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Heroes from History People Really Don’t Appreciate Enough

Khalid Elhassan November 10, 2020 32 min

William Colby - William J. Donovan — William Colby (oak leaves on cap) with OSS personnel and Norwegian Resistance members in Norway. Special Operations

9. Prevented From Attacking His Original Target, William Colby Skied for 100 Miles to Attack Another Target

Without William Colby’s whole team at hand, attacking his target, the well-protected Grana Bridge, would have been foolhardy. So he decided to attack and destroy another bridge: the smaller, but unguarded, one at Tangen. On April 9^th, 1945 Colby led his men on a 100-mile journey on skis to their target.

The men, carrying a 60-pound load of ammunition and rations, took turns dragging a sled with 180 pounds of explosives. They made their way through tough terrain, skiing through a sleet storm en route, until they reached the Tangen Bridge on April 14^th. After cutting nearby telegraph wires, they blew up their target. With the bridge destroyed, Colby and his men sped east towards the safety of neutral Sweden.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.