Letter: Jonah and the Tooth Fairy

From Mr Stephen Howarth

Sir: Reindeer may not be very strong, as Lars Breimer observes (letter, 19 December) but they are certainly strong enough to pull a man in a sledge. It was a reindeer pulling a sledge that saved the life of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian soldier, sent from Britain in March 1943 with 11 others to sabotage a northerly airbase in their Nazi-occupied homeland. The mission was betrayed and all the participants except Baalsrud were shot dead or captured. Baalsrud escaped into the snow barefoot and minus one toe, which had been shot off by a stray bullet. His only hope was to strike out for neutral Sweden, 80 miles across the mountains.

The journey took two months and would never have succeeded but for his own powers of endurance and the impressive courage of other Norwegians who risked their own lives to save him from execution as a spy. Passed on from one to another in an anonymous chain, he was brought at last to a high plateau, where two Lapps strapped him into their leading reindeer's sledge. Followed by a herd of 500 reindeer, Baalsrud was pulled in this manner for two days until they reached the frontier, where a German patrol encountered them. Under fire from the patrol, the entire herd stampeded across the final barrier, a semi-frozen lake. The shots did not stop until they reached the Swedish shore.

It probably helped that, by then, Baalsrud had lost half his normal weight and was only five and a half stone. Whether the reindeer could have done the same with Father Christmas is another question.

Yours faithfully,

Stephen Howarth

Shelton, Nottinghamshire

19 December