Almanac: Rescuers risk ravages of Redoubt — Fritz recounts chilling backcountry tale

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part story about the attempted rescue of two World War II bomber pilots who were injured when their plane crashed high on Mount Redoubt across Cook Inlet on June 1, 1942. Part one followed the rescue team as it traveled on foot toward the crash site, and part two follows the team as it attempts to recover the wounded men and return safely. Most of the information for this story comes from a 1943 Saturday Evening Post article written by one of the rescuers — Anchor Point’s Milo Fritz, who later gained renown for his medical work throughout the state and for his three terms in the state House of Representatives.

By Clark Fair

This is the cover of The Saturday Evening Post containing Maj. Milo H. Fritz’s Oct. 2, 1943, article, “Ambulance Case on Mount Redoubt.”

Redoubt Reporter

Sometime between 4 and 5 a.m. on June 20, 1942, Maj. Milo Fritz, now traveling solo ahead of the rest of the rescue team, crested a ridge of snow high on Mount Redoubt and spotted the wreckage of the airplane, lying on the edge of a crevasse 200 feet wide. Finally, after approximately 48 hours of overland travel, Fritz was about to learn whether either of the pilots who had crashed there 19 days earlier had survived their injuries.

Doggedly, then, in the gusting wind and deep, swirling snow, he began to climb up and around the crevasse toward the aircraft.

Just 24 hours earlier, the rescue team — sans Corp. John Garner, who had been sent back to the first camp after he was too sore to continue — had been cheered by the warm, early morning sun and its first sighting of the braided waters of Redoubt Creek.

But the team members’ enthusiasm was soon tempered by the cold, silty stream they found necessary to cross and recross in their leather boots, and by the seven to 10 miles still left to travel before reaching the first low ridges of Mount Redoubt.

They had arisen in camp that day at 2 a.m. and had hiked into this drainage. The day before — after a 10-hour boat ride from Anchorage — they had hiked for nearly 12 hours, beginning just north of Harriet Point at the lower end of Redoubt Bay on the western shore of Cook Inlet.

The seven men pushed the pace because they wished to reach the wrecked bomber that lay at an approximate elevation of 7,500 feet and rescue the injured pilots who had been trapped there since crashing on June 1. Moreover, the rescuers hoped that the pilot, Lt. Edward Clark, and the co-pilot, Lt. Joe Donaldson, were still alive.

Two uninjured members of the flight crew — Sgts. Don Harris and Charles Michaelis — had managed to descend the

Photo reproduced from article in The Saturday Evening Post . Lt. Joe Donaldson receives an emergency dose of plasma as he is tended to by Corp. Darrell Prince in the Redoubt Creek drainage in June 1942.

mountain, travel across country to the coast, and, after a week of waiting in a shelter cabin, flag down a fishing vessel and travel to the authorities in Anchorage. Arriving on June 17, they had reported that Clark (badly sprained or broken ankle) and Donaldson (compound fracture of the lower left leg) had been too injured to travel and had ordered them to seek help.

Now picking his way at the head of the rescue team was the only nonmilitary man in the bunch, Lee Waddell, an experienced outdoorsman about 50 years old, who had been hired to guide the others up the mountain and then safely down and out to the coast.

Behind Waddell — each carrying a pack full of gear and taking turns toting two 25-pound litters — were the much younger Sgt. E.I. Robinette, Cpls. Earl Karnatz, Costello Pizzutillo, Miles and Darrell Prince, and Fritz, the medical officer who was in charge of the mission.

In order to lighten their loads and thereby quicken their pace, the rescuers had left their sleeping bags and some of their food behind at the camp now occupied by Garner. At about 8 p.m., when they finally reached the rocky moraine at the base of the mountain, they stashed even more items — their extra clothing and all but four tins of their military rations.

Then they clambered onto the boulder-strewn moraine, which twisted upward into the main rocky bulk of the mountain and became progressively snowier with increased elevation. High above them they could see that soon they would be climbing through deep snow and over exposed ridges of rock.

Photo reproduced from article in The Saturday Evening Post. Much more subdued on their arduous descent than they had been in the early stages of their rescue attempt high on Mount Redoubt, members of the rescue team take a breather as Lt. Joe Donaldson lies strapped into a litter.

As they ascended beyond the snow line and onto the high white slopes, they entered an extended sort of twilight common around Alaska’s summer solstice. At some point, they hunkered behind a large boulder and munched all but two of their remaining candy bars — saving the final two for the pilots.

At this point, Fritz divested himself of most of his remaining gear, and continued ahead of the others with plasma and plaster, figuring that his earlier arrival was most crucial.

On slopes steep enough that he sometimes had to bend low and grip with his gloved hands, Fritz climbed steadily. Sometimes he post-holed in drifts that were hip-deep. Exhausted and having to stop every few steps to catch his breath, he pushed on until, at about 4 a.m., he had the plane firmly in his sights.

After rounding the crevasse and sliding carefully down to the battered bomber, he peered inside and saw something rolled up in a sleeping bag near the bulkhead behind the pilots’ section.

Fritz was initially dismayed.

“Crawling in to investigate what I thought would surely be a corpse, I was startled to have someone throw back the covers and say, ‘Who’s there?’ It was Lt. Donaldson, perfectly rational, but a most pathetic sight.”

Almost immediately, despite his relief at finding someone alive, Fritz detected the “sick-sweetish stench” of gangrene. He moved outside and fired a pistol shot to signal the other rescuers, then inspected his patient and inquired about Lt. Clark.

Donaldson was emaciated, covered with filth and three weeks of beard, and his eyes were red from hemorrhaging. As he chewed hungrily at the two chocolate bars Fritz presented, Donaldson told him that Clark had headed down the mountain five days earlier, bound for the coast.

Soon, they were joined by Karnatz, Darrell Prince and Waddell — the others had stopped farther down the mountain, too

Alaska Digital Archives. Dr. Milo Fritz ministers to a young patient in Allakaket in June 1961.

exhausted to continue — and they cut and fashioned parachute risers into ropes for hauling and braking the litter once Donaldson had been secured onboard. Soon, even as the wind intensified, they had the patient strapped in and were trudging with him around the crevasse and downhill.

They found Miles Prince and Pizzutillo a short distance below and learned that Robinette, dressed only in coveralls, had stopped even lower and turned back for warmer climes. They all shared the burden of the heavy litter and continued their descent, moving easily despite the deep, soft snow — until they reached the moraine, at which point they were forced to carry the litter as they stumbled around boulders and over porous sand.

At 6 p.m., they were just above the bed of Redoubt Creek and they continued to stay above the drainage until 10 p.m., when they stopped to make camp. Then — while Waddell hiked back nearly two miles to retrieve their stash of food and clothing — Fritz and the Prince brothers cleaned and casted Donaldson’s wounds, which Fritz described as “gangrenous,” “badly infected” and “splintered.”

Despite a situation he referred to as “a nightmare of fatigue,” the doctor did not entirely lose his sense of humor. While giving Donaldson an IV of plasma and glucose in far less than sanitary circumstances, he remarked that, “the conditions of asepsis … must have made (pioneer of antiseptic surgery, Sir Joseph) Lister turn 180 degrees in his grave.”

He was delighted to note later, however, that Donaldson seemed to suffer no ill effects.

They were awakened by the sun at 4 a.m., and the group determined that Waddell should forge on ahead and try to reach Anchorage for more help. On the way to the coast, Waddell stopped at their first campsite to retrieve Garner and learned that Robinette had passed through already, bound for the inlet.

As the main rescue team continued its slow struggle down the long drainage, Waddell and the others arrived at the coast and were hurried to Anchorage in the group’s cabin cruiser. On the morning of June 22, Waddell was inside a small civilian plane, flying over the weary rescue team and dropping a parachute load of rations to them.

Then, as the thankful men gorged themselves on the food, Waddell flew back to Anchorage, and then returned with a large group of volunteer soldiers in a six-passenger Bellanca floatplane, which landed on one of the twin lakes the rescuers had encountered on their first day.

Eventually, the Bellanca hauled in 13 volunteers, who were led by Waddell, back to the Redoubt Creek drainage. As Waddell then returned to the lakes for a well-deserved rest, the volunteers moved on until they encountered the rescuers at 4 a.m. on June 23.

Traveling all day through rugged conditions and voracious mosquitoes, the entire group arrived at the floatplane shortly after midnight. Fritz, Donaldson, Waddell, Karnatz and Miles Prince took the first 50-minute flight out, and by 3:30 a.m. on June 24, Donaldson was in bed in Station Hospital in Anchorage.

The next day, Fritz learned that Lt. Clark was alive. Just like the sergeants before him, he had managed to walk all the way to the coast and signal a boat ride to Anchorage.

Despite the horrific condition of his leg, Donaldson did not have to undergo an amputation. In fact, Fritz said that “maggots had kept the wound clean,” and the lieutenant was expected to start flying again later in 1943.

Fifty-seven years later, after Dr. Milo Fritz had passed away in his Anchor Point home at the age of 91, he was memorialized in the Congressional Record by then-Sen. Ted Stevens. Stevens recalled that Fritz, who had risen to the rank of command surgeon during his tenure in the Army, had served three terms in the state House of Representatives, had performed pioneering medical work with Native children in Bush communities across Alaska, and had received commendations for rescuing one pilot from Mount Redoubt and another from a burning plane at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

In spite of the acclaim he had received at the time of the Redoubt rescue, however, Fritz preferred to share the credit. At the latter part of the 1943 article he wrote about the rescue for The Saturday Evening Post, Fritz gives credit to the many men who took part in the adventure — but particularly to Lee Waddell, without whom, he says, “this rescue mission might well have failed.”