UNITED ARAB REPUBLIC: The Last Adventure

Like many dreams of adventure, it began in a college bull session. John Armstrong of suburban Belleville, N.J. used to talk things over with Yves Tommy-Martin, a Fulbright scholar from France, while both were students at Amherst College. They continued to talk of one big adventure before settling down to careers when Armstrong turned up in Paris on his own Fulbright to do research in Chinese literature at the Sorbonne. Soon, they had enlisted two more companions—another Frenchman, Jean Pillu, 25, and another American, Donald Shannon, 28, of Milwaukee. Their ambition: to drive the 8,500 road miles from Paris to Johannesburg.

They had little money, but persuaded several companies to furnish them supplies in return for later testimonials. They called themselves “The 1959 Franco-American Students’ Automobile Tour of Africa” (“What a mouthful,” Donald wrote home. “The ‘Franco-American’ sounds like spaghetti, and the ‘students’ sounds academic, but it’s the best we could come up with”). On July 4, they set forth in two small Citroëns loaded with camping gear.

The Long Silence. “Africa is calling,” Donald wrote cheerily. The tour headed south to the Riviera, turned east into Italy, drove across Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon, and finally put their cars aboard a boat bound for Port Said. On July 24, Donald sent his sister a letter from Isna, Egypt, saying that he and his companions were ready to cross the Nubian Desert, and adding confidently “Write me in Johannesburg.” In Aswan next day, John Armstrong wrote his mother a postcard that said he would soon be in the Sudanese border town of Wadi Haifa. The four bought food and water to last three days and hired a Nubian boy to guide them through the desert.

The letter and the postcard were the last news to come from the expedition. Finally, after weeks of waiting, the boys’ alarmed parents asked the State Department for help. Receiving a request from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, units of the

United Arab Republic frontier guards and camel corps began a search.

Uncertain Guide. For nearly three weeks, searching parties crisscrossed the scorching desert, and helicopters hovered over the deep desert canyons. Though the travelers had been seen at the U.A.R. border post of El Shallal, they had never turned up at Wadi Haifa. Those whom the police questioned were shocked to hear that anyone had attempted the trip in two small cars not specially equipped for the desert: since all roads and railways end at Aswan, the only really safe way to make the trip is by Nile steamer. The adventurers had either not known this or not cared—and the Nubian boy they had hired had never been a guide before in his life.

Last week a searching party found the two Citroëns and four bodies long exposed to the sun—the young guide, the two Americans and one of the Frenchmen. Officials could only guess that the other had either struck out on his own or had died even before his companions. There was no evidence of foul play. An autopsy concluded that the young men had died of thirst and sunstroke.