When I Fell From the Sky

by Juliane Diller (Koepcke)

  My father is not the only one to criticize del Carpio. The comandante is also attacked sharply by the press and other family members, but I don’t hear about any of this. I notice only that there’s now much more going on around the house and that our hosts, since the police protection was canceled, have their hands full trying to shield me. From that point on, a whole horde of journalists besieges the linguists’ settlement.

  My father tells me that he has decided to make an exclusive deal with Stern magazine. “They’re serious,” he says, “and then we’ll have our peace from the others.”

  Two men will come and interview me. Do I feel strong enough for that yet?

  I nod. I agree with everything my father decides. He must know what he’s doing, and I just accept all this.

  And so the next day, January 7, 1972, becomes visiting day: Not only Gerd Heidemann and Hero Buss, of Stern, arrive and introduce themselves to me, but also the British journalist Nicholas Asheshov, who accompanied my father on an expedition years ago and found favor with him. He is a reporter for the Peruvian Times and also the Peruvian newspaper La Prensa. From that point on I will have daily conversations with the Stern journalists.

  In his letter to his sister, my father writes on January 8: All the rest (he means journalists) I “chased away”…. I made an appointment with the two from Stern for this morning: Juliane will describe in detail to them everything she knows.

  My father is always there during the conversations with Gerd Heidemann and Hero Buss, and I’m glad about that. Every day they knock on my door and stay one or at most two hours. At first a brief preliminary report appears, then four detailed accounts with large photo spreads. No wonder I don’t really get a chance to rest. Especially since I receive other visitors from Lima.

  My godfather’s daughter arrives, as well as my former English teacher, who immediately wants to pray with me. But that’s too much for me. Though religious, I prefer to pray alone, and I tell her that. In addition, old friends of my parents come. They are Hannelore and Heinrich Maulhardt, who own the lovely bungalow hotel La Cabaña, on the Yarinacocha Lagoon, and put up my father. The director of the natural history museum in Lima visits too, as well as a doctor friend, a nurse and many others. Many of my friends write to me and send me sweets.

  Meanwhile, the various, now relatively smoothly cooperating search parties made up of civilians and military personnel continue to fight their way through the jungle. On the morning of January 7, they already reach the first airplane wreckage. It takes six hours before—mainly due to the tireless effort of the family members—a landing site has been cleared. The first FAP helicopter lands around five o’clock in the evening. Within a distance of just a few hundred yards, they find the LANSA’s galley, the intact tail of the plane and the completely destroyed luggage compartment, the contents of which have been scattered far over the ground.

  That day a seaplane also lands in Puerto Inca to the great jubilation of the local children. Here the base is established for the whole operation, and the small jungle settlement experiences a boom such as it has seen only once before. That time, too, a plane had crashed, though not over the lowland rain forest but in the Sira Mountains, where it was never found. Now there’s a flurry of activity in the small city. The few hotels, which raise their prices on the spot, are immediately booked up. The restaurants are simply overrun, and soon it becomes apparent that there’s not enough food—the people of Puerto Inca are not prepared for the feeding of such masses. There are no more hotel rooms available in Pucallpa either. And the flights out of Lima are booked up for days.

  The next day, January 8, more pieces of wreckage are found at the crash site, as well as the first twenty corpses. There are reports of gruesome finds and awful images that can never be forgotten. Most of the corpses are dismembered or horribly disfigured. In the press there are comparisons to Dante’s Inferno. According to press reports, the coroner flown in at the behest of the authorities becomes “ill” when he sees the scene of the accident and the remains of the corpses and finishes his work as quickly as possible. Apparently, over a diameter of around two and a half miles, there are gifts, pieces of luggage or their contents, clothes, shoes, Christmas stollens in their packaging, but also parts of corpses hanging in the jungle trees all around. Over everything hovers a terrible smell of decomposition. In the branches sit vultures, which have clearly been disturbed by the search team.

  The new hastily flown-in coroner inspects the crash site for fifteen minutes; then he orders the recovery of the corpses and departs again. No wonder the true cause of the crash was never determined.

  The first dead to be identified are the pilot and a fourteen-year-old girl. The pilot, Carlos Forno, has to be sawed out of his cockpit, and is recognizable only by his seat in the plane, his uniform and papers. In the young girl’s case, it is the sad remains of Elisabeth Ribeiro, who is able to be identified by her own father on the basis of her jewelry, which he himself gave to her as a gift. He insists on carrying by himself what is left of his daughter in one of the black plastic bags that have been provided. He brings her remains into the helicopter that will take the corpses to Puerto Inca. From there they are flown to Pucallpa to the morgue that is specifically established for them on the Carretera Central. There the dead are laid out in an empty factory building for identification. Here, too, the smell of decomposition soon attracts the vultures.

  Again and again there’s pouring rain. The civilians, mustering all their strength for the recovery work, complain that the authorities are not providing them with the right resources. The distributed gloves and black plastic bags could not be less suitable for the task and make more difficult the often-arduous recovery of corpses that have fallen into ravines or are lying on steep slopes. And so the already extremely problematic work becomes agonizing.

  And me? I’m shielded from all this. I want most of all to have my peace. But there are the conversations with the journalists from Stern, who come daily, and my visitors, who think they have to cheer me up. My father goes to Pucallpa daily. As I learn later, he is waiting day after day at the temporary morgue. He is waiting for my mother. But none of the found corpses are identifiable as hers.

  When he’s not in Pucallpa, he sits silently most of the time in a corner of my room. Once, after the children from the mission station, who unfailingly visit me every day, have left, I look at him sitting there, completely absorbed in himself.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask him.

  Then he looks up as if returning from another world.

  “Oh, nothing,” he answers, forcing himself to smile, which doesn’t really succeed. “I was just grieving a little bit for your mother.”

  Our post-crash meeting: my father visiting my sickbed. (Copyright ©1972 Stern magazine)

  Reflection: looking behind the mirror, I think back on my youth. (Copyright ©1972 Stern magazine)

  12 Greetings From This World and the Next

  Letters congratulating me on my survival arrived from all over the world. (Photos courtesy of Juliane (Koepcke) Diller)

  Over the days, weeks and even months that follow, mail is brought to me, mountains of letters. Each day there are more. They come from all over the world, and I’m overwhelmed and moved, as well as occasionally put off, by the lines that complete strangers feel compelled to write to me. Most are from the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, England, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Argentina and, of course, Peru. But also people from Burundi, New Zealand, French Guiana, Uruguay, Cuba and Costa Rica have something to say to me. The addresses on the envelopes are often curious. Sometimes they consist of only the words “Juliane Koepcke—Peru,” but they always arrive. The ages of the letter writers range from nine to eighty years old. Among them are many children, young people and mothers, who usually feel sympathy with my fate and apparently simply have the need to write and tell me that I’m not alone. For instance, there is a nice woman from Australia who writes: I’m no one special, just a mother
of a family…. All over the world many people think of me during those days and wish me the best.

  Many want to let me know how much they admire how I found my way through the jungle and think I’m enormously “brave,” “coolheaded” and “fearless.” I’m happy about that; but actually, I think, I simply had no choice.

  Then there are people who were acquainted with my parents either closely or more distantly, had studied with the same professor in Kiel or had toured the Peruvian jungle in earlier years. Some German exiles in Latin American countries write how proud they are that “a girl from the old country” could achieve such a feat. An American airplane pilot believes that “his” stewardesses could learn a lot from me—I’m not entirely sure what he means by that. Bob from Colorado used to study aviation technology and would like to know whether I fell to earth together with a piece of wreckage or on my own. He even writes a funny sentence in flawed German.

  Doctors or others who possess special expertise comment on my injuries and give good advice, as in the case of a Belgian who warns of lung damage—caused by the collarbone fracture—or a Munich entomologist who writes to me that it could not have been the case that there were worms (Würmer) in my wounds. He’s right: It’s the fault of German newspaper articles with incorrect translations of the English “worms” and Spanish “gusanos” as Würmer, “worms” in the strict sense, instead of Fliegenmaden, “maggots” in the sense of fly larvae. Some boys my age and younger ask for zoological details. A few, like Peter from Australia, who would like to learn more about the stingrays, are interested specifically in fish; others, like Brian from Canada or Herbert from southern Germany, who want to know whether it’s true that the jaguar in Peru has gone extinct, have general questions about the wildlife of the Amazon Rain Forest.

  But occasionally letters also offer me a glimpse into a stranger’s fate: A woman from San Antonio, Texas, had lost her then-seventeen-year-old daughter three years earlier, who—so she claimed—not only had a strong resemblance to me, but also loved animals and wanted to become a veterinarian. She died in a diving accident. Now the woman is inviting me to live with her and her other daughter and study at a Texan university. Perhaps she thinks she can replace my mother and I her lost daughter?

  I also can’t rule out the possibility that one or another young man has fallen in love with me from afar. Usually, they write me charming letters assuring me that they will always be there for me if I should need them. One of them even composes a religiously themed poem. Another sends me his message in minute handwriting on a postcard in Italian, French and even Latin. Unfortunately, there are also some who become pushy. When I don’t reply to one of them, he ultimately appeals indignantly to my father!

  An American artist expresses the desire to make a bronze sculpture of me—if we could meet someday. And a sixteen-year-old girl from Munich would like to write a short story about my accident and asks me for details.

  A zealous supporter of the international artificial language Esperanto writes me a bilingual letter in English and Esperanto, which begins as follows:

  Now that you have become a world famous person, probably you will find [it] useful to learn the international language, Esperanto. The world famous “Football King,” Pelé of Brazil, wrote an autobiography “I am Pelé” and published it in Esperanto, and it makes history because Esperantist footballers over the whole world can read it, whatever their national languages are. Please learn Esperanto and write a book about your life and adventures so that Esperantists male and female around the whole world can read it….

  Conveniently he has also enclosed a small handbook with the grammar rules and a vocabulary book for learning Esperanto.

  I also find funny a postcard from Hildesheim, Germany, on which the following poem is written:

  An angel came from heaven,

  ate a piece of cake,

  then went wandering,

  and all was well again.

  Oh, if only things were that simple!

  I also find pleasure in the letters from school classes that have many questions, and now and then they enclose pictures they’ve drawn of me in the middle of the jungle next to the airplane wreckage.

  Then there are letters that make a strange impression on me, which I occasionally even find abhorrent. For there are people who have supposedly managed to do what has remained denied to us—that is, to make contact with my mother in the afterlife. Even before her death was officially confirmed, such people sent along her “warm greetings.” A psychic from Freiburg, Germany, is firmly convinced that her soul was with me at the moment of the crash and I was able to survive only because—unbeknownst to me—she showed me the way. Meanwhile, she describes the circumstances as they are portrayed in the error-ridden newspaper reports: I climbed out of the wreckage; there were many corpses around me; at her advice I picked up a cake and took it with me, would almost have fallen into the hands of cannibals if her invisible soul had not lured me onto a safer path. In her last vision she saw me sitting in a clearing, encircled with light, eating the last cake crust. I can still take all that with a sense of humor. However, when she then passes on messages from my dead mother as well, it becomes too much for me.

  It’s neither the only nor the last odd letter I will receive. Some even try to hitch their wagons to me. Several months later a biorhythmist from Switzerland is convinced that during this almost superhuman exertion, I was in an optimal biorhythmic state. She goes on: For even if such perseverance is largely a matter of character, it would not help much if one were in a weak rhythmic state. That’s why she writes that she is convinced that your jungle odyssey constitutes a perfect test case for the doctrine of biorhythmics.

  To verify this, she asks me to indicate my birth date, if possible also the time of day. This is very important to the woman: For if my suspicion regarding your experience is correct, then this would be such a persuasive test case that even the most malicious doubter and opponent of biorhythmics would have to admit defeat.

  An extremely excited woman from New Jersey will write me a discomfiting letter two years later. It begins like this: Juliane: I have found new patterns in air crashes—planetary positions. Starting with my case, she calculated the horoscopes for those days on which airplane accidents took place and stumbled on a shocking theory. Apparently, quite particular configurations of planets made the metal birds fell from the sky. Most of my friends think I’m going mad, she writes, but I’ve become obsessed with research. In her view, a plane crash is caused by a square between the sun and Pluto. But on Christmas in 1971, Venus, Pluto and Saturn formed a triangle to spare me. Apparently, something similar repeated itself a year later, and again a plane crashed, this time a French one over the Caribbean. What am I to make of this? I understand nothing about astrology and can unfortunately contribute nothing to this discussion.

  Still odder is a letter that also reaches me two years after my accident. This one reads: I have found the right circle relation number … and with it would like to start a worldwide intellectual revolution in the field of mathematics with the help of your high-school graduate (this refers to me). The complicated, supposedly groundbreaking new formulas for a “Pitel year” I cannot understand even after my Abitur—on which I scored rather well—and the intellectual revolution will apparently have to wait.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  I’m still lying in my bed in the mission station of Yarinacocha as a guest of the hospitable “linguists.” Each day I receive a new basket full of letters, read them all and ask myself the anxious question: How in the world am I going to answer all these people? There are so many that it’s simply impossible. I choose the letters that especially appeal to me. Some even turn into friendly correspondences, as happens with a student from Sweden and a woman from Poland.

  But some letters do not require any postage stamps and do not have to traverse any great distance to reach me, for they come from next door. The community of missionaries, who so kindly took me i
n and cared for me, has lost members too. I am all the more grateful to be able to recover with them. Deep in my heart I feel guilty for having survived, while all the others had to die. “Why,” my father asks me at an especially hard moment, “did the two of you have to take that LANSA flight?”

  … Even though I’d explicitly warned you not to. Though he doesn’t say the second part out loud, I know that he’s thinking it. I also know that it’s my fault that we didn’t take the flight with the safe airline Faucett, as my mother would have liked to, just because I was so childish and insisted on participating in the school graduation celebration. I feel guilty and full of boundless regret. I’m sorry that I didn’t skip the school event. I’m sorry that I survived and she didn’t. I’m sorry that so many families are in mourning, and only I am sitting here in my bed and already doing so well again.

  I don’t find words for all this, am not even aware of it. The fact that every survivor of a disaster goes through this, I learn only much later.

  13 Terrible Certainty, Agonizing Uncertainty

  A town in uproar: thousands waited at the Pucallpa airport for news about the vanished LANSA aircraft. (Photo courtesy of Juliane (Koepcke) Diller)