Aleksey Maresyev – Crawled for 18 days
Time stranded: 18 days
Distance traveled: Under 30 miles
Terrain types: Forest
Deaths: 0
Situation ended: Made it to safety
Location: Staraya Russa – West Russia
Aleksey Maresyev was a Russian national born in the city of Kamyshin in 1916. He came from humble beginnings with his father being a laborer who also fought in the First World War, one of the possible reasons he joined the army himself in 1937 at the age of 21. Only two years after joining the Second World War broke out and Russia found itself short of pilots and skilled military men.
Maresyev requested to become a pilot and graduated from the Bataysk Military School of Aviation in 1940, but it wasn’t until the next year he would see combat. In August of 1941, he was sent out on combat patrols and managed to down four German planes over the next 6 months, an act which got him noticed by his superiors.
On the 5th of April, 1942 he found himself in yet another battle near the city of Staraya Russa in the far west of the country. His plane was sprayed with bullets from a highly skilled German pilot believed to be Ace Peter Siegler who was fighting in the area that day, since the German Ace had several dozen plane kills Maresyev in his much more basic Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter plane didn’t stand a chance.
Maresyev’s plane came crashing down into a forest close to the German front line, smashing into pieces as it hit the forest canopy. Maresyev was badly hurt but very much alive, with most of the damage happening to his legs as the cockpit crumpled around them during impact. The Germans saw the plane come down and sent troops to try and find the pilot but they were a long way off giving Maresyev plenty of time to escape.
Unfortunately for him, his legs were too badly damaged to walk properly, and after trying to stagger as far as he could he soon had to resort to crawling as fast as possible to escape the German scout party. Because he was still in Russia the Germans couldn’t pursue him for long but this didn’t mean rescue was any closer. During the war Russian soldiers were considered by those in charge to be disposable, often using them with no regard for their safety, and knowing this Maresyev knew there wasn’t going to be anyone coming to rescue him.
He wasn’t a huge distance from safety but because he couldn’t walk the journey would take him over a couple of weeks instead of a couple of days. He had a few rations and a knife but nothing substantial to last him for the trip, the only thing going in his favor was water didn’t seem to be a problem since the countryside is covered in streams and due to the time of year snow could be used as a last resort.
For the next 18 days he crawled across forest floors in an attempt to find anyone friendly who could help him, but day after day there was no one to be seen. His legs took most of the damage during the crash and had several large open wounds he had nothing to bandage with, and in the first few days, Maresyev noticed gangrene was setting in.
Since his choices were either crawl or die he somehow found the drive to keep going and eventually made it back into friendly territory and was taken to a hospital. The cuts on his legs weren’t the problem, but rather the gangrene which by now was deeply set into both his lower legs. The doctor he originally spoke to told him he could be saved without losing his legs, but after a lengthy operation, he woke to find both of them were missing from just above the knee.
His initial reaction was anger at the thought he wouldn’t be able to fly, but after the initial healing period, he was fitted with prosthetics and spent months learning how to walk again, even making it back into the pilot’s seat in June 1943.
Because of his achievements in flying both before and after the accident, combined with his incredible survival story, Maresyev was awarded the title of “Hero of the Soviet Union” and retired from the military in 1946.
When later asked by reporters about his survival story he gave the following statement:
“There’s nothing extraordinary in what I did. The fact that I’ve been turned into a legend irritates me.”