That had occurred to Stephen and he was now appalled by the possible magnitude of the task. He stared at the flailing tree tops and shook his head in dismay. Then he thought about their navigation. “Down to the left I reckon,” he shouted back.
Graham nodded and they turned and began picking their way along the jumble of rocks which formed the knife-edged North-South crest line. It was hard going as the bushes were all tough and the small twisted trees were prickly and difficult to push through. There was a lot of climbing up and down wet rocks.
After ten minutes Stephen stopped. He crouched in the lee of a large boulder and waited for Graham to join him. “I don’t think we should go down any further,” he said.
“No. We will only have to climb back up,” Graham agreed.
“I wish this bloody rain would stop,” Stephen added. He was getting a headache from squinting and peering over or through his wet glasses. He paused to have a drink, aware that he was shivering, yet sweating at the same time. As he replaced his waterbottle the wind did ease and the heavy rain passed in a grey wall.
Stephen led the way out into the rain, to climb back up the ridge on the windward side. That was worse as they were now facing into the wind. By now he was sick with worry and fearful that they would not find anything. He was also assailed by a niggling doubt that it might all have been for nothing, that he might have imagined the crash. Feeling really low and depressed he led the way out onto the windy slope and began crawling up, staring out into the swirling cloud that hid all but the area within ten to twenty metres.
Twenty minutes later he was chilled to the bone and almost ready to drop. His spirits had dropped to near zero and he was uncomfortably aware that Graham was not really looking as keenly anymore. ‘He thinks I’ve led him up here on a wild goose chase,’ he thought miserably.
Suddenly Stephen stopped, stood rigid, and rubbed at his wet glasses. Fifty metres to his left front the top of a large tree which stuck up higher than the crest line had several broken branches on it. His heart seemed to freeze in awful dread. ‘Oh no!’ he thought ‘I wish it was all a mistake.’ But there was no mistake. The tree trunk was deeply gashed and the broken branches showed fresh scars. Stephen felt his face set in grim mask. He looked around and caught Graham’s eye, then pointed.
CHAPTER 4
BEYOND BELIEF
Stephen felt his stomach contract and turn over as he realised he was staring at the site of a plane crash. He had seen them often enough on the TV news but the reality was altogether different. Trembling with fear and deep concern he began making his way across the steep mountainside towards the area. All his deepest fears of death and dying began to well up and he had to force himself to go on.
He rarely prayed, but he did now. ‘Please God, may they be alive.’
Beyond the tree that he had noted he now saw a second tree, the thickness of a telegraph pole, which had obviously been struck and snapped off by some terrific impact. The tree was lying over at a 45 degree angle and a great scar on the side facing him showed where the aircraft had struck it.
Beyond that, in the undergrowth, something white showed. Stephen paused to gulp air and to fight down growing panic. ‘I don’t want to see any dead people,’ he told himself. ‘Please God, may there not be any dead people!’
Graham was past him now, cutting a track with his secateurs. Stephen followed, feeling as though some dreadful invisible force was drawing him to an inevitable fate. He saw some pieces of aluminium scattered in the jungle, then noted that all the leaves on the tree beyond the one knocked over had an oily black colouring and were withered.
“Fire!” he muttered. “There’s been a fire.”
There was no sign of one now, not even a wisp of smoke. Graham stopped and looked up, his face grim. “You were right. You saw a flash. It must have exploded on impact.”
Stephen could only nod. He felt so choked up he was unable to speak. With an effort he tore his eyes away from the scorch marks and found he was staring at part of the aircraft’s wing. The wing was bent in half so that both the red upper side and white lower side could be clearly seen. ‘Some sort of high wing monoplane,’ his mind registered. ‘A Cessna or something like that.’
Near the tip of the wing was an area of torn and twisted metal. Graham pointed to it and said, “Looks like he hit that tree back there with his wing tip and then spun in.”
Stephen nodded, then found he was looking at a shiny white object at the base of the big, singed tree. Curious, because it did not have the silvery metallic sheen of aluminium, he went closer, then recoiled in horror as he realised what he was looking at. It was the top of a person’s skull. Particles of skin and hair still adhered to one side of it.
Graham joined him and gasped in shock. “Bloody hell! They must have really hit hard!” he cried.
Stephen stared in grisly fascination, then his stomach heaved and he spewed. His senses reeled and he staggered to another tree and leaned on it as a wave of dizziness swept over him. Then he gagged and snatched his hand away. The tree was covered in reddish slime and what could only be a human hand was lying among the leaves at its base, all tangled into what was the remains of a pale blue shirt.
“Oh God!” Stephen cried. He vomited again and clung to a vine until the wave of dizziness passed.
Graham moved to join him and also stared in horror, then pointed up. “Holy hell!” he cried. “This is unbelievable!”
Stephen did not want to look, but found his eyes drawn upwards by sheer ghoulish fascination. Then horror piled on horror. Sticking out of the tree were what could only be some ribs. Tattered pieces of flesh still clung to them. The bones had been driven deep into the wood by the impact of the crash. Nearby, ribbons of purplish intestines festooned the wait-a-while and undergrowth.
Stephen was stunned. It was worse than his worst ever nightmare, and he knew that he would now be condemned to many, many more. ‘I’ll never be able to sleep soundly again!’ he thought in dismay.
The whole area was the same. The plane had obviously struck the first tree with its starboard wing tip and spun, to smash into the second tree side on.
“Must have hit the cabin,” Graham surmised. “There’s the engine and propeller up the hill there and what’s left of the fuselage and tail down there to the left.”
Stephen stared around in a state close to collapse. The jungle was littered with pieces of aluminium, smashed and torn items of luggage, machine parts and human remains.
Graham moved along the slope to stare down at part of a torn and shredded lower torso, still encased in brown pants. “I don’t think we will be doing much First Aid,” he said sadly.
“God this is awful!” Stephen cried. He took off his glasses and began trying to rub them clean with his wet handkerchief. A fit of trembling shook him and he knew he was weeping. Rain began to pour down again.
“We’d better look around anyway,” Graham said. “Just in case someone did survive.”
Stephen could only nod. He was too ill to speak, and also perversely irritated that Graham just looked a bit pale and grim while he knew he must be looking very weak. He pointed on along the slope where he could see some more wreckage. Graham turned and began climbing up towards where the burnt engine lay half buried in the hill slope from the force of the crash.
The object, when Stephen reached it, turned out to be a briefcase which had burst open. Beside it lay a map. The rain had reduced it to a soggy mess. Nearby were more luggage and some parcels wrapped in brown paper and with stamps on them. He picked one up and tried to read the address but his glasses were too smudged. His pack snagging on some wait-a-while caused him to come to a decision. He went a few more paces and shrugged the pack off and then dropped his webbing. Next he swilled out his mouth using water from one of his waterbottles. Then he pulled out his shelter and tied two corners up. Crouching under this tiny shelter he carefully took out his toilet paper and cleaned his glasses.
Stephen wasn’t sure why he did t
his, not consciously wanting to see the horrors behind him any better. Carefully he put his toilet paper back in its plastic bag and slipped that into his trouser map pocket, then put on his hat and glasses again. With a deep breath, dreading the worst, he looked out from under the piece of shelter into the gloom of the jungle further along the hillside.
A black shape against a tree twenty metres further on attracted his attention. ‘That looks like a wing,’ he thought. That puzzled him a bit as he wondered how it could have travelled fifty metres through thick rain forest. He made his way slowly along the steep side of the slope to the object. As he got closer his curiosity was aroused even more. The thing was obviously an aircraft wing, but it was plainly not from the crash just behind him. The wing was black with age and had a small tree growing up through it. It was leaning up against a tree and had vines growing around it. The bottom end was half buried in a pile of leaf litter and deadfall.
Then the truth struck Stephen and he stopped and gaped. “This is a different plane crash, a much older one!”
Still marvelling at the coincidence of two plane crashes on the one mountain he moved closer and bent down to look underneath. The underside of the wing had been sheltered from the weather and still showed traces of pale blue paint as well as markings. Stephen crouched to study the markings, his mind stunned by what he was looking at. It was like looking at an old photograph. There, before his eyes, were markings he had only ever seen in photos in history books, but which he instantly recognized:- the black cross, edged with white, of Germany.
“German!” he cried, quite unable to believe his eyes. “And not modern German either.” With trembling fingers he reached forward to touch the cold metal and flaking paint. It was so unbelievable that he wondered if he was going mad. Through his mind flashed pictures of German markings: the white-edged, black Teutonic cross worn by German aircraft during World War 1 and since the latter part of the Twentieth Century. But this was the square cross of the Nazi 3rd Reich, the markings worn during World War 2.
“But....but! But what is it doing here?” Stephen wondered. World War 2 had been over half a century earlier and as far as he knew no German aircraft had ever come near Australia. He went through the types of British, American and Japanese aircraft he knew had been flown over North Queensland during that time. He had even helped recover some of their wrecks for the Mareeba Aircraft Museum, so was reasonably familiar with them. But this! German! How?
Unable to believe his eyes he studied the wing and its markings more carefully, then moved out from under it and looked around. Almost at once he saw the twisted shape of a metal propeller and what had to be the air-cooling on one of the cylinders of a radial engine. This was almost buried in leaf mould and dirt but when Stephen made his way over to it he saw the heads of two more cylinders just visible in the deadfall.
“A crashed plane alright,” he muttered, looking around to see where it had come in. There was no sign. The jungle canopy was complete, had obviously regrown. Then his eyes noted that what he had at first thought was a moss-covered log lying across some rocks was in fact more of the wreck. As he made his way along the slope to it he saw that it was part of the fuselage.
When Stephen got there he gasped in shock and stood transfixed in horror. The fuselage was upside down, its upper sides all covered with leaves, dirt and vines, but the underside was the cockpit. Staring at him through the lichen mottled Perspex were the eyeless sockets of a skull!
For nearly a minute Stephen was quiet unable to move as wave after wave of terror gripped him. Icy fingers of fear squeezed his neck and skull. His hair stood on end and he began gasping as though he had run a race. Somehow he found it even more terrifying than the recent horror nearby.
At last he managed to gasp air. “Talk about ghosts from the past!” he muttered. With an effort of willpower he made himself look carefully, even though every instinct was to run. Standing there in the gloom of the rainforest amid the rain and clouds he felt very lonely and fragile.
The Perspex canopy was broken in places and much of it was covered with moss, slime and lichen. Stephen knelt to peer in. Then he saw the second skeleton. Except it wasn’t a skeleton. It was a pile of brown-green bones and part of a skull: the jaw and some teeth. A few fragments of what might have been skin or leather clothing still clung to it. A small tree had grown up through the ribs. Among the bones was a small metal plate and chain.
The sight of that gave Stephen another numbing shock. “His identity disc!” he said, talking to himself to stop from gibbering in fear. This was the remains of a man; a man with a name. The name was engraved on the steel plate but it was too soiled and corroded for Stephen to make out. He reached in to get it, then paused as a spasm of superstitious dread gripped him. ‘Don’t desecrate the dead,’ he thought.
Instead he moved his hand to pick up a small circular object lying on the metal inside of the cockpit. ‘A coin?’ he wondered, puzzled by its weight. He rubbed at the moss, then gasped in amazement. It was a gold coin! A British Sovereign he noted as he turned it over.
Astonished at his find Stephen knelt and looked closer. He saw a dozen more of the coins, lying amid a bundle of soggy black material and several rectangular lumps. He picked one up and was surprised at its weight. To satisfy his curiosity he scratched the slime off.
“Gold? Now why is that here?” he wondered, seeing several more of the ingots. Next he noted a D-shaped brass padlock with a dozen small brass eyelets threaded onto it. Some of the eyelets still had threads of fibre embedded in them. After a moments thought the answer came to Stephen. ‘This must have been a mail bag, one of those ones with a padlock.’ He had seen them at country Post Offices.
Carefully extracting the coins and ingots he laid them out on the leafmould. Then he moved back along the wreck. Just behind the rear cockpit opening was what could only be the butt of a machine gun. That got him excited but the thing was almost completely buried in the soil and leaves and he was unable to budge it. While attempting to do so he slipped and fell against the side of the fuselage. The corroded and rotten aluminium crumbled and he was able to see inside the rear section of the fuselage.
A pungent odour told him that various jungle creatures had been nesting in the thing. Tree roots grew through from the top and sides and there was a mush of black slime which could have been anything. Just protruding from the slime was a squarish shape with a handle.
‘That looks like a briefcase or suitcase,’ he thought. Gingerly he reached in through a broken panel. As gently as he could he brushed dirt and leaves off it. It was a briefcase, and it still had a handle. Some careful prodding elicited the information that the briefcase was made of aluminium or some similar metal. Some more careful digging extracted the case.
Very carefully Stephen examined the case. It was certainly of all metal construction and was still intact. As he realised this Stephen became quite excited. “It might have the code books or something in it,” he muttered.
He ran his fingers gently around the join between the lid and bottom and found it was a seal of what may once have been rubber but was now a sticky black mess. At that his pulses raced. “This might have documents in it which are still legible,” he muttered. As rain was again pattering on the leaves he made no attempt to open the case but carried it carefully over to his shelter and placed it underneath.
He spent another ten minutes foraging around the wreckage before he was interrupted by Graham shouting. Stephen looked up, his mind crowded with his new discoveries. “What is it?” he yelled back.
“Where are you?” Graham called from somewhere up in the jungle.
“Here. Come and look at what I’ve found.”
“What is it?” Graham called back.
“You come and look,” Stephen answered, now fired by the thrill of his discovery.
Graham came slithering down the steep slope, calling out and being guided by Stephen’s answers. As he got closer he called out, “Did you find any people?”
> “Only two more dead ones,” Stephen replied.
“That’s a pity,” Graham replied as he arrived panting beside him. “Where are they?”
“Here. Look at this,” Stephen said, gesturing towards the moss-covered fuselage.
Graham looked, then recoiled in shock. “Good God! What? What the hell? Who are they?”
Stephen was gratified by Graham’s reaction and now made the most of it. “Germans. They were killed in World War Two.”
“Germans!” Graham cried incredulously. “How do you know?”
Stephen led Graham over to the wing and pointed at the faded markings on the underside. Graham crawled under and stared at them wide-eyed. “You are right. This is unbelievable!” he cried.
“What else could it be?” Stephen asked.
“Oh it’s German alright,” Graham agreed. He pointed to some tiny lettering engraved on a metal plate. He stood up. “How do you think it got here?”
“From a ship I suppose,” Stephen replied.
“Have to be,” Graham agreed. “One of those raiders like the Graf Spee.”
“She was a ‘pocket’ battleship. Did any of them come near Australia?” Stephen replied.
Graham shook his head. “Not sure. Don’t think so. We can easily check. Holy mackerel Steve, this is the find of the year!”
Stephen nodded, now gripped by mounting excitement. “It will certainly be news.”
“News! Every aviation buff in the world will want to see it,” Graham prophesied.
“Your camera, have you got it?” Stephen asked.
“In my basic pouch. I left my webbing and pack up on the crest. I’ll just go and get it,” Graham replied. He went scrambling off up the slope. Stephen went back to the wreck and continued searching. By the time Graham came back he had two more significant discoveries to show him. One was the tailplane. This lay fifty metres away, wedged in some rocks. Most of the aluminium covering had gone, exposing the metal framework inside, but just visible on one side was the faded outline of the Swastika.
Secret in the Clouds Page 4
