They phoned me very early in the morning to say that three young boy scouts were overdue on Table Mountain. Apparently, they had left Tafelberg road the previous afternoon to walk over the Saddle and to rendezvous with the mother of one of them at Rhodes Memorial. When they failed to arrive before dark, a token search had been made by the scouts, but they had suspended it when they realised that conditions were getting too dangerous. The Mountain Club had arranged to get a party into the field at first light.
We set out in very favourable conditions, such as one would expect near midsummer. The first objective was to retrace their route. As we were descending on the Rhodes Memorial side, we received a radio message. One of the boys, aged 14, had arrived at the shop at Rhodes Memorial and reported that two of his friends had fallen and were dead. We accelerated and got to the memorial in a rush, hoping that he might be mistaken about their being dead.
This was the story he told.
They had set out around three o’clock, planning to get to Rhodes Memorial well before dark. Unfortunately, the leader took a wrong turn at the top and led them along a traverse above the faces to the left of the Saddle. Suddenly, he slipped over the edge, falling about thirty metres. The second member of the party started to panic and in his frantic efforts to get down to help, fell from the same place, landing next to the leader. The survivor then stopped to think the problem through, traversed a long way to the left, and descended safely to the level where his friends had landed. He then traversed back to where they were lying. He said that the moment he saw them, he was convinced that they were both dead, but he had recently completed a First Aid course and knew that he could only legally assume death in the event of decapitation, or if putrefaction had set in. Since neither was the case, he ensured that both bodies had patent airways and put them in the recovery position, fastening them with cords to ensure that they would not fall any further. At this stage, he realized that it was too dark for him to descend safely, so he settled down to wait out the night. During the night, unable to sleep, he collected water from a drip nearby and prepared a stove so that he would be able to offer tea to the rescuers whom he hoped would come soon.
At first light, he started climbing down, heading for the planned rendezvous. Since—at this stage—the search headquarters was on Tafelberg Road (on the other side of the mountain), there was no one there to meet him. As soon as someone arrived to open the shop, he asked them to contact the Mountain Club Rescue Team.
A party set out immediately, back up the mountain, with the survivor to guide them. I was asked to wait to be picked up by a helicopter in order to evacuate the two victims, whom we still hoped might be alive. While I was waiting, I was joined by the father of one of the victims. I tried to give him some encouragement, saying that I had seen many unconscious people whom the uninitiated had thought were dead, and that when people are panicking they often make wrong observations. Although under extreme stress, he remained very calm. I didn’t think of it at the time, but he was probably praying.
Suddenly my radio came to life. It was the party which had gone up with the survivor.
“Kevin, I’m sorry, but we have two deltas.”
Delta was a euphemistic term that we used on the radios to refer to D.O.A.—Dead on Arrival.
“Rick, please confirm, two deltas.”
“Yes Kevin, I’m afraid neither of them made it through the night.”
I glanced at the father and he still seemed quite calm. I said to him: “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” he replied, “Something about deltas. What’s that mean?”
I wished I could just run away.
“I’m afraid it means that you aren’t going to see your son again on this earth.”
He seemed to struggle to grasp what I was saying and finally replied: “So, he’s dead then. What do you think I should do?”
At this stage of my life, although a fairly regular churchgoer, the only claim I made to being a Christian was in order to identify that I was not Jewish or Muslim. However, God can work just as well through unbelievers as He can through His people. I said: “Why don’t you pray?” Unfortunately, I was in no way equipped to offer to pray with him: In fact, I wasn’t all that sure that God answered prayers. But I hugged him tightly, partly to comfort him and partly to make sure that neither he nor my fellow-rescuers could see that I was crying as much as he was. He prayed quietly, and it seemed to comfort him. I only found out years later (when I was at Bible school and met someone who had known him) that he was a devout Christian.
When we had finally finished evacuating the bodies and I was able to go home, I was hit by a wave of guilt. There I had been, annoyed that I might miss the birth of my son, trying to comfort someone who had just lost his. When I finally made a commitment as a Christian, this was something I had to bring before the Lord in repentance.
A few days after the accident, my little boy—Patrick—was born, and I was there.