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Nine men from the Greenland icecap rescue (TIME, Jan. 3) riding in style in a red-tailed C-54 transport, landed 30 minutes late in a freezing rain at La Guardia Field. Official greeters swarmed all over them and pumped their hands while newsmen pumped their memories for details of their Greenland exploits. ("How did you find conditions on the icecap?" asked one blonde newshen.) In the background Air Force P.R.O.s worked diligently. The glory would not have been theirs to exploit had the Air Force been beaten to the rescue by the Navy's carrier Saipan.

The seven fliers and their rescuers (Lieut. Colonel Emil Beaudry and Lieut. Charles Blackwell*) were whisked off to a midtown hotel, which was to be their garrison for the next few days. As they entered the lobby a dark-haired woman bounded over to one of them, Glider Pilot Howard Halstead, handed him a piece of paper and wished him a happy New Year. The woman was his wife; the paper was a summons charging him with desertion. He shrugged her off, explained that he had divorced her and remarried.

Between their sightseeing and night-seeing rounds the men told their story of survival. Seven men were flying in a C-47 during an 80-mile-per-hour blow, when both engines conked out. They pancaked on to a frozen plateau 7,700 feet above sea level and 40DEG below zero.

They built three snowhouses. Each was about eight feet high, 10 ft. by 14 ft. in breadth. They used their parachutes for roofs, stripped the ailerons from their plane to hold them up. They used the C-47's plywood ventilator for a center beam (it broke), and the power plant for lighting. Air Force planes dropped them everything they could use--playing cards, whiskey, clothes, magazines, a Christmas dinner of roast turkey and pumpkin pie, a Christmas tree. Some even talked to their families in Greenland by radio.

As would-be rescuers--five in all--landed in a B-17 and gliders near the marooned party, and failed to get off the ice again, the men welcomed them to the gang. On the 19th day, when Colonel Beaudry landed his ski-equipped C-47, the boys smilingly showed him the bunk they had prepared for his stay. But in 38 minutes they were aboard and sweating out the jet-assisted takeoff. "We faced into the wind, counted noses, checked the engines and took off," said Co-Pilot Blackwell.

Their New York City reception last week was warm enough to take the arctic chills out of their bones. When it was all over and they were all thawed out, they quietly slipped out of town, soon to return to duty.

* Five others of the marooned group did not make the trip to New York.

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