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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

7. William Colby Concluded His WWII Adventures by Accepting the Surrender of a German Garrison

Major William Colby and the Norwegian Special Operations Group (NORSOG) parading in liberated Trondheim, Norway, in 1945. Wikimedia

After another harrowing chase, with Nazis nipping at their heels, William Colby and his men once again shook off their pursuers by climbing Benzedrine Hill. While awaiting new orders, Colby’s men found and buried the remains of their comrades who had crashed near their initial drop zone.

A few days later, they stumbled across a squad of Germans and wiped them out in a shootout. A few days after that, Germany surrendered. As commander of the nearest Allied unit on the ground, Colby accepted the surrender of the local German garrison. After a triumphant tour during which they were lionized by the locals, our hero and the other NORSOGs made it to the Norwegian capital of Oslo. From there, they were repatriated back to the US in June 1945.

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.