by Robert Lyman
At Smith’s bungalow, where the Europeans retired for a final meal together, was a message for Mills. It was now December 13. A telegram from Shillong reported that on December 11 the king had abdicated and that the Duke of York had been proclaimed George VI. Long live the King! Even Fürer-Haimendorf was caught up in the gloom of his British friends, no longer attempting to hide their embarrassment and shame at the behavior of their former king. “The world and its troubles have caught us again,” the Austrian observed.
Fürer-Haimendorf was facing his own problem. Although the sepoys could quite legitimately claim to have killed some of the enemy, all of the Naga porters were returning with tales of glory but no physical evidence of their manifold victories. Importantly, they had no heads. How could they return to their villages as warriors without such practical evidence of their martial credentials? Resourceful jurists among the porters, he observed, came up with the solution of substituting Fürer-Haimendorf’s four Pangsha heads “for those of the killed enemies left lying on the field.”
It is argued that since they were fairly fresh and had hung only on the head-tree, and not been stored in the morung, it is plausible to assume that their inherent “virtue” has not yet been finally absorbed in Pangsha’s store of magical power. By this interpretation the value of my heads suddenly mounts, and it is soon apparent that they will never reach any European museum.
By no means all the porters take this point of view. The Lhotas and Rengmas recognize the heads as valuable trophies, and are burning with impatience to receive their share, but the Semas and the Sangtams stand on their dignity. A head that has not been severed from an enemy’s body is to them useless for ceremonial purposes. . . .
I hand over one of the heads to the Lhotas and Rengmas, telling them to divide it, so that each village should receive a small piece. It is not only the men who have been with us on the Pangsha tour who will thus gain the right to the dress of the head-hunter, but all those who touch the small piece of head with their dao. Excitement runs high among the porters; their fellow-villagers will acclaim them as heroes, and the bringing in of the head will be followed by days of feasting.
With little more than a puff and a fizzle, the 1936 punitive expedition was over. In Fürer-Haimendorf’s collection a photograph remains of the four Europeans, standing together outside Smith’s bungalow following lunch, self-consciously showing to the camera the sangfroid that defined their roles as lawgivers in this lawless land. They stood in a semiformal, self-conscious pose, full of restraint and awareness of their position. All but Smith wore jackets; Fürer-Haimendorf and Mills wore ties. Smith was to remain in Mokokchung, Mills and Williams to return to Kohima, and Fürer-Haimendorf to walk back into the Konyak country, from whence he had first started out on this unusual adventure. The evening ended in typical fashion over gin and bitters and shared stories of hardship, excitement, danger, and triumph.
Sir Robert Reid, the governor of Assam, forwarded Mills’s report on the successful expedition to Pangsha to New Delhi on January 30, 1937. He was pleased with the outcome of their adventure: “The expedition completely achieved its objects in effecting the release of several slaves taken as captives and in inflicting on Pangsha a well merited punishment not only for its participation in the slave trade but for its head hunting raids on its neighbors. The Deputy Commissioner, Naga Hills, has been asked to submit proposals for the constitution of a Control Area to include Pangsha and other villages.” Mills’s report argued that the Control Area should be extended to include those villages for whom slave taking had been allowed to fester for want of the exercise of effective restraint. “The proposed extension of the Control Area covers the approaches to the only known pass into Burma through which slaves are taken, and the whole of the country in which we know that slave-raiding has survived to the present,” he wrote. The government of India agreed and in January 1938 extended the Control Area that ran alongside the British Administered Area, but not so far as to include Pangsha. This didn’t mean, however, that the empire was creeping forward, only that the area in which Britain claimed an interest was now closer to its colony in Burma. The gap between the formal Control Area and the Burmese border, which looked so illogical on the map and equally irrational to colonial administrators frustrated by their inability to exercise the necessary influence over anyone outside the general purview that these categories denoted, was thereby reduced but was frustratingly not eliminated entirely.
Any self-congratulation by Britain was short-lived. Reports began filtering in to Mokokchung that the impact of the expedition remained limited to the villages that had been visited: towns within the region that had not received a visit continued to behave as they had always done. One such was the Kalyo Kengyu village of Nokhu, and another was Sanglao, which had previously been a victim of Pangsha’s despoliations. The new deputy commissioner in Kohima, Charles Pawsey, was concerned by this state of affairs, as it was apparent that these villages were attempting to thumb their noses at British authority and to ignore the warnings that Mills and Williams had hoped would be spread far and wide by virtue of their recent visit. It was clear to Pawsey that the remote villages were counting on Britain not returning to their region anytime soon. He pressed Shillong for further action at the end of the wet season (after October) for a follow-up punitive expedition if these remote villages refused to give up the slaves they were reported to be holding; the government could find no grounds to refuse. Accordingly, in 1937 Pawsey, accompanied by the new subdivisional officer at Mokokchung, Hari Blah, set out with 174 officers and men of the Third Assam Rifles under the command of Major Bernard Gerty of the Ninth Jat Regiment. Unfortunately, no detailed accounts of this expedition appear to remain. Sir Robert Reid subsequently considered the expedition to have been a success in that slaves were recovered and recalcitrant villages punished: “The expedition left Mokokchung on the 1st November 1937 and by the end of the month all the slaves known to be in the unadministered area were set free without any casualty on our side. Nokhu was reached on November 12th, 4 slaves were released and a fine was exacted: Sanglao was reached on the 15th and was overwhelmingly friendly: Pesu was reached on the 17th and burnt and slaves recovered.” Reid noted, nevertheless, that as soon as the expedition left the area stronger villages took advantage of the weakened state of those recently punished. While Pesu was being rebuilt, for instance, after being burned to the ground, Panso broke through the village’s weakened defenses and killed six, taking their heads.
Any hope that Pangsha would not return to its old ways was dashed when during the dry season of late 1938 and early 1939 Mokokchung continued to receive reports of its trespasses and those of neighboring villages who were working in alliance with it. The target of considerable cruelty that year was the village of Agching. Early in 1939 the villages of Yungkao, Tamkhung, and Ukha grouped together to attack Agching, killing twelve people and removing their heads. In June that year, during the monsoon, they attacked again, this time accompanied by Pangsha, killing ninety-six. All these villages were now well within the recently extended Control Area. Action by Shillong could no longer be delayed because of the excuse that the villages sat outside the British area of influence, and another punitive expedition was dispatched. Guns were provided for the endangered villages for their protection. Led again by Charles Pawsey and supported by the new subdivisional officer at Mokokchung, Philip Adams, the expedition was supported by three platoons (100 men) led by Major A. R. Nye, Fourth Prince of Wales’ Own Gurkha Rifles. Like the two previous expeditions to the region, it was considered a success. There was no opposition. Both Pangsha and Ukha, the two most bloodthirsty and aggressive villages, were burned, and those that were deemed to have played only supporting roles, such as Yungkao and Tamkhung, were fined. Practicalities continued to dominate the application of the law in these parts. The villages were sternly admonished for their activities and advised that they were not to use guns or take heads within the Control Area. The implication was that they
could continue to hunt outside the Control Area, that is, into Burma. One of the aims of the 1939 punitive expedition was to arrest both Mongu and Mongsen, the two paramount chiefs of Pangsha. It is not clear what Pawsey had in mind for these two troublemakers, although a public trial at Mokokchung, followed by imprisonment, seemed the most likely plan.
Three large-scale punitive expeditions in four years crossing the eastern territories of the Naga Hills constituted a significant change in the experience of British-Naga relations in this northeastern region. Philip Adams led a further punitive expedition to Nian and Yungya, burning the villages in April 1943 following a year of violence. These expeditions, however, seemed to have minimal long-term effect, or indeed any real impact outside the villages specifically targeted for retribution. They did, nevertheless, make villages such as Noklak and Pangsha acutely aware that the government seemed willing now to act against slavery and head-hunting in a way it had previously been unable to and was serious about its prohibitions in both the Administered Area and the Control Area, of which they were now (unknowingly) a part. Armed action of this kind made the subdivisional officer at Mokokchung more than the paper tiger he had been in the old days, when missives from so far away could be easily ignored. It also made the British acutely aware of those in the region who were responsible for fanning the flames of civil disturbance—men such as Mongsen of Pangsha—so that they could mark their cards accordingly.
12
ERIC AND THE HEADHUNTERS
Fighting to retain control of himself, Sevareid stumbled uphill, heading for the site of the wreckage, where he presumed he would find the others. Clambering through the bush, he fell repeatedly, cutting himself on the sword grass and branches. In the short period of time during which he had dangled from the parachute he had spotted a village on a distant hillside, and a jumble of ill-connected questions bubbled to the surface of his mind. Panic was close, incoherent thoughts racing through his brain in no clear, logical fashion: “I have no food. There are berries here. Where are the Japs? Who lives in that grass village? I have no weapons. I have a penknife. A razor . . . That boy from Minnesota. He lived forty days in the New Guinea jungles. Maybe I can, too. No, this is too bad—no, cannot do it.” Bloodied and emotionally exhausted, he at one point rested where he fell, entirely accepting the prospect of death. He thought of his wife and twin sons and attempted to calculate what his death benefits would be if his insurance company paid out when he didn’t return. He tried to call out, but nothing more than a mumble emerged from his lips. He then heard shouting. Ned Miller and a blond-haired serviceman whom he didn’t recognize from the plane—who turned out to be Sergeant Francis Signer—emerged from the undergrowth. Bloodied too, the three men sat for a while, saying nothing, as if attempting to restore their reserves of both physical and emotional energy.
Before long another shout was heard, this time for help. Walking slowly uphill, they came across a parachute caught in the branches of a tree, beneath which was sitting Sergeant Walter Oswalt, clearly in pain. One leg was crossed over the other. He groaned and told them that he had hurt his leg in the fall. Taking off his boot, Sevareid saw that the ankle was red and swollen, but his limited medical experience could not tell him whether he was looking at a sprain or a break. Then out of the bush stumbled Harry Neveu, complaining of a broken rib. After a few moments Neveu suggested that they move to the crash site, as it would be the natural rallying point for any other survivors. They, the last to jump, would surely be joined in due course by those who had jumped before them but who were now much farther away. Neveu judged that they were some 300 yards from the wreck, but that distance was covered in thick, chest-high brush. Sevareid placed a splint as best he could on Oswalt’s ankle, wrapping it with parachute silk, and he and Signer helped Oswalt move along the path that Miller and Neveu managed to cut through the undergrowth.
Eventually they reached the blackened edge of a great pit gouged out of the earth in which the mangled remains of the plane still smoked fiercely. A plume of black smoke rising high into the air marked the half-acre of burned hillside scorched by the fierce fireball produced by the burning aviation fuel. They stared disconsolately at the scene of devastation before them, lost in silent contemplation of the recent events and the prospects for their salvation in this desolate land. Sevareid recalled Neveu muttering something about whether Felix had managed to get out of the aircraft, nervously concerned lest his friend had not made it, given the last-second rush to evacuate the plummeting plane. Neveu also stumbled through an apology for not getting them home; when interviewed years later he was convinced that Sevareid had misheard him and thought that Neveu was admitting to a personal failure to keep the aircraft in the air and that therefore he was somehow responsible for the crash. Such were the surging emotions of the moment. Happily, Sevareid made no such claim in his memoirs. To the contrary, he had commented, “So far as we could see, both pilots had done their duty to the utmost and had got us away from enemy territory. Neveu felt very badly, but it never occurred to any of us to hold him responsible; indeed, we were more inclined to be grateful that he had kept us in the air as long as he had.”
The fire was still too hot to approach. A strange-looking lump of molten metal in the grass was recognized by Sevareid as his typewriter. Sitting down amid the wet brush on the outer rim of the circle of fire-blackened earth, the men attempted to work out what to do. A river ran through the valley half a mile below them, and a village could be seen on the same slope of the mountain, although in the far distance. It now seemed clear that Oswalt’s leg was broken, and he lay on the wet grass uncomplainingly, yet in agony. They decided to stay where they were for the time being to wait for any stragglers and because they could not carry the injured Oswalt on their own. He was a giant of a man and would require at least four fit men to carry him to a place of safety. It was also an opportunity to gather their wits and think through how they might survive the onset of night. Neveu had a map, which he pulled out of his flying jacket. Unfortunately, the area into which he believed they had crashed was denoted by a white area marked “Unsurveyed.” The nearest British outpost, Neveu knew, was Mokokchung, which was at least eighty-five miles as the crow flew but many miles farther if they were forced to walk there through these intimidating, corrugated mountains. Of any inhabitants the survivors were blissfully ignorant.
While they were miserably contemplating their plight, the distinctive and unmistakable sound of a C-47 Skytrain appeared separately in each of their consciousnesses. Unwilling to believe what they were hearing, they ignored it for a while until the reality of the drone in the distance was confirmed. Then, amazingly, the aircraft appeared down the valley and approached their position rapidly, flying low overhead, waggling its wings as it saw the men on the ground, who jumped up—except for Oswalt—in a frenzy of screaming and ecstatic joy. Oswalt’s frantic distress messages to Chabua had been heard and sufficient information provided for the crew of the C-47 to find the thin pillar of smoke marking the spot of Flight 12420’s demise. With a start Sevareid realized that the time was 10:15 a.m. It was only an hour after the crash, and here was the USAAF in the sky above, like a ministering angel. It was almost too good to be true.
Although searches for downed aircraft and their crews were not yet on an organized or systematic footing in the early days of the Hump airlift, the news of a downed aircraft would often lead to the first available crew being sent up to search for it. Useful innovations had already been developed, such as the creation of standard rescue packs bundled together with canvas and rope and attached to parachutes that were opened by use of a “static line” attached to the aircraft. They contained essential necessities for the preservation of life such as first aid equipment, knives, a rifle or two, and ammunition as well as food and blankets. The canvas cover and attaching cords could be used to make a shelter.
When the SOS messages came streaming in to the operations center at Chabua shortly after 9:00 that morning, a C-47 was tasked wi
th the search within minutes of the receipt of Oswalt’s distress signals. The ATC operations officer was Colonel Richard Knight. Tracking Oswalt’s last radio signals, he gave the rescue aircraft an approximate location for the crash. After that the crew members were on their own and would have to use the “Mark I Eyeball” to locate the exact position of the crash on the ground. The USAAF missing air crew reports (MACRs) from the time demonstrate that the crew of this rescue aircraft—pilots Captain Hugh Wild and George Katzman and radio operator Staff Sergeant Glenn Arbuthnot—were vastly experienced in searching for downed aircraft in what was already known to crews as the “aluminum trail” stretching between Assam and Yunnan. On this occasion the same problem that had faced Mills and Williams in 1936—the fact that the entire area was unsurveyed—meant that they would have to reach the general area and then search with the naked eye. It entailed flying slowly and methodically along every valley in the area of the last position provided by the doomed plane in the hope that evidence of the remains might be identified from the air. This was not always possible in areas of heavy vegetation, where the jungle canopy could easily hide wreckage from view. Many scores of aircraft were never discovered. On this occasion, however, the burning aviation fuel provided an unmistakable marker for the searchers. After traversing a number of valleys, they turned into the one that led directly to the plume of smoke under which they could see the ecstatic survivors jumping up and down close to the wreck.
After the rescue plane had circled the site several times, Neveu suddenly realized that the crew was trying to get them to an area of open ground where they could safely dispatch a parcel from the plane. The crew of the C-47 clearly didn’t want to drop anything on the still burning wreckage. The survivors could see a patch of cleared ground higher up the hill that looked suspiciously as though it had once been cultivated. Scrambling uphill as quickly as they could, Neveu, Sevareid, and Miller found a track that took them directly to the open space. Sevareid could not help noticing footprints in the mud, and they passed other unmistakable signs of human habitation: a bamboo spout, for instance, thrust into the side of the hill to divert a small watercourse. Had it been placed here by the inhabitants of that distant village he had seen when swinging under his parachute, or were there Japanese soldiers about? Reaching the clearing, the exhausted men waved to the plane, and Neveu laid out his parachute as an aiming mark. Sure enough, a bundle was pushed out, swinging wildly under its parachute to fall virtually at their feet. In the bundle were an ax, machetes, blankets, cigarettes, army rations, mosquito netting, and two old Springfield service rifles, one of which had a broken stock. A further pass by the plane brought with it a small weighted bag in which the men found a typewritten note: “Remain at wreckage until rescue party reaches you. You are safe from enemy action there. Give some sign of life to searching aircraft by building a fire or displaying unusual signs by parachute panels. Further provisions coming by air tomorrow including a radio. Your location: 26°25′ N.—95°20′ E.”a Yet another pass, however, delivered two additional packages containing the radio. One held the receiver, but the transmitter in another package under a bright orange parachute was broken in the fall when the parachute failed to open. The equipment was collected and carried to the area where Oswalt sat, silently uncomplaining despite the pain in his leg, and he twiddled with the radio knobs in an effort to make contact with Chabua. One of the items was a set of ground-signaling panels with instructions for sending messages to the plane by arranging the letters on the ground for the air crew above to read. After completing several more circuits, the C-47 turned to the north. Within minutes the comforting drone of its engines drifted to silence, and it passed out of sight.