Читать книгу Lost in Shangri-La: Escape from a Hidden World - A True Story - MItchell Zuckoff - Страница 14

Chapter Seven Tarzan

THE NEXT MORNING, MCCOLLOM CONTINUED HIS treks between the rock ledge and the wreckage. On one trip, he climbed a tree and surveyed the area. He saw what looked like a clearing several kilometres away. Using a compass he had found in the plane’s detached tail, McCollom plotted a course they could follow to reach it. With his companions’ injuries festering, and with little water and no food but hard sucking candies, they needed to get to the clearing as soon as Margaret and Decker felt strong enough to walk.

Plane crash survivors are usually told to remain with the wreckage to increase their likelihood of being found. But the usual rules rarely applied in New Guinea. McCollom recognized that if they remained where they were, hidden under the jungle canopy, they faced certain death. Even if they reached the clearing, the likelihood of rescue seemed slim.

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New Guinea’s jungles were boundless cemeteries of unmarked military graves. In April 1944, when the wife of a missing Army Air Forces pilot sought information about her husband’s prospects, an officer wrote back with unusual candour: ‘It is necessary to cross high mountain ranges on practically every flight made on the island. Thick jungle growth goes right up to the tops of the peaks and entire squadrons could completely disappear under this foliage. No matter how thorough the search is, the possibility of locating the plane is rather remote. We have had numerous other instances of like nature and no word has come concerning those crews or airplanes. The weather and terrain account for more airplanes than combat flying.’

More than six hundred Allied planes had crashed on the island since the start of the war, some in combat but many from rough weather, mechanical failures, pilot error, uncharted mountains hiding in clouds, or some combination. Hundreds more planes from Japan, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand and the Netherlands had crashed on New Guinea, as well. Some were located after they went down, but many were concealed by the emerald-green rain-forests. By 1945, New Guinea was home to more missing aeroplanes than any country on earth.

Two and a half years earlier, in November 1942, a severe downdraught struck an American C-47 delivering troops and supplies to another part of the island. The plane crashed into a mountain at 2700 metres, into conditions almost identical to those encountered by the survivors of the Gremlin Special. Search planes flew one sortie after another, but found no trace of the C-47, which was nicknamed the Flying Dutchman.

Seventeen of the twenty-three men aboard survived the crash, though some had severe injuries. When no rescuers arrived, eight men felt fit enough to attempt to walk out of the jungle. They split up, leaving the crash site in two groups of four. On the fifth day of their trek, the first group came to a narrow gorge with a fast-moving river. It was not possible to cross, so they tried to ride logs down the rapids. Two drowned. The other two eventually met friendly natives, who guided them from village to village. After thirty-two arduous days, they arrived at an Allied base. The second group had an easier time. They received help from natives after ten days, and within a month all four were safely out of the jungle.

The reappearance of survivors from the Flying Dutchman triggered a new search for the injured men left behind, but that failed, too. As a last-ditch effort, a reward was offered to any natives who discovered the wreck. More than sixty days after the crash, a group of natives came across a cluster of decaying bodies and a lone survivor, an Army chaplain described in one account as ‘blind from malnutrition and so light that he “felt like a baby”’. Around him was a bare semi-circle of dirt – near the end of his ordeal, he had sustained himself by eating mountain moss within his reach. The natives offered him cooked banana, but he died in their arms. They left his body, but brought back his Bible as proof that they had located the Flying Dutchman.

Long after, searchers returned to the wreck and found a rear cargo door where the survivors had kept a makeshift diary written in charcoal. The first entries were simple reports with an almost military tone. Each entry was a few words long, noting when the crash occurred, when each group of healthy survivors left, how the remaining men had tried to launch a balloon to attract searchers, and what food they had found and eaten. The rationing of one chocolate bar and a single can of tomato juice took up five days’ worth of entries.

After a while, when food, tomato juice, and cigarettes were gone, the entries scratched on the cargo door turned personal, revealing hope, fear, and occasional flashes of grim humour. On Friday, 27 November 1942, seventeen days after the crash, an entry read: ‘Buckets full [of] water this morn … still got our chin up.’ Two days later: ‘Boy we’re getting weak.’ But the diarist added, ‘Still have our hope.’ The next day: ‘Still going strong on imaginary meals.’ On Monday, 7 December, the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the entry read: ‘Year ago today the war started. Boy, we didn’t think of this then.’ Two days later, a month after the crash: ‘Just thirty days ago. We can take it but it would be nice if someone came.’ A week later, as thoughts turned to Christmas: ‘Running out of imaginary meals. Boys shouldn’t be long in coming now – 6 more shoping [sic] days.’ Six days later: ‘Tonite is Christmas eve. God make them happy at home.’ Six days later: ‘Johnnie died today.’

The entries petered out after two more days, seven weeks after the crash. The final entry noted that it was New Year’s Eve. The three remaining survivors signed their names: Pat, Mart and Ted. Days later, the natives found the wreckage – and Captain Theodore Barron, the blind, malnourished, moss-eating chaplain, known to his friends as Ted.

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At daylight on Tuesday, 15 May 1945, the second day after the Gremlin Special crash, McCollom announced that he had changed his mind. They could not wait for Margaret and Decker to feel stronger before starting their trek to the clearing he had spotted from the tree.

With soiled and soggy bandages on their burns, McCollom feared his companions would get worse before they got better. Already they moved slowly, as though swimming through honey, a side effect of their injuries, sleeplessness, empty stomachs, and the thin air at such high altitude, more than 1600 metres above sea level. A native would have considered the rainforest a mess hall overflowing with fruits and roots, birds and small mammals, but for the survivors it was as mysterious as a menu in Mandarin. The only nourishment they trusted was their boiled sweets.

McCollom assembled most of their supplies in one of the remaining yellow tarpaulins. He packed a smaller one for Decker and gave Margaret a pail that he had found in the plane’s tail. Rattling around in it were her day’s rations: two tins of water and a few cellophane-wrapped sweets.

McCollom returned to Laura Besley’s body for a grisly but necessary task. He unwrapped the tarpaulin and removed the flight suit he had given her for warmth. Just as Margaret had shortened her Army-issue uniforms when she had first arrived in Hollandia, McCollom used his pocket-knife to slice twelve inches of fabric from each cuff so Margaret could wear the flight suit without tripping over herself.

When McCollom brought her the suit, Margaret knew that it came from the body of her good friend but she was glad to have it nonetheless, just as she knew that wearing Laura’s shoes might be the difference between life and death. Margaret still had the Rayon underwear she had stripped off after the crash intending to make bandages. Now she tore the pants in half and used the fabric to cover the burns on her legs, so the rough flight suit wouldn’t scrape against her charred skin.

Later, writing in her diary, Margaret wished that before they left the crash site they had said a prayer, built a cross, or laid some kind of marker for the twenty-one friends, comrades, and McCollom’s twin. Even a moment of silence would have made her feel better about their departure. But at the time, their only focus was on reaching a place where they might be spotted from the air.

‘Let’s go,’ McCollom ordered his two-person platoon. He took the lead, Margaret followed close behind, and Decker brought up the rear.

They first had to climb up from the ledge where they had spent the previous two nights and make their way past the wreckage. The growth was so thick that they made the most progress by crawling on their hands and knees. In a few places, a wrong step would mean a fall into a rocky ravine. In others, it would mean a deadly plunge over a cliff. It took an exhausting thirty minutes just to get twenty-five metres past the plane.

The detached tail section of the Gremlin Special.

Margaret tried to tie back her hair, which fell halfway down her back. But it was no use. It kept getting caught in the clawing vines and branches that surrounded them. They repeatedly had to halt their crawl-march to untangle it. In desperation, Margaret shook loose her hair and declared: ‘Please, McCollom, hack it off.’

The lieutenant used his pocketknife to saw through chunks of Margaret’s thick hair, dropping the cuttings where they stood. After working his way around Margaret’s head, McCollom fashioned what Margaret called ‘a rather sad, three-inch “feather” bob’. They started out again, but still the jungle tore at her.

‘For goodness sake, McCollom, I’ve got to get rid of this hair!’ she yelled.

McCollom cut it even shorter.

Margaret’s burns made each step painful. Decker, worse off, still unsteady from his head injury, moved stiffly but never complained.

As they inched their way through the mud and brush on the jungle floor, the trio stumbled upon what Margaret considered a miracle: a dry creek bed, or gully, that formed a narrow path down the mountain. To view this as miraculous mostly reveals how difficult the jungle was by contrast. The gully cut into the mountain at a sharp angle, in some places forcing them to climb, slide or jump down the rocky slope. The footing was unstable even along the flatter sections of the path, with loose stones that slid out from under them. In other places they had to climb over boulders and old tree trunks. But it was a trail nonetheless.

‘It is foolish to think that we could have cut our way out of that dense, clinging jungle with a pocketknife our only weapon,’ Margaret wrote in her diary. ‘The gully promised two things: a foothold in the jungle, precarious though it was, and eventual water.’

Even as they followed the dry stream, the survivors had to stop and rest every half-hour. After two breaks they noticed trickles of icy water draining into the gully. At first, they were delighted. Margaret and Decker, aching with thirst, announced that they intended to fill their stomachs as soon as the water became deep enough to collect. McCollom warned against it, worrying that waterborne germs would torture their bowels. But they were too excited to listen. In no time, the tributaries grew larger and they had more water than they wished for. It rose over their shoe tops and kept rushing into the gully, threatening to sweep them down the mountain with the swift-moving stream.

They navigated the rougher spots by sliding along on their bottoms, getting soaked in the process. In the steepest places, waterfalls cascaded from one to three metres down. The jungle bordered closely on both sides of the gully, so fallen logs rested in some of the waterfalls. Whenever possible, they used those logs as ladders or poles to climb down. When no logs were available, McCollom led the way, climbing down the falls hand over hand, the water pouring over his head. He stood at the bottom, under the rushing water, as Margaret made her way down far enough to stand on his shoulders. Then she slid into his arms, and McCollom placed her in shallower water. When she was safe, he returned to help Decker.

They came to a three-metre waterfall, too high and too steep to try McCollom’s shoulder trick. Margaret and Decker rested at the side of the stream while McCollom fought his way into the encroaching jungle to search for a way around. But the growth was especially thick there, so he returned with a new idea.

McCollom grabbed a thick vine that hung from a tree alongside the falls. After testing it with his weight, he held tight to the vine, took a running jump, and swung over and beyond the falls. When he cleared the cascading water, he let himself down at the bottom. He tossed back the vine and told the others to follow.

Margaret didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the vine and launched herself into space. When she cleared the falls, McCollom caught her as she let go of the vine. Next came Decker, who followed suit.

When he was safely beside them, the sergeant smiled drily: ‘Damned if I ever thought I’d understudy Johnny Weissmuller.’ Decker’s mention of the vine-swinging movie star who played ‘Tarzan’ made Margaret laugh, though she overlooked the obvious implication: that made her Jane.

As they trudged onward, Margaret felt worse with each step. She was cold, wet and exhausted. Her whole body ached. Tears welled in her eyes, but she was determined not to cry.

From time to time they heard search planes overhead. As the thrum of each plane’s engines grew closer, McCollom frantically worked the signal mirror. But he knew that the foliage canopy made the effort useless. Still, the sound alone was enough to revive their confidence that there was still a possibility, no matter how remote, that they would be found.

McCollom’s plan was to walk until early afternoon then set up camp when the daily mist and rain rolled in. But the jungle bordering the stream was so relentless they couldn’t find a spot on the bank large enough to stretch out. They kept moving until they could go no farther, eventually settling on a location that was far from ideal.

McCollom placed one tarpaulin on the sodden ground and draped the other over them as a cover. They ate a few Charms, then bunched together to keep warm as they slept. McCollom slid between Decker and Margaret, so he could care for them both if needed. Decker thought McCollom displayed ‘the old mother hen instinct’, but he appreciated it and kept quiet.

Their campsite slanted sharply towards the stream, and several times during the night the trio rolled in a heap down the bank into the icy water. Each time they dragged out the tarpaulins and their soggy selves and tried again to sleep.

Also disturbing their sleep was something they had seen earlier in the day. While walking through the stream, they noticed an unmistakable sign that they were not alone: outlined in the mud was a fresh human footprint. That night they heard strange barking sounds in the distance.

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As far as the three survivors knew, they were the first outsiders to trek through this part of New Guinea’s mountainous rainforest. But they were mistaken. That distinction belonged to a wealthy, amateur American zoologist who seven years earlier led an expedition to New Guinea in search of undiscovered flora and fauna.

One unfortunate result of that 1938 expedition was an act of deadly violence. The question now was whether that legacy would threaten the three survivors of the Gremlin Special.