Who taught you something you couldn't have figured out yourself?

In 2014, I found myself stuck in a swamp that stunk of methane, attacked by swarms of mosquitoes the size of my thumb.

I was about eight miles from the closest trail.

No big deal, unless you have food, water, and fuel to deliver to hungry men in the field.

The softcover HMMV I drove was made in the 80s. It could plow through saplings and plenty of water, but that day, it wouldn't start.

It wasn't the fuses. If it was the battery, we were in shit.

I managed to get enough clear water to clean the wires of mud. Nothing had gnawed them.

Then my mentor, an E-5 Forward Observer whose face was reconstructed so he looked like an elf extra from the Lord of the Rings, told me to try something.

Underneath, there was a linkage. Doing as he said, I used a stick to smash the links together.

The engine started.

It had been the neutral safety switch, an interlock device that prevented the engine from cranking unless the selector was in neutral.

At some point the linkage got bent. The stick was used to force it to line up.

There's no way I would have figured that out.

***

In a bid to find the Northwest Passage, Sir John Franklin led the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror through the Canadian Arctic.

The crew of 129 disappeared into the white expanse, never to be heard from again.

Until some Americans led by Lt. Frederick Schwatka, veteran of battles against Crazy Horse, found the bones of one of the crew of the HMS Terror.

How did they survive?