They appear to have been there for several days, but Wikipedia makes it sound like just one or two days.
The knocking out of the support pole seems improbable.
The finding, after a long delay, of the emergency supplies seems improbable.
That the Brits have no sidearms was mysterious.
Would they really need to draw a line across the floor?
Would reindeer really have passed in silence?
- Don't know, but a couple of days only is a short time frame for movie purposes. They might have added more to give time to develop the character relations, as well as underscoring the pressing issue of short supplies and Schwartz' condition.
- Not really. Don't know if it actually happened, but it's certainly possible. The supporting beam was broken, so the pole was probably just an improvised solution. It's not like the roof would come flying down the second they let go of the beam.
- The supplies were discovered on a whim, and were hidden well. Given that cabins in Norway were frequently used by hikers - which the owners usually didn't mind - the owners couldn't just hide their luxuries behind an obvious trap door. People were free to use the shelter if necessary, but not to indulge themselves in liquor and beef jerky.
- Don't know. Maybe they didn't have sidearms to begin with.
- Probably just a cinematic display of the safety line, which would be natural to have in such a situation.
- Yes, they're very quiet.
It was normal practice, particularly in the first year of the war, for British airmen not to carry a sidearm.
What isn't explained is the ranks of the British airmen, which appear to be unusual at best. I 'm assuming that the aircraft they were flying was a Blackburn Skua, a two seat naval fighter-bomber that was very actively used in the Norwegian campaign. As a captain, the pilot was probably a Marines officer - he is too young to be a naval captain - and the RN did not have a separate flying service for the Marines, but many Marines officers flew with the Fleet Air Arm. But the gunner seems to be in RAF uniform, which can only be explained by him being one of a few RAF flyers that were seconded to the RN.
Some info I found:
On 27th April, 1940, a Blackburn Skua, flying from HMS Ark Royal with Captain R. T. Partridge RM as pilot and Lieutenant R. S. Bostock RN as observer, engaged and shot down a Heinkel He 111, piloted by Horst Schopis, over Grotli, in Norway. The two man crew of the Skua were forced to make an emergency landing on a frozen lake, after a bullet severed their oil pipe.
After deliberately destroying the sensitive equipment in the cockpit, in case Germans found the plane, they managed to make their way to a nearby hut - where they were soon joined by the crew of the Heinkel that they had just shot down.
The remains of the British plane were, in fact, recovered from the bottom of the Norwegian lake in 1974, and are on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, whose curator, David Morris, was quoted as saying, in 2004:
"Capt Partridge offered his hand in friendship and Horst respected the gesture.
"With limited communication, both agreed that their battle had been in the air and that survival rather than further conflict should be the common aim.
"That night they shared coffee and muesli found in the hut and handed themselves in to the Norwegian authorities the next day."
I can only assume that a cinematic version takes a spot of artistic licence and their peril lasts for more than one night.
This actually came from a Rupert Grint fan site: http://rupertgrint.net/comrade-true-story
Looks like my guess was about right, then. Although why Grint's character had to be an RAF Leading Aircraftman (equivalent to a Lance Corporal or PFC) rather than the original naval Lieutenant seems to have been an artistic decision outweighing historical or factual considerations.
shareThe time frame has been expanded from the original night, the survivors spent together, into a much longer period and yes, the British characters appear to have been more fictionalised than their German counterparts for dramatic purposes. Yes, the film ends up succeeding as a humanistic tale of friendship in the midst of war, but I think it may have worked better sticking a little more closely to the facts.
A more enhanced dramatic narrative may have dropped the fictional endless blizzard story (it was reasonably late spring ... even in Norway), with an intro highlighting the Ariel dogfight. I know the film was likely shot on a small budget, but it drags predictably from the outset, when it may well have worked better to depict the crews in combat against one another, before becoming allies/friends.🐭
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