A blizzard raged on
the glacier.
He could see nothing
ahead, could barely make out the compass in his hand. He could not
turn back even if he wanted to. There was nothing to go back to.
The storm stung and lashed his face, hurling hard, cold flakes at
him from every direction. Snow became encrusted in a thick layer on
his clothes and with every step he sank to his knees. He had lost
all sense of time and had no idea how long he had been walking.
Still cloaked in the same impenetrable darkness as when he had
begun his journey, he could not even tell whether it was day or
night. All he knew was that he was on his last legs. He took a few
steps at a time, rested, then carried on. A few steps. A rest. A
few more steps. A rest. A step. Rest. Step.
He had escaped almost
unscathed from the crash, though others had not been so lucky. In
an eruption of noise, the plane had skimmed the surface of the
glacier. One of its engines burst into flame, then vanished
abruptly as the entire wing sheared off and whirled away into the
snow-filled darkness. Almost immediately the other wing was torn
away in a shower of sparks, and the wingless fuselage went
careering across the ice like a torpedo.
He, the pilot and
three others had been belted into their seats when the plane went
down but two of the passengers had been gripped with hysteria at
the first sign of trouble, leaping up and trying to break into the
cockpit in their panic. The impact sent them ricocheting like
bullets off the sides of the cabin. He had ducked, watching them
slam into the ceiling and bounce off the walls, before being
catapulted past him and landing at the back of the plane where
their cries were silenced.
The wreckage ploughed
across the glacier, sending up clouds of snow and ice until it
gradually lost momentum and ground to a halt. Then there was no
sound but the howling of the storm.
Alone of the
passengers, he was determined to brave the blizzard and make for
civilisation. The others recommended waiting, in the hope that the
storm would blow itself out. They thought everyone should stick
together, but he was not to be stopped. He did not want to suffer
being trapped in the plane; could not endure it becoming his
coffin. With their help he wrapped himself up as well as possible
for the journey, but he had not walked far in the relentless
conditions before he realised he would have been better off inside
the plane with the others. Now it was too late.
He tried to head
south-east. For a split second before the bomber crashed he had
glimpsed lights, as if from houses, and now he headed off in what
he believed to be the right direction. He was chilled through and
his footsteps grew heavier and heavier. If anything, the storm
seemed to be growing more intense. He battled on, his strength
failing with every step.
His thoughts turned
to the plight of the others who had remained behind in the
aircraft. When he had left them the snow had already begun to drift
over the wreckage, and the scar left by its progress across the ice
was filling up fast. They had oil lamps but the oil would not last
long, and the cold on the glacier was unimaginable. If they kept
the door of the plane open, the cabin would fill with snow. They
were probably already trapped inside. They knew they would freeze
to death whether they stayed in the aircraft or ventured out on to
the ice. They had discussed the limited options. He had told them
he could not sit still and wait for death.
The chain rattled.
The briefcase was weighing him down. It was handcuffed to his
wrist. He no longer held the handle but let the case drag on its
chain. The handcuff chafed his wrist but he did not care. He was
past caring.
They heard it long
before it swooped over them, heading west. Heard it approaching
through the screaming of the storm, but when they looked up there
was nothing to be seen but winter darkness and stinging,
wind-driven flakes. It was just before eleven at night. A plane,
was their immediate thought. War had brought a fair amount of air
traffic to the area as the British had a base in Hornafjördur, so
they knew most of the British and American aircraft by the sound of
their engines. But they had never heard anything like this before.
And never before had the roar been so close, as if the plane were
diving straight for their farm.
They went out on to
the front step and stood there for some time until the roar of the
engines reached its height. With their hands over their ears they
followed the sound towards the glacier. For a split second its dark
body could be glimpsed overhead, then it vanished again into the
blackness. Its nose up, it looked to be trying to gain height. The
roar gradually receded in the direction of the glacier, before
finally dying away. They both had the same thought. The plane was
going to crash. It was too low. Visibility was zero in the
appalling weather and the glacier would claim the plane in a matter
of minutes. Even if it managed to gain a little height, it would be
too late. The ice cap was too close.
They remained
standing on the step for several minutes after the noise had died
away, peering through the blizzard and straining to listen. Not a
sound. They went back inside. They could not alert the authorities
to the course of the plane as the telephone had been out of order
since the lines came down in another storm. There had not been time
to reconnect it. A familiar nuisance. Now a second blizzard had
blown up, twice as bad. As they got ready for bed, they discussed
trying to get through to Höfn in Hornafjördur on horseback to
report the plane once the weather had died down.
It was not until four
days later that the conditions finally improved and they were able
to set off for Höfn. The drifts were deep, making their progress
slow. They were brothers and lived alone on the farm; their parents
were dead and neither of them had married. They stopped to rest at
a couple of farms on the way, spending the night at the second,
where they related the story of the plane and their fear that it
had almost certainly perished. None of the other farmers had heard
anything.
When the brothers
reached Höfn they reported the aircraft to the district official,
who immediately contacted the Reykjavík authorities and informed
them that a plane had been seen south of the Vatnajökull glacier
and had almost certainly crashed on the ice. All flights over
Iceland and the North Atlantic were monitored by air traffic
control at the US army base in Reykjavík, but they had been unaware
of any aircraft in the area at the time – the conditions had meant
traffic had been at a minimum.
Later that day a
telegram from the US military headquarters arrived at the office of
the Höfn district official. The army would immediately take over
investigation of the case and see to it that a rescue party was
sent to the glacier. As far as the locals were concerned, the case
was closed. Furthermore, the army banned all traffic on the glacier
in the area where the plane was believed to have gone down. No
explanations were offered.
Four days later,
twelve military transport vehicles rumbled into Höfn with two
hundred soldiers on board. They had not been able to use the
airstrip in Hornafjördur, as it was closed during the darkest
winter months, and Höfn was cut off from the capital to the west by
the unbridged rivers of the Skeidará sands. The expedition force
had had to circumnavigate the country in six-wheeled vehicles
equipped with snow-chains, driving first north, then south along
the East Fjords to reach Höfn. The journey north had been arduous,
as the main road was little more than a dirt track, and the
expedition had been forced to dig their way through heavy drifts
all the way across the eastern desert of
Mödrudalsöraefi.
The troops were
soldiers of the 10th Infantry Regiment and 46th Field Artillery
Battalion under General Charles H. Bonesteel, commander of the US
occupying force. Some of the men had taken part in the army’s
winter exercises on the Eiríksjökull glacier the previous year, but
in practice few of them could even ski.
The expedition was
led by one Colonel Miller. His men pitched camp just outside Höfn
in barracks built by the British occupation force at the beginning
of the war, from where they made their way to the glacier. By the
time the soldiers arrived at the brothers’ farm, almost ten days
had elapsed since they had heard the plane, days in which it had
snowed without respite. The soldiers set up their base at the farm
and the brothers agreed to act as their guides on the ice cap. They
spoke no English but with a combination of gestures and sign
language were able to show Miller and his men the direction of the
plane, warning that there was little chance of finding it on or
near the glacier in the depths of winter.
‘Vatnajökull is the
biggest glacier in Europe,’ they said, shaking their heads. ‘It’s
like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ It did not help that the
snow would have obliterated all signs of a
crash-landing.
Colonel Miller
understood their gestures but ignored them. Despite the heavy
going, there was a passable route to the glacier from the brothers’
farm and in the circumstances the operation went smoothly. During
the short winter days, when the sun was up only from eleven in the
morning until half past five, there was little time for searching.
Colonel Miller kept his men well in order, though the brothers
quickly discovered that most of them had never set foot on a
glacier and had scant experience of winter expeditions. They guided
the soldiers safely past crevasses and gullies, and the men set up
camp in a depression at the edge of the glacier, about 1,100 metres
above sea level.
Miller’s troops spent
three weeks combing the slopes of the glacier and a five square
kilometre area of the ice cap itself. For most of the time the
soldiers were lucky with the weather and coordinated their searches
well. They divided their efforts, one group searching in the
foothills from a camp set up near the farm, while the other group
camped on the glacier and scoured the ice for as long as daylight
lasted. When darkness fell in the afternoon, the soldiers assembled
back at the farm base camp where they ate, slept and sang songs
familiar to the brothers from the radio. They slept in
British-issue mountaineering tents, sewn from double layers of
silk, and huddled for warmth around primuses and oil lamps. Their
heavy leather coats reached below the knee and had fur-lined hoods.
On their hands they wore thick, coarsely knitted gloves of
Icelandic wool.
No sign of the
aircraft was found on this first expedition apart from the rim of
the nose wheel, of which Colonel Miller immediately took charge. It
was the brothers who made the discovery, about two kilometres on to
the ice cap. Beyond this fragment, the ice was smooth in every
direction and there was no evidence that an aircraft had crashed or
made a forced landing there. The brothers said that if the plane
had gone down on that part of the ice cap, the snow had probably
drifted over the wreckage already. The glacier had swallowed it
up.
Colonel Miller was
like a man possessed in his search for the plane. He appeared to
feel no tiredness and won the admiration of the brothers, who
treated him with a mixture of affection and respect and were eager
to do anything for him. Miller consulted them a great deal for
their local knowledge and they came to be on friendly terms. But
eventually, after the expedition had twice been hampered by severe
weather on the ice, the colonel was forced to abandon his search.
In the second storm, tents and other equipment were buried in snow
and lost for good.
There were two
aspects of the expedition that puzzled the brothers.
One day they came
upon Miller alone in the stable block, which adjoined the barn and
cowshed, taking him by surprise as he stood by one of the horses in
its stall, stroking its head. The colonel, whose courage and
authority over his men was striking, had to all appearances taken
himself quietly to one side to weep. He cradled the horse’s head
and they saw how his shoulders shook. When one of them cleared his
throat, Miller started and glanced their way. They saw the tracks
of tears on his dirty cheeks, but the colonel was quick to recover,
drying his face and pretending nothing had happened. The brothers
had often discussed Miller. They never asked him how old he was but
guessed he could be no more than twenty-five.
‘This is a handsome
animal,’ Miller said in his own language. The brothers did not
understand him. He’s probably homesick, they thought. But the
incident stayed in their minds.
The other matter
which aroused the brothers’ interest was the wheel itself. They had
had time to examine it before Colonel Miller found them and
confiscated it. The tyre had been wrenched off the wheel so only
the naked rim hung from the broken landing gear. For a long time
afterwards they wondered about the fact that the wheel rim was
inscribed with lettering in a language they understood even less
than English.
KRUPPSTAHL.