Walter Stewart, Benjamin, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, May 25, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 21 and 22

Page 41

W LTER TEW ART a 2 200 out dashing about on the sand. There's a lot of the story I can't tell but when I wa in th Boy Scouts in 1932 the army gave surplus things to Boy Scout troops. And our troop got canteens and mess kits. Other troops got tents, and we were mad. When I went into the service I took my canteen. When they offered me one I said, "Oh, I've got my own." It was a World War I type with a steel lid. Well, we filled my canteen clear up. I said, "I'll volunteer my canteen for this cause." So we filled only two canteens and threw them over to these guys. That's all the water we had. After they were rescued one man said, "Who had the canteen with a steel lid?" I said, "That was mine." He said, "It did not break. The other one with the plastic lid broke and we didn't have any water in it. This saved our lives." After we found those two we started to circle. You go in ever increasing circles and climb up to about eight thousand. Then, to our great joy, we saw a parachute on the lava. The parachute was laid out in the black lava. A white parachute with black lava rocks holding it like an arrow with the shroud lines acting as the shaft, and the chute like an arrow. They've shown us the way they went. We flew right over that line about two miles and there they were with another parachute made into a tent. It was blistering-blistering heat in the day and bitter cold at night. They had a sign written on the rocks with sand, "Four men hurt." One guy out there jumped up, but we had no canteens left for them. Well, many things happened. The British couldn't believe the fact that we found them. They wouldn't believe us. The next day they said, "Nobody was anywhere near where you said." I said, "My navigator and I will go out and fmd them and show you." This time my airplane was ready to go. Roper got in the back. We couldn't 40