by Robert Lyman
Insofar as the written record is concerned, the fates of the others who were part of this story have been lost to history.
EPILOGUE
During the time of this story the village of Pangsha was considered part of India’s orbit, and after independence in 1947 it became part of the new country. However, the arbitrary line drawn across a map in the previous century by some anonymous colonial bureaucrat clearly placed Pangsha in Burma, a fact that became more evident as digital and satellite mapping technology now demonstrate. For this reason the village and its various khels were handed over to Myanmar in 2015. It remains remote from the world and physically looks quite different from the thatched conglomeration found by Mills in 1936 and the air-crash survivors in 1943. Houses remain on stilts but are now made of rough-hewn clapboard and corrugated iron and painted brightly.
When India gained its long-awaited independence in 1947, the Naga Hills were part of Britain’s political settlement, much to the chagrin of many Nagas, who felt no affinity with India and desired their own independence. The ICS men in the Naga Hills during the run-up to independence, however, were convinced that this decision represented the best outcome for the Naga people, Charles Pawsey for instance arguing that Naga independence outside a new India would inevitably result in “tribal warfare, no hospitals, no schools, no salt, no trade with the plains and general unhappiness.” Both Mills and Adams contributed to the preindependence debate in then-secret papers written for the governor of Assam, outlining the options available for the Nagas to survive within a political environment in which Britain was absent. Both unequivocally supported the idea of the hill tribes retaining semi-independent status in an independent India. These pleas fell on deaf ears, however. Sir Andrew Clow, for whom James Mills wrote “Note on the Future of the Hills Tribes of Assam and the Adjoining Hills in a Self-Governing India” in 1945, dismissed the idea of keeping the Naga Hills outside an independent India as “grandiose,” arguing that they should become part of a federal agency within a new India. Even the idea of a temporary solution whereby Britain retained political control after independence for a period of, say, ten years, was “a chimera.”
But it was by accident of history, brought about by the speed with which independence was secured—rather than by political design—that the Naga Hills became part of the new India on August 15, 1947, despite the efforts of people such as Philip Mills to secure some form of semi-independent status for Nagas and others. Few outsiders were able to visit the remote Patkois (now generally referred to as the Patkai Ranges) in the several decades following independence, when many across Nagaland (so called since becoming an independent state within the Indian Union in 1963) fought against the Indian state for the right to Naga independence. These agitations rumble uncomfortably on, despite the desire of many for a permanent, sustainable peace. In 2006 the Kohima Educational Society (KES), an organization established in Nagaland to act as the Naga partner of the British-based Kohima Educational Trust (KET), was approached by local Naga people about building a hostel in Pangsha in order to support the education of young children who would otherwise need to walk many miles to the local mission school, then in the process of construction, and who found it impossible to undertake this journey every day. The KET had been established in 2003 by surviving British veterans who had fought alongside their Indian comrades in the tumultuous Battle of Kohima in 1944 to turn back the Japanese invasion of India. At their annual gathering in York in 2003 these men decided to create a formal and enduring memorial of their gratitude to the Naga men and women who had assisted them to overcome their enemies during those desperate days, forming a charitable organization to aid the advancement of education across Nagaland. An initial report by the prominent Naga writer and newspaperman Charles Chasie identified Pangsha as an area of extreme poverty, so it was decided to build the hostel near the newly built Straightway Mission School just outside the village. The purpose of the hostel was to provide accommodation during the week for some of the children who would have to travel up to thirty miles to attend the new school. Without living accommodation during the week the school would struggle to sustain a viable pupil population. Immediate support came from Mr. P. Longon, the Nagaland minister for soil conservation, who had been born in Tuensang, and in 2008 he escorted KET trustee Sylvia May to the village. May described her trip with Longon; her husband, Rob; KES trustee Pfelie Kesiezie; and KES manager Bendang Ozukum:
It was the most astonishing trip that I have ever made. The road was tortuous. It took 15 hours from Kohima, the last two hours on mud and only passable because . . . [Longon] had organized bulldozers from the nearest town of Noklak to make the road passable. Six months of the year this road is unusable. We made the journey in one day. Leaving Kohima at 4 a.m., we arrived at 7 p.m., and were greeted by a welcoming line of singing locals, performing a welcome song and dance. After a meal of hornet and chicken brought all the way from Noklak, we retired by candlelight. There was no electricity.
Woken at 3.30 a.m. by the local cockerel, half an hour before dawn, we began to enjoy this rare and remote part of world. Villagers came from all over the area. Pangsha residents walked up and those from the Burma side also made the long journey. The terrain cannot be underestimated. Thousand-foot high mountains with jungle-covered sides which plunge into valleys at impossibly steep angles. It is incredible that any roads have been hewn out of this terrain at all. The villagers travel on foot and mostly barefoot. Some wore sandals and one or two have sneakers.
As soon as the Minister had completed his meetings with the Burmese villagers, the party walked up to the top of the hill following what had been a constant procession since dawn. There we were greeted by an amazing sight. A huge circle of around 60 to 70 Nagas in traditional clothes were gathered in a circle, singing. A further 100 or so looked on. Rob and I were thrust into the circle to join the festivities and once again we danced with the local people.
During their visit the Mays were told the story of Flight 12420 by the villagers and shown remnants of its wreckage. “One man,” Sylvia May recalled, “who claimed to be 100 years old says that he remembers the British coming to his village and burning it down. He also remembers the plane crashing. . . . The villagers showed us where the plane came down and talked about rescuing the people who’d been on the plane.”
The prospect of building a hostel here would perfectly suit the aims of the KET: the safekeeping of Eric Sevareid and the other survivors of the crash on August 3, 1943, was as much a cause for gratitude as was the support given by Nagas to Charles Pawsey and the Anglo-Indian forces fighting their life-and-death struggle at Kohima and elsewhere in the Naga Hills. So it was agreed: the KET would fund the building of a substantial hostel complex for the village. But the expectation of a two-year construction period proved to be fantastically overoptimistic. Building didn’t get under way until 2010, and it was not until March 2014 that the years of planning, fund-raising, and construction finally came to fruition with the formal opening of the new three-building hostel. The KES, represented by its chairman, Dr. Phyobemo Ngully, together with KET trustee Hugh Young, formally presented the hostel to the village in front of an audience, recalled Young, of “some 220 school children and a lesser number of village elders, pastors, school and government officials.” After a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony there followed prayers by the three village and International Trade Centre pastors and welcoming speeches by the leaders of the three village councils (Old Pangsha, New Pangsha, and Dan Village). The children recited Psalm 23 and sang a hymn before “grace before the feast” was said by the pastor of Old Pangsha. (Christianity has clearly entirely eclipsed the animism of the pre-European era.) This signaled the start of the inauguration feast, which included pork, chicken, and fish caught from the Langnyu River. It was, concluded Young, a deeply moving experience and augured well for the long-term future of these children, and indeed of their remote village.
What would Mongsen say? I have no doubt that he would chuck
le and think, “First you burn me down, and now you build me up! Such is life in these parts. But at least we are now friends.” I am sure that he would accept the work of the KET as partial payment for the care the men and women of Pangsha extended to the American and Chinese survivors of Flight 12420, and others in the months that followed, in those long-ago days. Perhaps, with the enduring poverty in that ancient community, what has been built there can not only contribute positively to the physical needs of its people but support the renewal of their spirit and enable them to hold their heads high among the people of Nagaland—and indeed farther afield.
MAP 1
The Administered Area
MAP 2
Routes Between Mokokchung and Pangsha, Including Those of the 1936 Expedition and the Survivors’ Return in 1943
APPENDIX A
Weapons of the Patkoi Nagas
A.
Crossbow used by Singphos Daphlas and Nagas on the Patkoi Range.
B.
Spears used by the same with hair ornamentation. The circles denote the owner’s rank.
C., D.
Different kinds of daos used by the Patkoi tribes. D is doubled-edged.
E.
A bamboo drinking cup adorned with real “poker work.”
F.
The plain-shafted spear used for throwing.
G.
Carved wooden pipe used on the Western Patkoi. The bowl represents a human head, and a row of monkeys stands along the stern.
Source: Art and descriptions from L. W. Shakespear, A History of Upper Assam (1914).
APPENDIX B
1936 Expedition Diary
APPENDIX C
1943 Crash Diary
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