Bidspirit auction | First Edition of 'We Die

First Edition of 'We Die Alone', hardback book by David Howarth, 1955. A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance is a classic 1955 non-fiction book written by British author David Howarth. It documents the astonishing true survival story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian commando who became the sole survivor of a betrayed sabotage mission in Nazi-occupied arctic Norway during World War II. In March 1943, a team of 12 expatriate Norwegian resistance fighters sailed from the Shetland Islands to northern Norway aboard a fishing boat laden with heavy explosives. Their ultimate mission was to sabotage a strategic German airfield. However, a miscommunication led to their betrayal, and they were promptly ambushed by a German patrol boat. Eleven of the commandos were either killed on the spot or captured, tortured, and executed. Only Jan Baalsrud managed to evade initial capture, swimming across an icy fjord in sub-zero waters to escape into the harsh Lyngen Alps. The book remains one of the most highly regarded survival stories ever written. It was adapted into the Oscar-nominated Norwegian film Nine Lives (1957) and later retold in the 2017 feature film The 12th Man.