Written by George Lee Sye
September 3rd, 1986
As I stood on the skid, I looked down through the mist to the tree tops below me. I was more nervous than I had ever been. My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry. The helicopter lurched as the pilot fought to hold it in a stable position so we could exit. As the wind buffeted it I could feel the helicopter moving sideways. The tremendous downdraft from the spinning blades above the machine made standing on the skid even more precarious.
It was only about two hours since I received the call from the Sergeant to get ready for the task. A light aircraft had disappeared the day before during a rain storm. It had taken off from Cairns airport (in North Eastern Australia), planning to make a short journey over the range to the west of the city for a sight seeing trip to the Atherton Tablelands. Sadly it never reached its destination. At 2:52 pm on Wednesday the 3rd of September 1986, the wreckage of the plane had been spotted on Mount Williams from a search helicopter.
“We’re going to see if we can find any survivors. We’ll drop in by helicopter and be out by nightfall.” The Sergeant’s plan was that he, a police photographer, the government medical officer and I would be inserted to the site. We were to check for and treat any survivors, confirm the passing of those who didn’t survive and take initial investigation photographs of the crash scene.
With such a short trip planned, I dressed in army greens and an oilskin jacket and packed one litre of water, a muesli bar and camera into a small ‘bum bag’. I had been a member of the team for about a year and had always looked forward to call-outs, even if they were only short ones. They took us away from the normal routine and added considerable variety to what I did as a special operations operative. I particularly enjoyed working with helicopters and my excitement about doing this job would have been clearly evident.
The call-out is just a distant memory now. I was now standing on the skid where I could feel the downdraft blowing my hair and tugging at my clothes. I looked at the winch operator and nodded. In response he activated the winch and I felt myself lowering. Using both hands on the skid I held myself away from the helicopter as my feet fell away to dangle freely below me. As I dropped away from the aircraft and into the canopy, it seemed to me that this was possibly the longest winch I had ever experienced. I was to find out later that the red painted part of the cable was visible to the operator, indicating that it was in the last fifty feet of its two hundred and fifty foot length. In these conditions, the helicopter was operating at its limits.
As I dropped into the dense undergrowth, I sensed that no person had ever set foot in this area and I was making history. I felt like Columbus must have felt as he stood on unknown lands.
The jungle was extremely dense, a condition magnified by the mist and shadow of the low lying cloud cover. With feet firmly on the soggy ground, I was able to remove the padded loop from underneath my arms. I watched as it returned to the top of the canopy some fifty metres above me. Looking around I could make out what appeared to be a part of the light aircraft about thirty metres to my left. The bright white with red and blue stripes contrasted against the dark green of the wet undergrowth. Plenty of time to make a closer examination, my immediate task was to support my colleagues as they were winched into the site.
One by one they followed the same route that I had earlier. First the Sergeant, then the photographer, and then the Doctor were winched through the canopy from the hovering helicopter. Once the last person had detached from the winch cable, the helicopter flew off to the east. The loud wump wump wump of the aircraft was quickly replaced by the soft sound of the wind gusting and blowing through the tree canopy above us. Without the aircraft it seemed eerily silent.
The Doctor was a man on a mission. He wanted to spend as little time as possible on the mountain and wasted no time in confirming that there were no survivors. What surprised me about the site was how the mangled aircraft and its victims were all located in a relatively small area. All eight of the victims and most of the aircraft were located in an area with a radius of about fifteen or twenty metres. Two of the victims were still seated close by the fuselage, while the other six had obviously been thrown from their seats and away from the main part of the plane.
Some twenty minutes after leaving us, the helicopter returned. The weather had closed in even more and it was now raining. Looking up through the mist and the tree canopy, I could only just make out the grey shape of the Iroquois Helicopter as the pilot worked hard at holding it in a hover. The cable dropped and, reversing the order in which we descended into this sad and miserable place, the Doctor was winched out first. As he passed the top of the canopy I could see him rotating as the downdraft increased its effect on his ride upwards. The effect of the rotor wash is circular and its effect on anything at the end of the winch cable gets stronger the closer it gets to the aircraft. To compensate a rope is usually tied to one end of any stretcher being hoisted and held by a person on the ground while it is winched upwards. The effect is minimal for a person hanging from the winch harness without any equipment, so no stabilizing rope is necessary.
While the Doctor had checked the passengers of the aircraft, the photographer had taken a range of photographs to help the investigators. His task was now to return to his lab and develop them for examination at the first opportunity. With far more enthusiasm than he held for the insertion, he waited for his turn to be extracted. He had packed his photographic equipment safely into an aluminium case, and was now ready to depart with the only thing he had brought with him.
My anticipation of the harness once again appearing through the canopy was short lived. With bewilderment I watched the helicopter slowly move away from the hover point and then finally disappear from view. The sound receded into the distance as I looked towards the Sergeant for an answer to my obvious question.
He spent the next few minutes talking into and listening to a hand held radio. “Looks like the weather is too bad for them, they can’t hold it there so they’ll come back in the morning to get us.” As the Sergeant explained the situation my bewilderment turned into disbelief. We didn’t bring anything with us. I had only the clothes I wore, a little water, some food and a camera. The Sergeant had even less. Having brought only his photographic equipment, the photographer was obviously experiencing the same thinking pattern as I; at first disbelief that the helicopter had flown off and then realisation that we were here for the night.
This became one of the most interesting nights of my life. The site was on sloping land on the side of a mountain. Dense undergrowth and rotting foliage prevented us moving very far from the crashed aircraft so we cleared a small area to the east of the wreckage. Fortunately we were able to find a single plastic tarpaulin and three blankets in the wreckage so we placed the tarp on the cleared soil as a ground sheet. This was to be our home for the next fourteen hours. Each of us had a blanket that we used as a barrier to stop the continuous rain falling directly onto us. The unfortunate thing for us was the lay of the land. The continuous rain was flowing across the top of the already soaked soil. The slope prevented us sitting down for very long before we slid downhill with the mud and slush. We had to stand most of the time. Standing in the pouring rain with sodden blankets draped over our heads, we looked like a trio of grim reapers.
I thought it could get no worse, but I was wrong. The leeches in that place were unbelievable. When we were first dropped in I did not see a single leech. However, I did notice that all of the victims had ‘goose bumps’ on their skin, and the men appeared to have facial hair growth, but no sign of leeches. The little buggers came out at night in the hundreds just for us. They wanted blood from living bodies. Throughout the course of that night I removed countless leeches from my legs and neck and even face, as did my companions. To help pass the time I started tying them in knots to see how long they took to get out. Amazingly they can undo themselves no matter how hard the knot is tied. It always intrigues me how we discover interesting little facts like this when we are forced to keep our minds occupied.
Shift HappensAs you can probably imagine, we had a lot of time to think during that night. Standing in the jungle for fourteen hours in the dark and rain gives you a lot of thinking time with very few distractions.
I don’t know what prompted me, but during the night I started thinking about the passengers who had not survived the crash. Suddenly it hit me, here I was, wet, cold, hungry, tired and feeling sorry for myself. Just metres away were eight dead people, not cold, not hungry, not tired; just dead. Who was in the worst situation here, the dead passengers or me? That is when I realised that I had a choice. I could continue feeling sorry for myself, thinking about how my situation was unfair and could not get any worse, or I could recognise that I was alive and would be picked up in the morning to return home. I could choose to acknowledge that this situation would give me the experience to ensure that in the future I was better prepared and also able to better prepare others. I would also have an interesting story to tell people.
Immediately I started to focus on the positives of the situation and as a result felt different. I started to make a mental list of what I could do to ensure that the next time I do one of these jobs I would be prepared in the best way possible. In fact, I wanted to be better prepared than any other person so I went to work thinking about some of the things I could do, carry and even learn.
The most important skill you will ever develop as a leader is the ability to elicit empowering emotional states in other people, and then link those states to the behaviours you wish them to engage in. You do that; you will become a force to be reckoned with.
After ten years of special operations and working with some of the highest performing people [in their field] in the world, I am convinced of one thing ..... you will never reach your potential in this regard unless you first have mastery over your own thinking and emotional states; no way. Why? Because self mastery precedes mastery of others; the ability to consciously direct your own focus and alter and shift your own emotional states is the foundation for consciously and consistently achieve the same with others.
Here’s to your truly remarkable life.
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