One man against the pirates / by Clark Norton and Howard Kohn

One man against the pirates / by Clark Norton and Howard Kohn

“For weeks the drunken toughs had terrorized the Vietnamese boat people stranded on a tiny island. Rape, torture, murder—seemingly without end. Now it was up to one young American to stop it,”

            On November 16, 1979, Theodore (Ted) Schweitzer, a new field officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees, was in his office at the Songkhla refugee camp in southern Thailand, a temporary home for thousands of “boat people” who had fled Vietnam. For Schweitzer, a simple, soft-spoken, 37-year-old American overseeing the camp was not an entirely exotic assignment. He had taught English in Bangkok three years earlier, and was married to a Thai woman. Fluent in Thai, he had already battled local authorities to get better conditions for his refugees. But now his job was about to take on a new dimension.

            That morning, Schweitzer was visited by an oil-company helicopter pilot who reported spotting dozens of refugees on Ko Kra, a tiny island 50 kilometres off Thailand’s eastern coast. Schweitzer had never heard of Ko Kra, but with missionary zeal he asked the pilot to fly him over the island. Soon he was looking down on a one and a half-square-kilometre patch of mountain, jungle and coral-flecked beach. Below, tattered refugees waved at him in desperation.

            Schweitzer pleaded with the pilot to land, but the man had spotted pirate boats offshore and bodies floating in the water, and he refused. “I’m not hired to fly combat missions,” he said.

            Back on the coast, Schweitzer persuaded Thai marine police to take him to Ko Kra by launch. Together, they rescued 157 men, women and children.

            Schweizer was aghast at the refugees’ tales of terror: pirates had attacked their boats, robbed them, then they towed them to uninhabited Ko Kra, where the refugees were thrown overboard hundreds of metres from shore. Seventeen had drowned. The rest were marooned with little more than their clothing. Then the real nightmare began. Boatloads of pirates—as many as 50 vessels in a day—repeatedly returned to Ko Kra to rape the refugee women. (For centuries, many Thai and Malay fishermen have doubled as pirates. In the past decade, with a million boat people setting sail from Vietnam in fragile vessels, the piracy has swelled like the tidal waves that also plague these waters.)

            One young woman, Vu Thanh Thuy, a former journalist in Vietnam, begged Schweitzer to do something to stop the pirate attacks. “I promise,” he told her.

            Before leaving Ko Kra, one of the 157 refugees had scratched Schweitzer’s name and UN affiliation on the wall of an abandoned lighthouse. Two weeks later, an old fisherman smuggled a message to Schweitzer: “SOS: we are 17 South Vietnamese refugees, just arrived Ko Kra island. Our lives are in danger and we need immediate help.” On December 3, Schweitzer returned to the island on a police boat and rescued this second group. A month later he rescued another 80 people.

            Piercing screams.

            Then, in mid-january 1980, after sighting more refugees from a helicopter, Schweitzer set off on his fourth rescue mission. It was plague by trouble from the start. The weather was stormy and the Thai police were unwilling to risk the violent north-east monsoon. Schweitzer ended up renting an old fishing boat and its crew for $500 of his own money.

            Alerting the Thai authorities to his plans, Schweitzer and crew set off in the late afternoon on January 14, hoping to reach the island by morning. But the storm tossed seas heaved the boat on six metre swells, driving it in circles. Not until midnight on the second night did they reach Ko Kra, dropping anchor 400 metres offshore to avoid the rocky shallows. Then the captain shut off the engines.

            Suddenly, screams from the island pierced the night. Exhausted from the journey, Schweitzer sat on deck and listened until he could listen no more. I have to do something, he thought. Impulsively, he stripped to his underwear and dived into the water.

            The current was swift, and Schweitzer struggled towards the beach. But instead of getting closer to it, he could see it receding. I’m being swept out to sea!

            Straining desperately towards a rocky outcropping at the far west end of the island—the last piece of land before kilometers of ocean—Schweitzer collided with something in the water. His blood froze as he stared into the face of a dead man. Then a mountainous swell picked Schweitzer up and smashed him against the outcropping. Somehow he grabbed on to a small ledge.

            With waves threatening to wash him back to sea, Schweitzer crawled his way 15 metres up the slippery cliff to a wider ledge. His legs, slashed by the rocks, ran with blood. Shivering, he crouched and waited for daybreak.

            Hellish prison.

            An hour passed like a year. Then he heard voices.

            “Hello!” Schweitzer shouted, pulling himself to his feet. He looked up and saw the smiling faces of two Vietnamese men pop over the edge of the cliff. One cried in English, “Oh, we are saved!” Using a pair of trousers, they hoisted Schweitzer to the top of the cliff, then bandaged his legs with an old skirt. Schweitzer asked about the screams.

            “The robbers are raping the girls,” he was told.

            The men led Schweitzer down the back side of the cliff. In a grassy area by the beach, he saw campfires. Dozens of fierce looking young toughs lay around them in an alcoholic stupor. The pirates ! The Vietnamese told Schweitzer that the pirates had taken their watches, jewellery and other valuables. One old man had his gold-filled teeth wrenched out with pliers and a screwdriver. But what really kept the pirates around was the refugee women. Ko Kra had been turned into a hellish prison of rape and torture.

            Some women had fled to the hills or into the tall elephant grass. But the pirates tortured the men to reveal their hideouts. Once, when the pirates set fire to the elephant grass to smoke out the terrified women, a teenage girl jut let the fire burn over her, not crying out as it scorched her back. But when the elephant grass was gone, the pirates found her and raped her anyway. Now, Schweitzer watched with horror as the pirates raped Vietnamese girls in view of everyone.

            “Where are the other men?” he asked the two Vietnamese.

            “Hiding.”

            “Show me where.”

            An hour later, Schweitzer was at the head of a ragtag band of about 35 half-starved Vietnamese men. Hanging on to one another for support, they advanced towards the pirate campfires.

            At the sight of the foreigner, the pirates cursed and rose on unsteady legs. Speaking Thai, Schweitzer called out that he was from the United Nations. “All these people are under my protection,” he shouted. “ If you leave immediately, I won’t have you arrested.”

            About 50 pirates stood their ground, facing Schweitzer and the refugees. Schweitzer looked grimly at their scarred bodies and rippling muscles. Doggedly, he stepped closer.

            The pirates waved a small arsenal of weapons—guns, hammers, axes, lead pipes—and shouted, “Stand back! Stand back!”

            Schweitzer and his outmatched band halted. If he didn’t act fast, the men behind him might retreat to the bush. I can’t show any sign of weakness, Schweitzer thought. If I do, I’m a dead man.

            “ I am a representative of the United Nations!” he repeated. “ If you kill me, the whole world will hunt you down!”

            The pirates laughed, yet some began to retreat. The sight gave the refugees sudden courage, and several sprang forward, beating the pirates with their bare hands.

            “Don’t! Come back !” Schweitzer yelled. But it was too late.

            The pirates turned and attacked. With one swing of a lead pipe, their leader opened a bloody gash on Schweitzer’s head. Another blow sent him to the ground. In a daze, he felt his side and stomach being kicked in repeatedly. Then he lost consciousness.

            “All must make it.”

            When Schweitzer regained consciousness, it was dawn and the pirates were gone. But he could see their boats lingering off-shore. Knowing that their attackers would return, some of the refugees fell at Schweitzer’s feet, begging to be taken from the island.

            With no time to lose, Schweitzer told the hysterical refugees, “Be quiet! Do exactly as I say!”

            Their first task was to find the women and children who were still hiding. From previous rescue missions, Schweitzer knew of several hideouts, including a rocky cave half-filled with sea water. On his first mission he had found a young woman who had stood waist-deep in water for 18 days. She had had chunks of her flesh eaten away by sea crabs. Seeing her, Schweitzer had broken down and cried. Now he found more women in the cave, some too weak to walk. He carried them on his shoulders down the mountain to the beach.

            “I have a boat standing by,” Schweitzer told the refugees. Dividing them into three groups—men who could swim, men who could not, and women and children—he matched up swimmers and non-swimmers.

            Then began a grueling series of swims out to the rented fishing boat. Human chains were formed: Schweitzer or another man towing a woman, who in turn held a child.

            As Schweitzer placed the first refugees on board, he thought he saw a pirate boat returning. Should I leave with those already on board? No, all must make it?

            A second boat appeared on the horizon. Another pirate ship? Schweitzer took note of its markings: a Thai navy boat. Thank God, we’re going to make it.

            And they did—although their boat ran aground just one and a half kilometers from the mainland and they endured another 12 hours as pirate ships menaced them. But a rising tide finally carried them to shore and safety. Because of Schweitzer’s courageous efforts, 88 more refugees survived the horrors of Ko Kra.

            Sense of accomplishment.

            During his remaining four months at Songkhla, Schweitzer returned to the island another two dozen times, leading an average of one rescue mission per week. In all, he helped save 1,250 refugees. He was beaten up twice, shot at, stabbed, and threatened with murder. Once, a pirate kicked him so hard in the kidneys that red urine spurted uncontrollably down his trousers. His wife, sick with fear, suffered two miscarriages, and their daughter was threatened with kidnapping. Much of the time Schweitzer was forced to act alone, for officials didn’t like to admit the extent of the problem.

            Finally, in May 1980, Schweitzer accepted a transfer, this time an office job in Geneva, Switzerland. His health was wrecked; he awoke every night in a nightmare sweat. Twice he had to undergo emergency kidney operations.

            Still, Schweitzer felt a sense of accomplishment. Besides saving refugees, he had persuaded the UN to invest in life-saving equipment so that others could carry on his work. And he won the “deep gratitude” and “personal admiration” of Poul Hartling, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who presented him with a replica of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the agency in 1981.

            Today, Schweitzer is back in the United States, still determined to do whatever he can to save the boat people from pirates. He has formed his own anti-piracy organization, called the SEA Rescue Foundation. Its goal is to establish a piracy-free zone across the Gulf of Thailand, using helicopters, speedboats and sea planes.

            In 1983 a US-based Vietnamese refugee organization, the Boat People SOS committee, gave Schweitzer its award of merit. Instrumental in bestowing that award were California residents Vu Thanh Thuy, the young journalist Schweitzer rescued on his first mission, and her husband, Duong Phuc, whom Schweitzer had also rescued.

            “We would have died on Ko Kra if not for Mr Schweitzer,” Vu Thanh Thuy says. “We could never thank him enough.”

            And in a city in southern France, a young boy is growing up, born to one of the women rescued by Schweitzer from the watery cave of Ko Kra. She has named him Theodore.

“The big advantage of a book is it’s very easy to rewind. Close it and you’re right back at the beginning.”

                                                                                                                                                -Jerry Sienfield

A tragedy ignored             Pirates continue to roam the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, preying upon the men, women and children who risk their lives in rickety boats to free the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.             In 1985, for instance, 451 boats managed to make it from Vietnam to Thailand or Malaysia. Crammed into these vessels were 10,706 Vietnamese. Nearly a third of the boats had been attacked by pirates, usually more than once. Seventy four passengers had been murdered, 111 kidnapped, 110 raped.             How many boats failed to reached freedom will never be known. What is known is that increasingly the pirates are murdering all passengers after robbing them and often raping the women. In March 1985, for instance, a refugee boat slipped away from Can Tho, Vietname, with 117 passengers aboard, including 36 children under ten. Four days later, it drifted across the path of five pirate vessels. Only one managed to survive.             Though the Thai navy has expanded air and sea patrols, the pirates have an essentially free hand since they operate largely in vast international waters. There are 4,356 documented cases from 1981 through 1986 of murder, kidnapping and rape, but 40 convictions. And the ongoing tragedy is largely ignored by the rest of the world.

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“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not is a fool –leave him!

He who knows not and knows that he knows not is simple –teach him!

He who knows and knows not that he knows, is a sleep –wake him!

He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise –follow him.”

***********              ************            ************

“ Calmness is the sure indication of a strong, well trained, patiently disciplined mind.

The calm man knows his business, be sure of it. His words are few, but they tell.

His schemes are well planned, and they work true, like a well balanced machine.

He sees a long way ahead and makes straight for his object.”

***********              ************            ************

 “If you dream something long enough,

a door seems to open and through that door,

come mighty forces that will guide you

in your efforts, to make the dream come true.”

***********              ************            ************

“All science, research and study is a prayer,

that God will reveal His eternal secrets to us.

For God does have secrets which he reveals,

only when man searches reverently for them.

God did not make all his revelations in the past.

He is continually revealing Himself, His plans and his truths

to those who will search for them.”

***********              ************            ************

“Those people who are prepared to suffer do the least suffering.

It is those who are always running away from pain

who receive the greatest amount of suffering.”

***********              ************            ************

 

The heroism of father Kolbe’s / By Lawrence Elliot

The heroism of father Kolbe’s / By Lawrence Elliot

            “On October 10’ 1982, the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed Francis friar Maximilian Kolbe its first saint and martyr to emerge from the Second World War.

            Towards the end of a stifling hot day in July 1941, a prisoner slipped from a work party at Auschwitz concentration camp and disappeared. When his absence was discovered at evening roll-call, search parties set out after him. If the fugitive was not found in 24 hours, the camp commander announced, ten of the 600 men of his cell-block, selected at random, would be put to death in reprisal.

            Death was no stranger at Auschwitz. But for the desolate men crammed together in the filthy rooms of Block 14, anticipation of the gruesome lottery was a particular torture. As the long night wore on, none could be blamed for secretly hoping that the fugitive would be caught.

            But he was not caught. He was never heard from again, and passes into history—having set the stage for what, 30 years later, Pope Paul VI described as “probably the brightest and most glittering figure” to emerge from “ the inhuman degradation and unthinkable cruelty of the Nazi epoch.”

            No one slept in Block 14 that night. Each man faced his own agony of soul. Dignity, home, freedom, family—all had been lost, now life, too, was in the balance. As one prisoner, former Polish soldier Francis Gajowniczek, hope was especially real. He believed that his wife and two sons were alive. If only he survived this purgatory, he would find them, and together they would rebuild their shattered lives.

            On a near-by bunk lay a commercial artist, Mieczyslaw Koscielniak, who had lost hope altogether. “The lucky ones were already dead.” he remembers thinking. “And the Nazis had reduced the rest of us to animals who would steal for a mere crust of bread. Except for the priest.” 

            Even then, Koscielniak knew that the priest was different. Often ill, feebler than many of the others, still the priest seemed always to have a morsel of food to share. If he could stand, he would work; if another faltered, he would share his load. He heard confessions in secret, and even during that endless night Koscielniak remembers seeing the priest kneeling by the bed of a sobbing youth, telling him that “death is nothing to be afraid of.”

            Tension mounts.

            By the time the prisoners lined up for morning roll-call, the sun was burning down relentlessly. The other cell blocks were soon marched off to work, but the men of Block 14 remained standing in the quadrangle. They stood all that day, ten ranks of living skeletons.

            At 6 p.m, the camp commander, Colonel Fritsch, announced that the fugitive had not been found. He would now choose the ten who must die; they would be taken to the death bunker in Block 13 and left to starve.

            The selection took only a few minutes, but for the waiting men it was an eternity. Boots grinding on the baked ground, Fritsch moved up one rank and down the next. Ten times he spotted, pointed and spoke a single word into the harrowing silence: “You!” Each time, guards shoved the condemned man up front. Some of the ten wept. One, the soldier Gajowniczek, cried out, “My wife! My poor children!”

            As the guards prepared to march the doomed men off, there was a sudden stir in the formation. An eleventh man was coming forward—the priest. “What does that Polish swine think he’s doing?” Fritsch shouted. But the priest kept coming, unsteady, face white as death, ignoring the raised weapons of the guards. Finally, he spoke: “May it please the Lagerfuhrer, I want to take the place of one of these prisoners.” He pointed to Gajowniczek. “ That one.”

            Fritsch glared at the emaciated apparition before him. “Are you mad?” the German snapped.

            “No,” the priest replied. “But I am alone in the world. That man has a family to live for. Please.”

            “Who are you?”

            “I am a Catholic priest.”

            The watching men stirred nervously. Koscielniak recalls thinking: “Fritsch will take both him and Gajowniczek.” And what did Fritsch think, staring at the serene eyes in that wasted face? Did he realize in that transcendent moment that he was in the presence of a force stronger than his own? Those who remember say that his gaze faltered. “Accepted,” he muttered, and turned away.

            The men of Block 14 were stunned. “We couldn’t understand it,” says Koscielniak today. “Why would a man do such a thing? Who was he anyway, that priest?

            He was Maximillian Mari Kolbe, a Franciscan friar, and in time, Koscielniak—and the others who survived—would understand that they had witnessed the making of a saint.

            Raymond Kolbe—he took the name Maximilian when he entered the Franciscan order—was born in a poor Polish village in 1894, and by the age of 13 had already decided to be a priest. At ten, he had told his mother of a mystical experience in which the Virgin Mary had offered him a choice of two crowns—the white signifying purity; the red, martyrdom. “I choose both,” the boy had said.

            He contracted tuberculosis as a youth, and was never thereafter wholly free of illness. But “he was a most gifted youth,” said one of his professor at the Gregorian University of Rome. At 21 he had a doctorate in philosophy. A year after his ordination, he earned another, in theology. He might have made a brilliant Church career.

            But his calling lay elsewhere. In 1917, he had organized in Rome the Militia of Mary Immaculate, a crusade to win back a world profaned by war and self-indulgence. Returning to Poland, and working alone in the face of his superior’s surprise and perplexity, he began publishing a monthly magazine, Knight of the Immaculate, to spread the gospel of God’s love. When circulation hit 60,000 Father Kolbe was forced to look for somewhere to accommodate the growing magazine and the Franciscan brothers who kept arriving to help him.

            In 1927, he put up a statue of the Virgin Mary in a field about 40 kilometres from Warsaw—the start of what was to become the world’s largest monastery, Niepokalanow. By 1939, there were more than 750 friars at Niepokalanow, and they were turning out up to a million copies of the Knight each month. But 1939 was also the year Hitler attacked Poland and began the Second World War.

            Strongly opposed to the Nazis, Father Kolbe was arrested even before Warsaw fell. And though he was released soon after, he knew the reprieve would be brief. He rushed back to a bombed and plundered Niepokalanow to establish a haven for refugees, and eventually 2,000 found shelter there. He even published one last issue of his beloved magazine. “No one in the world can alter truth,” he wrote then. “All we can do is seek it and live it.”

            On February 17, 1941, the Nazis came for him again. This time, suspected of being an enemy of the Third Reich, Father Kolbe was sent first to a Warsaw jail and then to Auschwitz. He arrived in a cattle truck packed with 320 others, to be greeted by back breaking labour, meager rations of bread and cabbage soup and daily dehumanization.

            One day, struggling under a heavy load of wood, Father Kolbe stumbled and fell, and was beaten nearly to death by a guard. He was brought back to precarious life in the camp hospital by a Polish doctor named Rudolf Diem. As he was unable to work, he got only half a ration of food, but still often gave part of that to younger patients.

            Ill as he was, weighing about 44 kilos, Father Kolbe could have slept on a real bed in the hospital. “But he insisted on a wooden bunk with a straw mattress,” recalls Dr Diem. “He wanted to leave the bed to someone whose lot was worse than his.” Towards the end of July, feeling better, the priest was assigned to Block 14. It was only a few days later that the prisoner escaped and Father Kolbe reached out for the red crown of martyrdom.

            The ten who had been left to starve to death now lay naked on the cement floor of a dank underground cell in Block 13. Sometimes they moaned or cried out in delirium. But as long as they were conscious they responded to Father Kolbe’s assurances that God had not forsaken them. While they had strength, they prayed and sang.

            After a few days, the guards, who had seen hundreds die but none who had faced the end with such tranquility, refused to go near the cell, and sent a Polish orderly to remove the bodies of those who had died.

            In Block 14, the soldier Gajowniczek was at first bewildered by Father Kolbe’s sacrifice. He wept and refused to eat. Then Koscielniak brought him to his senses: “Take hold of yourself! Is the priest to die for nothing?” In that moment, Gajowniczek made up his mind that he must live. He would not waste Father Kolbe’s gift.

            At the end of the two weeks, only four men were still alive in the bunker, and of those Father Kolbe was the last to die. it was as if he had to help each comrade through the final trial before he himself could be free. At that, the Nazis had to finish him off. They came with an injection of carbolic acid on the fifteenth day of his agony, August 14, the eve of the Assumption. Smiling, whispering “Ave Maria,” the priest held out his arm for the needle.

            Four long years later, the horror over, Francis Gajowniczek made his way back to what had beed his home in Warsaw and found it bombed to dust. Both his sons had been killed, but he found his wife safe. The two moved to a small village and began a new life.

            Then Gajowniczek heard stunning news: word of Father Kolbe’s martyrdom had reached the Vatican, and it had been proposed that he be beatified, a preliminary step to canonization as a saint. Gajowniczek was called upon by the Church to testify, as were others who had witnessed Maximilian Kolbe’s selfless life and heroic death. Finally, after 24 years of painstaking investigation, the justice of the cause was affirmed.

So it was, that on October 17, 1971, there gathered before the high altar of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome 8,000 men and women who had journeyed from Poland for the solemn ceremony of beatification. Among them were Francis Gajowniczek now pensioned and white-haired, as well as Koscielniak. A portrait of the Blessed Father Kolbe was unveiled and, for the first time in memory the Pope himself presided over the holy rite.

“Millions of beings were sacrificed to the pride of force and the madness of racialism,” said His Holiness. “But in that darkness there glows the figure of Maximilian Kolbe. Over that immense antechamber of death there hovers his imperishable word of life: redeeming love.”

So Father Kolbe lives on, a symbol of the world’s unknown sacrifices and unrecognized heroism. He gave the gift of life to one man, and to countless others the heart to outlast the tyranny that beset them. And to all men he leaves the legacy of his unconquerable spirit.

“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes”             -Abigail Van Buren

            

Miracle on Mont-Blanc/ By Catherine Galitzine

Miracle on Mont-Blanc/ By Catherine Galitzine

For three weeks, the young French couple had remained lost and snowbound in the Alps. They were as good as dead. Suddenly, 22-year-old Patricia rebelled. “I don’t want to die,” she cried. So they decided to walk out—or die trying.

            Their skis hissed across the untracked snow as Patricia and Herve Ranville made for the Anterne Pass, high in the French Alps. Married for four years and sharing a love for ski-trekking, the couple had decided to spend New Year’s Eve skiing and camping on Mont-Blanc. That night, they pitched their tent at an altitude of 1,878 metres and celebrated the coming of 1981 with packaged soup, rice and chocolate, washed down with snow melted on their little bottled-gas stove. Then, snug in their double goose down bag, they wished each other a Happy New Year and slipped into a peaceful sleep.

            Herve, 23, and Patricia, 22, were both teachers in the Yvelines department. They had discovered the joy of ski-trekking two years before. Realizing the potential hazards of their new sport, they prepared for each outing carefully—riding bicycles and practicing rock-climbing to develop their wind, doing yoga to increase self-control, using sophisticated equipment, mapping their routes from guide-books.

            Originally, they had planned a four-day expedition from the village of Chamonix to Sixt, via the Le Buet peak and the Anterne Pass. However, weather forecasts had forced them to re-route and shorten their trek, to two days and one night on the mountain. As they were leaving the Refuge du Tour, a little inn near Chamonix, Herve told the caretaker of their new plans.

            When Patricia opened the tent flap on New Year’s Day, she found that clouds were hovering over the Anterne Pass above them, fog swirled around the tent. “Mustn’t waste time,” she said, folding up their things.

            Wrong route.

            She and Herve went through the pass, set their ski bindings in running position and crossed the Anterne Plateau on their way down towards the valley floor. Around noon, a dense fog forced them to slow down. From then on, they navigated exclusively by compass and altimeter.

            Every 50 metres, Herve checked their position on their map to be sure they were following the right trail. At 2 p.m. the fog lifted briefly to reveal the high-voltage power pylon mentioned in their guide-book. “It’s okay,” Herve exclaimed. “We’re on the right track.” Since they were obviously not going to reach Sixt that day, they decided to put up their tent near the pylon. One night more in the mountains wouldn’t make much difference; they still had food for two days.  

            The next morning the fog was gone. Packing their belongings, the couple skied off  towards the north-west. Soon the slope became steep. Then suddenly, there was nothing before them but a sheer cliff overlooking a long drop. Realizing they had taken the wrong route, Herve and Patricia trudged back up to the pylon and started again; this time they went further to the pylon’s left—only to wind up peering into the same abyss. It was too late for another try now. They simply would have to set up the tent where they were and spent another night on the mountain.

            The next day, they slogged back up to the pylon. There, Patricia re-read the guide-book for what seemed the twentieth time. “ The trail must be somewhere off to the left, “ she said. Herve interrupted: “Look there! Ski tracks!” Laughing with relief, they started off. But they didn’t go far before realizing that the tracks were their own. Patricia dropped to the snow. The unending whiteness suddenly seemed hostile. She and Herve had been gone four days, and for the first time they were beginning to worry.

            For the third time, they struggled back to the pylon and set up the tent out of the path of possible avalanches. Threatening clouds piled up in the sky, and fat snowflakes began to fall. “We’re probably in for a few days of bad weather,” Herve said.

            Panic sets in.

            Fortunately they had begun cutting their rations the previous day. They still had one small tank of fuel and slightly over 5,000 calories of food. By keeping to 500 calories a day each, they could hold out for five more days. For the next four days and nights the snow was unrelenting. Herve and Patricia left their tent only to brush away the snow. All around them, huge avalanches broke loose with a terrifying noise. Panic was beginning to overtake them. They slashed their already restricted calorie allotment in half, causing spells of vertigo and spots in front of their eyes.

            The snowstorm ended on January 8. Around 9 a.m. the couple heard a helicopter. Herve grabbed his red overalls and waved them frantically, shouting “Hey! Hey!” But the helicopter was already disappearing beyond the pass. “It’s not possible,” Herve said, his voice broken. “He didn’t see us.” Later in the afternoon, they spotted a second helicopter, but it was even further away than the first.

            The next morning, the sun was out again. If help didn’t come, Herve thought, they would have to backtrack to their starting point. But for the moment, it would be foolish to move. They had to wait for the snow to pack down. “You know, Pat,” Herve said, “in mountains, they don’t stop searching, just like that. They’ll certainly be back.

            Patricia’s parents had reported the couple missing to the High Mountain Gendarmerie Station in Chamonix on January 5, four days before. But when authorities questioned the caretaker of the inn where the Ranvilles had stayed, he had forgotten Herve’s parting words about a change in route; all he remembered was that the couple was heading for the area around Le Buet. When the snowstorm ended, police inspected the region on foot and from the air; they flew over the Anterne Pass, but a high voltage wire prevented them from flying low enough to spot the couple.

            As the days wore on, it seemed impossible to the rescuers that the Ranvilles could have survived more than ten days in storms and minus 25 degree C. cold. On January 11, the search was suspended because of bad weather. As tactfully as possible, a young policeman prepared the couple’s parents for the worst.

            The next day, January 12, Patricia and Herve were certain the search had been called off. Four days had gone by since they sighted the helicopters. During that time, nothing broke the oppressive silence of the mountain. “If we don’t get ourselves out of this, we’re done for. We have to backtrack,” Patricia declared. After much debate, she convince Herve to take the food they had—some cheese and hazelnuts—and go to search for help. Herve didn’t like the idea of going alone. But, reluctantly, he began the painful climb towards the Anterne Pass.

            After three and a half hours, he had gone only 300 metres. Then he saw clouds rushing towards him, indicating that it would soon be snowing. He returned to the tent.

            The next day, the couple awoke to find that their tent buried under 50 centimetres of powdery snow. That evening, when he peeled off his boots and socks, Herve found that his toe had gone blue. He knew there was very little he could do about frostbite except drink huge quantities of water, but the last little bottle of fuel was half empty. He forced himself to eat some snow, even though he knew every mouthful swallowed would lower his body temperature. Before going to sleep, the couple dined on one raisin each.

            Blocked for another two days in their tent by a terrific storm, Herve and Patricia contemplated their imminent death with composure. They passed the time writing wills and farewell messages. Suddenly, Patricia rebelled. “I don’t want to die,” she cried. Herve helped her do some yoga exercises to regain her calm, and finally they fell asleep.

            Next morning, Patricia decided: “Whatever the weather, we’re leaving now.” They had nothing to lose. Weren’t they as good as dead already?

            It took them four hours to dress, dismantle the tent and close their bags. Finally, around 12.30 p.m., moving like a pair of robots, they plunged into the storm back towards Chamonix.

            Nightmare trek.

            Guided only by their compass and altimeter, Herve and Patricia trekked for three days. On the fourth morning, the storm grew too violent to travel. The wind gusted at 120 kilometres an hour. Visibility was zero. Lying in their sleeping-bag, they wondered where they were and how long their tent would resist the elements. Herve’s feet began to thaw in the warmth of the sleeping-bag, and the pain was excruciating. “Talk to me, Pat,” he begged. “For God’s sake, don’t stop talking.”

            For 12 straight hours, Patricia described imaginary feasts, recited recipes, talked about anything that would distract Herve from his suffering.

            Like a curtain rising on a stage, the fog lifted from the mountain the next morning to reveal the flat, smooth surface of Anterne Lake. Herve’s navigation had been perfect!

            They decided to climb 200 metres higher to the Anterne Pass. Patricia fainted three times while preparing to leave. When they finally managed to break camp four hours later, Herve fell several times in the first few metres they covered. “We’ll never make it,” he muttered. In despair, they almost pitched their tent again. Then, somehow, they found the strength to go on.

            Six nightmarish hours brought them to the pass. There they decided to descend another 200 metres, still heading towards Chamonix, to the “Moede Canteen” shelter. But it was boarded up. They tried to hack open a window with their ice picks. Impossible. There were iron shutters behind the boards. Philosophically, they pitched their tent for the last time. Tomorrow they would reach a village—or they would die.

            The next morning, Herve and Patricia set off again, moving into a narrow gorge whose walls were lined with heavy layers of snow that might fall at any moment. It was madness to navigate between them, but it was their last chance. Each time one of them fell, it took nearly half an hour to get up. Oblivious to hunger, thirst and pain, they struggled forward on a prodigious wave of hope.

            Around 5 p.m., on January 22, a passer-by who lived in the village of Le Mont, saw a pair of strange, skeleton-like skiers. Rushing to meet them, he asked, “Are you the two youngsters they’ve been looking for?”

            “Yes, I think so,” Patricia stammered. “We’re the ones.”

            Patricia and Herve Ranville were treated for frostbite at the hospital in Chamonix. Herve had to have all ten toes amputated. In 22 days, he had lost 15 kilos, Patricia 12.

            Early in their six-month convalescence, the couple discovered why they hadn’t been able to find the trail to Sixt. The guide-book’s description of the route was incomplete and misleading.

            To all mountain climbers, the experience of these two young teachers is a formidable lesson. Thanks to excellent equipment, judicious rationing and a tremendous will to live, they had held out far longer than anyone had thought possible.

“if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”                 -Abraham Maslow