Free When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain by Giles Milton Page B

here but aluminium, plastic, ice, and rock.’
    It became clear that if they were to survive, they would have to eat their dead loved ones. It was a decision that was not taken lightly. Many of those aboard the plane were strict Roman Catholics who had serious reservations about resorting to cannibalism. But they also knew they had little choice. Unless they ate, they would die.
    Among the crash survivors was Roberto Canessa, a young medical student. He was convinced that a small party should try to hike over the mountains and seek help. This would involve a gruelling trek over some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain. They would have to climb peaks of almost 5,000 metres. They would also face extreme temperatures with no winter clothing. Worse still, they would have almost no food.
    After waiting eight weeks for the temperatures to rise a little, Roberto Canessa and two comrades, Nando Parrado and Antonio Vizintin, set off on their long march. It was 12 December.
    The lack of oxygen was their first hazard. The constant climbing left them dizzy and desperately short of breath. The cold, too, was hard to endure. They had made a makeshift sleeping bag, but the nights were nevertheless bitter.
    Parrado was the fittest; he reached the peak of the first high mountain before the other two. From the top, he got the shock of his life. He thought they’d crashed just a few miles from the Chilean border and was expecting to see some distant signs of civilization. Instead, he saw nothing but a barren vista of ice-bound mountains and valleys stretching for as far as the eye could see.
    Only now did the men realize that they’d crashed in the middle of the High Andes and were a vast distance from the nearest human habitation.
    Aware that the rescue hike would be even more arduous than anticipated, Vizintin chose to head back to the crash site. The others continued on their long trek. For day after day they crossed lonely peaks and valleys. They were freezing at night and constantly starved. But they eventually found a stream that led them out of their frozen hell. After nine days of gruelling marching along the banks of the Rio Azufre, they saw cows – a sure sign of human habitation.
    As they prepared to make a fire that evening, Canessa looked up and noticed a man on the far side of the river. He shouted and waved, trying to show that they desperately needed help. Over the roar of the water they heard him shout ‘tomorrow’.
    The two survivors slept soundly that night, aware that their ordeal was almost at an end. On the following day, the Chilean horseman brought them some bread and hurled it across the river, along with a pen and paper. They wrote down what had happened and flung it back.
    The horseman went back to raise the alarm and get help for Canessa and Parrado. Shortly afterwards they were finally rescued and given much needed shelter, food and water.
    That same day, 22 December, two helicopters set off for the crash site. Despite atrocious weather they eventually plucked the remaining survivors from the mountain. They were in a desperate state: cold, starving and suffering from extreme malnutrition.
    But sixteen of them had survived seventy-two days without food and supplies in one of the bleakest spots on earth.

 
    22
    The First Celebrity Kidnap
    At around 10 p.m. on 1 March 1932, nursemaid Betty Gow went to make a final check on twenty-month-old Charles Lindbergh, son of the famous aviator of the same name.
    To her surprise, she found that baby Charles was missing from his cot. She went straightaway to seek out his mother, Anne, to see if she had taken him.
    Anne didn’t have the baby, so Betty went to see Charles, who was in his study.
    He didn’t have the baby either and he was alarmed to hear that Charles junior was missing from his crib. He rushed up to the nursery to check for himself. Betty was right. The baby was missing.
    As he looked around the room his eyes alighted on a