Lost In Shangri-La

If you're looking for a true World War II adventure story, Lost In Shangri-La (#173) by Mitchell Zuckoff is just the ticket.  Near the end of World War II, a C-47 plane took off from an airbase in Hollandia, capital of what was then Dutch New Guinea, on a sight-seeing trip over a newly-discovered and mysterious valley in the mountains that appeared on no maps of New Guinea.  Dozens of villages and cultivated fields were home to a large population of  unknown tribesmen clearly visible from the air.  Flying to see this Hidden Valley or Shangri-La became a coveted field trip for the many servicemen and women stationed on the fringes of the war zone.

On a day in May, 1945, one of the officers organized a trip mainly for his staff to view the Valley.  The plane filled quickly with a number of WACs, officers and enlisted men, and the trip was expected to take about three hours.  Instead, the plane went down on a remote mountainside with only a few surviviors who included a beautiful WAC out for adventure, a lieutenant whose identical twin brother was killed in the crash, and a badly injured tech sergeant who worked in engineering.  There was apparently no way out of the crash zone except for a hundred and fifty mile trek through cannibal country in one direction, and Japanese soldiers concealed in the jungle in the other.  And the survivors were not alone there, as they soon discovered. 

This book chronicles the amazing story of how the plane came to crash where it did, the endurance of the trio of survivors, and the almost miraculous spotting of the party in the jungle by the air search teams.  But locating the survivors turned out to be the easy part; how was Army headquarters going to get these three out of the jungle with no place to land or take off, no navigable waterways, or possibly an arduous trek that might not be feasible for the injured passengers?  And would the natives prove to be hostile?  They clearly had the advantage in numbers.  And no pressure, but the world was listening to, and reading the continuing story of these troops in Shangri-La through reporters who communicated with those on the ground with walkie-talkies on the daily supply drop runs, much as we recently were glued to the TV following the story of the trapped Chilean miners. 

Lost In Shangri-La highlights the heroism of the Filipino troops who were ultimately chosen to attempt parachute landings in dense jungle areas potentially filled with unknown enemies.  Their two medics with their supplies and positive attitude were key to saving the survivors while their commanding officer (I kept picturing Van Johnson in this role.) organized the rescue mission from the ground, all while establishing good relations with the nearest neighboring tribe.  One of the items the rescue party brought with them to the crash site was a camera, and the still shots of the crash site, and their encounters with the natives and the dramatic and dangerous rescue add another whole dimension to this story.  It reminds you that this was real, and the ending was still unknown to those taking these pictures.

Mr. Zuckoff, a journalism professor at my alma mater, includes copious notes and an interesting bibliography if you want to learn more about New Guinea and the natives whose lives were also changed completely by this event.  I noticed that he included a book that I read several years ago: Tim Flannery's fascinating Thowim Way Leg: Tree-Kangaroos, Possums and Penis Gourds, published in 1998.  That book alone was enough to make me cross New Guinea off my bucket list for good!  Margaret Hastings, the WAC who lived this tale, is obviously made of sterner stuff.  In later life, when she was asked if she would go back to New Guinea, her answer was a resounding "You bet!"  I guess that spirit is what made her and her two companions, John McCollem and Kenneth Decker, the ultimate survivors.