Artimus Pyle, Marc Frank, And Ken Peden Go Searching For Help
With the dust settled from a plane crash that would make a small Mississippi town famous, everything that surrounded the few conscious and able survivors were completely horrific and getting darker by the second. Deceased people hanging from trees, the other survivors moaning for help of any kind, and completely surrounded by a black swamp whose canopy is blocking the only light that is trying so desperately to shine through. At this point, for Artimus Pyle, Marc Frank, and Ken Peden, the only sensible thing left to do was to leave certain death at the crash site, for uncertainty in the swamp.
As the three marched on, feet soaking wet from the water, all odds seemed stacked against the trio. Tremendous physical pain overwhelmed the group as did mental exhaustion. Especially Artimus, who had three broken ribs and multiple large cuts. The will to carry on was strong, however, Pyle being a US Marine, would live out the phrase “Semper Fidelis” which means always faithful. A little after an hour of trudging through a creek – and at one point burrowing underneath a barbed wire fence – they found themselves staring at a small, dim light in the distance. Shining from what seemed to be a small house on a dairy farm.
That farm belonged to a young dairy farmer named Johnny Mote. The 22-year-old had been outside bailing hay in the twilight when he heard the crash in the distance, which he assumed was “a car skidding in gravel.” But after seeing helicopter searchlights, he started to assume it was a jailbreak instead. Mote hopped into his pick-up to get back to his house, told his wife to get back in the house, then proceeded to grab his gun and stand guard. Pyle, Frank, and Peden were met with hostility when they finally came up to Mote. Mote fired a warning shot in the air. The guys hit the dirt and yelling out with what they had left “Hey! I don’t know who you think we are but we were on a plane and the plane crashed out there on the other side of that cow pasture.” Mote instantly connected the dots to the sound he heard earlier and the men that lay before him. He then assembled a convoy of trucks and four-wheelers to locate the crash site and rescue the survivors.