Bill Arnott’s Beat

Book Signing and Saying Yes, Part II: The Book.

And what was the book given to me by the friendly guy at my book signing event? Matt Gutman’s The Boys in the Cave: Deep Inside the Impossible Rescue in Thailand. The man who bought me the book knew one of the guys involved. I think. Degrees of separation were unclear, dark and muddied as a flooded cavern. If you don’t know the story, twelve Thai boys—part of a U15 soccer team, and their coach—went for an after-practice hike into the underground caves near their town. It was a popular hike—you can clamber and creep a mile and a half into the earth, the caverns the result of monsoon erosion.

The team (ages 11-14) finished practice, and along with their coach, made their way to the popular local hike. It wasn’t yet monsoon season. They weren’t irresponsible. They weren’t misbehaving. Just a group of boys with a well-intentioned coach doing something more than simply practicing. But they get caught in the caves amidst an atypical, early flood that made exiting impossible.

To ensure their safety they were forced to move further inside the underground maze as water accumulated, cutting off their only possible exit.

The downpour filled the series of low snaking caves behind them with a torrent of water, an instantaneous, raging river, leaving the thirteen cut off with no means of escape. They managed to find a small tilting shelf of sandy rock, and there they waited for water to recede or for rescue. The water was due to recede, perhaps, in three or four months. Snacks got eaten. And their pocket of stale air slowly turned to carbon dioxide with each exhale. The book follows the ensuing story from a reporter’s perspective—government, navy, and civilians doing their best to rescue the boys from a dismally inaccessible, submerged labyrinth.

The only possibility of survival for the team, albeit remote, was rescue—a rescue unlike any other. Cave diving is a unique and highly skilled endeavour. A handful of people on the planet are capable of a dive like that—in pitch black, through narrow, snaking caverns with stalactites and sharp rocky floor with no clearance, not to mention dragging a dozen nonswimmers a mile and a half underwater, buried in cell phone- and GPS-impenetrable rock. In other words, it was never intended to be a rescue, only recovery. The first diver discovered the boys (and their coach) ten days after they were stranded. Ten days. And then the rescue planning began.

Spoiler alert: I’m going to refer to the conclusion of this drama. Stop reading if you want to read the book and be surprised. Otherwise, read on.

The ending to the tale is happy. Predominantly. The team and their coach were rescued, against unfathomably long odds. A Thai Navy SEAL died early in the rescue attempt, likely from a tainted oxygen tank and subsequent drowning. He became the face of the rescue—the hero who didn’t make it. The surviving heroes are many. The story’s a good one. For many reasons.

As I write this, much of the world is on its second wave of lock-down, each of us doing our part to flatten the COVID curve. Distancing. Waiting. Optimism remains, along with uncertainty. And fear. It’s no one’s normal. If my drawing parallels is offensive, it’s unintended. But when in our lives have we been trapped, literally or metaphorically? Survival is hardwired into us. But we don’t survive unscathed. Survivors scar, and we’re scarring now. Most of us will survive. Positive changes are in fact happening to permanently improve the social landscape. But to believe things will return to pre-pandemic normal is a myth. Our lives, like the boys in the cave and all involved in their salvation, have changed forever.