Lost man lived on clay and old wood

PARIS - A French man survived for 35 days lost in a labyrinth of caves in the Pyrenees, drinking the water dripping from the walls and eating clay and rotten wood.

Jean-Luc Josuat-Verges, 48, owes his life to a strike by French teachers.

Three pupils, given an unexpected day off, went to explore the caves near Madiran and found his four-wheel-drive truck parked some distance inside the tunnels.

They alerted the gendarmerie who discovered Josuat-Verges sheltering in a heap of old plastic tarpaulins, only 200m from the exit.

"It was instinct for survival and strength of character which saved me," he said. "I never panicked, never got depressed or cried. I even sang songs."

Josuat-Verges, a monitor in a centre for the handicapped, said that he entered the caves, once used for growing mushrooms, because he was depressed and needed some time to himself. He consumed a bottle of whisky and sleeping pills but denies that he intended to commit suicide.

He told gendarmes that he drove into the caves, had an accident, and then continued on foot. His torch packed up, he lost his shoes and could no longer find his car or the way out and, after searching for a week, gave up and sheltered in the old tarpaulins.

He said that there was no shortage of water dripping into the caves and he ate pieces of rotting wood, lumps of clay and sucked pieces of rock for the minerals. Although he had lost 19kg by the time that he was discovered, he was otherwise declared to be in good physical and mental condition and released from hospital after a few hours.

"I went there because I was a little depressed but as soon as I was trapped and in a survival situation, everything changed. I was determined to live," he said.

The gendarmerie said that they accepted the main lines of his story but they have nonetheless asked him to return for further questioning.

Josuat-Verges' wife and his two teenage sons had organised searches for him, fearing that he might have been injured while hiking. His wife even hired a helicopter to fly over the forests and mountains to look for her husband.

Gendarmerie lieutenant Philippe Lasalle said: "He was thin, bearded and covered in mud when we found him but he replied to our first questions coherently."

When his rescuers asked what day it was, he was only two days out.

On his first night back at home, he refused to go to bed. He could not bear to be returned to darkness, He sat up and waited to watch the dawn.

- INDEPENDENT