24. How to Survive and Escape a Mutual Predicament?
While the German airmen spent the night of April 27 – 28 in the reindeer hunter’s hut, Captain Partridge and Lieutenant Bostock made do in the far more commodious Grotli Hotel. The following morning, the Germans spotted the hotel, and made their way there. Rooting through the establishment’s cupboards, the airmen found enough in the larder for a decent meal, and the enemy combatants sat down together around a dining table to share a hearty breakfast.
The two sides then tried to figure out the best course of action to get out of their mutual predicament. They were stuck in snow-covered mountainous terrain, in the middle of nowhere, with no means of communication with their chains of command or the outside world. They reasoned that it was unlikely that anybody would come looking for them, and that sooner or later, they would run out of food. That being so, they figured that in order to escape death, they would have to shift for themselves.