It was like the opening scene from Lost Horizon. En route from Munich to Marseilles, a U.S. Army Dakota plane had been caught in an Alpine downdraft, had crash-landed on the Wetterhorn, in a yawning ice bowl just ten miles from Switzerland's famous peak, the 13,670-foot Jungfrau. Marooned at 9,800 feet on the slopes of Rosenlaui glacier was a curious company of twelve people, including an eleven-year-old girl, four women (three were wives of U.S. generals).
Five hours after the crash the plane radioed its position. Search planes of the U.S., France, Italy and Britain took off in the...