Authors: Slavomir Rawicz
Then Zaro stood up. ‘We can’t wait all day for them to make up their minds to move. I am going to shift them.’
He went off into a pantomime of arm waving, Red Indian war dancing, bawling and shrieking. The things did not even turn. Zaro scratched around and came up with half-a-dozen pieces of ice about a
quarter-inch thick. One after another he pitched them down towards the pair, but they skimmed erratically and lost direction. One missile kicked up a little powder of snow about twenty yards from
them, but if they saw it they gave no sign. Zaro sat down again, panting.
We gave them another hour, but they seemed content to stay where they were. I got the uncomfortable feeling they were challenging us to continue our descent across their ground.
‘I think they are laughing at us,’ said Zaro.
Mister Smith stood up. ‘It occurs to me they might take it into their heads to come up and investigate
us.
It is obvious they are not afraid of us. I think we had better go while we
are safe.’
We pushed off around the rock and directly away from them. I looked back and the pair were standing still, arms swinging slightly, as though listening intently. What were they? For years they
remained a mystery to me, but since recently I have read of scientific expeditions to discover the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas and studied descriptions of the creature given by native
hillmen, I believe that on that day we may have encountered two of the animals. I do insist, however, that recent estimates of their height as about five feet must be wrong. The minimum height of a
well-grown specimen must be around seven feet.
I think that, in causing a deviation of route, they brought our final disaster upon us.
It was about midday that we set off to continue our descent. Everything went well and we made good time Our spirits were up in spite of our empty bellies. We found an almost ideal cavity among
the rocks to spend the night, were greeted by another clear, fine April morning breaking through a thin, quickly-dissipated mist.
Two hours later it happened. Zaro and I had the rope’s end belayed around our two stout sticks at the crest of a slope. I was laughing at something Zaro had said about the two strange
creatures of the day before. The slope was short and hardly steep enough to warrant the use of the rope, which lay loosely thrown out as a safety line in case Paluchowicz, crawling down backwards
on all fours, should slip into an unseen crevice. Behind him were Smith and Kolemenos, well spaced out. All three were astride the limp rope without holding it.
I saw Paluchowicz reach the end of the slope. I turned to Zaro and in that instant saw the rope jerk about the sticks and become slack again. Simultaneously there was a brief, sharp cry, such as
a man will make when he is suddenly surprised. Zaro and I swung together. It was a second or two before the awful truth struck me. Smith was there. Kolemenos was there. But Paluchowicz had
vanished. Like fools we stood there calling out his name. No one answered. The other two, with their backs to Paluchowicz, did not know what had happened. They had stopped at our first shout and
were looking up at us.
‘Come back,’ I called out to them. ‘Something has happened to Anton.’
They clambered back, I hauled in the rope and tied the loose end about my waist. ‘I am going down to see if I can find him,’ I said.
I reached the point where, from above, the slope appeared to fall gently away. Zaro took in the slack of the rope and I turned around as I had seen Paluchowicz do. The sight made me catch my
breath. The mountain yawned open as though it had been split clean open with a giant axe blow. I was looking across a twenty-yard gap, the narrowest part of the chasm which dropped sickeningly
below me. I could not see the bottom. I felt the sweat beading out on my forehead. Futilely I yelled, ‘Anton, Anton!’ I turned and went back, so shaken that I held tightly to the rope
all the way.
They all talked at once. Had I seen him? Why was I shouting? Where was he?
I told them what it was like down there, that there was no sign of Paluchowicz.
‘We will have to find him,’ said Kolemenos.
‘We will never find him,’ I told them. ‘He is gone.’
Nobody wanted to believe it. I did not want to believe it myself. With difficulty we broke a way round to a new point from which we could look down into the abyss. Then they understood. We
heaved a stone down and listened for it to strike. We heard nothing. We found a bigger stone and dropped that down and there was still no echo of the strike.
We hung around there a long time, not knowing what to do. The disaster was so sudden, so complete. Paluchowicz was with us and then he was gone, plucked away from us. I never thought he would
have to die. He seemed indestructible. Tough, toothless, devout old Sergeant Paluchowicz.
‘All this way,’ said the American. ‘All this way, to die so stupidly at the last.’ I think he felt it more than any of us. As the two older men, they had been close
together.
Kolemenos took his sack from his back and very deliberately tore it down the seams. We all stood silent. He put a stone in the corner and threw it out into space. The stone fell out and the sack
floated away, a symbolic shroud for Paluchowicz. He took his stick and with the blunted axe chopped an end off and made a cross and stuck it there, on the edge.
We climbed on down, trying to keep in sight the spot from which Paluchowicz had disappeared, vaguely hoping we might find his body. But we never found the bottom of the great cleft and we never
found Paluchowicz.
There were some quite warm days after this and we could look back and see the majesty of the mountains we had crossed. We were in terrible need of food and now that the supreme effort was over
we could barely keep ourselves moving. One day we saw a couple of long-haired wild goats, which bounded off like the wind. They need not have been afraid. We hardly had the strength to kill
anything bigger than a beetle. The country was still hilly, but there were rivers and streams and birds in trees.
We had been about eight days without food when we saw far off to the east on a sunny morning a flock of sheep with men and dogs in charge. They were too far off to be of any help to us and were
moving away from us, but our hopes rose at the sight of them. Soon we must be picked up. We pulled some green-stuff growing at the edge of a stream and tried to eat it, but it was very bitter and
our stomachs would not take it.
Exhausted, walking skeletons of men that we were, we knew now for the first time peace of mind. It was now that we lost, at last, the fear of recapture.
They came from the west, a little knot of marching men, and as they came closer I saw there were six native soldiers with an N.C.O. in charge. I wanted to wave my hands and shout, but I just
stood there with the other three watching them come. They were very smart, very clean, very fit, very military. My eyes began to fill and the tears brimmed over.
Smith stepped forward and stuck out his hand.
‘We are very glad to see you,’ he said.
I
T WAS HARD
to comprehend that this was the end of it all. I leaned my weight forward on my stick and tried to blink my
eyes clear. I felt weak and lightheaded like a man in a fever. My knees trembled with weakness and it required real effort to prevent myself slumping down on the ground. Zaro, too, was hunched over
his stick, and one of Kolemenos’s great arms was drooped lightly about his shoulders. The rough, scrubby country danced in the haze of a warm noon sun. The soldiers, halted but five yards
from us, were a compact knot of men in tropical shorts and shirts swimming in and out of my vision.
I dropped my head forward on my chest and heard the voice of Mister Smith. He talked in English, which I did not understand, but there was no mistaking the urgency in the tone. It went on for
several minutes. I flexed my knees to stop their trembling.
The American came over to us, his face smiling. ‘Gentlemen, we are safe.’ And because we remained unmoving and silent, he said again in Russian, very slowly, ‘Gentlemen, we are
safe.’
Zaro shouted and the sound startled me. He threw down his stick and yelled, his arms above his head and fingers extended. He threw his arms about the American and Smith had to hold him tight to
prevent his running over to the patrol and kissing each man individually.
‘Come away, Eugene,’ he shouted. ‘Come away from them, I have told them we are filthy with lice.’
Zaro started to laugh and jig inside the restraining arms. Then he had the American going round with him in a crazy, hopping polka, and they were both laughing and crying at the same time. I do
not remember starting to dance but there we were, the four of us, stamping round, kicking up the dust, hugging one another, laughing hysterically through the blur of tears, until we collapsed one
by one on the ground.
Kolemenos lay sprawled out repeating softly to himself the American’s words. ‘We are safe . . . we are safe . . .’
The American said, ‘We shall be able to live again.’
I thought a little about that. It sounded a wonderful thing to say. All that misery, all that sorrow, the hardship of a whole year afoot, so that we might live again.
We learned from Mister Smith that this was a patrol on exercise which would take us, if we were not too weak to march, a few miles to the nearest rough road where they had a rendezvous with a
military truck from their main unit. He had told them that we had come so far a few more miles would not kill us. With the main unit there would be real food.
The patrol produced groundsheets from their packs and rigged up a shelter from the sun. We lay beneath it resting for about an hour. My head throbbed and I felt a little sick. We were handed a
packet of cigarettes and some matches. Even more than food just then I wanted to smoke. To handle so ordinary a civilized commodity as a box of matches gave me a warm thrill. The smoke itself was
bliss. From somewhere came a big tin of peaches, ready opened, and we dug our fingers in, stuffed them in our mouths and crushed the exquisite juice and pulp from them. We drank water from Army
water-bottles and were ready to go.
It seemed to me that none of us could have recalled details of that cross-country trek. The patrol adjusted its pace to our weary shamble and it must have taken about five hours to cover ten
miles. Zaro marched with me and we buoyed ourselves up with the pretence that we were getting along at a swinging military pace.
‘The heroes’ return,’ Zaro grinned. ‘All we need now is a band to lead us.’
The altogether delightful quality of everything that happened to us at the end of the march was that it required no resolution or decision from us. There was a bumping ride by lorry at that
breakneck speed which is the hallmark of Army driving anywhere in the world. We were as thrilled as schoolboys with the trip – our first on wheels since we left the Russian train at Irkutsk
eighteen months ago. We were in process of being gathered up and looked after, told what to do, tended, and later, even cosseted. The British took over completely.
I never found out exactly where we were. At that time I did not care. Any guess I might make from perusal of maps could be hundreds of miles out. Smith must have found out, but if he ever told
me, the information did not register. I hugged to myself only the great revelation that this was India.
The young British Lieutenant who watched us ease ourselves down over the lorry tailboard was amazingly clean, spruce and well-shaven. I observed him as the American told him our story. His
expression as he stood listening in the shade of the trees at the small roadside encampment was incredulous. His eyes kept wandering from Smith to us. He was trying to understand. He put several
questions, nodding his head slowly at each answer. I thought how young he looked. Yet, he was about my own age.
The American told us, ‘He believes me now. He says he will make arrangements for us to be deloused and cleaned up here because he can’t take us back to base in this condition. He
says he will have to isolate us from his troops until this is done but that we will be well fed and cared for. He says we need not worry.’
That night we were given a hot meal that ended with stewed fruit and steamed pudding. I had my first experience of hot, strong, tinned-milk Army tea, lavishly sweetened. We were given
cigarettes. We were given first-aid treatment for our torn and bruised feet. And that night we slept secure, wrapped in Army blankets, in a tent.
The novelty, the bustle and the excitement of it all kept me going. There was no time for me to stand still and discover how near to collapse I was. Breakfast the next day absorbed my attention
– more tea, corned beef, Australian cheese and butter from tins, unbelievably white bread, tinned bacon rashers and marmalade.
The delousing was a thorough affair. We stripped off all our clothes – the sheepskin surcoats,
fufaikas,
fur waistcoats, caps, masks, padded trousers, sacks and skin gaiters –
and piled them in the open. The blankets we had slept in were thrown on top of the heap. Head and body hair was shorn off, bundled and thrust among the clothes. Over the lot they poured petrol and
suddenly it erupted into a roaring bonfire, billowing black smoke into the sunny, clear air. Everything went, consumed in flame.
Kolemenos said, ‘I hope those bloody lice die hard. They have had a good time at my expense.’
I turned to him and he to me. Then we were all exchanging looks and the laughter bubbling out of us. We had realized we were seeing one another for the first time – really seeing for the
very first time the lines, the set of the mouth, the angle of the chin and the character of the faces of men who for twelve months and four thousand miles had shared the wretched struggle for
survival. It seemed the most comical thing that had ever happened to us. I had never thought of what might lie beneath the matted hair, and neither, I suppose, had they. It was like the midnight
revelation from some fantastically-prolonged masked ball.