Mercy Mission to McMurdo

For seven months of the year, the vast, ice-heavy continent of Antarctica is cut off from the rest of the world. Huddled in their outposts scattered along the continental shelf, scientists and technicians of a dozen different nations live a cocoonlike existence, surrounded by snow, space, mountains, glaciers and continuous night. The first historic break in their winter isolation came last week when a U.S. Navy plane landed on skis in the dark of night at the U.S. Antarctic base on McMurdo Sound, and then returned to the sunny outside world without mishap.

Orange Streamer. It was a mercy mission to save the life of Seabee Bethel McMullen of Port Hueneme, Calif., who had fallen from the second story of the McMurdo base fire station and landed so heavily that he nearly scalped himself and suffered cerebral concussion and a fractured spine. Because his legs were paralyzed, McMullen was placed in traction, and word was flashed to Washington that an immediate operation was necessary to save his life. There are no surgeons among the reduced 215-man winter staff on the icecap, and the Navy ordered a U.S. surgical team to risk the dangerous flight.

Two huge Hercules aircraft took off from Quonset Point, R.I., and reached the U.S. staging base at Christchurch, New Zealand, the following day. Flights from Christchurch to McMurdo have been made with almost monoto nous regularity for the past eight years --but only in the sunlit months from December to March. During April the light shrinks to a thin orange streamer and then flickers out, to be succeeded by continuous night and a winter season of swift blizzards and howling gales with temperatures as low as --127DEG F. Not until August does the sun return.

The flight was led by Lieut. Robert Mayer, 40, of Yardville, N.J. Before takeoff, Mayer said, "No fears. I'll just be talking to the Man upstairs and let him guide me." Hurriedly, sea men at the Christchurch base dumped mail onto the plane for the isolated Americans, who hadn't seen a letter for five months. Messages from McMurdo urged, "Heavy on the eggs," but extra fuel, and a shipment of unrequested apples and mixed fruit pressed on the lads by the Salvation Army, left no room for that request. Flying south from Christchurch, Mayer, his 15-man crew and two surgeons were soon over the deep green of the Antarctic Sea. Below were the ships of New Zealand's navy, which had quickly deployed to rescue stations in case of trouble. Then the plane approached its landing point on the bleak continent that is twice the size of the U.S. and covered with a layer of ice up to two miles thick.

Frozen Beards. At McMurdo, men had worked all day under the ghostly lunar light extending the snowy runway to 10,000 ft. On the strip, oil drums were set alight to make a landing flare path, and New Zealand's nearby Scott Base turned on all its lights as a beacon in case of trouble. "The place is lit up like a Christmas tree," exclaimed the pilot over his radio. Down to McMurdo between jagged peaks came the Hercules, as a small group of Americans on the ice breathed tensely through frozen beards. The landing was perfect, and, while ground crewmen serviced the plane, the Salvation Army's apples were off-loaded along with the mail and a helicopter carried Seabee McMullen from McMurdo's lone oneroom hospital to the airfield, four miles away.

At once, the Hercules took flight, its injured passenger safely aboard, doubtless unaware that he had been the object of what was probably the greatest medical rescue in recent years. In the hospital at Christchurch, surgeons decided against operating on McMullen and expressed fears that the fall back at McMurdo may leave him paralyzed for life.

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