CONCORD - Three weeks ago, Bill Allman, 78, an Alaskan old-timer marooned for 12 days on a monstrous iceberg in the Bering Sea, was hallucinating, eating raw polar bear meat and fighting ice fog and screaming winds.
"It 'uz the worst time I ever had," said Allman, a Mecklenburg native who went by whaling boat to Alaska in 1921 and survived the worst it could offer for 57 years.
Allman, who lost 50 pounds in that 12 days, is back in his cozy room at Hotel Concord, where he's spent winters since 1957.
"I'm still seein' mirages, though - headless bodies floating by and a grizzly bear in my room at night," Allman said, his usually humorous blue eyes solemn.
Then he grinned.
"I just get up and eat a ripe banana. I eat all the time. And it 'pears like I need more blankets on my bed than I use to."
For half a century, Allman, born with "roamin' blood," has fought blinding Alaskan blizzards, attacks by grizzly bears, snowblindness. He crashed through ice with his dogsled, walked away from three plane crashes and survived the mammoth Alaskan earthquake of 1964.
His latest face-off with death started in October. "We heard the polar bear hunting was good on a big iceberg that had come to shore on the Bering Sea," he said.
On Oct. 27, Clark Dennison of Denver, Ed Harless of Kansas City, Mo., and Allman as guide, flew in a helicopter from Allman's sod hut by the Yukon, near Marshall, Alaska, to a small Eskimo settlement far up on the Bering coast.
Loading supplies on sleds pulled by snowmobile - including a skin boat - the three headed out on the 100-mile-long, 40-mile-wide iceberg.
"She's probably 500,000 years old, the scientists say, and she probably broke off over on the Russia side," Allman said. "She's like all them icebergs. She drifts south with the south wind, north with the north wind."
The three quickly bagged two small polar bears, then "we started tracking a big 'un, 1,800 pounds, with silky white fur, but he swam over to a two-acre cake of
ice that had broke loose from ours. We didn't shoot. We let him go..."
Elated, they set up camp.
Then the wind shifted, moving the berg about 15 miles offshore where, for the next 11 days and nights, the winds whipped up giant, ice-choked swells. The men couldn't get back to land.
And if the wind wasn't screaming, there was ice fog so dense that it hid the ground.
"What saved us, it wasn't cold,' Allman said. "It didn't go under 17 degrees below zero at night. Now if it'd been going down to 50 or 60 below, it might be a
different story for us."
They went on light rations the third day but ran out of food on the eighth. A U.S. Geodetic Survey helicopter tried to drop food to the men, but high winds blew the packet into the ocean. The craft couldn't get back again.
"We lost some of our food in the winds," Allman said. "We took enough for two weeks - beans, candy bars, plenty of rice and raisins and sugar - that'll keep you
going a long time. On the ninth day, we re-found some of the candy bars. They was damaged,
but we ate them."
They spent the days smoking, playing cards, walking a little and fishing unsuccessfully.
Before it was over, "we was rolling some little bits of that polar
bear meat in snow and swallowing it. It wasn't so bad that way. It's real fishy tastin'."
All three had heavy clothing - arctic boots, wolverine fur parkas
— but "we didn't have enough oil to keep a fire going. We was all seeing mirages. Once I saw a town with all the lights. Another time I was driving my old dog team like when I drove the U.S. mail in north Alaska in the '30s. Once I thought this old grizzly mother
bear had me, like one did last summer" - the one that left multiple claw marks in his scalp.
"I just don't know how long a man could take it," said Allman. "It's just a ice world, We took shelter in some nooks and crannies in the ice. We was too weak to be
afraid. We didn't do nothin' to take our strength. You have to save your strength in that cold. And not panic..."
On Nov. 7, the wind shifted. "We tore up our last sled then and built a fire and just waited," Allman remembered.
"Finally she (the berg) swung around and touched land for two or three hours." They walked 300 feet to the edge, threw a line to the Eskimos on shore, who pulled
them in the skin boat across about 30 feet of heaving, ice-laden water.
Allman says he's stronger now "but I'm still sleepy a lot." On the plane to Charlotte Nov. 15, he slept through his stop, ended up in Florida and had to be brought
back.
"I walked down Union Street the other day, and I got so hungry and nervous I had to sit down on the curb. I eat night and day, all the time, now. I leave my lights on at night," said Allman.
However, he vows he'll return to Alaska come spring.
