THE ALPS: To Woo a Termagant

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The guides carried the boys to the helicopter, wrapped them in sleeping bags and turned their attention to the pilots. One, an air-force major, had no climbing equipment. The other, a sergeant copilot, was injured and suffering from shock. There was no hope of getting everybody up to the shelter hut that stood some 500 meters above. The guides decided to leave the boys and drag the airmen up as best they could, but in the attempt the injured sergeant slipped into a Crevasse and hung there unconscious. Saving his life cost the others all the strength they had left. In answer to radio calls for help, the air force dropped more guides on the mountain, but their problem was soon less a matter of rescue of the two climbers than of simple survival for themselves.

In the Hut. By now eight in all, the rescue party had to face a fearful decision: whether to try to drag or carry the half-dead boys up the slopes to the refuge hut or to save themselves by making the ascent alone. They chose to leave the boys behind. Day by day the storms raged about their hut; then at last the angry skies cleared, and two more helicopters whirred over the mountain. In three hazardous trips to the Grand Plateau, 13,126 ft. up on the mountain, the helicopters brought down the stranded men, but the pilot decided that he dare not try to land near the two boys who still lay, possibly still alive, abandoned in the wreck of the first helicopter. "I have decided," the air-force chief of rescue operations announced at last, "to cease operations. I cannot take the responsibility of risking more lives."

"Too many people," agreed the father of Jean Vincendon, "have risked their lives already."