Argentine Antarctica: The Harvesters (1/3)

The Harvesters — Part 1

In 1969, Argentina’s Antarctic policy hovered between routine administration and logistical neglect. To the General Staff in Buenos Aires, the Argentine Antarctic Sector was little more than an abstraction, attended to solely during the Summer Campaign.

Each December, the icebreaker General San Martín sailed south to relieve the crews, deliver provisions and fuel, and return before the ice closed the Weddell Sea once again in April.

For the remaining eight months, the White Continent was left in absolute isolation. If a scientist suffered appendicitis in July, or a base caught fire in August, the official response was simple: endure or die. Winter permitted no rescues.

Foreign powers operated according to a different philosophy.

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain had understood that sovereignty in Antarctica was no longer defended by planting flags in the ice, but by maintaining the ability to project air power throughout the year.

The construction of permanent runways had become the new geopolitical frontier. Whoever succeeded in breaking the winter isolation and landing an aircraft on conventional wheels would control strategic access to the continent.

Against this backdrop of institutional paralysis, Olezza began to make the bureaucrats behind their desks in the capital increasingly uncomfortable.

In the middle of that year, twenty-one members of the Argentine Air Force assembled at Teniente Matienzo Base, located on Larsen Nunatak.

There, winter greeted them with a storm that buried the installations and forced the men to remain confined indoors.

The Corrugated-Iron Bunker

Teniente Matienzo Base, Argentine Air Force — 64°58′S, 60°04′W — 29 August 1969, 6.00 p.m.

Winter offered no respite on the nunatak. Outside the base, a white-out gale blew at ninety knots, scouring the corrugated-iron walls with a constant metallic shriek.

Inside, the main block lay in semi-darkness, broken only by the glow of a field stove that coughed out thick, oily smoke whenever the gusts outside blocked the chimney.

Olezza stood with the sleeves of his heavy shirt rolled up and his eyes reddened by confinement, his fists planted firmly upon a nautical chart of the Weddell Sea.

Opposite him, Lieutenant Oscar José Pose Ortiz de Rozas, commander of the base — a seasoned officer, sparing with words and possessed of natural authority — smoked in silence. His gaze rested upon the exact point where his superior’s finger repeatedly struck the chart: a small, elongated shape called Seymour Island.

‘Look at this, Pose,’ Olezza said, breaking the silence. ‘The bureaucracy in Buenos Aires suffers from winter blindness. To them, maintaining bases down here means leaving a group of men locked away, counting the days until they can return home. But look at this position.’

Vice-Commodore Mario Luis Olezza was a pilot of uncompromising character who combined the audacity of a military aviator with a long-term geopolitical vision. He refused to accept the doctrine of static sovereignty.

He spent hours examining the Air Force’s historical archives, searching for reports that administrative neglect had buried inside grey metal filing cabinets.

Pose adjusted the cuffs of his woollen jumper and leaned over the map.

‘I know the report Vice-Commodore Marambio left on record, sir. He was perfectly clear: the Seymour plateau lies in the direction of the prevailing winds. The same storms that bury us here sweep Seymour clean. The wind does the work of a broom. Snow does not accumulate; the crust of mud remains exposed. But seeing it from an Avro Lincoln is one thing. Standing on it is quite another.’

Olezza produced a worn folder bound with frayed cord and bearing the signature of Vice-Commodore Gustavo Argentino Marambio.

It contained the notes from Operation Enlace of 1952 and the subsequent technical reports. Before his tragic death, Marambio had left behind a remarkably prescient aviation testament after obsessively studying the island.

Olezza exhaled cigarette smoke towards the beams of the ceiling.

‘In Buenos Aires, they buried these papers because they consider the idea of operating wheeled aircraft on permafrost to be the fantasy of obsessive pilots.’

‘The engineers argue that constructing a runway there would require a fleet of deep-draught ships to transport heavy machinery, as well as cranes capable of lifting the equipment up the island’s steep cliffs, which plunge two hundred metres towards the frozen sea. Since the Air Force possesses neither those resources nor the budget to hire them, their verdict is final: Marambio’s dream is impracticable.’

‘And how do you expect us to move thousands of tonnes of stone to level nine hundred metres of runway without a single bulldozer, sir?’ Pose asked, folding his arms.

‘On our backs, Pose. With nothing but our backs and our arms,’ Olezza replied, fixing him with a steady gaze.

‘That is why we formed this group: so that it would not depend upon technology we do not possess. Twenty-one men, each one selected personally. If we wait for the official paperwork, the British or the Chileans will put a wheel on that plateau before we do. Geopolitics does not wait. Whoever controls Seymour will hold the key to permanent, year-round access to Antarctica.’

Olezza had submitted the project to his superiors under the title Operation Marambio.

The initial response had been systematic rejection on the grounds of ‘insufficient technical and financial feasibility’.

But Olezza was not a man who accepted no for an answer.

He decided to bypass the usual channels and pursue a strategy of accomplished fact. If there was no machinery, the runway would be built with the one resource the Air Force possessed in abundance: hardened men imbued with the spirit of the pioneers.

He secured the minimum political approval necessary to conduct an exploratory mission and began assembling, in the strictest operational secrecy, the contingent that would enter history as the Sovereignty Patrol.

Recruitment was not conducted through official bulletins or open calls for volunteers. Olezza travelled personally to different units throughout the country, searching for specific types of men in workshops and hangars.

He was not looking for parade-ground heroes, but for non-commissioned mechanics, radio telegraphists and tradesmen who understood how metal behaved under extreme cold and possessed the psychological resilience to withstand complete isolation.

They were men accustomed to solving problems with wire, improvisation and ingenuity whenever official spare parts failed to arrive.

Responsibility for organising the ground party fell to Lieutenant Pose Ortiz de Rozas himself and Lieutenant Mario Víctor Licciardello, who would assume direct operational command in the field.

Among the non-commissioned officers, the technical heart of the patrol was Master Non-Commissioned Officer Mario Rogelio Ranieri, a veteran of previous campaigns who understood the secrets of radial engines better than anyone.

The list of twenty-one men was completed by sixteen non-commissioned officers and one civilian whose role would prove crucial: meteorologist Alberto Omar Amistadi, who could interpret the subtle fluctuations of mercury barometers and anticipate the brief windows of clear weather before the storm closed its trap.

The door of the block flew open, admitting a blast of freezing air and Non-Commissioned Officer Ranieri, whose hands bore the scars of old frostbite burns suffered while tightening bolts in the open.

The meteorologist followed behind him, rubbing his arms to restore some warmth.

‘The barometer is rising, sir,’ Amistadi announced, brushing the snow from his parka. ‘If the pressure holds, we will have a visibility window over the strait tomorrow. Brief, but clear.’

Olezza nodded and looked at Pose.

‘There is your opportunity. Licciardello, Luján and Velázquez already have the sledges prepared. Ranieri, what is the condition of the engines?’

‘The fuel for the Primus heaters is being rationed down to the last gram, sir,’ Ranieri replied with the gravity of a veteran. ‘And the tools have already been packed. Pointed pickaxes, broad shovels and soft-iron crowbars. If the permafrost is as hard as granite, we shall wear out more wooden handles than sticks of dynamite, but the lads will not buckle.’

Pose looked at his men.

They were rugged tradesmen who would not break when the canvas of an Alberta tent was the only thing separating them from a storm at thirty degrees below zero.

Once deposited on the summit of Seymour Island, they would be entirely alone. If magnetic fading silenced the high-frequency radio, nobody on the mainland would know whether they were still alive.

The only way off the island would be to finish the runway with their own hands.

---

For two months, Pose subjected the group to a brutal programme of endurance training.

They practised erecting Alberta-type field tents in hurricane-force winds, rationed fuel and learnt to transport heavy loads across powder snow using improvised sledges.

They knew that if a worker injured himself with a tool, no medical evacuation would be possible.

The Historic List of the Twenty-One Men

Senior commanders and personnel responsible for coordinating and carrying out the operation

1. Vice-Commodore Mario Luis Olezza
   Originator, promoter and commander of Operation Marambio.

2. Lieutenant Oscar José Pose Ortiz de Rozas
   Commander of Matienzo Army/Air Force Base, field commander of the patrol and pilot of the historic first landing on the plateau.

3. Lieutenant Mario Víctor Licciardello
   Operational officer on the plateau and commander of Camp Beta.

4. Master Non-Commissioned Officer Mario Rogelio Ranieri
   Technical officer of the patrol.

5. Corporal First Class Juan Carlos Luján
   Operational member.

6. Corporal First Class Ramón Alberto Velázquez
   Operational member.

7. Alberto Omar Amistadi
   Civilian meteorologist of the Argentine Air Force.

Non-commissioned officers and corporals who completed the contingent of twenty-one pioneers

8. Principal Non-Commissioned Officer Juvencio Daniel Iturra

9. Assistant Non-Commissioned Officer César Jaime Carrizo

10. Auxiliary Non-Commissioned Officer Agustín Edison Beltrán

11. Auxiliary Non-Commissioned Officer Silvano Andrés Barrera

12. Principal Corporal Jacinto Pérez

13. Principal Corporal Omar Juan Aimaretti

14. Corporal First Class Luis Fioramonti

15. Corporal First Class Hugo Adolfo Cortella

16. Corporal First Class Castor Eustaquio Ayala

17. Corporal First Class Francisco Ignacio Alfonso

18. Corporal First Class José Oscar Medina

19. Corporal First Class Archimedes Segundo Sancochia

20. Corporal First Class José Luis Cortese

21. Corporal Second Class Gabriel Arturo Escalante

Pioneers who, using nothing but their backs, their arms, pickaxes and shovels, broke the winter isolation of the White Continent.

Alejandro G. Mazzuchi
Retired military aviator — Writer of historical narratives

 

Argentine Antarctica: The 1972 Tragedy

Tragedy in Antarctica: fall into a crevasse, a man waiting to be rescued and a missing body

In February 1972, a somber incident unfolded on the Antarctic continent as a Snocat transporting a patrol to the Sobral Base plunged into a deep crevice. The unfortunate event resulted in the loss of one occupant's life, while the other, teetering on the brink of freezing, placed their trust in Providence but was ultimately rescued. This narrative encapsulates the valor and commitment exhibited by those who dared to endure a year in the challenging conditions of the white continent.

By Adrián Pignatelli || Infobae

 

The patrol of ten men that left the Belgrano Base for Sobral, by then already deactivated (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

Inside the crevice, about sixty meters of icy depth, assistant mechanic sergeant Bladimiro Lezchik was conscious. He had an open fracture in his left shoulder and was bleeding from a deep wound in his scalp.

The vehicle he was driving, a Snocat, had fallen into a treacherous opening of ice that was hidden by the snow. His partner, Assistant Sergeant Oscar Kurzmann, 35, lay outside the destroyed vehicle. He was dead.

He remained for several hours in total darkness. While he asked for help, he thought about his family, his children. In a moment he resigned himself and entrusted himself to God.

When one of his companions came down with ropes to rescue him, he was freezing, he was at the limit of his strength and he was dominated by that dream from which it is impossible to wake up.

Bladimiro Lezchik was of Ukrainian descent. He was born in Formosa and his dream was to visit Antarctica (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

It was his first mission in Antarctica, where he had always dreamed of going, where he learned to know it through the stories of General Jorge Leal and when he set foot there he would be hooked forever. He said that it was like a magnet, a love, to which you always want to return.

Bladimiro (yes, with a long b, that's how they wrote it down) was a man from Formosa born in Colonia El Zapallito and he lived his childhood in El Colorado, a city in the southeast of the province, on the banks of the Bermejo River. His father had settled there, a Ukrainian who made his living as a tailor in his country, who traveled in carts making clothes and who in the harsh winter months when he couldn't go out, did theater.

Assistant Sergeant Oscar Kurzmann. He had Antarctic experience. Photograph published in the Non-Commissioned Officer Magazine No. 588, year 1984.

With a group of friends he came to Argentina and when he wanted to return, a civil war had broken out between Russia and Poland. He knew that if he returned he would be drafted and he stayed. The original family surname is an endless string of consonants, and the civil registry employee wrote it the way he heard it and that's how it stayed.

In Formosa there is an important colony of Ukrainians. The Lezchiks dedicated themselves to the countryside and Bladimiro, until he entered primary school, only spoke his native language. Upon completion, since there was no secondary school in the area, they sent him to train at the Sergeant Cabral Non-Commissioned Officers School.

The first one on the left. Lezchik with two companions, with a Snocat in the background (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

In 1961 he married Lidia Martyniuk, also of Ukrainian parents. He introduced them to a cousin at the end of 1957 when they returned to El Colorado on those endless train trips to Chaco and then by bus to the town of those who studied in Buenos Aires during the year.

When in 1970 they bought land and built a house in Rosario, they did so with a loan. Paying the fees was increasingly difficult, and the solution that Bladimiro saw was to offer to participate in a mission in Antarctica, for the significant extra that was charged.

Lezchik's dream was to go to the white continent, but he had not been lucky enough to be called up, despite the number of times he had signed up. Until he was selected.

On the way to Sobral, at kilometer 60, carrying fuel on the sleds (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

They were first sent south to acclimatize to the cold and snow. His wife Lidia, who had worked until she got married, was left alone with two children, Elbio, 9, and Noemí, 5, in a neighborhood where there was only one house on her block and the rest were vacant. Before Lezchik left, who had a knack for fixing anything, he added extra latches to the doors and windows.

On January 18, 1972, the 34 men, including military and civilians, arrived in Antarctica. For some it was their first trip and others already had experience.

The first task was titanic. Transfer the cargo brought by the San Martín Icebreaker about five kilometers uphill to the Belgrano Base.

Mortal trap. The crack where the Snocat "Chaco" fell, with the two men (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

On February 8, after lunch, he left on his first mission. He was part of a patrol of ten men, commanded by Carlos Fontana, a first lieutenant who had fallen in love with Antarctica after reading Cuatro Años en las Orcas del Sur, by José Manuel Moneta. He turned 30 years old on the white continent.

The patrol left the General Belgrano Base towards Alférez Sobral, an inactive scientific base, located 410 kilometers to the south. They had to update the route and supply it with food and fuel, because the future plan was to reactivate it. Deactivated in October 1968, the Sobral is currently buried in ice.

The trip had to be made as soon as possible, because the polar night was approaching. Fontana considered the order meaningless, because the snow and ice were soft and the dangers increased.

They were in four Snocats, the “Córdoba”, “Chaco”, “Venado Tuerto” and “Santiago del Estero”. Each of them dragged three sleds. Lezchik drove the “Chaco” and was accompanied by Assistant Sergeant Oscar Kurzmann, who had already joined the Esperanza Base crew in 1964.

The operation to rescue Lezchik and recover Kurzmann's body was put into practice immediately (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana).

On the maps that the group carried, the areas of cracks were marked, gathered in a stretch of about 60 kilometers. They were driving in second gear and probing the terrain to locate possible openings.

At 11:40 p.m., at kilometer 72, the “Santiago del Estero” sounded the alarm: the “Chaco” had disappeared into a crevasse.

Only a dark hole was visible, from which what Fontana describes as “sea smoke” emanated, with a strong acrid smell. When faced with shouting calls, only Lezchik responded. He asked to be taken out. Immediately, the rescue operation was prepared.

Lezchik, who had managed to get out of the Snocat, saw that his companion was on a balcony in the crevice, dead. He felt the blood running down his face and how his body grew cold. As time passed, he knew the inexorable fate.

On the surface, his companions had organized themselves against the clock. Sergeant Domínguez offered to go down, because he was the one who weighed the least. They crossed boards over the immense gap, tied him to several nylon ropes and lowered him, but when the rope reached its limit, they heard his screams that he could not reach the place. They had to add two more sections.

The Snocat was destroyed, about sixty meters deep. Domínguez confirmed that Kurzmann had died. Then he took care of Lezchik.

Kilometer 72. Before returning to the Belgrano Base, they left a cross in the place where Kurzmann's body was left. (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

He tied up this burly man of 1.92, who put his good arm around his neck. Laboriously, they climbed them.

Once on the surface, morphine was applied, his shoulder was immobilized and he received thirty stitches, without anesthesia, on his scalp. He was hypothermic and maneuvers were performed to stabilize him. They had to take him to the base because his life was in danger and they were running out of morphine.

While he was being assisted, Lieutenant Juan Carlos Videla and Leonardo Guzmán (with 14 winters in Antarctica under their belt) went down to rescue the body of their dead companion. They saw that his head was crushed. They covered her with the hood of their jacket.

When they were hoisting the body, the rope was cut and the body fell into the void. With a temperature of 20 degrees below zero, the men exhausted and one seriously injured, the chief, although at one point he thought about dividing the patrol, ordered to return to the base.

A wooden cross was improvised, milestones were placed to mark the place, and nine grieving men set out. They returned to the site on February 25, when weather permitted. They went in three Snocats and in one they carried a wooden coffin built by Assistant Sergeant Aragón and Sergeant Domínguez. To do so, they took the height of the head of the base as a measurement.

When they arrived at the place, they saw that the wooden cross was standing but that the crack had closed. They opened other holes and lowered a lantern that, due to the difference in temperature, exploded. They knew there was nothing they could do and they returned.

In November 1972, a fuel drum filled with ice with a metal cross, secured with steel cables, served as a monolith in tribute to the dead comrade.

For the patrol, it was a premonitory event. Days ago Kurzmann had confessed to Fontana that the day he died, he wanted to rest in Antarctica. He had already been at the Esperanza and Matienzo bases in other seasons and his vocation for being there was evident.

Lidia Lezchik found out about the accident because the police came to her house with a message from the Antarctic Directorate. Her challenge was then to talk to her husband on the phone.

Before leaving, Lezchik had asked, unsuccessfully, for a telephone line in a neighborhood that was conspicuous by its absence.

Communications between the continent and Antarctica were complicated to establish (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

His son Elbio remembers that there were two ways to talk to his father. One was to go to the command in Rosario, where a link was made with the Belgrano Base and the other was a phone call. Since the family did not have a telephone, they went to a neighbor's house, a few blocks away, or used the phone booth at the bus terminal. The procedure was always the same: there were pre-established days and times to do it, the call was requested and you had to wait. Sometimes an eternity.

As a result of solidarity, the members of the base had the services of the LU2AO radio amateur, who gave up an hour every Sunday so they could communicate with their families.

Only a week after the accident was the woman able to speak with her husband. They were not clean transmissions, there was a lot of noise that caused the voices to be distorted. “It's like when you try to talk underwater,” she explained. Additionally, they had to close a question or phrase with a “change.”

Doubts immediately arose in the woman. What if it wasn't her husband who was talking to her? If it was a colleague who pretended to be him because she was more serious than what they had told him? I always asked these questions on the way back home after each communication. It was winter and the wife and her two children slept together in the double bed to feel less alone.

In those talks, the same thing always happened: as soon as Elbio heard his father's voice, the emotion overcame him, he couldn't speak and he crossed to the opposite square to calm down.

Lezchik had to remain in Antarctica because the ice closed and the sea route was cut off. Operated by Dr. Bianco, he cured his shoulder there after four months of convalescence. His colleagues said that he was a strong and tough “Pole”. They also nicknamed him “Russian” and “German.”

The return was a rough sailing on the icebreaker to Ushuaia, where they boarded a Hercules. The whole family went to wait for him at El Palomar. His wife's mystery was which person he would meet. That night the expectation was eternal because he was the last to get off the machine. “Didn't you see Lezchik?” he asked each of those who got off. “Yes, yes…” was the answer. But nothing else.

It broke Lidia's heart to see María Teresa, Oscar Kurzmann's wife, alone, waiting for the bag with her unfortunate husband's belongings, including books by Arthur Schopenhauer written in German.

He was the last to appear. The family, relieved to see that she could move on her own, ran down the track to the foot of the stairs towards this big man who was unrecognizable because he had grown a beard. There were no words, but kisses and hugs. She was surprised to see her children taller than her.

Lezchik next to a Snocat, the vehicle used to travel in Antarctica (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

Endless hours of talks followed, where he recounted his experiences. They took a month's vacation and when they returned it was their turn to do their studies. He had a small bone in his shoulder raised a little higher.

He suffered from intense headaches and had to undergo psychological treatment for his recurring nightmares in which he dreamed that he fell into the crack.

He began to perform passive tasks in the Rosario military factory and in 1974 he was retired due to disability. They recommended that he dedicate himself to something that had nothing to do with his profession. That's how he became a taxi driver in Rosario. Vanesa's arrival had made him a father for the third time.

As his son remembers him, he was a silent, somewhat withdrawn person, with a very strong inner life.

He was also an evangelical pastor and with his wife they became the leaders of the “Sanctuary of Faith” temple, in Provincias Unidas in 2000, near the Rosario exit towards Funes, where nearly five thousand faithful attend. They had both been raised in that religion.

He was very detailed in everything he undertook and he himself fixed the car when it broke down. He liked to cook and had inherited organizational skills from the army. That habit made him a reference in the great campaigns of evangelism.

On Saturday, April 30, 2005, he was heading in his Peugeot 405 with other pastors to a meeting in the city of Buenos Aires. At kilometer 268 of the Rosario-Buenos Aires highway, near Arroyo Seco, there was a lot of fog and smoke, and they had to stop at the end of a long line led by a car that braked because it did not want to continue in those conditions. They were left behind a truck and another, loaded with soybeans, did not stop in time. Lezchik, at the wheel, died instantly along with another. A third, Norberto Carlini, saved his life.

He was 58 years old.

Carlos Fontana remained silent and after fifty years decided to tell what had happened that February 1972. On September 21 of last year, an event was organized, in which Kurzmann's nephews were given his file.

Monolith that marks the site of the tragic accident in which Oscar Kurzmann lost his life. (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

Noemí Lezchik told Infobae that her father's eyes clouded with grief when he remembered his dead colleague, and it was a memory that accompanied him throughout his life. She says that he had two deaths, one when he had the accident, in which he was reborn when he was rescued and then on the highway where, far from the Antarctic ice that he was so passionate about, that son of Ukrainians who had learned Spanish at school and that everything he undertook in life he did with the same passion with which he lived.

Sources: Interviews with Lidia Martyniuk, Elbio Lezchik, Noemí Lezchik and Carlos Fontana.