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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

8. After Blowing Up a German Bridge, This Hero and His Men Had to Ski For Their Lives

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

Soon as William Colby and his men blew up the Tangen Bridge, the Germans sent up a spotter plane to find them. Before long, 50 German mountain troops were hot on their tail. Bluntly warned that “if you can’t outski the Germans, you will not return“, our hero and his men skied for their lives.

After 56 grueling hours, they managed to lose their pursuers by making their way up a steep hill, which they nicknamed “Benzedrine Hill” after the tablets they took to keep them awake and going. On April 18^th, 1945, the NORSOGs crossed into the safety of Sweden, where they were reunited with their five teammates who had been mistakenly parachuted there. Reinforced and resupplied, Colby’s men returned to Norway, and blew up a half-mile stretch of the Nordland Railway on April 23^rd.

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.