SWITZERLAND: Fine Time in the Alps

It was like the opening scene from Lost Horizon. En route from Munich to Marseilles, a U.S. Army Dakota plane had been caught in an Alpine downdraft, had crash-landed on the Wetterhorn, in a yawning ice bowl just ten miles from Switzerland’s famous peak, the 13,670-foot Jungfrau. Marooned at 9,800 feet on the slopes of Rosenlaui glacier was a curious company of twelve people, including an eleven-year-old girl, four women (three were wives of U.S. generals).

Five hours after the crash the plane radioed its position. Search planes of the U.S., France, Italy and Britain took off in the teeth of a howling blizzard. At the end of the second day, a faint message from the survivors was heard in Grenoble: “It is urgent. We want to live.” By the third day, more than 100 planes of six nations swooped through the jagged mountain passes, buffeted by gales and dense clouds. Up from Geneva in a B-17 flew Brigadier General Ralph Snavely, whose wife was in the crashed plane, but for six hours bad weather obscured his approach to the Jungfrau. “Then,” said an aide, “it was as if the Lord pushed the clouds away for a few moments.” Through a rift they spotted the stricken Dakota, cushioned in the snow. Medical supplies, brandy and food were dropped near a red flag laid out on the glacier. In the next 24 hours, so many packages were dropped that a Swiss plane asked Americans to stop, lest they hit survivors or another plane. Those on the glacier had an even greater worry. As planes swooped low to buzz the Dakota, they heard ominous rumbles in the glacier; they feared that engine vibrations were widening the fissures. To warn planes away, the word “FINI” was trudged out in the snow (see cut). Confused observers thought it might be a bad American spelling of a French word (finis) indicating that a) they had given up hope, were “finished”; or b) that they had enough supplies.

Tough Like Hell. The U.S. hoped to rush a helicopter and a crew across the Atlantic in time to be of service; it was ordered back from the Azores when word arrived that Swiss guides, Alpinists and planes had the situation well in hand. Swiss Army Private Marcel Etter, one of a party of 73 who made the tortuous ascent, told a TIME correspondent:

“Climbing all day long was tough like hell. The Americans who were wrecked . . . gave me coffee with milk and whiskey in it. I have never tried anything so bad. Must be queer people to drink that. But I like them.”

One Last Look. Sergeant Karl Zimmerli, another member of the Swiss rescue party, described grey-haired Margaret Tate, wife of a U.S. general, and engineer George Harvey as “heroes” of the ordeal. Said Zimmerli: “Mrs. Tate is a very brave woman. She stayed cool even when we crossed crevasses which were hundreds of feet deep. Several times she said: ‘Pilot is my darling.’ I didn’t understand until they told me the pilot is her son. That is probably the reason too why she asked me to turn the sledge [towards] the crashed plane. She told me in German she wanted to look at it for the last time, because it saved the life of all of them. …”

Tired Like a Dog. “Harvey is a nice guy too. He gave me his second last cigaret. … He was walking between two of my men, tied to the rope. Suddenly beneath his feet the snow and ice had vanished, a deep crevasse was open. We got him up, just like that, in a moment. I was surprised to see that he still had my ice ax firmly in his hand. … It is rare that a greenhorn has such presence of mind. I’m tired like a dog.”

The following day, Swiss pilots flying ski-equipped Fieseler Storch planes took off survivors in nine breathtaking shuttle trips. None of the passengers had been badly hurt. Captain Ralph Tate Jr., pilot of the plane, felt so good at the rescue depot that he spurned an ambulance, jauntily vaulted a fence to the waiting hospital train. To eleven-year-old Alice McMahon, it had been great good fun living off snow and chocolate bars for five days. She came off the rescue plane vigorously chewing gum, told reporters: “I had a fine time.”