Ashbury College - Ashburian Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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28 THE ASHBURIAN At this point Capt. Custer's address came to a conclusion and Capt. Stirling-Hamilton continued. His part of the story was to tell how the expedition fended for themselves while stranded. lYhen they had reached Hrm ground above the muskeg they pro- ceeded to evacuate such equipment as was in the aircraft. XYhen this was done, Capt. Custer called a conference to take stock of their provisions. They found that they had the following on hand: 16 sand- wiches, a number of tins of fruit juice, and some chocolate bars. As it iappened, there was on board a United States army sergeant with thirty years' service. He was, as he thought, going home on furlough. He had some jam, some chocolates, and some emergency tablets. In the way of ammunition they had a .zz rifle with 48 rounds, and three US. service pistols with 5o rounds. They had no axe. There were seven parachutes on hand, these they used to make tents and shelters. At this qoint it was still showering, as it had been since they landed. Accord- ingly they put their equipment under one of the parachute tents they wad rigged up. They were short of clothes, but it was on two scores principally that the party was worried. The first was their shortage of ammo , the second was approach of cold weather. This they expected in 4 to 6 weeks and to have been caught in a merciless northern winter might have meant starvation and death for all of them. They decided to remain where they were for 5 days in hope of the appearance of a rescue 'plane, and if, at the end of that time, no help was in sight, they would make the long march to civilization. ln the meantime they set about making a better camp. The engin- eer sergeant made a shelter out of pine boughs and a parachute, but unfortunately the boughs touched the cloth, and the rain poured through. The sapper Hxed this by lifting the cloth out of contact with the boughs. .- After this they set out to look for food. The first things they found were blueberries. They also found some large toadstools, but there was immediately some doubt as to their edibility. One of the crew eventu- ally persuaded the others that a sure-fire test would be to boil the toad- stools together with a quarter. If the quarter turned black, then the fungus was poison. The quarter did not turn black, so the sponsor ate some of the toadstools, All night the others kept a wary eye on him, ready to man the stomach pump. But, by the next day the man was still well, so everyone had some. They were found to be tasteless and leathery, and the situation was made worse by a lack of salt. The .zz provided them with birds and squirrels, but the meat was only sufficient to make soup. At this point Capt. Custer went off to find the other lake which they had sighted from the air, and on his return he found a porcupine. This animal kept the Hve of them going for three days.

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THE ASHBURI.-IN U The speakers were introduced by Xlr. Glass. lle said that he was rather embarrassed introducing such senior officers as thev, with refer- ence to his former rank of lieutenant, and so he preferred to intro- duce them as just two loyal fathers of Ashburians. Un a more serious note, Mr. Glass said that he considered their adventure would be of great interest to us all, and proceeded to introduce Capt. Custer. Capt. Custer was to tell us how it happened that they had to land on the lake. The following is approximately the text of his speech. They left Churchill at 8.30 on the first morning of their trip. The weather was overcast, and they checked the magnetic compass as they were taking off. Though Capt. Custer was in favour of fiying close to the ground, the other pilot who was a Pacific veteran with a good deal of experience thought it would be a good idea to Hy over the clouds, especially since the meteorologist or rain-maker had predicted clear fiying after 40 minutes of bad weather. Unfortunately they hit snow, so that the radio became iced up, and the gyro went bad. Not realizing this, however, they continued to steer their twin-engined Beechcraft by the gyro. Now, in the forward baggage compartment, there had been loaded an iron box, and this shifted, fouling the compass. Capt. Custer later calculated that this compass had been 70D ofif. It appears that they had held their course for the first IO minutes after leaving Churchill, but that then on climbing over the clouds, their instruments had set them off, so that they kept fiying westward into the storm front. Realizing the error, they turned south, actually assum- ing their original course of 2100. They did this in hopes of reaching The Pas, because the ceiling there was better than at Churchill on account of the storm, being 6000-8000 feet at The Pas, but only 500 feet at Churchill. It turned out that they came out over Reindeer Lake. as they later identified it. Near this lake there are magnetic ore deposits. so that their compass needle spun round and round, and was of no use to them. By now they had only one hour's gas left, so they held a council to decide upon their next move. They decided to steer what they calculated to be west, and to send an SOS. They also decided to land While they still had gas and altitude, because power landings are safer than those without power. Next, the Petty Cflicer on board got rid of the door by detaching and dropping it. Then they came down on the lake fthere were two. this being the smallerj with their wheels up, Cllt the switches. and landed smoothly. They stepped out in muskeg, then surveyed their situation, and decided that instead of heading east across the muskeg to the big lake as they had originally intended, that they should go west instead to higher, firmer ground. This was a struggle of some 300 yards across the muskeg, where they sank knee-deep at each step. The first thing they did on reaching solid ground was to offer a prayer of thanks to God for their safe landing.

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THE ASHBURIAN ju They had agreed to wait five good Hying days for help, and then start walking. They had, however, three davs of bad weather in be- tween, so that they were in camp for a week. By then iuore food was needed, so a party was organized, and went to -the big lake in search of game. They found some spruce grouse. There were also some deer tracks, but no sign of the deer. However, they got eight or nine birds. Then the party decided to attract attention with smoke hres. Ac- cordingly they found a fine straight tree, heaped brushwood around it. and lit a fire. The flames roared up the tree and went Ullf. Though they tried this on other occasions, they met with little success. T i Un the eighth day, they started to walk out. They made packs carrying their provisions, but these proved too heavy, and had to be lightened. For the first day on the march they had the good luck to be walking through burnt out forest. On that day thev covered fifteen miles, ten of them in the right direction. All the time' they kept going south and west. The first night was spent under an improvised parachute shelter. Every night they built a large fire to keep themselves warm and the animals away. The second day they ran into fallen timber, piled four or five feet high, and this impeded them to such an extent that they were only able to progress at about one mile an hour. This lasted for two days. On the third night they found the meat was half bad. The wet and cold had spoiled it, and only two good grouse remained. The next day as they were sitting by a lake they saw a Lancaster steering north. They figured that it Hew over their aircraft, and sighted it. lYhen the Lancaster sighted the 'plane they radioed for a Hying boat. The flying boat went to the scene, and found the arrow made out of a torn parachute which the party had left behind. The pilot followed its direction, and picked up the trail from other similar arrows they had laid out. Realizing that rescue was at hand the party lit as big a fire as they could. The flying boat saw it, and dropped a message. The note was to the effect that the lake that they were by was too small to land on, and would they mind just nipping over to the next lake, which was bigger. Now this lake was four miles away, four miles of fallen timber. However, provided an incentive the group did the distance in record time. They were very pleased to see the crew that had come out to meet them. They spent that night on the 'plane. After Capt. Stirling-Hamilton had thus explained the rescue to a breathless audience, Capt. Custer got up once again, to philosophize on the expedition. He told us that at one point someone had said, Oh for a dog to hunt with! to which some joker replied, lf we had a dog we couldn't use him for hunting, we'd eat him!