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Frozen Beards. At McMurdo, men had worked all day under the ghostly lunar light extending the snowy runway to 10,000 ft. On the strip, oil drums were set alight to make a landing flare path, and New Zealand's nearby Scott Base turned on all its lights as a beacon in case of trouble. "The place is lit up like a Christmas tree," exclaimed the pilot over his radio. Down to McMurdo between jagged peaks came the Hercules, as a small group of Americans on the ice breathed tensely through frozen beards. The landing was perfect, and, while ground crewmen serviced the plane, the Salvation Army's apples were off-loaded along with the mail and a helicopter carried Seabee McMullen from McMurdo's lone oneroom hospital to the airfield, four miles away.
At once, the Hercules took flight, its injured passenger safely aboard, doubtless unaware that he had been the object of what was probably the greatest medical rescue in recent years. In the hospital at Christchurch, surgeons decided against operating on McMullen and expressed fears that the fall back at McMurdo may leave him paralyzed for life.