SIMBA, THE INCREDIBLE DESTINY OF AN ANTARCTIC DOG
(Translated from the original in Spanish, as best we could. This Story is from Miguel Acosta, Fuerza Area Argentina, mechanic, part of the crew of TA33 and TA05 planes, at the command of Mario L. Olezza at Matienzo. The story was sent to and submitted by Dog Holden. We will leave it to Fids to surely comment as to the likelihood of where Simba came from; and if able, to tell more of the facts of the story. So far, we have determined there was a Simba).
It was midnight on a Saturday in the middle of November 1962. The crew of the Teniente Matienzo Joint Base and the crew of the Douglas DC-3 TA-33 to which I belonged were gathered in the dining room. Due to the high prevailing temperatures, the snow was soft and prevented us from continuing the trip to the General Belgrano Base as we had planned.
At that time, the inevitable truco and canasta championship had already begun, a repeated way of sharing a few hours in the isolated and distant Antarctica. Matienzo was in its beginnings a precarious base and one of its shortcomings was the lack of a bathroom inside. The members had to go outside, to a latrine close to the house and mounted on cracks, on the side of the nunatak, which is an outcrop of sand and volcanic lava in the middle of the great ice barrier that borders the west of the Sea of Weddell.
“Play for me a pair of hands,” says Musso, one of the truco players, he gets up quickly from his chair and heads to the door, adding, “I’m going to the bathroom.” He went outside and returned to the living room and at the top of his voice he repeated, “A dog! A dog is there at the door!” Yes, he responded to the incredulous, it is a big animal!
No one stayed in their place, some came out as they were, with light clothes, others more cautious ran to the bedroom to look for a coat, with them came those who were already in bed at that time, not wanting to miss the novelty.
The dog was standing meters from the door, he looked at each member who came out and even let them pet him. His hair was jet black with white chest, paws, muzzle and spots on his small head that shone in the reflection of the light located at the entrance of the house. He made a few turns, and when the human he was waiting for did not come out, he took a few short steps back, turned around and looked for the soft snow on the side of the workshop, where he layed down facing the house. Inside, all the comments were already being made, -Yes, Juan Carlos said, he is a dog of approximately 4 years old, we immediately heard Julio who said he had read the Simba name that was engraved on the badge hanging from the collar and added that it was from leather and had a stainless metal buckle.
There is no doubt, he is a sled dog, said Bustamante, a sergeant of our Army who years before joined the Esperanza Base crews; He told us details of ropes and sleds totally unknown to the “aeronautical” people gathered there.
As I said at the beginning of this canine memory, we were at that Base making a stopover to later go to distant Belgrano and from there reach the Geographic South Pole.
To support our flight, the meteorological observers of the Antarctic Peninsula gave a timely report of the weather, which was later transmitted from Matienzo to the National Meteorological Service, where Dr. Hoffmann and Mr. Komar, among other qualified weather forecasters, provided us with the information which gave air operations in those latitudes a lot of reliability.
Needless to say, in these regular contacts with all the Bases, they were informed of Simba’s appearance, asking them if he belonged to them. In the following links the answers were NO, that they did not have a dog or that they never had one named like that in their staff. Everyone was surprised like us and added observations and questions whose answers we could not give or assume.
The next day, a beautiful sunny day, all the members got up asking about the new pensioner and the answer that he was there left them calm; More than one thought that Simba would rest and continue on his route, that Matienzo was just a stopover.
It was not like that, luckily for everyone he stayed and showed signs of having accepted the pampering of the cook, who began to separate his portion as if he were another member of the crew.
The following days, two members of the English station Hope Bay, neighboring our Esperanza Base, came as they always did when they passed to the south, or toured the area. They asked them the obligatory question about Simba. Visibly surprised John, a Scotsman with all his characteristics and well known to the Argentines, since he had been in Antarctica for almost three years, said that this animal was one of his crew, adding hurriedly, color and data that left his interlocutors no doubt that It was the same animal.
He continued saying that in the month of August in the middle of winter, they made a journey from their Base to the Jason Peninsula. It was getting dark when his guide dog fell into a crevice. The rescue attempts were in vain, because the animal moved to the side of the well and became wedged in the ice that intersected between the two walls and there was no option but to cut the pull rope that held it; An endless scream and muffled noise was the last thing heard from the guide dog. He also said that he had a hard time calming down the other dogs and they soon had to find a place to spend the night near Cape Longing. The next day they returned to the accident area and found no sign of Simba.
They continued their route southwest in search of a shelter installed by our Army years before in the vicinity of Cape Desengaño, which served as support.
Argentina, as a member of the Antarctic Treaty, had agreed to install shelters, identify their geographical position and communicate them to the Treaty so that they could be used in case of emergency by any eventual visitor; In that shelter, John said, they settled until the storm that hit the region in those days passed.
I can imagine the difficult times Simba went through after the rope that held him was cut. Surely he rolled towards the depth, with everything one can imagine, snow, darkness, ice spikes, blows everywhere and perhaps not so deep, the saving balcony that contained him and allowed him to remain there the time necessary to recover the cuts and bruises from the fall.
During the month of August the days are very short; Simba was then surrounded by many hours of total darkness, with noises of breaking ice, leaving his intuition altered by existing dangers, which he experienced from the breaking of that fragile bridge, which he could not detect as a guide dog because it escaped others cracks that remained on its side.
Simba completely dominated the times and haste to get out of that dangerous position, he remained with his hunger and thirst until the following days when a thread of light filtered through some crack in the crack, giving him the hope of reaching the surface that he had been waiting for for several days.
Surely Simba was accompanied by luck, which provided him with the balcony that stopped his fall, he was also accompanied by some distracted penguin or perhaps a seal chick that, shot from some predator, naturally climbed onto the balcony allowing, in this way, He would replenish his energy and give him time to explore places to finally achieve his self-liberation.
Several days or perhaps weeks passed to reach the surface and when he did there were no sleds or ropes, he ran from one side to the other, but on that lonely plain of nine and ice he found no one.
He sought with his instinct to return north but in those, for him, endless weeks, the Antarctic channels were thawed and he stayed on the shores. There he did not lack food to enjoy his well-earned freedom. He ended up discarding those intentions of going north and looked in the south for signs of life, which were what finally led him to Matienzo that November morning.
On the first day of December (1962) the conditions finally met and we were able to take off towards the Ellsworth Base, an old Antarctic base operated by the Argentine Antarctic Institute, neighboring the Belgrano Base.
The satisfaction of being able to take off and continue with our flight to the South Pole was accompanied by an eternal recognition of the help that the members of the Matienzo Base gave us with all their available means.
I have in my memory a postcard of the members raising their arms saying goodbye, and at their side Simba now turned into a mascot, looking surprised by the noises of the engines never heard before.
In the most unexpected way our returning from the Belgrano was interrupted; On takeoff our plane caught fire; Luckily we all came out of that hell alive, the losses were total and, with that inexplicable uneasiness of the accident, we found ourselves in the southernmost part of the Weddell Sea and thousands of kilometers from our El Palomar Base.
The Ellsworth Base where we were was closing definitively in a few more days; The old icebreaker General San Martín Q4 was already sailing there to remove its crew; They added us to the passenger list and at the end of the year we were returning in a way we never thought possible.
On a long journey, between icebergs and rough waters, this nobleman (Sapo), as the icebreaker was affectionately called, brought us to the vicinity of the Esperanza Base where the Bahía Aguirre transport ship was waiting for us, parked and sheltered in a cove in the area. , to later take us to Ushuaia; In it I shared the cabin with Juan Carlos, recently replaced at the Matienzo Base; After the greetings, the question about the Douglas accident and its details were the first words and when I told him the details he just let out of his mouth: “Negro, they were lucky, I can’t believe it.”
Almost immediately after remembering our families that we would soon see, he told me how eager he was to return to his family and, above all, to see his dear girlfriend; I told him that a few days ago my son Roberto Miguel had been born and that I was crazy to meet him. We started a round of mate and there he told me his last extra task, since he had been in charge of taking the dog Simba to the coast and bringing him on deck and delivering him to his owners in Esperanza. It was a surprise for me that made me experience the Antarctica that I had dreamed of visiting so much.
I say surprise because he told me that the Englishmen, upon finding out about the appearance of their guide dog, asked for it to be returned to them; The Argentines did it at the first opportunity they had. It was not easy for Juan Carlos to move Simba; he needed to build an improvised muzzle with nylon ropes, because with scratches and bites he intended to defend his freedom.
People who go to Antarctica usually return if the opportunity presents itself. I was no exception, they proposed that I join Matienzo’s staff for the year 1965 and of course I accepted. My transfer was made on a flight of the remembered Douglas TA-05 “El Montañés”,usual visitor of Antarctica at that time. It was September 1964 and upon arrival at the well-known Matienzo Base, I saw, standing next to the people who received us, my well-known Simba…I couldn’t believe it!
The post-flight and overnight have their tasks, which I shared with the plane crew and while I was doing them I thought and asked myself: what is this dog doing here?
A volunteer joined the tasks: Gerardo, the Base’s photographer, and while we started the engines, he answered my question about Simba. -A few months ago an English patrol came that was going south and brought us their former guide dog as a gift. The explanations for why they made the decision, as they said, was that during their definitive absence, they trained another dog to replace him precisely at that moment and it seemed to them that they would not have a better destiny to give to “a young retired dog”, also they added that Simba had the vices that his odyssey gave him, he did not recognize masters or cries and perhaps that was the reason for taking him as a gift to Matienzo, it was undoubtedly the best thing they could do with this beautiful animal.
From his arrival he was totally independent; He slept outside, he entered the house if forced, but within minutes he asked to leave, because he could not tolerate the heating. He visited the workshop sparingly, there was no heating, but the noise of the diesel engine of the electric generator installed there bothered him. A promontory of small stones was his favorite place, from which he observed the movement of people entering and leaving the house. He was an obligatory companion of any member who carried out work abroad.
We all felt like his best friend, but there was no doubt that Simba gave his preference to the cook and gave him his best blows. I never heard him bark, howl or whine and I doubt he ever did.
During the storms, which are a classic in the region, he spent them lying down, with his head almost hidden in his white paws like his shirt; That year we had hurricane winds that were around 300 kilometers per hour and he was outdoors, of course when the wind died down, someone came out to give him his food that Aderito, the cook, religiously prepared for him, and along the way made him move so that the snow will not stick to your body.
Two Beaver planes based in Matienzo carried out photographic flights and sightings of icebergs that usually break off from the great barrier, among other missions. When the mechanics and pilots went to the area where, to protect them from the strong winds, the small planes were buried in the snow, Simba would go out after them and stand nearby watching the preparations for the flight.
Once takeoff had taken place, he would lie down on the removed snow and remain there for the duration of the flight; The times were sometimes long and he would stay until the planes returned and when the last crew member got off, he would turn around and return to the house. We called him several times, but he never returned; He lowered his head and gave the impression that he had already completed his task and was leaving the area. That was his routine, that’s how he lived in 1965. The next year the men changed and his way of life continued; Other changes of men took place in 1967 and Simba was losing health; Osteoarthritis in his legs made it difficult for him to walk, but his habits did not change much.
An extension had been added to the house so that the members could leave their coats and boots impregnated with snow and ice, there was no heating there and they finally ended up accepting that place to spend the night.
At the beginning of 1968, they brought a female dog they named Zulma from the Esperanza Base, and she accompanied him for a while. His condition as a male was frustrated because his legs did not support him, and when his partner went into heat he could not mate. The intentions for descendants to remain did not occur; That was what Jorge, a member of the team that year, told us, and he also told us what his end was like.
One morning that year (1968) they found him dead; no one heard any noise or complaint; There he fell asleep forever, they buried him in the upper area of the nunatak, where he chose to live that night in November 1962.
Footnote:
Story is from Miguel Acosta. F.A.A., mechanic,part of the crew of TA33 and TA05 planes, at the command of Mario L.Olezza., sent to SIMBA, THE INCREDIBLE DESTINY OF AN ANTARCTIC DOG
It was midnight on a Saturday in the middle of November 1962. The crew of the Teniente Matienzo Joint Base and the crew of the Douglas DC-3 TA-33 to which I belonged were gathered in the dining room. Due to the high prevailing temperatures, the snow was soft and prevented us from continuing the trip to the General Belgrano Base as we had planned.
At that time, the inevitable truco and canasta championship had already begun, a repeated way of sharing a few hours in the isolated and distant Antarctica. Matienzo was in its beginnings a precarious base and one of its shortcomings was the lack of a bathroom inside. The members had to go outside, to a latrine close to the house and mounted on cracks, on the side of the nunatak, which is an outcrop of sand and volcanic lava in the middle of the great ice barrier that borders the west of the Sea of Weddell.
“Play for me a pair of hands,” says Musso, one of the truco players, he gets up quickly from his chair and heads to the door, adding, “I’m going to the bathroom.” He went outside and returned to the living room and at the top of his voice he repeated, “A dog! A dog is there at the door!” Yes, he responded to the incredulous, it is a big animal!
No one stayed in their place, some came out as they were, with light clothes, others more cautious ran to the bedroom to look for a coat, with them came those who were already in bed at that time, not wanting to miss the novelty.
The dog was standing meters from the door, he looked at each member who came out and even let them pet him. His hair was jet black with white chest, paws, muzzle and spots on his small head that shone in the reflection of the light located at the entrance of the house. He made a few turns, and when the human he was waiting for did not come out, he took a few short steps back, turned around and looked for the soft snow on the side of the workshop, where he layed down facing the house. Inside, all the comments were already being made, -Yes, Juan Carlos said, he is a dog of approximately 4 years old, we immediately heard Julio who said he had read the Simba name that was engraved on the badge hanging from the collar and added that it was from leather and had a stainless metal buckle.
There is no doubt, he is a sled dog, said Bustamante, a sergeant of our Army who years before joined the Esperanza Base crews; He told us details of ropes and sleds totally unknown to the “aeronautical” people gathered there.
As I said at the beginning of this canine memory, we were at that Base making a stopover to later go to distant Belgrano and from there reach the Geographic South Pole.
To support our flight, the meteorological observers of the Antarctic Peninsula gave a timely report of the weather, which was later transmitted from Matienzo to the National Meteorological Service, where Dr. Hoffmann and Mr. Komar, among other qualified weather forecasters, provided us with the information which gave air operations in those latitudes a lot of reliability.
Needless to say, in these regular contacts with all the Bases, they were informed of Simba’s appearance, asking them if he belonged to them. In the following links the answers were NO, that they did not have a dog or that they never had one named like that in their staff. Everyone was surprised like us and added observations and questions whose answers we could not give or assume.
The next day, a beautiful sunny day, all the members got up asking about the new pensioner and the answer that he was there left them calm; More than one thought that Simba would rest and continue on his route, that Matienzo was just a stopover.
It was not like that, luckily for everyone he stayed and showed signs of having accepted the pampering of the cook, who began to separate his portion as if he were another member of the crew.
The following days, two members of the English station Hope Bay, neighboring our Esperanza Base, came as they always did when they passed to the south, or toured the area. They asked them the obligatory question about Simba. Visibly surprised John, a Scotsman with all his characteristics and well known to the Argentines, since he had been in Antarctica for almost three years, said that this animal was one of his crew, adding hurriedly, color and data that left his interlocutors no doubt that It was the same animal.
He continued saying that in the month of August in the middle of winter, they made a journey from their Base to the Jason Peninsula. It was getting dark when his guide dog fell into a crevice. The rescue attempts were in vain, because the animal moved to the side of the well and became wedged in the ice that intersected between the two walls and there was no option but to cut the pull rope that held it; An endless scream and muffled noise was the last thing heard from the guide dog. He also said that he had a hard time calming down the other dogs and they soon had to find a place to spend the night near Cape Longing. The next day they returned to the accident area and found no sign of Simba.
They continued their route southwest in search of a shelter installed by our Army years before in the vicinity of Cape Desengaño, which served as support.
Argentina, as a member of the Antarctic Treaty, had agreed to install shelters, identify their geographical position and communicate them to the Treaty so that they could be used in case of emergency by any eventual visitor; In that shelter, John said, they settled until the storm that hit the region in those days passed.
I can imagine the difficult times Simba went through after the rope that held him was cut. Surely he rolled towards the depth, with everything one can imagine, snow, darkness, ice spikes, blows everywhere and perhaps not so deep, the saving balcony that contained him and allowed him to remain there the time necessary to recover the cuts and bruises from the fall.
During the month of August the days are very short; Simba was then surrounded by many hours of total darkness, with noises of breaking ice, leaving his intuition altered by existing dangers, which he experienced from the breaking of that fragile bridge, which he could not detect as a guide dog because it escaped others cracks that remained on its side.
Simba completely dominated the times and haste to get out of that dangerous position, he remained with his hunger and thirst until the following days when a thread of light filtered through some crack in the crack, giving him the hope of reaching the surface that he had been waiting for for several days.
Surely Simba was accompanied by luck, which provided him with the balcony that stopped his fall, he was also accompanied by some distracted penguin or perhaps a seal chick that, shot from some predator, naturally climbed onto the balcony allowing, in this way, He would replenish his energy and give him time to explore places to finally achieve his self-liberation.
Several days or perhaps weeks passed to reach the surface and when he did there were no sleds or ropes, he ran from one side to the other, but on that lonely plain of nine and ice he found no one.
He sought with his instinct to return north but in those, for him, endless weeks, the Antarctic channels were thawed and he stayed on the shores. There he did not lack food to enjoy his well-earned freedom. He ended up discarding those intentions of going north and looked in the south for signs of life, which were what finally led him to Matienzo that November morning.
On the first day of December (1962) the conditions finally met and we were able to take off towards the Ellsworth Base, an old Antarctic base operated by the Argentine Antarctic Institute, neighboring the Belgrano Base.
The satisfaction of being able to take off and continue with our flight to the South Pole was accompanied by an eternal recognition of the help that the members of the Matienzo Base gave us with all their available means.
I have in my memory a postcard of the members raising their arms saying goodbye, and at their side Simba now turned into a mascot, looking surprised by the noises of the engines never heard before.
In the most unexpected way our returning from the Belgrano was interrupted; On takeoff our plane caught fire; Luckily we all came out of that hell alive, the losses were total and, with that inexplicable uneasiness of the accident, we found ourselves in the southernmost part of the Weddell Sea and thousands of kilometers from our El Palomar Base.
The Ellsworth Base where we were was closing definitively in a few more days; The old icebreaker General San Martín Q4 was already sailing there to remove its crew; They added us to the passenger list and at the end of the year we were returning in a way we never thought possible.
On a long journey, between icebergs and rough waters, this nobleman (Sapo), as the icebreaker was affectionately called, brought us to the vicinity of the Esperanza Base where the Bahía Aguirre transport ship was waiting for us, parked and sheltered in a cove in the area. , to later take us to Ushuaia; In it I shared the cabin with Juan Carlos, recently replaced at the Matienzo Base; After the greetings, the question about the Douglas accident and its details were the first words and when I told him the details he just let out of his mouth: “Negro, they were lucky, I can’t believe it.”
Almost immediately after remembering our families that we would soon see, he told me how eager he was to return to his family and, above all, to see his dear girlfriend; I told him that a few days ago my son Roberto Miguel had been born and that I was crazy to meet him. We started a round of mate and there he told me his last extra task, since he had been in charge of taking the dog Simba to the coast and bringing him on deck and delivering him to his owners in Esperanza. It was a surprise for me that made me experience the Antarctica that I had dreamed of visiting so much.
I say surprise because he told me that the Englishmen, upon finding out about the appearance of their guide dog, asked for it to be returned to them; The Argentines did it at the first opportunity they had. It was not easy for Juan Carlos to move Simba; he needed to build an improvised muzzle with nylon ropes, because with scratches and bites he intended to defend his freedom.
People who go to Antarctica usually return if the opportunity presents itself. I was no exception, they proposed that I join Matienzo’s staff for the year 1965 and of course I accepted. My transfer was made on a flight of the remembered Douglas TA-05 “El Montañés”,usual visitor of Antarctica at that time. It was September 1964 and upon arrival at the well-known Matienzo Base, I saw, standing next to the people who received us, my well-known Simba…I couldn’t believe it!
The post-flight and overnight have their tasks, which I shared with the plane crew and while I was doing them I thought and asked myself: what is this dog doing here?
A volunteer joined the tasks: Gerardo, the Base’s photographer, and while we started the engines, he answered my question about Simba. -A few months ago an English patrol came that was going south and brought us their former guide dog as a gift. The explanations for why they made the decision, as they said, was that during their definitive absence, they trained another dog to replace him precisely at that moment and it seemed to them that they would not have a better destiny to give to “a young retired dog”, also they added that Simba had the vices that his odyssey gave him, he did not recognize masters or cries and perhaps that was the reason for taking him as a gift to Matienzo, it was undoubtedly the best thing they could do with this beautiful animal.
From his arrival he was totally independent; He slept outside, he entered the house if forced, but within minutes he asked to leave, because he could not tolerate the heating. He visited the workshop sparingly, there was no heating, but the noise of the diesel engine of the electric generator installed there bothered him. A promontory of small stones was his favorite place, from which he observed the movement of people entering and leaving the house. He was an obligatory companion of any member who carried out work abroad.
We all felt like his best friend, but there was no doubt that Simba gave his preference to the cook and gave him his best blows. I never heard him bark, howl or whine and I doubt he ever did.
During the storms, which are a classic in the region, he spent them lying down, with his head almost hidden in his white paws like his shirt; That year we had hurricane winds that were around 300 kilometers per hour and he was outdoors, of course when the wind died down, someone came out to give him his food that Aderito, the cook, religiously prepared for him, and along the way made him move so that the snow will not stick to your body.
Two Beaver planes based in Matienzo carried out photographic flights and sightings of icebergs that usually break off from the great barrier, among other missions. When the mechanics and pilots went to the area where, to protect them from the strong winds, the small planes were buried in the snow, Simba would go out after them and stand nearby watching the preparations for the flight.
Once takeoff had taken place, he would lie down on the removed snow and remain there for the duration of the flight; The times were sometimes long and he would stay until the planes returned and when the last crew member got off, he would turn around and return to the house. We called him several times, but he never returned; He lowered his head and gave the impression that he had already completed his task and was leaving the area. That was his routine, that’s how he lived in 1965. The next year the men changed and his way of life continued; Other changes of men took place in 1967 and Simba was losing health; Osteoarthritis in his legs made it difficult for him to walk, but his habits did not change much.
An extension had been added to the house so that the members could leave their coats and boots impregnated with snow and ice, there was no heating there and they finally ended up accepting that place to spend the night.
At the beginning of 1968, they brought a female dog they named Zulma from the Esperanza Base, and she accompanied him for a while. His condition as a male was frustrated because his legs did not support him, and when his partner went into heat he could not mate. The intentions for descendants to remain did not occur; That was what Jorge, a member of the team that year, told us, and he also told us what his end was like.
One morning that year (1968) they found him dead; no one heard any noise or complaint; There he fell asleep forever, they buried him in the upper area of the nunatak, where he chose to live that night in November 1962.
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