There was a
sickening crunch and a violent jerk.
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| Flight 571: slammed into the mountain |
The right wing of
the plane was ripped off by the peak of the mountain and flung backwards into the rear
of the fuselage. The plane, wildly out of control, smashed into a second peak,
which tore off the left wing.
Inside the
fuselage, the terrified passengers prepared for the shattered plane to plunge
them to their deaths.
But the crash landing was miraculously to spare some of those on board. The fuselage
hit a snow-covered mountain slope and slid downwards before coming to a halt in
a deep drift.
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| Beautiful: but not without food or clothing |
As a wall of
silence descended over the wreckage, the injured and groaning survivors came to
their senses. They had crashed in the lonely wilds of the high Andes. But they
were alive.
There had been 45
people on board the Uruguayan Air Force flight 571 when it took off on Friday,
13 October, 1972. Among the passengers was the Old Christians Club rugby team
from Montevideo, en route to Chile.
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| Survived the crash: but can they survive the cold? |
As the injured
survivors clambered from the wreckage they found that 38 of them were still
alive, although several were suffering from such injuries that they would
clearly not survive for long.
Their pitiful
plight soon struck home. They were lost in the snowbound Andes at an altitude
of 9,000 metres with neither food nor winter clothing. Worse still, they lacked any
medical supplies - a major handicap given that many of them were suffering from serious wounds.
They gathered
together the remaining food on board. It did not amount to much - some snacks,
a little chocolate and a few bottles of wine.
There was nothing else to eat on these windswept mountains, nor any animals to hunt.
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| Parrado and Canessa: survivors |
‘At high altitude,
the body's caloric needs are astronomical…’ wrote Nando Parrado, one of the
survivors. ‘We were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our
hunger soon grew so voracious that we searched anyway ... again and again
we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels... Again and again I came
to the same conclusion: unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing,
there was nothing here but aluminium, plastic, ice, and rock.’
It became
clear that if they were to survive, they would have no option but to eat their dead loved
ones. It was the only hope of keeping themselves alive.
Among the crash
survivors was Roberto Canessa, a young medical student. He was convinced that a
small party should try to hike over the mountains and seek help. Yet this
involved a gruelling trek over some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain.
Canessa and two
others - Nando Parrado and Antonio Vizintin - would have to climb peaks of
almost 5,000 metres in altitude. They would also face extreme temperatures with
no winter clothing equipment. Worse still, they had almost no food.
After two months
on the mountain (they waited for the temperatures to rise a little) they set
off on 12 December.
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| The plane that crashed: like this one |
The lack of oxygen
was their first hazard. The constant climbing left them dizzy and desperately
short of breath. The cold, too, was hard to endure. They had made a makeshift
sleeping bag, yet the nights were nevertheless bitter.
Parrado was the
fittest: he reached the peak of the first high mountain in advance of the other two.
From the top, he got the shock of his life. He’d thought they’d crashed just a
few miles from the Chilean border and was expecting to see some distant signs
of civilisation.
Instead, there was nothing but a wasteland of ice-bound mountains and valleys stretching for as
far as the eye could see.
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| Surviving: cold and hungry |
Only now did the
men realise that they were stranded at a vast distance from
the nearest human habitation.
Realising that the
rescue hike would be even more arduous than anticipated, Vizintin was sent back
to the crash site. The others meanwhile continued on their long climb.
For day after day
they crossed lonely peaks and valleys. They were freezing at night and
constantly starved. But they eventually found a stream that was to lead them out of the
frozen hell. It was the Rio Azufre and it gave them a passage to below the snow
line. After nine days of gruelling marching, they saw cows - a sure sign of
human habitation.
As they prepared
to make a fire that evening, Canessa looked up and noticed a man on the far
side of the river. He shouted and waved, trying to show that they desperately
needed help. Over the roar of the water they heard him shout ‘tomorrow.’
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| The crash site today |
The two survivors
slept soundly that night, aware that their ordeal was almost at an end. The Chilean horseman returned on the
following day; he brought some bread which he hurled across the river, along with a pen and paper. They wrote down what had happened
and flung it back.
The man went
back to raise the alarm and get help for Canessa and Parrado. Shortly
afterwards, a rescue party arrived and the two of them were given much needed shelter, food and
water.
That same day, 22
December, two helicopters finally set off for the crash site. Despite atrocious
weather they eventually plucked the remaining survivors from the mountain. They
were in a desperate plight: cold, starving and suffering from extreme
malnutrition.
But they had
survived - survived an extraordinary 72 days without food and supplies in one of the bleakest
spots on earth.
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| UK paperback |
NOW PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK
Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War available here for just £5.30
And for my American readers, it is now published under the title: The Boy Who Went to War: The Story of a Reluctant German Soldier in WWII available here
 |
Newly published US edition
|
'Idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating... an extraordinary tale of hardship, horror and amazing good fortune' James Delingpole, The Daily Mail
