AVIATION.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 August 1928, Page 3

AVIATION.

Australian Press Assn.—United Service F URTH ER, PARTICULARS. LONDON, August 16. For two months the world’s attention was concentrated on the little tent of Bingi, painted with red stripes, lost in a wilderness of pack-ice and linked with civilisation only by wireless. This was where six and later five men lived in alternate despair and faint hope. The ico floe, on which it stood, was driven in all directions by the polar wind. It might even be driven over the ocean towards Frans

Joseph Land, which the icebreaker and aeroplane should be enabled to reach. The sea gnawed the pitiful floe below and the sun thawed it above and the men looked anxiously each morning to see how much it had shrunk, speculating how soon it would he necessary to seek another. Newspapers daily reported the events in the red-striped tent, through the medium of wireless, telegraph, telephone, reporters’ pencils and printer’s ink. Some of these reports were so changed that they would be unrecognisable' bv the occupants of the tent. They said we had gone mad and wore quarrelling, that wo had become the victims of polar psychosis, that we were dying and had grown apothetic and felt daily surer, that wo had been deserted. That is why I am writing this article. It is easy to understand the psychological •conditions of the survivors of a crash. Our first moment was full of joy and enthusiasm, because we were near the mainland and people knew our route from the pole, perhaps Wilkins was still at Green Harbour with the aeroplane. Our rescue was only a matter of hours, was wluit we said. Then we realised we wore foodless which produced reaction. Later when Mulmgren saw provisions scattered on the ice, partly sent overhoard befor otlie crash, hope revived. This life on the icefloe was alternate hope and gloom. Bingi put the wireless into operation on the day of the crash and we hoard in the afternoon the high ringing note of our •S.O.S. messages giving our ]x>sition the same evening.

Wo were tired out after fifty-five hours flight. Most of us slept soundly. Next morning Mariano directed us with complete calmness and composure, wo gathered every piece of pemmicaii lying in the snow, convinced that each might mean another day to live. AYe worked badly, unused to the jumbled floes edged with deep snow and thin ice splint cracks, necessitated jumping. Wo had to pass Pomclla’s body. His face was buried in the snow surrounded by the wreckage of the motor cabin roof, which we tried to erect to shelter him because no kindly earth was at hand, though it repeatedly recurred whether fate had been kinder to us or to him, lint .the claims of live drove away thoughts of death.