Dude is a star

With Tom Brady back in the Super Bowl, and Alex Honnold making the rounds with Ted Talks and FreeSolo, I was reminded to add to my collection of men among men who have done amazing things, and thought relatively little of it, or of themselves, for it.

Joachim Ronnenberg deserves his spot.

He was just 23 when he was recruited – it doesn’t say why or what qualifications he had, aside from being young and alive in Norway in 1943.

The mission, run by the Special Operations Executive, or SOE — Britain’s wartime intelligence gathering and sabotage unit — was to destroy parts of the heavily guarded heavy water (nuclear) plant in Telemark, Norway.

They set out – m0re like dropped in- during February, in Norway. God, that’s cold.

Rønneberg said he made a last-minute decision to cut the length of his fuse from several minutes to seconds, ensuring that the explosion would take place but making it more difficult to escape.

The group skied hundreds of miles across the mountains to escape and Rønneberg, wearing a British uniform, made it to neutral Sweden.

He lived to 99, having not died several times over at the age of 23.

Where have they all gone, I ask myself. And how can we be more like them. For further inspiration, catch Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, who made a great WWII flick, Heroes of the Telemark.