Lost in Shangri-la

Chapter 20

“HEY, MARTHA!”

AFTER THE BURIALS, the jungle recuperation camp fell into a routine of medical treatments, meals, reading, card games, and bull sessions, punctuated by near-daily supply drops and encounters with the natives. Eager to get moving, Walter radioed Major George Gardner, who oversaw the supply runs from aboard the 311, to request a helicopter transport from the jungle campsite to the valley. That way, Walter figured, they wouldn’t need to carry Margaret and Decker or wait until they were well enough to travel by foot.

Walter’s request for a helicopter could be chalked up to wishful thinking, lack of aviation expertise, fatigue, or all three. If a helicopter could have flown over the surrounding mountains to ferry them from the jungle campsite, it presumably could have flown them out of the valley altogether, even if only one or two at a time. And if a helicopter had been a viable alternative, Colonel Elsmore and the other rescue planners in Hollandia might not have needed Walter, the medics, and the other paratroopers in the first place.

The most likely explanation for Walter’s wish for a helicopter—expressed several times in his daily journal entries—was his desire to hasten his return to Hollandia. He thought he could parlay success in Shangri-La into a combat posting, and he was keen to play that card with the military brass.

The “headquarters” tent at the jungle clearing, with (from left) John McCollom, Ken Decker, Ben Bulatao, and Camilo Ramirez. (Photo courtesy of C. Earl Walter Jr.)

While Walter waited for answers from Gardner on a helicopter, and from the medics on the survivors’ ability to move out, the young captain’s growing impatience seeped into his journal:

May 29, 1945: Decided to straighten up our kitchen, so Don [Ruiz] and I went to work on it, then waited around for the plane. Finally it came, a new plane and new crew. . . . They dropped one bundle two miles from us and it fell apart. They must think this is a tea party we are on. I blew my top and the plane took off for Hollandia. . . . All clothes for Hastings. She has enough now for a trousseau. No medical supplies. What a snafu bunch is running this show. . . . Here’s hoping on the helicopter.

May 30, 1945: Waited for the plane but it did not come. We have plenty of food but our medical supplies are very low. . . . Spent the afternoon in the sack reading and shooting the breeze. What a life. Certainly wish the answer on the helicopter would come through. Or at least that the patients would get well enough to travel. . . . Rain came early so we are all in the sack and most of the boys are reading. Spirits are fine and we are only wishing for some excitement. . . . God only knows what is going on in the outside world.

May 31, 1945: Up a little later this morning as there was nothing in particular to do. After breakfast I sent Caoili and Alerta out on a recon for a shorter route to the valley. . . . The plane came over early this morning . . . and the helicopter is out, so that is that and we hike out. I certainly hope the three survivors can take it.

June 1, 1945: This is really going to be hell, just sitting around, waiting to get out of here. . . . Patients’ recovery is all I am waiting for.

June 2, 1945: The plane came over at ten-thirty with our supplies and mail. We certainly needed the medical supplies and I received eight letters, which certainly helped the old morale. They gave us a brief resumé of the world news, and it is certainly encouraging. After lunch I read Bedside Esquire and then we got ready for dinner. . . . Certainly hope the recovery of the patients speeds up a bit.

June 3, 1945: What a morning. Slept till eleven-thirty. First time that has ever happened to me without a hangover involved, at least on Sunday anyway. Had some cereal and then waited for lunch. . . . This is quite a life and getting damn tiresome, but can’t do anything till I am sure that the trip to my base camp will not hurt the patients. Oh well—it’s a good rest.

June 4, 1945: In the morning, I fired a few rounds with the carbine. That is an excellent way to waste time. After you are through, you have to clean the weapon so it takes up a little time. Dinner tonight was really something. Prepared by Dongallo and Bulatao. Casserole of bacon, corned beef, sweet potatoes and peas, with rice on the side. Last but not least peaches for dessert. Weather still bad and no plane today. Morale is excellent.

June 7, 1945: . . . Sat around and talked about home.

June 8, 1945: Well, one year ago today I said goodbye to my wife Sal. It certainly seems a hell of a lot longer than that. I miss her more than ever up in this place, and that is going some. Don [Ruiz] woke me up this morning telling me that the plane was overhead. . . . Two war correspondents were in the plane, so I imagine this damn show is getting plenty of publicity back in the States. I hope so, as the men have worked plenty hard on this show, and maybe it will open a few people’s eyes to the possibilities of my future plans. The two were Mr. Simmons of the Chicago Tribune and Mr. Morton of AP.

THE “SHOW”—THE CRASH, the survivors, the natives, and the rescue mission in Shangri-La—had indeed reached the United States and beyond. After a nearly three-week news blackout, Colonel Elsmore let out word to the press that something remarkable was happening in the heart of New Guinea. Several reporters took the bait, but none more avidly than the two reporters Walter mentioned in his journal.

Walter Simmons of the Chicago Tribune was thirty-seven, a native of Fargo, North Dakota, whose father sold patent medicine. After two years of college, Simmons signed on as reporter for the Daily Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Ten years later, in 1942, he moved to the big time with a job covering the war in the South Pacific for the Tribune. Beneath the gruff exterior of a grizzled war correspondent, Simmons showed a flair for rich images and tight, well-turned phrases. “The dawn comes up like thunder every morning and this is how it goes,” he began a story about the daily life of American troops on Leyte Island. “Suddenly there is a sound like a giant hand beating a carpet. ‘Whomp, whomp, whomp’ it goes. It is a 40 mm gun battery signaling a raid alert. Soldiers and civilians leave their beds.”

In the weeks before Simmons hopped aboard the supply plane over Shangri-La, he’d kept busy feeding red meat to Tribune readers. Reporting in May 1945 from the Philippines while traveling with a division of the Illinois National Guard, Simmons wrote stories whose persistent theme was reflected in their headlines: “Midwest Yanks Fight Way Out of Jap Ambush,” “Chicago Yank’s Penknife Ends Fight with Jap,” “Yanks Harvest Crop of 19 Japs in Rice Garden,” and “Midwest Yanks’ ‘Banzai’ Charge Wins a Jap Hill.” In addition to appearing in the Tribune, Simmons’s stories were distributed by the Chicago Tribune News Service, which had more than sixty newspapers as subscribers, and also by Reuters, the British news service.

Simmons’s colleague and competitor, Ralph Morton of The Associated Press, reached an even wider audience. Like Simmons, Morton was thirty-seven and a reporter who’d reached the big leagues after years in the minors. A native of Nova Scotia, Morton had worked as a reporter for the Halifax Herald, the Canadian Press news service, and the Protestant Digest. He joined the AP in 1943 in New York, and early in 1945 was promoted to war correspondent and the wire service’s Australia bureau chief. The AP served more than fourteen hundred newspapers during World War II, and the wire service also provided news to radio stations across the country. With the wire service’s enormous reach, Morton’s voice was amplified many thousand times over.

After flying over the survivors’ campsite, Simmons and Morton filed stories that lit up newsrooms around the world. Every editor worth his or her salt recognized that the two war correspondents had found a humdinger of a story, known in the trade as a “Hey, Martha!” The phrase took its name from an imagined exchange between a mythical couple, long married and not necessarily happy about it. The husband, call him Harold, would be relaxing in his easy chair, his nose buried in a newspaper. Upon reading an especially surprising and interesting story, Harold would break his customary silence and loudly proclaim to his long-suffering wife, “Hey, Martha, wait ’til you hear this!”

The guts of the stories written by Walter Simmons and Ralph Morton were basically the same: A U.S. Army plane crashed near a lost valley in Dutch New Guinea inhabited by a tribe of Stone Age cannibals. Three of the twenty-four people aboard survived. One was a beautiful WAC. Another survivor had lost his twin brother in the crash. The third had suffered a terrible head injury. A crack squad of paratroopers jumped into treacherous terrain to help and protect them. Tense confrontations with tribe members evolved into cross-cultural understanding. Friendship, even. No rescue plan was yet in place.

Simmons’s story began: “In a hidden valley, one-hundred-thirty miles southwest of Hollandia, a WAC and two airmen are awaiting rescue following one of the most fantastic tragedies of the war. No white man had ever set foot in this isolated paradise before a C-47 transport plane circled over it at 3:15 p.m., May 13.” In the next paragraph, Simmons disclosed that the flight’s purpose was for the passengers and crew “to see the queer, unclad people who threw spears at planes.”

Simmons’s story created suspense by focusing on the military’s uncertainty about how the outsiders might exit the secluded valley: “For three weeks the tiny WAC secretary and the two men have been cheerfully awaiting rescue, but no plan has been definitely worked out. Several ideas have been suggested—an autogiro [forerunner to the helicopter], a seaplane which might land on a lake thirty miles away, a glider snatch, and tiny liaison planes which could bring out one passenger each trip.” Simmons pointed out obstacles to each approach, and that “an overland trek is possible but it would require weeks.”

An Associated Press story, relying on Morton’s dispatches, focused more squarely on the natives: “The crash of an Army transport plane in the wilds of Dutch New Guinea has unlocked the secrets of a mountain-bound ‘Shangri-La’ where six-foot tribesmen live in a state of barbaric feudalism inside walled towns.” Ratcheting up the height of the mountains, and presumably the drama, the AP story claimed that the plane crashed into a seventeen-thousand-foot peak. That would have made it two thousand feet higher than New Guinea’s tallest mountain.

Newspaper editors across the country, including those at The New York Times, ran the stories on page one. News of the war still occupied the hearts and minds of Americans—the savage, two-month Battle of Okinawa remained under way, with many thousands of dead on both sides. But a dramatic story about a military plane crash in a “real” Shangri-La, with a WAC and two male survivors, living among Stone Age tribesmen and a team of brave paratroopers, with no certain rescue plan, was war news with a new and exciting twist.

The widespread, enthusiastic response to the initial stories confirmed what Simmons, Morton, and their bosses no doubt suspected: the story of Shangri-La was hot. Even better, the Gremlin Special crash had what reporters call “legs”—a developing plotline, certain to yield more page-one stories and more urgent calls to Martha.

A FLOOD OF interest followed the dispatches from Simmons and Morton. Other war correspondents clamored for seats in the supply plane, all eager to write their own version of a story that, in journalistic shorthand, became known as “a WAC in Shangri-La.” Colonel Elsmore, always enamored of press coverage, happily obliged. He even arranged for a WAC stenographer, Corporal Marie Gallagher, to fly aboard the 311 to transcribe walkie-talkie conversations between the plane and the survivors’ camp.

In one transcript, one of Margaret’s tentmates, Private Esther “Ack Ack” Aquilio, relayed a message through the radio operator. The message described Esther’s fears for Margaret’s safety and inquired about how Margaret was feeling. Margaret shot back: “Tell her to stop worrying and start praying!” The reporters ate it up.

In another transcript, Walter described Margaret as “the queen of the valley.” He told the reporters how he and his men had limited success trading with the locals, but Margaret had collected woven rattan bracelets and “just about anything she wants from the natives.” Again the reporters pounced. Their stories called her “the queen of Shangri-La.” Major Gardner got in on the act on his daily talks with Walter via walkie-talkie, asking: “How’s the queen this morning?” The major tried to goad Margaret into speaking directly to him and the reporters. She declined.

Walter and McCollom alternated on the ground end of the conversations, with Gardner, radio operator Sergeant Jack Gutzeit, and the AP’s Ralph Morton taking turns manning the radio on the plane. Morton couldn’t have been happier with his participation in the story. He even began taking supply orders from the ground crew. In one story—headlined “Shangri-La Gets Latest News from Associated Press”—Morton breathlessly described how he read a summary of the world and the war to the survivors.

To avoid being left behind, Walter Simmons started to file his stories with the dateline “Aboard Transport Plane over Hidden Valley.” Within days, the Tribune offered Margaret, McCollom, and Decker $1,000 each for their “exclusive” stories upon their return. While the survivors considered the offer, Walter admitted to his journal that he suffered a pang of jealousy.

On one flight, Decker’s cousin, WAC private Thelma Decker, came along to offer encouragement. But when she stood from her seat to approach the radio compartment, she was overcome with airsickness and felt too ill to speak.

Another time, radioman Jack Gutzeit brought a phonograph to play Benny Goodman and Harry James records. Walter joked about jitterbugging in Shangri-La, but the music came through garbled.

Meanwhile, Gutzeit developed an air-to-ground crush on Margaret. On his day off, he hitched a flight to Brisbane, Australia, where he bought a box of chocolates and dropped them to her by parachute. A few days later, Gutzeit got cheeky when Walter relayed a request from Margaret for “one complete outfit—shirt, t-shirt, trousers and a bra.”

“Tell her she doesn’t need that down there,” Gutzeit said. “She can go native.”

The drops became so routine that the supply plane began treating them like milk runs. But one flight through the valley nearly ended with the deaths of two supply crew members. When the crew chief, Sergeant Peter Dobransky, and the cargo supervisor, Sergeant James Kirchanski, opened the rear cargo bay, the wind caught hold of a door and ripped it off its hinges. Dobransky and Kirchanski were sucked toward the opening. As Walter Simmons reported in the Tribune, the two men “clawed at the aluminum door frame and managed to keep each other from falling out of the plane.” The wayward door slammed against the plane’s tail section, but the 311 remained airworthy. The two sergeants suffered only scratches and bruises, and were back aboard the next flight.

During one supply run, the AP’s Ralph Morton wondered if Shangri-La might contain hidden riches. He asked Walter if the paratroopers had tried panning for gold in the Baliem River. Walter delivered the disappointing news: not only were there no fish in the river, there were no precious metals, either.

Much of the radio conversation was devoted to Walter and McCollom making small talk with the reporters, Major Gardner, Jack Gutzeit, and a new pilot, Captain Hugh Arthur. Now and then they placed orders for supplies and seashells, for trading with the natives. As days passed, those orders included cases of beer, which meant that alcohol had entered Shangri-La for the first time in recorded history.

The flights also brought regular mail from home. For Margaret that meant letters from her two sisters, “who said my father was too overcome to write.” McCollom and Decker heard from their parents, Walter from his wife, and the paratroopers from friends, sweethearts, and family. The mail drops gave editors at the Chicago Tribune an idea: they offered to have Walter Simmons deliver personal messages from the survivors’ families. Although the families could just as easily have done so themselves in letters, they took up the newspaper’s offer.

“We are all fine at home and will be looking for you just as soon as you can get here,” said the message from Patrick Hastings. “Hope and pray you are well and unhurt. Your sisters want to say hello. It really is something to have a famous daughter. Wait till you see the papers. Thank the Chicago Tribune for getting this message thru to you. It is a real thrill to send it. We will be seeing you soon, we hope. Love, Dad.”

Bert Decker’s message to his son read: “We hope you are recovering satisfactorily and will soon be back at your post. Mother and I are fine, but anxious. Dad.”

Rolla and Eva McCollom sent a message tinged with controlled midwestern sadness: “We are happy that you survived. Anxiously awaiting direct word from you. So sorry about Robert. Our love to you. Dad and Mom.” Later, McCollom responded privately in a letter in which he tried to allay his parents’ and sister-in-law’s fears that Robert had suffered or had wandered, hurt and alone, into the jungle. He wrote: “Robert was killed instantly and the body was burned completely. I was up to the wreck fifteen days after the accident and could find none of his personal belongings. Even if I could have identified him it would be impossible to get his body out.”

Morton and Simmons filed daily stories, and soon they began straining for news. Simmons seemed to get a kick out of reporting Margaret’s one persistent supply request: “How about dropping me some panties? Any kind will do.” But when other reporters repeated the story, the request got mangled.

“A few days later,” Margaret wrote in her diary, “Major Gardner told me with great glee that a story had been published saying I was begging for a pair of pants. That was one of the few incidents that ever worried me. I knew if my father read the story and thought I was running around in the jungle without enough clothing, he’d have a fit.” No matter how many times Margaret asked, no panties ever arrived.

Other times, the walkie-talkie transcripts read like letters home from summer camp:

Lieutenant John McCollom: We’re listening to the beautiful morning breakfast club. Over.

Major George Gardner: So this is the breakfast club. What are you guys eating this morning? How about a little chatter?

McCollom: We had a pretty good breakfast. Rice pudding, ham and eggs, bacon, coffee, cocoa, pineapple—anything you want to eat. Drop in and see us some morning, boys. The best mess hall in the Southwest Pacific.

AS MARGARET AND Decker healed, Doc Bulatao found himself with hours of free time. Every morning, after checking on his American patients, Bulatao visited with the people of Uwambo. “Tropic skin diseases and festering sores yielded to Doc and to modern drugs like magic,” Margaret wrote. The native wars remained on hiatus while the survivors and paratroopers were at the area the natives called Mundima, but the natives enjoyed demonstrating their bow-and-arrow skills nonetheless. Once, however, a native man became the victim of friendly fire, and Doc patched an arrow wound in the man’s side.

The medical care provided by Bulatao and Ramirez endeared them to the natives, who called them “Mumu” and “Mua.” Walter and the other paratroopers also received local names from the people of Uwambo, including Pingkong and Babikama, but which name belonged to which man was lost to time.

While waiting to move out, Walter recorded lengthy thoughts about the natives in his journal. He was generally respectful, and some of his conclusions showed anthropological insight. He admired their gardens as “excellent examples of hard work and common sense,” and credited their homes as “well constructed and weatherproof.”

Other observations, however, relied on incomplete data and mistaken assumptions. Because few women joined the men who visited the campsite, Walter believed there was a shortage of native women. And because he didn’t see the natives eat pig, he assumed they were strict vegetarians. Elsewhere in his journal, Walter repeated cultural stereotypes of the natives as “childish in everything they do or say.” A few of Walter’s observations might best be classified as fraternity house humor:

Today we showed one of the natives some pictures of pinup girls. Immediately he seemed to understand that they were women and he tapped the gourd around his private parts in a knowing manner. Some of the boys goaded him on a bit, and soon the gourd could no longer contain his excitement. It appears that sexual pleasure is an uncommon occurrence amongst these natives due to the shortage of the female sex. He finally beat a hasty retreat when he found that the gourd could no longer contain or act as a covering for his state of mind. It appeared as though he was thoroughly embarrassed, to say the least.

Walter also enjoyed a laugh at the sight of a little boy, perhaps six years old, who couldn’t quite fill his gourd. The dried shell hung to one side, exposing the boy’s not-yet-proud manhood.

As part of his curiosity about the tribe, Walter conducted an experiment in which he drew simple pencil drawings on blank paper. He showed them to the same man involved in the pinup incident, then gave him paper and a pencil. “He then proceeded to draw many curving lines on the paper much like a baby would do when first meeting crayon and paper. He was very proud of his achievement and showed his efforts to me with a big smile.” Walter concluded: “It seems to me that these natives could be educated easily with the proper methods.”

Interviewed over walkie-talkie by the Tribune’s Walter Simmons, Walter described the natives’ physical features, the “excellent condition” of their teeth, and their villages in great detail. Despite his impression of them as “an agile and strong race,” Walter expressed surprise that they didn’t make better bearers. He chalked it up to “the fact that they are so used to going around naked and carrying nothing.” In another interview, he said the natives “treat us like white gods dropped out of the sky.” Then he gushed: “These are possibly the happiest people I’ve ever seen. They are always enjoying themselves.”

Two native tribesmen photographed in 1945. (Photo courtesy of C. Earl Walter Jr.)

Later, he elaborated: “They lived well, had all they needed to eat, they had a place to stay, and they were a happy bunch,” he said. “It was a garden paradise all by itself, and nobody bothered them. They had clashes amongst themselves, but no trouble with the outside world. . . . The whole outside world was at war and here we had complete peace and happiness in this little valley. The outside world hadn’t gotten to it.”

In one important respect, the natives didn’t acquiesce to the outsiders. Walter wrote in his journal that “they still don’t want us in their villages and this feeling persisted during our entire stay. . . . Also, we are warned constantly about being around in the same area as their women and also they try to keep us away from their camote [sweet potato] patches as much as they can.” When he happened upon a young woman, Walter appraised her more generously than he had the first woman he described: “This one was lighter than the others and quite attractive for a native girl. Her busts were large and well formed, but not out of proportion. She was without a doubt the best-looking girl we saw during our stay in the valley.”

WALTER’S JOURNAL OBSERVATIONS reflected what he thought and experienced. But they were limited by a lack of knowledge of the tribe’s language or perspective. He had no idea that the people of Uwambo regarded him and his companions as spirits from the sky, or that their appearance had fulfilled the prophecy of the Uluayek legend.

Their return having been foretold, the survivors and paratroopers were welcomed by the otherwise warlike natives. But there were limits. In the long-ago times recounted by the legend, the spirits climbed down the rope from the sky and stole women and pigs.

Had he known about Uluayek, Walter might have been less surprised by how the native men behaved when he came within range of the native women.