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The Midnight Troubadour
Tough and timeless, this polo is built for the long ride. Featuring a crisp, non-collapsing collar and a rugged, stretchy fabric, it's the perfect shirt for any cowboy's wardrobe.
Unlikely Rescuers On May 13, 1945, a U.S. Army Air Force C-47 nicknamed the “Gremlin Special” crashed into a mountainside in what was then Dutch New Guinea. The plane carried 24 officers and enlisted women. Only three survived, Lt. John McCollom was relatively unharmed, but WAC Cpl. Margaret Hastings and Sgt. Kenneth Decker were badly hurt. They soon found themselves in the middle of a modern Stone Age culture still untouched by the outside world. The natives were known cannibals, but luckily for the crash survivors, they mainly ate their enemy tribe. On July 2, 1945, after having spent forty-two days in the jungle and being nursed back to health by friendly natives, the three survivors and their rescue team escaped the island.
Toughest Battle with Dehydration On the night of January 29, 1982, Steven Callahan set sail alone in his small sailboat from the Canary Islands bound for the Caribbean. On February 5, the ship sank in a storm, leaving Callahan adrift in the Atlantic in a five-and-a-half-foot inflatable rubber raft. Naked except for a t-shirt, with only three pounds of food, a few pieces of gear and eight pints of water, Callahan drifted for 76 days, and over 1,800 miles of ocean, before he reached land and rescue in the Bahamas. Callahan’s autobiographical account of the story, Adrift, is a gut-wrenching book that clearly details the extreme mental toughness required to survive at sea. I often cite Callahan when I teach the importance of leadership in a survival situation. Even though Callahan was alone, his mind divided into a “Captain” character and a “crewman” character. The written log from the ordeal records a detailed fight over the water ration. The “Captain” won the fight, the rations continued, and Callahan ultimately survived.
Gutsiest Escape Aron Ralston became widely known in May 2003, when he was forced to amputate his right arm with a dull knife in order to free himself from between a boulder and a rock wall. Ralston was scrambling through a canyon in Utah when a boulder shifted, pinning his arm to the canyon wall. He was alone, and no one knew how to find him. After several days, he finally walked out of the canyon, near death and minus one arm. The whole ordeal is documented in Ralston’s autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and is the subject of the 2010 film 127 Hours.
Youngest Survivor Abby Sunderland was attempting to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world, when a strong storm snapped the mast of her 40-foot yacht, Wild Eyes. The 16-year-old was stranded in the Indian Ocean, 2,000 miles from land after being hit by gale-force winds and freezing temperatures. She was rescued by fishermen two days after raising a distress signal. Photo: youllbethere
