have been invisible. Only courage, physical fitness and their compass could bring that world closer. They had just four kilometers of Swedish peninsula to aim for, far across the ice sheets. If they miscalculated by just a few degrees, they faced a hopeless walk on a treacherous course parallel to Sweden’s southern coast. In these conditions, they might never sight the land which lay so close.
As they took their first, creaking steps onto the sheet of white, it must have been hard for them to visualize what lay before them. Trusting their lives to a compass lit briefly by a shielded match, they set off on a north-easterly course and hoped for the best. Each man had to conquer the fear of not knowing whether the next step would be his last. But they were all sustained by a powerful survival instinct and a patriotic desire to free Denmark from Hitler’s grip. They would need all that mental strength and more.
Disaster struck for the first time after just two hours. The sledge, piled high with their supplies, plunged straight through a weak point in the ice when the trio paused for an ill-advised rest. Thorbjoern, who had been pulling it, was first to be dragged into the freezing water, but soon all three were fighting for their lives, barely able to breathe in the lethal cold. Sigfred and Kaj managed to pull themselves out and find a fragile foothold on a slab of ice. Then they hauled Thorbjoern to safety too. All three men must have known they were now in a battle for their lives, yet a collective decision was taken to press on for Sweden.
Shaking uncontrollably, they marched straight into another weak point in the ice. Perhaps they had been undone by what remained of the shipping lane, through which the steel bows of huge vessels carved a temporary path each morning. The hostile temperatures returned each night to patch the ice-cutters’ work, but the newly formed ice didn’t always fully repair the gaping scars left by the ships. It was like walking into a minefield, and no one knew which way to turn. All three felt the freezing water assault their senses as they stumbled and scrambled for a firm footing on anything that still resembled a solid surface. A Swedish police report later stated: ‘During the hike over the ice towards the Swedish coast they fell into the water several times, losing their sledge in the process. They had suffered a lot from the cold wind, and towards the end they were nearly frozen to the ice.’ By now Thorbjoern was all but paralysed by the numbing cold. Nobly, Sigfred gave his younger brother his coat to try to increase his body temperature. Kaj was suffering gravely, too. At the Oeresund’s exposed confluence with the Baltic, the temperatures were so severe and the wind so merciless that each man would have felt himself drifting helplessly towards hypothermia. Water froze so quickly on their boots and clothes that it threatened to stick them to the ice like glue. It was a constant battle to keep themselves sufficiently free to place one foot in front of the other.
Still they refused to give up, though. And, as dawn broke, they sighted Falsterbo peninsula. Although salvation was almost within reach, Thorbjoern was fading rapidly.