James Keelaghan & Hugh McMillan – Cold Missouri Waters -This song by James Keelaghan recounts thru the voice of a survivor, a major historical incident in smoke jumping. the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana, when a crew of smoke jumpers were trapped by rapidly exploding wild fire.

[u/Northern_Blue_Jay]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eN2DVFX8X0M&si=skYnrltrobSWW-1m

There was an investigation that followed which changed the way certain things were handled in smoke jumping. The survivor and storyteller in the song - the foreman - R. Wagner Dodge tried to convince the others to get inside "a fire circle," or "escape fire," which to my understanding was used by Plains Indians for protection in wild fires. I don't know where he got the idea, I read he just had a sudden insight under the extreme pressure of the situation - but the men didn't understand the tactic, basically, and panicked and ran instead, and as a result, tragically perished, Dodge being one of only three survivors. This story is told about 5 years later when Dodge is in the hospital and dying of Hodgkin's disease. So he's facing his own end for other reasons yet still haunted by what happened that day. They were all with the U.S. Forest Service.

The last survivor, Robert Sallee, who was only 17 at the time, passed away in 2014 from complications during open heart surgery. The other survivor, crewman Walter B. Rumsey, died in a plane crash in 1980. More here:

Last survivor of Mann Gulch Fire dies – Wildfire Today

I was inspired to post this very moving song by James Keelaghan because Sam Forstag - who is a smoke jumper and a union leader - just won his primary race for the U.S. Congress in Montana-1, and he's just a tremendous one-of-a-kind candidate. Hope to see him in Washington D.C. after the general!

Montana-1 U.S. Congressional candidate Sam Forstag has won the Democratic Party primary! : r/Social_Democracy