Man lost in cave network ripped pages from SAS Great Escapes to close dead ends

For most people, the idea of ​​venturing into a remote cave alone would fill them with dread.

But for former teacher Tommy Soames, it was his idea of ​​fun – until he got lost inside thinking he would die alone with no hope of rescue.

That’s exactly what happened when he explored the underground network of caves near Montenegro’s picturesque Lake Skadar last year.

Remarkably, he survived the six-hour ordeal by ripping pages from historian Damien Lewis’ book SAS Great Escapes and using them, Hansel and Gretel style, to mark each dead end until he found his way out.

Mr. Lewis then received an email from the adventurer telling him, “Your book saved my life.”

The pair reunited last week at the launch of the author’s latest book, SAS Great Escapes II, at the Churchill War Rooms in Westminster.

Mr. Lewis was so inspired by Mr. Lewis’ survival story that he recounted it in the foreword to his latest book.

Mr. Soames, who went to Montenegro during spring break last year, was initially told by a fisherman about the Obod Caves, near the town of Rijeka Crnojevica.

He was attracted by a review revealing how they had an underground river and so set off. The caves were in a beautiful forest, as Mr. Soames’ photographs show.

All he had in his bag was Mr. Lewis’s book, a tin of sardines, and a packet of dates.

“There was one huge entrance. So I thought, one way down, one way up. So I went in,” he said.

‘And I didn’t think the river would be this far. So I just listened for the water and heard it rustling softly in the distance.

“I think that’s why I got lost so easily, because all I listened to was the water and I didn’t really look where I was going, I just followed my senses.”

He said it got ‘pitch dark’ very quickly as it started to get deeper. The only sound other than running water was the screaming of bats.

When he came down to the river after about an hour’s walk, he filled his water bottle and then tried to get out.

‘I followed a path back up, [it was a] dead end. I thought, okay, that’s good. There are clearly two tunnels, not one. So I went down again, I took another tunnel.

And that was also a dead end. And it was after the second tunnel that I thought it was over. I was so sure at that moment that I was going to die.’

While trying to scramble back to the river, Mr. Soames took a wrong step and fell about 10 feet between two boulders.

Fortunately, he suffered only cuts and bruises, but said the fall “sobered me up” from the panic.

Back at the river, he examined the contents of his bag and began to think about the fairy tales he knew.

His mind drifted to Theseus and the Minotaur, where the hero escapes the monster’s labyrinth using Ariadne’s tangle of thread to guide him.

He also thought of Hansel and Gretel in the classic Grimm fairy tale, in which the siblings escape from a forest and the clutches of a witch by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind.

At first he tried to make a trail with the dates he had, but realized that their mud-brown appearance was merging with the rocks.

“And then I saw my book and I just started tearing it up,” he said.

“It almost became a sort of dial of failed paths right down.

“And all the while I tried to keep my hopes as low as possible.

“I thought there was a good chance I wouldn’t make it. But by God, I must try, ’cause no one’s coming looking for me.

“I thought about my parents, my siblings, and imagined the police knocking on their door and telling them, probably weeks later, that my body had been found.

“And that’s what drove me.”

Remarkably, he ripped every page out of the book – which charted notable escapes by members of the elite SAS in World War II – that he had read, up to chapter six.

“It wasn’t just the fact that I had a book with me, but it was that I had this book because these guys stayed calm under pressure and thought their plan through so logically,” he said.

Mr. Soames became so disoriented as he continued to try to get out for another five hours that when he finally saw the sunbeam marking the exit, he thought he was looking at a “snowdrift” and almost turned around. .

“But I thought, I’ve tried it everywhere, I’ll just take it and see,” he said. “And then I saw the exit and got down on my knees and cried for who knows how long.”

Fortunately, Mr. Soames, who now carries the shredded SAS book with him on all his travels, emerged just before the sun set, meaning the exit was clearly visible.

The day after, he was back in the UK and on his way to a performance by hit band The Killers, which he said was “somewhat traumatizing” because they turned off the lights during one song, forcing him to relive his cave ordeal.

Speaking at the book launch on Wednesday, Mr Lewis told MailOnline: “I was speechless when he sent the email, speechless when I spoke to him and speechless when I said ‘Tommy, I want to put your story in my book’ and he said “please do”.

“Because maybe he said, ‘Please don’t do that.'”

He added: ‘I went to my family when we were sitting at the table and I said ‘Shut up and listen’.

“I just sat down and read the email and they said, ‘Oh my God.'”

Mr Soames, who grew up in London and Norfolk, was a Spanish teacher at St Thomas Primary School in the capital until last summer.

He now hopes to get into travel journalism.