I felt no pain but something warm and wet fell on my head, and then cascaded down the front of me. It was blood. It looked horribly red against the light blue of my suit. Lieutenant "Matt" Mathews, the co-pilot, was tugging at me from behind, trying to extricate me from my overturned seat. Matt kept saying, "Are you all right, Mrs. Tate? Are you hurt? Can't you stand up?" I couldn't move. Then came the thought: My back is broken and I am paralyzed.

Then we both laughed, for both of us saw at once that my safety belt was still fastened and was holding me down.

My thoughts raced to the pilots' compartment where the hazards of a crash are greatest. My son! Dear God, my son! Then my heart almost stopped beating, for he was walking slowly toward me down the flight deck. Blood was streaming from a wicked gash which extended from between his eyes to the top of his head, exposing a sickening patch of skull where his scalp fell loose.For an instant he seemed not the grown man who had so skillfully set us down, but my little boy whose head was bloody. The impulse to take him into my arms was almost too much to bear.But I didn't, and how glad he must have been. He made no special note of my presence, other than a quick glance, and I knew he was mutely appealing for my support in his momentary defeat, not my tears or sympathy.

"Is everyone all right?", he asked, trying to see through the screen of blood pouring down his face. Then he swayed slightly, and in a tone of utter bewilderment said, "I don't know how we got into the mountains." His voice trailed off as though the scene before him were only a bad dream.

We hadn't been on the ground ten minutes before things began to straighten out. Looking back, it seems incredible that 12 people who had just been knocked silly could come out of the shock and gather together their wits and energies as we did that day.

We found Sergeant Folsom pinned face down under some chairs.While the co-pilot and radioman extracted him, George Harvey opened a first-aid kit. We learned later that he had had two years premedical study. He quickly administered morphine and deftly set Folsom's leg, which was badly smashed. Harvey went from one to another with amazing coolness. He applied a pressure bandage to Matt's little finger, which was almost lopped off. That was what had bled so profusely all over me. Coagulation was slow at the altitude of almost 11,000 feet.

General Haynes had a smashed nose and a badly cut upper lip.He refused assistance, saying that it was the fourth time he had broken his nose, and that he could manage alone. But Colonel McMahon had us worried. He was moaning and struggling for his breath. He seemed to have injured his back and was unable to move. None of the women were critically hurt.

When my son was satisfied that everyone had been attended to, he lie down on the floor and put his head in Harvey's lap. While Harvey was bandaging the ten-inch gash, Ralph ordered radioman Sergeant Louis Hill to try to call for help.

Hill made his way through the maze of debris up to the flight deck. Our hearts were in our mouths. What if the radio were smashed?

We waited hardly daring to breath. Then we heard it! That unmistakable, beautiful buzzing. Presently Hill called out, "I've got 'em! It's Istres! They hear me!"

There was a break in the tension then, but shortly little fears and apprehensions began to take form. The plane, buffeted by a howling wind, was tilted on its left side at a 30-degree angle. Were we on the edge of an abyss, or on the top of a mountain?  Our world suddenly narrowed itself to this small space inside the plane. Outside lay a world of which we knew nothing, hidden behind a screen of falling snow. Frost was forming on the windows. All heat had gone from the plane.

Up in the flight deck, my son, Matt, and Hill were holding a conference. They figured our position as best they could and sent it to Istres. Istres replied that a British Lancaster would start out within the hour, and that rescue parties on foot were already being organized to set out in the morning. Help seemed very near just then.

The crash occurred about 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 19, 1946. It was now 4:30; in half an hour darkness would be upon us and there was no artificial light in the plane. Ralph, Harvey, Matt, and Hill set about making plans for the night. From two broken seats they made a bed for Folsom, bracing it to get it level on the sloping floor. There was one sleeping bag to which he fell heir without question. He must be kept warm to prevent static pneumonia, which often occurs with a serious fracture. Colonel McMahon was made comfortable as possible in another chair.

There weren't enough blankets to go around, so the boys unfurled four parachutes. Trying to get under their billowy mass was like trying to crawl under a pile of soapsuds. It was impossible to get comfortable. Lying sidewise, we rolled down hill; lying crosswise, we shucked down until our knees were up under our chins. But we arranged ourselves as best we could.

Soon we became aware of something that sent a state of terror to our hearts. Stalking across a world of eternal snows came the cold--bitter, awesome, frightening cold. It crept through our clothes, seeping deeper and deeper until our bones felt brittle and without marrow. Against this great archenemy, we had little defense. That first night seemed endless--14 hours of profound darkness. At first we slept from sheer exhaustion. Then, as the floor got harder and harder, we began to waken one by one. Time took on fantastic proportions. It seemed as though we had been asleep for hours when someone asked what time it was. Our feeble flashlight was produced.  Harvey said, "Well, well! It's just eight o'clock."

If we could have sat up, lighted a cigarette, it would have helped. But much of the fuel from the tanks had spilled out into the snow under us, filling the plane with gasoline fumes.One flick of a match might have blown us into kingdom come. As it was, we were uneasy about the sparks the silk parachutes gave off every time anyone moved.

The plane shuddered in travail as the vicious gales marched over us. The heavy rudder swung free, pounding and banging. At times it seemed as though the whole ship moved. Each fresh onslaught of the wind heightened our misery. We feared that the plane might become dislodged and skate off--into what we didn't know.

Enemy number two soon began to manifest itself. Thirst, Harvey had warned us that to eat snow was tantamount to inviting slow death. Lung frost is a terrible malady, and is almost a sure result if snow is eaten at high altitudes in a 30-below temperature. A five-gallon can of water had been put aboard at Munich, but more than half of it had been used to keep the heaters going in the cabin before we crashed.

It was almost seven o'clock before the windows began to show faint gray squares. Ralph disentangled himself from the maze of silk and made his way out of doors. I was too cold to move. After a bit, Ralph stuck his head in the door and called to us, "Hey, everybody, it's stopped snowing and the sun's coming up!"

All around us were mountains, rows and rows of them, snow-covered. The plane lay sidewise at the top of a long slope that extended almost a mile directly ahead.

One of the boys said, "Holy mackerel!" Looking where he was pointing. I gasped. Not more than 50 yards to our left was a huge, ice-walled crevasse, wide enough to have swallowed us whole had we crashed an instant sooner. About 75 yards to the right was another crevasse just as wide. They were all around us--a network of ice chasms. We had crashed on a glacier--settled down on a 20-foot snowdrift on the only clear open space within sight!

Hill said: "Captain, you're a wizard in a blizzard. How did you do it ?"

Ralph said, "I didn't."

No one spoke. Then Matt said softly, "The good Lord was with us." We all agreed on that.

Our breakfast was scant--one Life Saver apiece. The only food left was candy. Fortunately, all of us had drawn our candy rations in Munich, and we estimated that with careful rationing we would have enough to last us several days.

At eight o'clock Hill went to the radio, Istres came in immediately. Hill told them that no aircraft could land near us, and that eight of us were stretcher cases since we women could not traverse the icy wastes on foot. Istres said that the Lancaster and land rescue parties were starting out at once to try and find us. They asked us to keep a fire going to facilitate their search.

The boys built a signal fire in a long aluminum pan from the galley. Since we were far above the timberline there was no wood for fuel. So they fed the fire with a mixture of oil and gasoline. Keeping it going during the days to come was a task that required easily half of the time. To collect the gummy engine oil they took turns reaching into the oil tank. The opening was so small that they had to cup their hands and bring out only what oil could cling to them, then flick it into a pan. Their hands were rubbed raw by the tank opening. The oil irritated the rawness until all of them were suffering intensely from sore, swollen hands. Gasoline was tediously dipped out in a small paper cup lowered into the tank on a piece of wire.

At noon, Hill again called Istres, according to schedule. He came back into the cabin glowing; "Istres says a Lancaster will be circling us in ten minutes!"

Eagerly, all of us who could piled out of the plane. Going from the dead, clammy cold of the cabin into the brilliant sunshine was almost like stepping into a heated room. Actual heat waves reflected off the snow. With an army blanket draped over my head like an Indian squaw, I shivered with sheer ecstasy as the warmth of the sun filtered through the thick wool.

We were a weird collection of humans. Lona Haynes's smart light gray suit was smeared with dirt and blood. Alberta Snavely said, laughing, "When I think of how chinchy I've been about wearing this coat, and how I hung it up in a cedar bag the minute I took it off--and now look at it!" There was a long rip in the beautiful fur, and it was matted down where she had slept in it and had crawled around on the floor. She said, "You know, Marguerite, when our husbands come for us and find out how dirty we are, they're going to wish they left us up here!" All of us women had made peasant scarves from parachute silk, from which emerged, both fore and aft, stringy, straggly, uncombed hair. The boys were showing five o'clock shadow over the dirt on their faces.

As minutes rolled by, and no plane appeared, our hope began to fade. Then, almost as if the elements were conspiring to bring defeat closer, the wind whipped down over the ridge above us as though someone had turned on a gigantic fan. All the heat went out of the sun's rays and we hurried back into the plane, hoping to retain some of the warmth we had assimilated.

As we snatched up our blankets to take them into the plane with us, my son said, "Brush off every little piece of snow. If the blankets get damp they'll never dry out, and we won't be able to use them." So we spent the next half hour inspecting each blanket for even the tiniest bits of snow.

Ralph and Hill remained outside still looking and listening, reluctant to give up hope. About 3:30 the sun descended behind the mountain back of us. It was too late now to expect the Lancaster. With the very last flicker of light, chocolate bars were passed. Some water had been melted during the day but it was tainted with the taste of oil and smoke. It didn't mix well with the chocolate, but it was wet. We felt a little squeamish after our evening repast.

That night we slept fitfully. Again the deadly brutal cold ate through our clothing like acid. The wind battered at the plane with a dull thudding consistency. General Haynes had difficulty breathing through his smashed nose, and after he fell asleep he snored at intervals. It sounded like the drone of airplane engines. Someone would say, "Hark!" Then we would listen, our hearts beating wildly. The sound would stop, and we would know that it had been only the General's snoring. The radio antennae vibrated in the wind like the sound of an approach plane. Again we would listen, and hope. By morning we were all exhausted from listening.

At noon Thursday, Hill called Istres. He came back into the cabin a little more agitated than usual. Their message said that searching parties had started out at dawn, and that a plane should be circling us in an hour. They again asked us to keep a signal fire going to help searchers.

The boys sprang into action. They had accumulated a pan of oil during the morning. Now they tore the curtains from the windows and saturated them with oil. Parts of the leather chairs were torn away, the rubber deicer boots were stripped off the wings and laid beside the fire. All those things would make a wonderful black smoke. But there wasn't enough fuel to keep the smudge-fire going for long, so they didn't want to waste a bit of it. It was all on this one chance. In that vast stillness, a plane could be heard long before it appeared.

We sat out there quite a long time. The boys were talking and laughing among themselves. Suddenly, I saw Ralph cock his head, then Matt, Harvey and Hill. With a concerted motion they feverishly threw the oil-soaked curtain on the fire, and a black column of smoke billowed 50 feet into the air.

Then we heard it, then saw it--a plane! The boys were yelling, "There it is! There she comes!"

The plane skimmed across the horizon about 20 miles to the south and east of us. It swung along the edge of the clouds on the horizon, looking as businesslike and determined as a fat man going to lunch. But instead of turning it kept going east. We watched it, our eyes straining from the glare. For a few heartbreaking minutes we stood there, speechless, unable to take our eyes away from the direction in which it had disappeared. Then we came to a crushing realization that the plane hadn't seen us.

Strangely, the sun lost its warmth and cheer. We could never build another fire like that, for there wasn't anything more to burn, except our clothes. Like a still picture slowly coming to life we all filed silently back into the plane. The disappointment was almost too much to bear.

Ralph then ordered Hill to contact Istres, even though it was not on time schedule, and ask for a triangular "fix." Possibly our report on location was incorrect.

Istres came in immediately. They too were anxious for a "fix." Six o'clock was agreed upon as the time it should be taken. Precisely at six Hill again contacted Istres. In the dim light of the flashlight, we could see the boys silently grouped around the radio, their faces almost ghostly in the faint glow. Hill pressed down on the key and held it for two minutes. Then the batteries died. We could not know if it had succeeded. We could send no more messages.

Wearily and automatically, we went about our routine for the night. Sleep was out of the question. We all sat there, silently. I scratched a hole on the frosted window glass and looked out.

Against the white carpet of snow the black peaks stood out clearly. I could see the long sweep of smooth valley to the left. Suddenly my heart stopped, for I saw two black objects moving slowly down the lower slopes of the mountains. Not knowing from which direction the ground rescuer party would come, this didn't seem so strange. I told Alberta what I had seen. She scratched another hole in the frost and saw what I saw. But after straining our eyes for a few minutes, the figures hadn't moved and we decided they were two small rocks we had commented on yesterday. By now we were ready to believe anything we imagined we saw.

Presently Alberta started, then poked me in the ribs "Look down there on the lower level! Do you see little green lights?"

I looked, and it seemed as though lights flashed, then went out, as though it might be a procession of people, all carrying small, green flashlights. The Hayneses thought they could see them too. Harvey and Ralph who had gone outside came in excitedly and said they saw a red signal flare about two miles away, behind one of the peaks. Harvey grasped the Very pistol and fired a reply. But the flare got no response. Nothing more was seen.

Then we were really frightened. We all had seen the same things, but they were nothing. We were having hallucinations. I have little recollection of the rest of that night.I can only remember that it was a terrible night--very long, and very cold.

Friday morning dawned without hope for us. It was snowing hard. The wings of the plane were already thickly covered and the sky was cloaked with gray. No one left the plane. All of us had less strength and energy. For two and a half days we had been without food and adequate water. Nerves were getting strained.

About noon Matt went up to the flight deck. A few minutes later he emerged into the cabin, walking unsteadily as he strove for balance. Opened before his face was a small black Bible, which he was reading as he came. He looked for all the world like an impassioned young parson leading his first group of converts to the altar.

"What are you reading, Matt?" I asked.

"To tell the truth, Mrs. Tate, I just opened it up and there was the Hundred and Twenty-first Psalm."

"Read it to us, Matt."

He began to read. Something quiet and solemn stole into that cold, icy plane and seemed to warm us through and through.

" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

When he had finished, we begged for more.

Matt thumbed through the Book stopping here and there to read one or two verses which seemed appropriate. As we listened, one or another would suggest a passage. Into the chaotic, unhappy, uncomfortable frame of mind we all had shared for days came a strange sort of peace.

Suddenly the boys raised their heads like dogs pointing game. Then we all heard it--a plane! It was coming closer and closer. The boys shot out of the doors, Ralph grabbing the Very pistol as he went. They fell all over themselves and everybody else on their way out.

Pulling ourselves together after the human avalanche passed by, Alberta and I crawled to the window and scratched a hole in the frost. As we knelt there, looking out, over the ridge to the east came a B-17 like and angel straight out of heaven.

As the big ship swooped down into the valley and come over us with a roar, the crew dropped two flares to let us know they had seen us. They circled around once then came back. On their second pass, they hit a terrific updraft. Ralph cried out in alarm, his face twisted in an agonized frenzy. "Look out! They're side slipping!" The B-17 careened crazily, but righted itself and gained altitude to get over the mountains ahead of them.

On their third trip over, large objects began to fall. Supplies were coming down to us! Now we could eat! Perhaps there would be warm clothes and blankets! We were all drunk with excitement.Our world suddenly lost its small confines. There was a great, wide, beautiful world out there somewhere, and it was waiting to welcome us back into the fold.

Within the hour, other planes began coming over. The sky was cluttered with them. Obviously they had been cruising in the vicinity, waiting for the signal that we had been located. Large canvas bags began falling like nickels out of a jackpot, plummeting down and going out of sight in the deep snow. Alice Mary was jumping up and down, her pigtails bobbing crazily. "Whee!” She exclaimed.  "It's just like Christmas"!

There were American C-47's, one C-54 and one B-29, British Lancasters and French transports. Then came the Swiss planes. I shall never forget that beautiful sight. The clouds had almost disappeared from the sky. Remnants of them were hurrying off to the north like frightened chickens making for the henhouse. It was another miracle; the sky was clear as crystal.

The boys set out immediately to bring in what they could. There was only an hour of daylight left. The bags were dropped with such force they were going down into the snow from six to eight feet. Retrieving one bag at a time took the efforts of all four boys. One of them had to be lowered into the hole to hand up the bag, then bag and boy hauled out again--exhausting work at that altitude.

Panting and heaving, but deliriously happy, they dragged their first bag of loot back to the plane. We could hardly wait until they got the heavy rope untied and spilled the contents on the floor. Heaven only knows what we expected, but it must have been food, of course. When the bag disgorged 12 pairs of overshoes, we didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Well folks," Harvey said, surveying the pile before him. "There you are. Chew on those till we get back."

The boys finally managed to bring in five bags, which produced food, warm clothing, blankets and medical supplies. Our first real food for days was K-rations. Ralph doled out one package apiece, with the warning to "take it easy, and eat very slowly." The place was a mess--we were all a mess, but a dirtier, happier, more disheveled bunch of people would be hard to find.

Before settling down for the night, I went outside. The night was calm and still. Stars shone coldly in a clear sky, unperturbed by the recent roar and commotion of man's contrivances. There, in the dim whiteness, I remembered Matt's reading of the Psalms. "'When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon, and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou are mindful of him?"

All around lay the same mountains, the same snows, the same crevasses. We had achieved our metamorphosis, but they were ageless. I surveyed the panorama until my eyes came to rest on our plane, lying there in the semidarkness like a monument to the Fates. In that plane was my son who had saved my life and the lives of ten others. But he had broken his own heart. Not once, during all the past days, had he smiled. His usual joyous, exuberant nature had changed frighteningly into a sober, dangerous calm. It was not enough that a war should make an old man of him before his time; he must now have this tragedy to mar his days and nights.

Suddenly the floodgates opened and I began to cry, silently and bitterly, for all the boys who had carried the war on their young shoulders. Tears streaked down and formed into little beads on the front of my coat.

After a bit, when the blessing of tears had washed away some my mental and physical turmoil, I rose to go back into the plane. Then I heard a muffled boom, near, yet far. The ground under my feet shook slightly. It was the crevasse just off the tail of the plane--I actually saw it open farther. Foot by foot, it was creeping up on us. Underneath the carpet of soft, innocent-looking snow was solid ice, thousands of feet thick that cracked and expanded in the night cold as the glacier moved like a snail down the mountain. I began to shake, uncontrollably. Determined to say nothing about my discovery, I crawled back into the plane.

Almost before we could get organized Saturday morning, two little Swiss planes came over. The first flew slowly, almost hovering overhead, and so low that the message it dropped in a bright-red package nearly fell into our outreached hands. The message said that a ground rescue party should reach us by that afternoon.

Then another plane bustled in. It dropped a large, oddly shaped object a short distance away. The boys lugged in, and found a five-gallon thermos of hot, sweet tea. There was also a slab of bacon and four huge loaves of fresh whole-wheat bread.

And soon there came to us a sensation we hadn't had for many days--an odor that tops all odors--frying bacon in the open. The saliva began to gather in my mouth, and a sharp pang hit the pit of my stomach.

Ralph yelled, "Come and get it!"

Between jagged, thick slabs of soft, fresh bread went the bacon. We sopped up the bacon grease with our crusts, and laughed at each other's greasy faces as we stood there, dunking bread into the sizzling fat. We carried bread, bacon and hot tea into the cabin for Folsom and the Colonel. We found ourselves slapping each other on the back and saying, "We don't want to be rescued--we're having a wonderful time".

About 11 o'clock the American and British planes began to arrive. One by one, they peeled off and came over us, dropping bag after bag, box after box. They were pinpoint bombing. The stuff was coming too close for comfort. Occasionally, a bag hit the fuselage of the plane and bounced off.

At noon another group of American planes barged in on the scene. Flying in formation they stormed in low, then pointed their noses up skimmed the top of the mountain back of us, and went away. The boys knew they were getting aerial pictures of the situation. On their return trip the vibration was terrifying. With a rumble and a roar, the whole side of the mountain at our rear let go. Thousands of tons of snow slid down, kicking up snow dust billows hundreds of feet high, like the bottom of a waterfall. From where we stood it looked as though it were going to sweep us down the glacier.

We were scared skinny. The boys were swearing and shaking their fists at the planes. Harvey grabbed the broom and ran down the hill a way, and started making huge words in the snow to warn them off. These planes had to be stopped or we'd be goners.

The planes went away and didn't come back. Actually the avalanche did not endanger us and, of course, the men in the planes knew it. From the ground we couldn't see the deep ravines that separated us from the avalanche, and stopped it. Our old friend Crevasse had opened its mouth a bit though.

At last we could have a good fire from the packing cases in which the supplies had been sent. The water the boys were preparing now wouldn't taste of oil. I announced my intentions of washing my teeth. I was going great guns, thrilling to the taste and the feel of the clean toothpaste, when Harvey let out a yell that almost sent me headfirst into a snow bank: "Look! God Almighty, look!"

My arm stopped in the middle of a jab. There, silhouetted against the western sky, like two Cherubim stood the first of our rescuers. They sighted us, lifted their arms in salute, and swept gracefully down the long high slope, their skis leaving tiny trails behind them in the snow.

Everybody was yelling his head off. The two Swiss skiers hugged us, kissed us, slapped our backs, then hugged us again. The words Gruss Gott were repeated time after time. Obviously they never expected to find us alive. Their eyes swept incredulously over us, from one to another, as though they were sure one of us must be dead.

The Swiss rescuers arrive.

As the Swiss sipped happily on the whiskey we had saved for just this occasion, the boys quickly opened some cans of stew and got them on to heat. The skiers hadn't eaten since four that morning, when they started out. It had taken them 11 hours to reach us--11 hours to traverse 15 miles. What terrain they must have traveled! No small wonder they looked haggard and fatigued. While they were eating, they told us that 80 more men were on their way!

Not long after, the rescue parties started coming, following the ski trails marked out by the first two. They came in groups of perhaps 20. Every one wore the same incredulous expressions as he greeted us. Later the Swiss doctor explained it to us. They had never seen anything like this before. They were all highly trained for just this sort of thing, but never before had arrived at the scene of a crash to find all of the plane's occupants alive. Nor could they understand how we had withstood the days and nights of extreme cold. The doctor praised Harvey highly for his splendid job in setting Folsom's leg. He told us that we would leave the next morning by sledge.

Our private mountainside, that had been so deserted, now burst into a scene of bustling activity. One group of Swiss scooped out a large area in the snow under the plane's left wing, lined it with paper, and even put a little door on it. Others sought shelter in the luggage compartment of the plane. Still others remained in the open, standing or sitting around four huge charcoal fires. The firelight played on their white wind-resist jumpers, which they wore over their uniforms pant-legs stuffed down inside their ski boots. Hoods were pulled snugly down around their faces, which shone red in the firelight.

Inside the plane, we all sat around in a stupor. Light from the fires came through the frosty windows and cast an eerie glow throughout the cabin. Sometime during that night, when I came out of a doze, I overheard Ralph talking to Matt about the plans for the morning.

L-R Mrs. Albert Snavely, Sgt. Hill, co-pilot "Mat" Mathews, Mrs. Tate, Cpt. Ralph Tate, and George Harvey.

"I'm staying behind and will follow you down."

My heart skipped a beat. I rolled over and reached out to him.