Lost in Shangri-la

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  With the AP’s Ralph Morton doing double duty as reporter and radio operator, the supply plane made the cargo drop and checked in with the jungle campsite. After exchanging small talk and details about Walter’s planned route to the valley, it became clear that Margaret was the reporters’ primary interest. No matter how hard John McCollom tried to distract him, Morton kept after his journalistic prey:

  Ralph Morton: How’s Corporal Hastings this morning?

  Lieutenant McCollom: She’s feeling pretty good. In fact, everybody is feeling good. We’re pretty anxious to get out of here. The three of us have been sitting here for better than a month, and we’re kind of anxious to get back to work in Hollandia. And the paratroopers have been here for three weeks or so.

  Ralph Morton: Is Margaret able to carry anything for you?

  Lieutenant McCollom: Corporal Hastings is carrying a small pack—probably weighs about fifteen pounds. The rest of us have packs weighing from fifty pounds to seventy-five pounds. It will be rough going until we pick up some natives [as bearers].

  Ralph Morton: That sounds like a pretty good load for a ninety-eight-pound girl to carry. . . .

  EVEN WHEN FAR back from enemy lines, standard practice among reporters in war zones was to painstakingly record, and then publish, the names and hometowns of servicemen and -women. That way, their families and friends back home could enjoy the acknowledgment of their loved ones’ courage, as well as the reflected glory of knowing someone involved in the war effort. “Names are news,” as the saying went. Publishers encouraged the practice for commercial reasons as much as journalistic ones: printing a local person’s name in the newspaper generated loyalty among readers and encouraged the purchase of extra copies, for posterity.

  With one glaring, categorical exception, the reporters covering the Gremlin Special crash faithfully followed this practice. They published the names and hometowns of the survivors and the crash victims, and also the chaplains who flew over the valley for the funeral rites, the planners in Hollandia, and the crew of the 311 supply plane. They included the names of not only the pilot, copilot, and radio operator but also the flight engineer, Sergeant Anson Macy of Jacksonville, Florida, and the cargo crew.

  But as obvious as the reporters’ obsession with Margaret was their tendency to overlook the 1st Recon paratroopers of Filipino descent. That oversight came despite the fact that all but Rammy Ramirez were natives or residents of the United States, and all were full-fledged members of the U.S. Army. When speaking with the reporters by walkie-talkie, Walter and McCollom repeatedly tried to draw attention to the enlisted paratroopers, particularly the heroic jump by Bulatao and Ramirez into death-defying terrain, and their life-and-limb-saving ministrations to Margaret and Decker.

  Yet in one story after another, the medics and paratroopers received little or no credit. Sometimes they appeared anonymously, as in one typical mention: “Two Filipino medics laden with supplies also were dropped by parachute.”

  To his credit, Ralph Morton of The Associated Press eventually devoted some ink to the enlisted men of the 1st Recon, as did the Tribune’s Walter Simmons, who focused most on Sergeant Alfred Baylon. Simmons’s interest in “the stocky, cigar-smoking” Baylon was piqued by the fact that the sergeant hailed from Chicago and had previously worked as an orderly in the city’s Garfield Park Community Hospital.

  When the supply plane dropped news clippings about the events in Shangri-La, Walter reacted angrily in his journal to how little acclaim his men received: “So few reporters have given my men the credit due them and are always bringing in outsiders for credit. I certainly hope that when I get out of here I can give the credit to those who deserve it and [to] my enlisted men, who made possible the rescue of these people. It has definitely been no cake party jumping into unexplored country and climbing mountains over the damnest trails ever seen. No complaining, but just slugging along, doing their job.”

  As the paratroopers’ leader, Walter received glowing mentions in the press reports. Reporters gave him the title of “rescue chief,” as Ralph Morton put it, presumably to distinguish him from the native chiefs. But throughout the mission reporters used his unloved given name, “Cecil.” And they routinely added an “s” to his last name, calling him “Walters.”

  BEFORE SETTING OFF to the valley base camp, the survivors and paratroopers picked through their supplies to decide what to carry and what to leave behind. As he stuffed provisions in his backpack, McCollom noticed the unused boxes of Kotex that had been dropped for Margaret. Ever the engineer, an idea crossed his mind.

  “Maggie,” he asked, “you gonna use any of this?”

  When she scoffed, McCollom tore open the boxes. He handed out the white sanitary napkins to each of the men, who tucked them under the shoulder straps of their heavy backpacks. Reflecting later on his innovation in infantry padding technology, McCollom said: “Man, those are good for that sort of thing.”

  As she collected her belongings, Margaret focused on the natives. “We tried to say our farewells to Pete and his men,” she wrote in her diary. “The term ‘savages’ hardly applied to such kind, friendly and hospitable men as these natives. We could never understand each other’s language. But we could always understand each other’s hearts and intentions. The greatest miracle that befell McCollom, Decker and me, aside from our escape from death in the crash, was the fact the natives were good and gentle people.”

  Eager to return to the base camp, Walter wrote in his journal that he didn’t see the natives as he left camp. But before she started down the trail, Margaret searched for Wimayuk Wandik, the man she called Pete. She found him weeping at their departure along with his men.

  “Some of us could have wept, too,” she wrote in her diary.

  Unknown to Margaret and the other outsiders, the natives had given them a parting gift. When Wimayuk and his clansmen understood that the visiting spirits intended to walk out of the jungle toward the valley, the people of Uwambo communicated with their allies. They bestowed another maga—a declaration of safe passage—along the intended route.

  As she fell into line for the march, Margaret glanced back over her shoulder at the campsite. She took one last look at the sweet potato garden that had been her salvation after the crash; the place where she, McCollom, and Decker were spotted by Captain Baker in his B-17; the jungle “hospital” where her gangrene was treated and her legs were saved by Bulatao and Ramirez. Her final vision of the place: the pyramidal tent they left behind, with the American flag flying above it.

  DURING THE MONTH they spent in the little camp near the Mundi River, the survivors and paratroopers had repeatedly offered extra food to the natives. They found no takers, not even for a taste. McCollom tried everything: rice, canned beef, a chocolate bar. “We’d break off a bite and eat it,” he said. “They wouldn’t touch it.”

  When the visitors broke camp, the natives gathered the food left behind and placed it in a cave. “Nobody knew what the food was,” said Tomas Wandik. “The people were afraid of it, so they put it all in one place and it became sacred objects. Pigs were killed and their blood was sprinkled on it in a purification ceremony.” The natives planted a bamboolike tree near the entrance to the cave, to mark it as a place of magic. They also conducted a blood-sprinkling ceremony along the path the spirits followed down the mountain.

  Although he wouldn’t eat their food, Wimayuk Wandik accepted McCollom’s offer of a machete with a rope tied through a hole in the handle. Chopping wood was daily, time-consuming work, and the blade—by all indications the natives’ first exposure to a metal tool—was prized for slicing through trees faster than any stone ax or adze. At first, Wimayuk returned the gift every morning, only to be reassured on a daily basis that the ax was his to keep. When McCollom left, Wimayuk kept the machete for good.

  Although Wimayuk, Yaralok, and others were sorry to see the spirits leave, not everyone in Uwambo was unhappy. “Some people were getting mad at Wimayuk because he was going in with the s
pirits too much,” said his son Helenma. “They said, ‘Take that machete back!’ ” Some of the objectors’ anger might have stemmed from the paratroopers erecting their tents in the middle of the community garden. “They destroyed the sweet potato and taro,” he said.

  Throughout the spirits’ stay, a consistent pacification effort involved cigarettes. “They loved them,” Margaret wrote, “but they were always terrified by matches or cigarette lighters. So we used to light cigarettes from our own and hand them over to Pete and his men.” She noted that “Pete” became a Raleigh man.

  After the spirits left, Wimayuk climbed to the top of the Ogi ridge. He used the machete McCollom gave him to chop up pieces of the Gremlin Special wreck for tools and building supplies. One piece became part of a village fence. It remained in use for more than six decades after the crash.

  In the months that followed the spirits’ departure, the people of Uwambo returned to the rhythms and routines they’d followed for untold centuries. They raised their pigs and sweet potatoes, they tended to their villages and their families, and they resumed their wars with their enemies. One difference was that when they told their children the Uluayek legend, now it included the tale of Yugwe, Meakale, Mumu, Mua, Pingkong, Babikama, and the other spirits who came from the sky.

  It would take a few years, but just as the legend had prophesied, the spirits’ return indeed marked the beginning of the end of the lives they’d always known.

  WITH OVERLOADED PACKS on their backs, Kotex pads on their shoulders, and no clear route to follow, the survivors and the paratroopers began the treacherous trek from the jungle campsite toward the base camp.

  “It was up and down and crevice to crevice,” Walter recalled. “We had to go across the creek that went down the mountainside for a long ways. We had to crisscross that a half-dozen times because it was the only way that we knew exactly how to keep our bearings as to where the hell we were going.”

  Margaret set out feeling strong and brimming with confidence. As they walked single-file through the rain-slicked jungle, she felt like one of the troops. She kept up as they crawled over fallen logs, edged along a precipice “that fell away into a bottomless gorge,” and hopped from one tree stump to another. But a half hour into the hike, Margaret found herself struggling to catch her breath. Her thoughts flashed back to the nightmare journey after the crash, crawling and inching her way down the mountainside and through the stream.

  “I thought I was well and strong, much stronger than Sergeant Decker, who still looked gaunt and ill,” she wrote in her diary. She discovered otherwise. “The steady, rhythmic infantry pace set by the paratroopers was too much for me.”

  “Please, stop!” she called to Walter. “I’ve got to rest.”

  “Me, too,” Decker said, much to Margaret’s relief. She felt certain that if she hadn’t called a halt, Decker would have continued silently and stoically until he dropped.

  Walter noted in his journal that the lack of native bearers and the needs of the “two patients” slowed his intended pace. But he added: “Hats off to Sergeant Decker and Corporal Hastings. They are both showing great spirit.”

  Three hours into the first day of their trek, they stopped to pitch camp for the night. The early hiatus gave the medics time to re-dress Margaret’s and Decker’s wounds. It also spared them from being caught in the nightly rains. Quickly a little camp emerged: Margaret got a pup tent of her own, McCollom and Decker shared another, a few paratroopers crammed into a third, and the rest hung jungle hammocks from trees.

  The next morning, they were up early and back on the trail shortly after eight o’clock. Walter described the day’s route as “plenty rugged, straight up and down.” Margaret’s right thigh ached terribly from muscle cramps—“Corporal Hastings was really hurting today, but she is game,” Walter wrote—so they slowed again.

  When the supply plane passed overhead and they established a radio connection, Walter told Major Gardner about the absence of natives who could be put to work as bearers. He speculated that the natives didn’t like the outsiders passing close to their villages.

  “Are they hostile?” Gardner asked.

  “I doubt it very much,” Walter answered. “But we’re all set on that score. Don’t worry. We have plenty of ammunition, but we’re not expecting anything. They are very peaceful and very friendly. As long as we stay away from their women and their camote patches, we’ll be all right.”

  Later that day, several natives from a village along the way proved willing to lug the trekkers’ bedding and bedrolls. By the time the hikers made camp in the mid-afternoon, Walter had achieved his goal of a ten-mile day. “Our main trouble is water,” he wrote in his journal. “There is plenty around, but God only knows where in this jungle.”

  Walter didn’t want anyone to know it, but he’d wrenched his left ankle while hopscotching from rock to rock. “My main concern was Maggie and the other two survivors, Ken Decker and Mac,” Walter recalled. “So I wasn’t paying attention and I stepped on this rock, which was covered with moss. I slipped badly and got a pretty bad sprain out of it, which lasted a long time.” It swelled to nearly twice its normal size, so he asked Doc Bulatao to apply a tight wrapping. The pain continued, but at least Walter could stay on it. “We are rolling too well to hold up the progress for me,” he wrote in his journal. “So ‘Bahala Na.’ I’ll go with it.”

  The survivors, paratroopers, and tribesmen rest during their trek from the jungle to the valley campsite. (Photo courtesy of C. Earl Walter Jr.)

  Margaret’s throbbing leg eased, and she grew stronger each day. By Sunday, June 17, their third day on the trail, Walter proclaimed that she had the makings of a first-rate infantry soldier. He wrote in his journal: “My hat’s off to Corporal Hastings, Sergeant Decker and Lieutenant McCollom. Lots of spirit and great people. Corporal Hastings deserves plenty of credit and I don’t mean maybe.”

  Margaret noted the change in her diary, writing that she felt “like a million dollars.” But now that her strength had returned, she had a new concern: unwanted suitors.

  “One of the natives we instantly named ‘Bob Hope,’ ” she wrote. “He had a ski nose just like his namesake. Unfortunately, our Bob developed a terrific crush on me. His idea of courtship was to hang around and leer at me hour after hour.” Margaret’s discomfort at the attention deepened into frustration when the paratroopers teased her about her new love interest. It only got worse.

  “Suddenly Bob had a rival,” she wrote. “A young native who must have been in his teens was smitten, too. His idea of wooing a girl was to pick up a stick and throw it at her. Obviously, I was expected to throw it back. He was like a pup.” Eventually the amorous natives backed off, and the march continued.

  On the morning of Monday, June 18, the ragged little band cleared the gap between two mountains that Walter called “the saddle.” They followed a winding path alongside the muddy Pae River and broke for lunch. After two more hours of marching, the three paratroopers who’d remained at the base camp—Sergeants Sandy Abrenica, Roque Velasco, and Alfred Baylon—spotted them and came running up the trail. Walter beamed at the sight of men he called “the best damn field soldiers in the world.”

  As the supply plane flew overhead to herald their arrival in the valley, the three survivors jumped up and down and waved. At the controls was the chief planner himself, Colonel Elsmore, with the AP’s Ralph Morton sitting beside him in the cockpit.

  Five weeks after they left Hollandia, Margaret, McCollom, and Decker finally got a firsthand look at Shangri-La.

  “Surely the followers of Moses when they came upon the Promised Land saw a sight no more fair,” Margaret wrote in her diary. “It was a beautiful, fertile land, ringed by the giant peaks of the Oranje Mountains. A copper-colored river wound through the valley’s green length. It was our Promised Land, too.”

  When the survivors settled down, they learned that Elsmore had a surprise in store.

  Chapter 22

  H
OLLYWOOD

  WHEN MARGARET HEARD that the supply plane carried a surprise, she was certain her admirers onboard would drop a few cases of beer for a base camp arrival party. She was right, in a way. The beer had, in fact, been dropped—back at the jungle campsite, after they’d left. “And there it lies today,” she wrote in her diary. “Two fine cases of American beer to greet the lucky Robinson Crusoe or Trader Horn who stumbles on them. The natives will never touch it.”

  The surprise did, however, have something to do with alcohol.

  AFTER BRIEFLY SURVEYING the base camp, Walter heard one of his men calling him to the walkie-talkie. The radioman on the 311 told him the supply plane carried a filmmaker who planned to make a documentary about life, death, the natives, and the rescue effort. The filmmaker had slipped into a parachute harness and was preparing to jump when Walter made contact with the plane.

  “This guy ever make a jump before?” Walter asked.

  “No.”

  Worried, Walter learned that a fellow 1st Recon paratrooper back in Hollandia had given the filmmaker a half-hour verbal lesson on the basics of avoiding certain death.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Walter said, “tie a rope on his ripcord!” At least then, if the man froze in fear in midair, the chute would open and he’d have a fighting chance.

  The survivors and paratroopers watched as the plane swooped through the valley with an open jump door, but no sign of the promised filmmaker. Another pass, and still no movement to the door. Finally, on a third pass over the base camp, a large figure appeared unsteadily in the opening, camera equipment strapped to his body. He lurched through the jump door, out into thin air. A puffy white canopy blossomed above him as he floated toward the valley floor.

  As they watched, the paratroopers sensed a problem. The chutist was oddly limp.

  By her own admission, Margaret knew next to nothing about parachuting. Still, she knew enough to brand the jumper “a rank amateur.”