Off the Ice

Lord of the drifting ice pack that crushed and sank his Soviet icebreaker Chelyuskin (TIME, Feb. 26, March 12), jungle-bearded Professor Otto Schmidt has somehow kept his crew alive, fed and sheltered for two months in the -- 20DEGF wilderness of the Arctic Ocean north of Bering Strait, while a semicircle of rescuers hovered from Cape Van Karem, Siberia, to Alaska. Last month a rescue plane swooped onto the ice pack, loaded the Chelyuskin's ten women and two babies aboard, got back safely to Cape Wellen, Siberia. Since then the ice pack, twisted by Arctic currents, hammered by icebergs, has begun piling in on itself. It heaved the camp kitchen into splinters, erupted the surface of the improvised landing field. A loose block of ice nudged the pack's edge, smashed Professor Schmidt's motorboat. The hardy professor worked overtime in a gale to keep his precarious village functioning. Last week he was running a fever, saying nothing about it, when the weather cleared and Soviet rescue planes got through. They were flown by Pilots Molokov, Slepnev and Kamanin. The professor loaded his weakest villagers aboard. Molokov could squeeze only three men in his cabin, but he had an idea. He got out his silk parachutes, laid two men on the ice. He swaddled them in all the clothes they had, then in the parachutes, wrapping them like Indian papooses. He laid out one on each under wing of his biplane, lashed them securely, flew his load of five 100 mi. across the white waste to Cape Van Karem. When Pilot Molokov came back for another load, Professor Schmidt had developed pneumonia symptoms but he refused to leave until all his villagers had gone. To the Soviet high command at Moscow, the professor is more valuable than any ten of his villagers. Direct from the Kremlin came the radio word: "Professor Schmidt will take the next rescue plane to land." Obediently the professor flew away in Pilot Slepnev's plane, riding in the cabin with his village doctor. They took the patient to Nome, whence he was to be transferred to the hospital at Fairbanks.

The plane pilots now began a strange race to make most ferry trips, rescue most men. They set their loads down at Cape Van Karem, hastily refueled and tore back to the ice pack. In one day Pilot Molokov made four trips, got 20 villagers. Pilot Kamanin made four, got 18. The population of the village dwindled to 28, to six. Finally the last six were set down at Cape Van Karem. And then the pilots went back for the dogs and such scientific instruments as were worth the haul.

While planes and dogsleds took the saved 102 on the next lap to Providence Bay, a storm of joy and admiration swept all Russia. To the score of rescue pilots and their mechanics Stalin wired: "We are proud of your victory over Nature." He awarded them Soviet Russia's top decoration, the Order of Lenin, gave them a year's pay. Feeling that this was still inadequate he created a new title, "Hero of the Soviet Union," and made them all Heroes. To the 102 who had been rescued he awarded the Order of the Red Star and half a year's pay. Then he ordered a monument in Moscow to immortalize the great Soviet epic of how 102 got on and off the ice.

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