Fascism

4 yrs

Fatal Hike
part 1

The lilac was in full bloom when a group of boys from the Strand school in Brixton and Kenneth Keast, their 27-year-old master, left Freiburg for the opening hike of their 10-day Easter trekking tour in the southern Black Forest. It was the morning of 17 April 1936, as they set off for the village of Todtnauberg, over 15 miles away, across the summit of the Schauinsland mountain. By the time they emerged from a wood about three hours later, snow was falling steadily but they were full of spring-time optimism. The boys broke ranks to throw snowballs.
Keast noted that some of his boys – who wore shorts, mackintoshes, and even sandals, rather than appropriate gear for hiking through snowy mountains – were beginning to find the going tough. With the snowfall worsening, he put a stop to their skylarking and urged them to concentrate on the path ahead.

When they had set out from their youth hostel that morning, Keast had been warned that the snow would make his planned route hazardous. Even without snow, the locals considered it a challenge. The weather map for 17 April that hung in the hostel gave clear indication that conditions were going to turn. The previous day, the tourist office had warned Keast about the approaching storm, to which his response was: “The English are used to sudden changes in the weather.” The 13-year-old Ken Osborne, who had already written his first postcard home, wrote in his small black notebook: “Had breakfast. Left Freiburg about nine o’clock. It was snowing and we lost our way.”
With snow now falling heavily, and having lost the path and circled back on themselves, they were soon behind schedule. Keast stopped at an inn to ask for directions. The landlady advised him that the paths and signposts would be buried in snow, at which the schoolmaster shrugged and said they would “brush it off.”

Continued.
NEXT to part 2:
https://gab.com/ArchangeI/posts/105464550965963184