By DAVID KITTREDGE
Renaissance Redneck
While Eric Sevareid and the other crew and passengers of the crashed C-46 cargo plane awaited rescue they remained close to their encampment that had been constructed for them near the Naga village in the dense jungles of Burma. The natives, especially the children regarded the survivors through the fence of the enclosure as curiosities in a zoological exhibit. The survivors didn’t mind though as it seemed to be a natural reaction for these isolated forest dwellers who had just seen men fall from the sky dangling from parachutes, only a couple of days ago.
Two days after the crash, the British had enclosed a note in a parachute supply drop instructing the survivors to remain in the village to await rescue, that the regional Naga chieftain lived in a village only six miles away and would arrive shortly to provide them protection, and that a rescue party would start on foot in a couple of days from Mokokchung, a town in Assam, India. Soon after reading this note Sevareid realized that the regional chieftain was already in the village along with two of his sons. The chieftain, named Chingmak, spoke a little English and informed Sevareid verbally and with hand signs, by putting his hand under his neck in a cutting motion, that he was there to protect Sevareid and the other passengers, no matter who he had to kill to do it.
As the days passed Dr. Flickinger started the able-bodied men on a regimen of calisthenics to ready them for the 70-mile walk out of the jungle that was soon to come. The men were also informed by way of a note in a daily parachute drop that the Japanese Army was only about 40 miles away as the crow flies, so they dug trenches around their encampment just in case of an attack by the Japanese.
Near the end of the day on Aug. 13, 1943, only 11 days after the plane crash, the survivors heard a din coming through the distant jungle which was a large group of Naga tribesmen shouting war chants as they marched in cadence to the beat. Among the 100 warriors and porters was Phillip Adams, head of the British Consulate in Mokokchung. This was the rescue party led by the Sahib of Mokokchung as Adams was affectionately known by the indigenous peoples.
The daily parachute drops of supplies by the British forces became a problem between the Naga villagers and the newly arrived Naga mercenaries. This represented an influx of vast wealth to the natives; they even squabbled over the rubbish left over from the drops, which consisted of discarded pieces of rope, parachutes, tin cans, cloth bottles and paper. Adams finally appointed a couple of village elders to dole out the refuse and leftover supplies to the natives. The Naga mercenaries were also on edge because they had expected to be able dole out punishment upon the villagers for some rumored violations, that were probably ginned up during their 70-mile hike through the jungle.
Finally the British and American “invaders” were led out of the village by the Sahib of Mokokchung and his warriors back to civilization. The 10-day trek back to the British territory was grueling due to extreme heat, high humidity and the poor physical condition of the white men, many of whom had to be carried at times by the Naga mercenaries.
Eric Sevareid and his mates had made it safely out of headhunter territory by sheer luck and with the overwhelming aid of the British military. The feeling was that parachuting into the headhunters’ territory, rather than walking in had startled the tribesmen enough as to allay their normal deadly warring but protective reactions. The villagers were often attacked by surrounding village tribesmen on a regular basis. Also moving out of the main village and into a quickly-built encampment on the outskirts of the village after the first night in the village had allayed any agitation by the natives by the intrusion of the westerners.
But Sevareid still had to get to Kunming, China and Chiang Kai-shek to carry out his duties for CBS and President Roosevelt, so the second week of September 1943 he hopped another airplane ride over the Hump into China, which went relatively smoothly this time except for the two hour holding pattern over the airport in Kunming due to foggy weather, causing Sevareid to become ill, probably from anxiety.
To be continued …
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