Life or Death

by Larry Verstraete

  Lester and his father had a SPOT beacon with them, an electronic device that broadcasts an emergency signal when activated. Around 9:00 p.m. they switched it on. Stranded, they huddled around a small camp stove in the moonless night. They waited, chilled and wet, drawing hope from the flickering flame and from each other. Had the signal reached someone?

  Rescue, if it came at all to this remote place, would be hours away. No search and rescue aircraft were based in the Arctic, only in more populated regions of southern Canada, thousands of kilometres away.

  * * *

  That night the signal reached the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) in Trenton, Ontario. Officials checked their inventory of available planes at bases across Canada, looking for one to fly north and check on the situation. They found one — a Hercules transport — sitting on the tarmac in Winnipeg.

  A brute of a plane, the Hercules had four turboprop engines, a large cargo bay and a reputation for rugged durability. It could take off and land on short, uneven runways. Fully fuelled, it could fly long distances without stopping, too.

  A quickly assembled crew hurried to the plane, threw supplies aboard and fired the engines. While most of Winnipeg slept, the plane roared down the runway. In minutes it was aloft, flying northeast, homing in on the SPOT beacon signal.

  At 3:50 a.m. the plane swept over the scene. Through the driving snow, the crew spotted the small boat and its two tiny figures. The boat was locked in ice about 10 kilometres from shore. There was no nearby place to land the plane. In these conditions, not even boats launched from Igloolik could reach them.

  The Hercules crew radioed the RCC base in Trenton that they had located the men. They knew more about their situation, about the ice surrounding them, the screaming wind and thrashing waves. The Hercules would continue to monitor the situation, but without refuelling, it couldn’t fly forever. More than a single plane would be needed to pluck the Aqqiaruqs from the swollen sea.

  * * *

  Hearing the news, emergency officials in Trenton re-evaluated the situation. Any kind of Arctic rescue pushes resources to the limit. Because of its remote location and the unpredictable weather, this one was especially tricky and dangerous. To save the two hunters, rescue crews would have to adapt to ever-shifting conditions, modifying their plans at a moment’s notice.

  While the Winnipeg Hercules continued to fly over Lester and David Aqqiaruq, RCC officials dispatched two more aircraft. From Trenton a second Hercules, this one equipped with rescue gear, relief supplies and three experienced search and rescue (SAR) technicians. From Gander, Newfoundland, a Cormorant helicopter carrying a rescue crew of five.

  A Cormorant rescue helicopter from Canada’s fleet flies over the North Atlantic.

  Time was the critical factor. The hunters had already been stranded more than twelve hours. Even travelling at top speed, the second Hercules would not arrive until sometime in the afternoon. The Cormorant would take much longer. By the time it arrived, it would be evening, almost a full day since the stranded pair had activated the beacon.

  Forecasts called for worsening weather. Things were getting worse for Lester and his father.

  * * *

  In their open boat, the Aqqiaruqs bucked ice-capped waves. They watched the Hercules thunder overhead, making one futile pass after another. Their hopes dwindled with each drone of the engines. “I thought we were going to die,” Lester said.

  Around 3:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, the second Hercules arrived to take the place of the one from Winnipeg. Unable to land nearby or to rescue the men, the crew dropped a phone to the hunters. Unfortunately, it landed far away. The Aqqiaruqs couldn’t reach it.

  On subsequent passes the Hercules dropped a radio and two rescue kits containing a camp stove, provisions and a six-person life raft. These landed closer. The hunters climbed aboard the raft, their icy fingers gripping slippery rubber. Shortly afterward the aluminum boat sank, taking all of their gear with it. Within minutes the radio died, too.

  By now hypothermia had set in, slowing their reactions. They tried lighting the camp stove, but it was too wet. There was food aboard, but they couldn’t open the packages. “Our hands were really cold,” Lester said.

  Aboard the second Hercules, the crew discussed options. Weather conditions, both winds and waves, were deteriorating. The Cormorant chopper skirting up the coast wouldn’t arrive for hours. The hunters would not survive without immediate help.

  With daylight fading, SAR techs Marco Journeyman, Maxime Lahaye-Lemay and Janick Gilbert donned parachutes. Without a working radio, communication with the plane would be lost once they hit the water. Instead, they agreed to use the personal beacon locators each one carried. One beacon activated told the flight crew that they were all okay; two meant they were in trouble.

  The Passages route was shorter … but more dangerous, too.

  In the dark, the three men leaped from the plane. One landed close to the raft and climbed aboard. A second landed farther away. Unable to fight the waves, he deployed the one-man raft he carried and climbed inside. The third SAR tech, Janick Gilbert, was blown off course by high winds.

  One beacon flashed. Then a second. To the crew aboard the Hercules, the message was clear. Five men, not just two, were now in trouble.

  * * *

  Powered by three engines, the Cormorant chopped along the Atlantic coast carrying its crew of five: Aaron Noble, the commander; Dean Vey, the co-pilot; Brad Hiscock, the flight engineer; and two search and rescue technicians, Daniel Villeneuve and Shawn Bretschneider.

  Time was evaporating. Almost twelve hours into its mission, a call came over the radio updating the men about the SAR crew in trouble. In the Cormorant, options were considered. The route that the chopper followed up the Atlantic coast was near refuelling stops, but long and meandering. Was there a faster way to reach the site?

  The answer was there, staring at the Cormorant crew from maps and electronic screens. If they abandoned the safety of the shoreline and flew directly over the broad, stormy waters of Northwestern Passages instead, they could shave off an hour, maybe more. Although the Passages route was shorter, it was more dangerous, too. But five men were at risk, bobbing in uncertain seas, and who else could come to their rescue in a place so remote?

  It took just a few minutes to decide. “We’ll be doing what we can to get these guys out of the water,” the chopper crew radioed the RCC base. “We’re proceeding direct at this time.”

  Steering northwest, the chopper flew directly over water, buffeted by strong winds and shrouded in cloud cover. At the RCC base in Trenton, officials monitored the flight. They kept in close radio contact, knowing that if the helicopter ran into difficulty, there would be little they could do. If another helicopter had to be dispatched, it would take at least twelve hours more to get there.

  At 9:46 p.m. the RCC radio crackled with good news. The Cormorant had arrived at the site. Relief was short-lived, though. Weather conditions were far worse than expected — wind gusts up to 80 kilometres per hour, waves 10 metres tall. Descending below the clouds, the Cormorant crew spotted beacon lights blinking in multiple locations. Some were clustered close together, others far away. Each one marked an object tossed by the sea. Instead of a single drop to the ice to rescue the two hunters, many more might be needed.

  The Cormorant hovered over one life raft with Hiscock manning the hoist. Paying out cable, he lowered Villeneuve and Bretschneider into the water.

  Dragging a hoist hook and a rescue “horse collar,” Villeneuve and Bretschneider swam to the life raft. Three men were inside, a SAR tech with the Aqqiaruqs, all on the brink of collapse. One after the other, the horse collar was fastened around the men. One after the other, they were hoisted into the helicopter.

  We have … one possible black.

  While Villeneuve tended to the three men, the chopper crept to a second life raft. Again Bretschneider was lowered into the sea. A second SAR tech was extracted and hauled aboard, chilled but grateful.<
br />
  Where was the third SAR tech? Multiple blinking beacons pitched on the waves. Two were attached to empty life rafts. Another was attached to a floating helmet. Then the crew spotted a glint in the dark … light reflecting off the ice, they thought. But when the helicopter zeroed in for a closer look, they saw Janick Gilbert bobbing on the waves. He’d been in the water for five hours.

  Again Bretschneider was lowered. Gilbert was unconscious and as Bretschneider wrestled with the horse collar, the heavy hoist hook struck his head. Dazed, he still managed to hook Gilbert’s body to the hoist. Then he attached himself.

  With both men weighted on the line, Hiscock struggled to haul them aboard. The two other SAR techs, warmed now and partly recovered, lent a hand.

  “We have all three SAR techs on board,” the chopper crew radioed RCC Trenton as it headed to Igloolik. “We have … one possible black. We’re going to need an ambulance immediately at the airport.”

  In the language of rescue, “black” is code. It means that a victim — Janick Gilbert, in this case — is in mortal danger, near death and in need of immediate medical attention.

  At the Igloolik hospital, doctors treated the men. Journeyman and Lahaye-Lemay, the two rescued SAR techs, recovered. So, too, did Lester and David Aqqiaruq, who suffered from exposure and frostbite. Unfortunately, the third SAR tech, Janick Gilbert, did not. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, he was declared dead shortly after the helicopter arrived.

  In 2012 the five-man crew of the Cormorant helicopter was selected for a special honour. To mark the men’s heroic actions, they were chosen as the winners of the 2012 Cormorant Trophy for Helicopter Rescue.

  10.

  BEHIND THE BRICK WALL

  Few knew about the well-kept secret or the lives it protected.

  From the outside, the two-and-a-half-storey building standing at 19 Barteljorisstraat in the Harlem section of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, looked much like its neighbours. It was old and rambling, a jumble of rooms and hollow spaces with a watch shop on the main floor and living quarters above. The street was lined with other businesses, and the watch shop was just one more. Or so it seemed. Few knew about the dangerous mission operating there, the secrets inside or the small bedroom at the top of the staircase — Corrie ten Boom’s bedroom — which, like the rest of the house, seemed so normal, but wasn’t.

  During World War II, when the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany, forty-eight-year-old Corrie ten Boom, her sister Bessie and their father Caspar lived and worked at the building. To outsiders they appeared to be a quiet family, deeply religious, devoted to each other and hardly the troublemaking kind.

  One day in 1941, German soldiers stormed the fur shop across the street, tossing clothes and personal items out the window and evicting its Jewish owner. Corrie and Bessie ten Boom ran to help their neighbour. They scooped up his belongings and brought him home. For the rest of the day, the ten Booms hid the man, waiting until darkness for the Dutch Resistance to smuggle him out.

  It was a defiant act, born of compassion, and the beginning of something remarkable. Helping Jews was against the law, and hiding them an act punishable by death. Yet for Corrie ten Boom and her family, helping others was a way of life. Word of their kindness spread, and soon their house became a bustling place — a safe harbour for Jews and other refugees, and a centre for the Dutch Resistance.

  During World War II, many Dutch worked in the underground Resistance, endangering their lives trying to bring an end to the German occupation. The Gestapo searched homes, relentlessly seeking out those loyal to the Resistance.

  German police round up Jews in Amsterdam in February 1941.

  Despite the danger, the ten Booms welcomed refugees and kept them hidden until safer quarters could be found. With so many mouths to feed and with so many strangers filtering through the Beje — Corrie ten Boom’s nickname for the ten Boom home — keeping the operation secret from the Gestapo was difficult. A raid on the Beje was a strong possibility. Something had to be done.

  After studying the configuration of rooms in the house, an architect with the Dutch Resistance, a man with the code name Mr. Smit, offered a suggestion.

  “This is it,” he said to Corrie ten Boom when he entered her small bedroom. It was the highest room in the house, the one farthest from the front door. Mr. Smit drew a line on the floor two paces from the back wall. “This is where the false wall will go.”

  In the six days that followed, a steady stream of “customers” flowed in and out of the Beje. They carried cleverly disguised items — hammers, trowels, bricks or mortar — hidden in briefcases, boxes or rolled-up newspapers. Working quietly and unnoticed, the Resistance team constructed a brick wall across the bedroom to create a secret room — a hiding place for “guests” should the Gestapo come calling.

  The room was tiny, barely the size of a closet. Standing shoulder to shoulder, about a half-dozen people could hide there. To supply oxygen to the room, workers rigged up a ventilation system. They roughed up the brick on the outside to make the new wall look as old as others in the house, and installed a sagging bookcase in front. A sliding panel, 60 centimetres by 60 centimetres in the left-hand corner of the bookcase beneath the bottom shelf, became a hidden door. The room was equipped with emergency supplies — a jug of water, some hardtack biscuits, a mattress on the floor. Because it was constructed out of brick, the wall absorbed sounds and hid the hollowness behind.

  Corrie ten Boom’s bedroom, showing the false wall, bookshelf and hiding place.

  “The Gestapo could search for a year,” Mr. Smit said proudly of the room. “They’ll never find this one.”

  Practice drills were held. A buzzer was installed at the top of the stairs, with push buttons to activate it situated at critical points around the house. When the buzzer sounded, guests scurried, picking up clothes, hiding cups and plates, and turning over mattresses to make sure that there was no “warm spot” for the Gestapo to feel. They crawled through the small opening in the bookcase with their belongings, closed the sliding panel and sandwiched their bodies inside. With enough practice, the whole process took little more than a minute.

  Meanwhile, the ten Boom family practised routines of their own. When the buzzer sounded, they threw a tablecloth over a table, set dishes in place and casually sat down, giving the impression that they were just having tea. They also rehearsed the answers they might give if questioned by the Gestapo.

  For a year and a half, the ten Booms harboured refugees and lived dangerous double lives while Nazi security tightened. “Ostensibly we were still an elderly watchmaker living with his two spinster daughters above his tiny shop,” Corrie ten Boom wrote later. “In actuality, the Beje was the centre of an underground ring that spread now to the farthest corners of Holland. Here daily came dozens of workers, reports, appeals. Sooner or later we were going to make a mistake.”

  The panel was slid into place just moments before a stranger burst into the room.

  One Wednesday morning in February 1944, while Corrie ten Boom was ill with the flu, a stranger showed up at the house. The man claimed that he and his wife had been hiding Jews, but now his wife had been arrested.

  “I need six hundred guilders,” he told Corrie ten Boom. “I am told that you have certain contacts …”

  The man spoke Dutch. He seemed sincere, but was he working for the Gestapo?

  Despite her uneasiness, Corrie ten Boom felt compelled to help. “Come back in half an hour,” she told him. “I’ll have the money.”

  Minutes later the buzzer sounded, warning that infiltrators had entered the Beje. Six Jewish “guests” piled into the secret room. The panel was slid into place just moments before a stranger burst into the room, shouting, “So you are the ringleader! Now tell me where you are hiding the Jews.”

  Other men — some Gestapo, others Dutch supporters of the Nazi movement — swarmed through the Beje. They rounded up the family and a few legitimate visitors who happened to be there, corralle
d them in the living room and drilled them with questions.

  “Where are the Jews?” one asked. “Where is the secret room?” He hit Corrie ten Boom repeatedly when she would not answer.

  The men unsuccessfully searched the house, toppling furniture and smashing cupboards. If there was a secret room, they could not find it. Discouraged, but not willing to give up, the officer in charge stationed a guard outside the house. Sooner or later the “guests” would have to come out.

  The ten Booms were arrested. They were questioned and beaten. The following day they were sent to a prison near Hague, a town 40 kilometres away. Separated from her family and confined to a cell of her own, Corrie ten Boom endured days of questioning and gave the answers she’d practised, never revealing information about the secret room or the people hiding there.

  One day a guard threw a parcel into her cell. She found a few biscuits inside, a towel, needle and thread, and an envelope containing a note from her married sister, Nollie. The stamp on the envelope was crooked. Suspicious, Corrie ten Boom tore off the stamp to discover a tiny scrawled message underneath: All the watches left in the cupboard are safe, it said. The message was code for The Jews in the room have escaped.

  For the remainder of the war, Corrie ten Boom was confined to prison cells and detainment centres in Holland and Germany. Her sister Bessie died. So did her father. But despite the hardships and close calls, Corrie ten Boom never revealed the information the Gestapo wanted.

  After the war, Corrie ten Boom co-wrote The Hiding Place, a book about the secret room and her wartime experiences. Inspired by her faith, she toured various countries, spreading messages of forgiveness and renewal, until her death in 1983 at the age of 91.

  Today the house at 19 Barteljorisstraat is a museum visited often by tourists. They come to the Beje to stand in the small bedroom at the highest point in the house, to see for themselves the brick wall and the secret panel, and to marvel at what Corrie ten Boom did while Nazi soldiers patrolled the street outside.