Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
and if you love history too, well this is the channel for you.
In 1945 US Army Air Corps Major Ray T Elsmore was traveling From Hollandia, which was a major Allied
port in Dutch New Guinea, to General MacArthur's headquarters in Australia. Now the standing orders
were to fly around the eastern edge of New Guinea, because the interior of New Guinea was
still described on maps as, “unknown”. But that day Major Elsmore was in a hurry because reportedly,
he had a hot date in Melbourne, and so he decided to ignore the standing orders and fly over the
central part of New Guinea. And about 120 miles south of Hollandia he came upon a heretofore
unexplored valley that showed significant signs of a large human population of unknown natives,
and that discovery would eventually lead to one of the most amazing rescues in history and it is
certainly a story, worth remembering. Further reconnaissance flights saw that the valley was
well populated with a number of villages and extensive agriculture. Surrounded by a
high mountain range, the orange mountains, and sitting in over 5,000 feet, the highland valley
seemed to be literally untouched by time. Well quickly story started to arrive that the valley
was populated by giants or headhunters, and that raised people's interest, and so the Army's Far
Eastern Air Services Command decided to start flying essentially, tourist flights, allowing
service members who signed up to climb aboard a C-47 skytrain aircraft and take a tourist trip
over what was then called, Hidden Valley. On May 13th 1945, five days after VE Day a C-47 skytrain
named The Gremlin Special was on one of those morale trips, carrying 24 passengers and crew on a
scenic tour of Hidden Valley. At about 3 p.m. the plant experienced engine trouble and crashed to
the side of a mountain, in one of the most remote spots..on earth. Of the 24 people on board, 19 died
instantly, only three people, two soldiers and a nurse with the Women's Army Corps were able to
escape the wreck. They went back and were able to rescue two more nurses who were grievously
injured, but still alive. Too injured it seemed, as neither one of those would survive the night.
For the three survivors, army Lieutenant John McCollom, Sergeant Kenneth Decker and Women's
Army Corps Corporal Margaret “Suzy” Hastings, all seriously injured and still in shock,
the situation was dire. McCollum had lost his twin brother in the accident, Hastings had lost
her best friend, whose shoes she needed to take in order to survive. They were all seriously injured,
two had severe burns, they were on the side of a mountain in the jungle too thick for them to be
seen by aircraft, a hundred miles from rescue with an area where the natives were completely unknown,
and to the south of them there were still thousands of enemy Japanese soldiers. All
they managed to recover from the burned wreck were some canteens of water and hard candies. Hastings
and Deckers burns were severe, McCollum had a head injury but they knew that they had to move,
they had to at least find a clearing where they had some chance of being spotted. It took them
a couple of days before they were recovered enough to move at all, and then about a day and a half to
find a clearing, about two and a half miles away but almost immediately they were spotted by a
rescue aircraft that was searching for survivors. The aircraft dropped a couple of life rafts
which gave them cover to get out of the rain, but finding the survivors was not the biggest problem.
There was no airfield in the valley, no place big enough to land an airplane, it was too high up,
the air was too thin to operate a helicopter and there were no roads into or out of the
remote valley. The same day they were discovered by the natives. The Dani people of the New Guinea
Highlands were a Stone Age culture, they hadn't invented the wheel, they hadn't invented a number
higher than three. While there apparently had been a small scientific expedition in 1938,
most of the Dani had never seen nor even heard of a white person, and while they were neither giants
nor headhunters, the Dani could be quite warlike. Well the three survivors did the best they could,
they smiled and they offered the only gift they had, hard candies, and the Dani decided
to welcome them. Through sign language they got the Dani to help them build a fire so that they
could stay warm and the next day another airplane flew over and dropped extra supplies, shoes and
a walkie-talkie, so that they had communication, and they got even more supplies in the afternoon
including even lipstick for “Suzy” Hastings. But the situation was still dire, Hastings
and Deckers burns were becoming gangrenous, if they did not get medical help soon they would
die. But a plan was in the works, the idea was to drop in paratroops from the five two one seventh
reconnaissance battalion, the only operational paratrooper battalion in the area. The five two
one seven was a covert operations unit that was made up primarily of Filipino American volunteers.
The idea was that they would take in medics and enough personnel that they could clear an area
large enough to land a Waco CG-4 combat glider. The Waco CG-4 was a relatively small combat glider
that had been used at D-Day in an Operation Market Garden, and it could land in a fairly small space
as long as you just cleared it out enough to not say, have stumps in the way. And what's more it
had a fairly simple grappling system so that an airplane that was flying could fly over hook a
hook on the front of the glider and pull it to safety, and so the idea was to clear a field,
land a Waco glider, put the survivors on the glider, hook it with an airplane and fly away.
And the plan was flatly...insane. There was only one unit in the entire theater of operations
that had a Waco glider and the grappling system had never been used operationally. In practice
trials it had failed catastrophically, pretty much everytime it had been attempted. But lucky for the
survivors paratroopers are also..insane. And when Captain Earl Walker, the jumpmaster for the five
two one seventh, asked for volunteers..pretty much the entire unit volunteered. Now he elected to
take with him ten men, two medics and eight other men, in order to go and protect the survivors long
enough for them to clear a fields large enough to land a Waco glider and then tow it back out
again. And they also paratrooped in, a newsreel correspondent. The rescue took four weeks, that's
how long it took to clear a field big enough for the Waco, and for the survivors to recover
enough that they could make it down to the base camp. The air at that altitude was so thin that
the gliders could each carry only five people for the airplane to be able to lift it out of there,
and so three different times they had to land a glider, fly out, land another glider, fly out,
land another glider, fly out, on a procedure that had never successfully been tried before and yet,
all three succeeded, and everybody was evacuated successfully. The extraordinary rescue was
actually big news at the time. After VE Day and as the army was gearing up for a possible invasion of
the Japanese home islands there was a news lull, and especially the specter of a pretty Army nurse
trapped in the jungles of New Guinea, captured the public's attention. Maybe too much so,
at one point the rescuers actually had to ask for clothes for the other two survivors, because
everybody was so worried about Suzy Hastings that within the first couple of days they had dropped
three..dozen..bras for her. You know this was a situation where..things could have gone wrong,
and most especially with the Dani. They could be a rather warlike tribe and yet both groups,
the survivors and the rescuers, treated them with such honor that the Dani welcomed them. Had either
of them been more militant or more trigger-happy it could have gone quite differently. When the
rescuers first landed they found themselves surrounded by so many Dani that one of the
troopers remarked “I think I kind of know how Custer felt”. And there is a story among the
Dani today that says that some of the tribes thought that they had overstayed their welcome
and was planning to attack them if they stayed much longer. While lots of things could have gone
wrong they didn't and certainly that has to do with luck or good fortune, but really the rescue
succeeded because of the reason that most things are successful. The people involved kept their
head in a difficult situation, they did their jobs and so they accomplished one of the most
extraordinary rescues in history from the valley that the press had decided to call, “Shangri-la”.
And while it's pretty much forgotten today, it is still a story that's well worth remembering.
I'm the History Guy, hope you enjoyed this edition of my series,
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