by W. R. Benton
Dang, almost all I have left is what I had on me or in my fanny pack! I think I can use part of the sleeping bag, but that’s about it. How could I have been so dumb! I knew better too! He thought in anger as he dug through the remains of his survival gear. The survival container was now just one large lump of melted plastic. The young man noticed the plastic from the survival kit had run completely over the gear that had been stored inside and then hardened once the fire was out. Dave considered trying to force the melted plastic open but he knew anything inside had been damaged to the point it was now useless to him. He shook his head and threw the lump of hard plastic into the now worthless shelter in frustration.
The snow had continued to fall, but slowly and very little was on the ground, perhaps less than an inch. David was angered by his carelessness with the fire, but he knew he had to erect another shelter of some sort or he’d freeze to death way before morning. He understood then the loss of the survival manual was his biggest loss and while some of it had not burned up, more than half was gone. He’d glanced through the book that morning and it had a lot of information he needed now, but it was almost completely destroyed and of little use to him. All that remained of the book was a section on how to gut and eat wild animals and another on how to find water.
What was it Captain Johnston had said to dad at the picnic that day about making survival shelters in the snow and cold? If I remember right, he said a large pine tree could be used if a man trimmed the lower branches off. But, I can’t have a fire because the tree would go up like a match once it started to burn, David thought as he unconsciously picked up a stick and started dragging it around in the snow at his feet.
Standing he saw a large pine about fifty feet from where he stood and it was a nice full one. He still had his sheath knife, so he made his way to the tree and started removing the lower branches. Some of the branches were dead, so he broke them off and pulled them away from his shelter. The live branches he cut from the tree and then lined the cold ground with them. As he worked, he thought of how he could stay alive tonight when the temperature went way down.
Finally, he decided he could pull a small piece of aluminum from the aircraft wreckage and use it to construct a small container for his fire. By burning small twigs he could have a very small fire near the shelter all night long and yet not have it actually inside. This time he’d never leave it unattended.
David had learned a few years back how to make a heat reflector using boulders or logs to make the heat from a fire reflect back into a shelter. It was basically a wall on the opposite side of the entrance to a shelter, with the fire in the middle, and it usually worked very well, unless the wind picked up. He had plenty of wood, so he pulled eight large logs to the area he’d selected to make his heat reflector. Using his knife, he peeled the bark from each log and then pounded four large stakes into the frozen ground, two at each end of where the logs would lay. The stakes were set far enough apart to allow him to stack the logs on top of each other and the poles would hold the logs upright.
At times, he noticed he was working hard enough to break out in a sweat, so he’d stop and allow himself time to cool down. He knew from cross-country skiing that sweating could be fatal in cold weather. The sweat would freeze and form a thin layer of ice on a person, which could cause death. Strange, he thought as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, how things I learned in different sports and subjects are coming together to help me.
As soon as his heat reflector was competed, he went to the aircraft wreckage and pulled a large piece of metal from under the wing. Being careful not to cut his hands on the sharp sheet metal, he made his way back camp. Once in camp, he placed the end of the metal under a log of his reflector and pushed down on the soft metal, causing it to bend. He repeated the process on all our sides and end up with a very crude looking metal bowl.
Using rocks under the raised lips of the container to stabilize it, he soon had a small fire going in the very center of the metal. This time he used the flint and steel and not his matches to start the fire. He had considered using the matches, only he knew he should save them for real emergencies. David had always loved starting a fire with flint and steel, just like the old time mountain men had done when they were out trapping beavers. He knew the secret to starting a fire was to have your tinder, kindling, and fuel nearby before you ever started to work on it. Of course, his father had always reminded him that all wood used in a fire should be as dry as possible, because it burned faster and gave off less smoke as it burned. The thought of his father brought tears to his eyes once more.
As he waited for the fire to die down a bit so he could cook something to eat on the hot coals, he opened one of the survival meals his father had placed in the survival kit. The brownish colored plastic container read, MRE and in smaller print, it stated below, Meal Ready to Eat. The ration looked like a military meal to David, and while he’d never eaten one, he’d seen Colonel Wilcox eat them on a hunting trip the year before. If it was the same meal the colonel had eaten, it was not dehydrated, and Dave and his father had always used the commercial dehydrated meals when they camped. They both like them because they were very lightweight and tasted good.
He opened the plastic, pulled the contents out, and placed them in his lap, as he looked the items over closely. He discovered the large bag contained a main entrée, a side dish, crackers, coffee, cream, sugar, salt, pepper, peanut butter, hot sauce, an apple cinnamon energy bar, and a fork/spoon combination. All of the contents were in the same brownish plastic and as he looked closer, he noticed his entrée was beefsteak. His side dish was mashed potatoes and David loved steak and mashed potatoes.
The young man had not realized how hungry he was and decided, as his stomach growled in anticipation of the meal, to have the crackers and peanut butter as he heated the meal over his small fire. The directions on the container said the pouches were not plastic, but a type of foil and he could heat them up in boiling water. He placed his canteen cup filled with water on the hot bed of coals from his fire and then dropped the foil packs containing the meat and potatoes in the water.
The crackers were a little harder than the average soda cracker, but as hungry as he was they tasted fine. Using his knife, he cut the corner from the peanut butter pouch and squeezed it out onto the crackers as he ate. He decided to keep the coffee, sugar and cream for breakfast, along with an energy bar. David had never cared much for the taste of coffee, too bitter, but he suspected it would taste just fine in the morning when the temperature was much lower.
He thought back of the movies he’d seen where hungry men would wolf down their food as quickly as possible, except as soon as he’d removed the meat and potatoes from the hot water and opened the pouches, he ate very slowly. For the first time in his short life, Dave did not gulp his food down, but instead he savored each and every bite. Once the pouches were empty, he used his knife to open them up and licked the foil lining clean.
The weather was growing worse and while the wind had died down, the snow was now falling harder. The temperature was falling as well and he glanced at his woodpile hoping he had enough to last the night. He had lined the ground under the tree with pine boughs so he knew he would sleep off the cold ground, but his sleeping bag was about shot.
He picked up the sleeping bag and noticed with a critical eye that only about half of the bag remained. He considered his options and recognized his bag would not protect him over night and he’d freeze to death if he attempted to use it. His only choice, as he saw it, was to return to the plane, remove the casualty blanket from his father’s body and then cover his head with the partial sleeping bag. He disliked taking the blanket from his father, but knew his dad was beyond being cold any longer and would want him to use it. Still, the casualty blanket had been his father’s death shroud and it seemed wrong in David’s mind to remove it. It took Dave well over an hour to work up enough courage to go back to the plane to retrieve the blanket.
Snow covered the top
of the wreckage when David arrived and he reminded himself to clean it off in the morning. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected because of its large size it would be easier to see from the air than a human. He opened the door to the airplane and slowly made his way to his father’s seat. Without turning on the flashlight, he removed the casualty blanket from his father and it was when he was placing the sleeping bag over his dad’s head that his hand came in contact with his father's face. David jerked his hand back as if he had touched a live coal from his fire; the coldness of his father’s skin shocked him. He suddenly started crying and with tears streaming down his face, he placed the remains of the sleeping bag over his dad’s head and then wiped his eyes.
“Dad, I’m so sorry. I don’t know if I’ll be back dad, because I’m having a hard time visiting you. I love you dad and you’ll always have a place in my heart.” Dave spoke aloud, turned, and then crawled from the wreckage. As he closed the door to the plane, the young man knew the wreckage had become a shrine to his father. David understood he would never see an airplane again without thinking of his father and how he'd died.
It was later that night before the snow stopped and the temperature dropped a little. He was sitting near the fire to keep warm and sipping on hot water. It was late, but off in the distance he heard the lonely howl of a wolf calling out to another member of its pack. That has to be the saddest sound in the world, he thought, just as the last of the wolf’s howl trickled off and the night became silent once more.
David looked at his watch to check the time and saw it was broken. He removed the watch and started to throw it away, then thought better of the idea and slipped it in his fanny pack. Standing and stretching, the young man suddenly felt very alone once again. He thought about his feelings for a moment and realized the howl of the wolf that had triggered his emotions. The wolf had sounded so alone and the sound reflected how David felt.
He slowly turned and made his way under the large pine tree and wrapped up in the casualty blanket. Before he realized he was tired, David had fallen asleep.
Morning dawned cool, but the sun was shining and the temperature had risen enough that David knew the snow would melt from the ground before noon. He had a quick breakfast of the instant coffee with a sugar and dehydrated cream in the canteen cup. He was in no hurry as he leaned against a large log and slowly sipped his coffee enjoying the heat flowing through his body. He was wondering when the rescue teams would find him. While he didn’t know much about how search and rescue worked, he knew when they didn’t show up in Anchorage, the police would be notified. Well, he thought as he raised the hot cup to his lips, today will be forty-eight hours. If all goes well, I’ll be home this time tomorrow.
Suddenly he remembered his snares and quickly finished the bitter tasting coffee as he thought about having fresh meat to eat. While David had shot game, he’d never trapped before and was unsure what he would do if an animal was caught in one of his snares. Standing, he picked up his rifle, slung it over his right shoulder and started out to check his traps.
His first two snares were empty, with no tracks in the snow. He moved on through the trees and in the next one, he saw a rabbit caught in the snare. While the survival manual had stated that the snare would choke the trapped animal to death, this rabbit was still very much alive. As David neared the snare the rabbit began to move in an attempt to escape, but the wire held the animal firmly around the neck.
Now what, he thought as he stood back from the snare and watched the animal struggle to escape, I don’t want to kill it, but I have to eat.
Picking up a large stick laying near the trail, David approached the rabbit slowly and then he struck it as hard as he could on the top of the head. Animal died instantly and while he was saddened to kill, the young man knew he had no choice if he were to survive. He then reset his snare and move on to the next trap.
The next two traps were empty but his last one held a small fox by the leg. David was scared to attempt to kill the larger animal with his stick, so he raised his rifle, sighted on the animal’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The fox fell unmoving. The young boy quickly gutted the fox, but left the skin on, and as soon as he was finished, he headed back to camp.
David spent the next hour skinning the fox and cutting meat from the bones. He placed the fox meat in a tee shirt and using some electrical wires from the plane, he tied it up high in a tree. He'd twisted the wires together to make a crude rope of sorts. He did this so animals could not get at his hard-earned food. The rabbit was placed on a spit and then over the hot coals of his campfire. He decided to roast the meat and it smelled good as he pulled out the burned and scorched remains of the survival manual to see if he could learn anything about cooking or dressing the game better the next time.
On page 108 of the manual, it suggested the inner organs (heart, liver, kidneys) and all meaty parts of the skull—brains, tongue and eyes be kept as well. David picked up the rabbits head, glanced at it and then threw it far out into the bush. I’m not that hungry yet, he thought as he fought down the urge to throw-up. But, on another page it suggested he boil the meat he got and not roast it. The chapter explained that he’d get more nutrition out of boiled meat than he would if he roasted it. Roasted meat allowed the oils and nutrients to drip onto the fire, where they burned up and did him no good.
“I’ll boil all meat from now on and stay as strong as I can,” he spoke aloud as he closed the manual.
As his meat browned over the coals, Dave started remembering Boy Scouting trips when he’d been active with his troop. A few times they had gone on weekend camping trips and once a scout master had pointed out that pine needles could be used to make tea. They’d tried some, but the tea had tasted bitter to Dave then, but he’d not been attempting to survive at the time either. According to the scout leader, the tea would keep a person from getting scurvy and anything that would help him stay healthy he wanted.
The young boy spent a good hour gathering up pine needles, but stayed near his camp as his rabbit cooked on the small fire. Not once during the whole time was he ever out of sight of the flames of his fire, because he feared another fire would result in his death. He knew he had to be responsible if he wanted to survive and return to his mother and sister alive.
David had just sat down and pulled a rear leg from the roasted rabbit when he heard the sound of an aircraft. He quickly placed the cooked meat on the log and ran to the area of the aircraft wreckage. He screamed, jumped up and down, and waved his arms violently to attract attention. The aircraft passed right overhead and David knew he’d been seen or had he?
The aircraft never changed course and what concerned Dave was the simple fact the aircraft did not rock its wings or give any indication he’d been spotted. As the sound of the airplanes engines great fainter and fainter, and then finally disappeared into clouds off in the distance, he fell to his knees in the mud from the melting snow and cried.
An hour later, as Dave sat by the fire, he realized he’d made no attempt to signal the passing search plane. He knew, from flying with his father, it was difficult to spot things on the ground, even when you knew where they were. He remembered his fanny pack, pulled it around, and started looking at the gear he’d saved from the fire by having it in the pack. He pulled out a signaling mirror, the plastic whistle, and a smoke flare. Darn it! If I had been prepared, I could have used this smoke flare as the plane came near me! Stupid! Oh, please, let them come back this way. Please, just one more time, he pleaded as he placed the mirror and whistle around his neck. He stuck the flare in his coat pocket for easy access. He knew he’d just made a horrible mistake and he hoped it was his last one.
CHAPTER 4
COLONEL FRANK WILCOX sat at his kitchen table and sipped his hot coffee slowly. It was early morning, his eyes were rimmed in red, and his hands shook from a lack of sleep as he spoke, “We flew right over Jim’s last known route, but we saw nothing. While there was still some snow on the ground, most of it had melted.”
<
br /> Cathy, who had been staring into her cup, looked up and met the man’s eyes as she asked, “But, what about the ELT you told me about?”
Frank shook his head slowly and replied, “Cathy, I don’t know why it isn’t sending. I talked to my experts about that and they said the severe cold we had the last few days might have caused the battery to die or the transmitter might have been damaged on impact.”
“If the airplane hit hard enough to damage the transmitter, wouldn’t that much force kill both Jim and Dave?” She asked as her eyes started to water.
“No, maybe not at all. See, the transmitter is located in the tail section of the airplane and it’s possible, if Jim nosed up just before impact, that the tail took a lot of the impact forces. The force of that impact might have damaged the ELT.” Frank lowered his coffee cup to the saucer, looked at Cathy and then continued, “Cathy, there are too many things that can happen when a plane crashes. What has my rescue teams excited is the fact we did not find any signs of a fire from the crash. Now, there is a good chance a pilot with Jim’s experience could land a crippled airplane and maybe it is almost undamaged. And that, my dear, means they could both be alive.”
Cathy’s eyes met his and she could see he had meant exactly what he had just said, they might both still be alive. The woman thought about her husband and son for a minute or two then asked, “What kind of terrain did the plane go down in Frank?”
“Mostly mountains or at least the last known position of the aircraft was in the middle of a mountain range. While the terrain is rough, it is better for survival than the tundra or in open water. As you might guess, in the water there would be little hope of survival as cold as the ocean is right now.”
“Frank, you need a quick shower, some food, and then to get some sleep.” Carol commanded as she walked to the table from the counter where she’d just put on a fresh pot of coffee.