The Queen of Shangri-La

I said, heatedly, "Patsy would never betray me. She loves me."

Laura actually reached over and patted my hand as she said. "Does she tell you that?"

I said, "Well... No... But Patsy's love shines through in every letter that she sends me. She's working in the bank in our town, and she does volunteer service with the Red Cross rolling bandages. So, she doesn't have a lot of time to write. But I know that she's faithful because I've told Patsy that her loyalty is very important to me."

Laura looked at me with genuine sympathy and said, "Well, I hope that's the way it is then, soldier. Because you're definitely one in a million." Rather than sounding like praise, it came across like she was telling me I had a lot to learn about life.

I was just about to tell her that I wasn't some Wisconsin bumpkin. But Jimmy, who had been playing kissy face with Maggie, decided that the time was right to grab her small but shapely right boob... and that triggered a slap of epic proportions.

Maggie leapt to her feet and said, "I'll tell you when you can touch me, soldier. Until then, you can keep your hands to yourself."

With that, she turned to Laura and said, "Come on girlfriend... there are plenty of other guys in this place." And she went stomping over to a table full of appreciative GIs, who were more than happy to make room for her.

Laura gave me a, "See, I told you so," look. Then she rose and walked over to join her friend.

I looked at Jimmy, who was rubbing his jaw speculatively, and said, "It looks like you struck out, partner. But you were punching way above your weight anyhow. So, leave that hot little thing to the officers and let's get our ass back to base. We've got a mission tomorrow."

Jimmy glanced speculatively in Maggie's direction, still rubbing his jaw. Then he rose without a word, and we walked back to the barracks together.

The next morning was the very last time I saw Jimmy. He and Bunting bit it skip bombing a few stray Jap ships in Kokas, Harbor. I wondered if Jimmy woke up that morning thinking, "Today's the day I die." D-Cup went straight into the water trailing smoke and just like that, Jimmy's and Bunting's lives ended. It was a superbly pointless death, but such is the cruelty and capriciousness of war.

As for me, Jimmy's death hammered home the reality of what we were doing. If you're a mechanic, you put in long sweaty hours keeping a complex machine in tip-top shape. It's dirty, menial, and often unpleasant work. But real death is an abstract concept to people like me. That wasn't the case with the guys flying the A-20s.

The practical outcome of Jimmy's loss was that I didn't have a plane to crew anymore. But the situation didn't last more than three hours. That's when I got orders to report to the headquarters of the 39th Troop Carrier Squadron. Colonel Prossen, who was Head of Maintenance for the entire Far East Air Service Command, had requested me as a crew chief for his personal C-47. I guess hard work pays off.

By that stage in the war, the U.S. had progressed up the island chain all the way to Okinawa. So, the 312th was in the process of upping stakes and moving their A-20s to the Philippines, anyhow. I just carried my footlocker across the runways to the 39th barracks, which was in a bigger Quonset.

Most of the remaining aviation was strictly supply oriented. Naval Base Hollandia was the advance headquarters of the United States Seventh Fleet. Bulk supplies from the U.S. came through there. Then, we'd distribute it out to any place within the C-47's 3,000-mile range, which made the 39th one of the most important units still based at Sentani.

Prossen's Skytrain was called "The Gremlin Special." It had the number thirteen along with a cartoon gremlin painted on its nose. I have no idea why people didn't think that presaged bad luck. It featured the usual bench seating for two rifle squads, which translated to 24 paratroopers. Sitting side by side those guys would have a ringside view of whatever hellhole they were being dropped into.

The C-47 was a workhorse in all theaters of the war. It was powered by a couple of Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasps. They were a lot easier to maintain than the Wrights because they weren't supercharged. And I had a much bigger crew because it was a transport wing. To emphasize my new status, they gave me a bottom stripe.

I wrote Patsy about it, just to let her know I was coming up in the world. Patsy was writing less and less as the war dragged on. I understood. It was hard for the folks back home to truly understand what we were going through. And I was sure that Patsy had friends and family all begging for attention. Plus, it takes a lot of time to compose a letter about nothing.

My routine was always the same. I rose at 4:30 to go down to the flight line. I'd inspect the enlisted mechanics. Then I'd hand out the day's duty assignments, grab a cup of coffee and sit down to wrestle with the minutia of maintenance logs, repair schedules and timetables. That usually took the morning.

Afternoons were spent working with the crew on whatever maintenance tasks we had on the books.

All in all, the job was no different than the daily schedule every working stiff follows. The time passed in a repetitive rut.

Then, I got a V-Mail on the eighth of May 1945. Most people recall the date because it was the day Germany surrendered. There was a party at Rosies to celebrate that. But it was muted since we were fighting the Japs and they showed no sign of giving up. It was also my twenty-second birthday.

Patsy's last V-Mail had been nearly a month and a half earlier and I was worried that something had happened back home. So, you can imagine my joy when I heard my name at mail call. I grabbed Patsy's letter and retreated to my bunk to devour the news. And that was where my boyhood ended.

The letter was short, and not sweet. It featured the usual excuse. I'd been away for almost two years, and at age twenty-two, Patsy felt like the prime years for motherhood were slipping away. Accordingly, she wanted to get on with things. That was all she wrote.

I learned, from my mom - much later on - that it was due to Patsy being knocked up. Duke Williams was the perpetrator. He'd continued to play around after his marriage... no surprise there! And as Vice President of the local bank, he deemed all of its tellers to be his personal sluts. Unfortunately for him, he'd underestimated how fertile Patsy was.

Patsy's pregnancy ruined Duke. Everybody in town knew our story. And so, the community at-large wanted to lynch the motherfucker. That caused a major public relations problem for the bank that Duke's father owned. Duke Senior needed to create plausible deniability... pronto. So, he fired Duke and cut him off financially. And of course, Duke couldn't find a job anywhere in town after that.

I felt sorry for Betty. Instead of being the wife of a future President of the local bank, Betty was stuck with an unemployable philanderer. But then again, she'd made her choice. She and Duke had kids. So, divorce was totally out of the question -- at least back in that era. Hence, she and Duke were trapped in a loveless marriage.

My only consolation was knowing that Betty would make Duke pay-and-pay for his transgressions. And that torture would continue, for every day of their no doubt miserable lives together. Duke himself must have spent his time raging at how unfair it was. Since, he'd done nothing wrong in his own mind. The woman was supposed to take care of birth control.

The thought of my Patsy fucking that cowardly douchebag hurt a lot. I knew from experience that she had tons of pent-up passion in that amazing body - only constrained by her Catholic upbringing. It gave me fits of jealousy to imagine the ride that she must have given Duke... once he got past the dogma.

I wondered how many times the two of them did it before her luck ran out. Patsy was as naive as I was. And so, she was an easy mark for an unscrupulous predator like Duke. Plus, Patsy had never experienced mindless lust before. So, she must have been totally out of control. Nonetheless... Patsy got the only thing she wanted in the end, which was a child. So, maybe she was happy.

More pertinently, my knowledge of Patsy's pregnancy was still in the future. Consequently, I was bewildered at being so unceremoniously dumped. Why had Patsy given up on me? What had I done? The feeling of utter hopelessness was so overwhelming that I almost ate a bullet. The only thing keeping me from doing that was my greater fear of death.

For the next week, I was either in the hanger fucking up my assignments, or at Rosie's getting drunk. That's where I ran into Laura, again. I was sitting alone trying to guzzle myself into oblivion when Laura sat down at my empty table and said in her sympathetic voice, "You got the letter, didn't you?"

I slurred, like a whiny little bitch, "She said she wanted to get on with her life. What does THAT mean?!!"

Breaking down was just so humiliating, especially in front of a worldly woman like Laura. But she patted my hand and said kindly, "I've gotten a few of those, myself. You'll cope like the rest of us. Just focus on doing your duty. Life will take care of the small stuff."

Laura's eyes told me that she was speaking from the depths of painful experience -- and that was when the epiphany hit. The girl back home was a boy's wish, not a man's goal. Being the best person I could be, now and into the future -- THAT was my life's purpose.

In that respect then, losing a girlfriend was a trivial thing compared to adhering to bedrock principles like honor, and duty. The Army had been telling me that from day one. But I was too constrained by my small-town upbringing to hear it. I sat there looking with awe at this wise woman. Then I stood and said humbly, "Thank you." Laura's words had broken me out of my cocoon, and I was going to be a butterfly.

Prossen had heard about my fuckups. So, the next day I found myself standing at rigid attention, while he reamed me a new asshole. He was chomping on an unlit cigar as he said angrily, "If you weren't such a great mechanic, I'd take away those stripes. But since you are practically indispensable, I'm only going to confine you to quarters for the next month."

Then he stood, stretched, and walked around the desk, located his face one inch from mine and yelled, "Your love life ain't the Army's problem, Boy! And you are going to hate yourself if this EVER happens again!!" I stared fixedly at a spot just above the Colonel's head and yelled, "Sir!! Yes Sir!!"

The Colonel turned, walked back behind his desk, and plopped himself down. He shuffled some papers while I continued to stand in silence. Then he said conversationally, "Nicholson and I are taking a morale flight up to Shangri-La this afternoon, and I need somebody in the back to babysit the passengers. That's going to be you, Boy! And you had better not fuck it up!!"

I wasn't sure whether he was punishing me or rewarding me. A couple of years back, when the Japs were still a problem in New Guinea, the Army had contemplated building a road across the entire island - right through its dense jungles and mountains. Planners had even dispatched survey flights to find possible routes. One of those found an amazing valley situated 150 miles to the southwest of the base.

The beauty and isolation of the place fascinated every American who flew over it, so much so that it was nicknamed "Shangri-la," which was taken from a popular Ronald Coleman, Jane Wyman film called Lost Horizons. It was the same kind of mystical place.

Photographic reconnaissance revealed that there were natives living there in thatched roof huts and cultivating crops. Those people had a stone age existence and they had never encountered a white person. It was also rumored that they were cannibals. So, although everybody wanted to see Shangri-La, they didn't want to actually visit it.

Hence, Prossen arranged for "sightseeing" flights to view Shangri-La from the air. They called them, "navigational exercises." Everybody knew they were junkets meant to boost our morale and relieve the underlying boredom. Only a lucky few got on those flights, mostly officers. But it was Mother's Day that Sunday, so there were eight WACs on this particular excursion.

There were also five crew... Prossen, nominally the pilot, Major Nicholson who was the copilot and actually flying the plane, Norris and Newcomer, the engineer and radio man, and me. My job was to make sure the passengers were comfortable and behaved themselves. It was sort of an airline stewardess role, which is why I think Prossen assigned it to me. I still had a lot of making-up to do.

I was there to calm the nerves of anybody who was anxious about flying and to ensure that everybody obeyed the rules, including staying seated during the flight. That wasn't as easy as it sounds. I was just a Staff Sergeant and most of the passengers were either Officers, or WACs and they were all definitely there to party.

A uniform was impractical. So, I went back to my quarters to change into a clean pair of mechanic's coveralls. I was the C-47's crew chief and above all, I was more comfortable in my work outfit. Plus, it gets cold at eleven thousand feet.

Then I walked out into the hot sun and strolled over to the waiting Gremlin Special. The door on a Skytrain is on the left side, just forward of the tail. The flight crew had already boarded, and the passengers were lined up ready to inch gingerly up the narrow steps, which deploy when the door was opened. They were all eagerly anticipating seeing Shangri-La.

The first step onto the ladder is awkward and the ladder itself is small and rickety. So, I was there to assist. Most of the men didn't want my help but the WACs all let me give them a hand. The first face I ran into was a smiling Maggie Hastings. She was glowing with excitement. Laura was next in line. I said a sincere, "Thank you," as I helped her up the ladder. Laura knew what that meant, and she nodded back meaningfully.

I had seen most of the other six WACs before, including the tall one and the plump one. I boarded last, pulled up the stairs and closed the door. There is a little canvas fold down seat located in the tail of the plane. The jumpmaster sits back there to avoid snarling the stick of paratroopers who are waiting to exit the plane during a drop. That was the logical place to be since I wasn't sightseeing.

Surprisingly, Laura and Maggie, who were first to board, were sitting near me, just on the other side of the door. Apparently, they'd rushed to the front and discovered that the wing blocked their view. So, they'd hurried back to position themselves at an unobstructed rear window.

They both seemed absolutely thrilled to be there. Laura was cheerful and self-contained. Her classic good looks and her kindness had gotten under my skin in a serious way. I thought to myself, she is really a very attractive woman, even though she was perhaps ten years older than me. In fact, I was thinking about asking her to one of those legendary blanket parties when we got back.

Maggie was incandescent. She had her gorgeous face and trim little figure, but it was her aura of energy and frank sexuality that made her stand out. Sitting apart from the passengers, I could see that every guy was either flirting with her or eyeing her like a prime cut of beef. I wondered if any of them would get lucky.

One thing that I knew for sure was that Maggie was way out of this boy's league. I might be a Staff Sergeant, like Laura, but the comparison ended there. Laura and Maggie were both very worldly and sophisticated. While I was purely small-town America... honest, hardworking, and naïve. The slick looking Major with the Clark Gable moustache sitting across from Maggie was more her type.

The C-47 is not built for comfort - with all of the noise and vibration it's kinda like being inside a cement mixer. But the distracting sounds did nothing to dampen the festive atmosphere among the passengers. Maggie's Major produced a flask and handed it across the aisle to her. She laughed and took a swig. Then she handed it to Laura.

I was back there to prevent that sort of stuff. But what the heck. They were enjoying themselves and not causing any trouble. And they were about to see something very few people had ever seen. So, they were giddy with excitement.

Instead, I sat there thinking about my current situation. I was single. Actually, I had always been single - except in my own mind. And I was as horny as any guy could be after almost two years of living strictly with other men.

I stole a surreptitious glance at Laura, who was chatting amiably with the Lieutenant next to her and thought, "Laura's gone out of her way to be nice to me and she's a lot smarter and prettier than Patsy. Maybe she's my next stop."

Maggie's shriek of laughter interrupted my reverie. Laura's friend might be something special in the looks department. But she was an irritating little shit.

The Baliem Valley, or Shangri-La as we called it, is a 50 mile long and 12-mile-wide river basin that sits two miles above sea level, directly between the highest peaks on New Guinea. The flight to it normally takes under an hour. So, when nothing had happened after an hour and a half, I walked through the partying passengers and up to the cockpit.

I asked Nicholson if there was something wrong. George Nicholson was a good pilot and a good guy. He always treated enlisted like me with respect and we respected him. He said offhandedly, "We're over the valley right now but we've got cloud cover. I was circling to find a hole but it's socked in."

Prossen said dryly, "That valley is huge, and I don't want to disappoint the passengers. So, we're going to dive underneath the clouds. Just tell the people in the back that there will be a period when there'll be nothing but cotton outside their window."

I said, "Aye-aye skipper." Then I walked back and announced that there would be a short time when we would be flying blind. But that we'd be under the clouds after that - and they'd see the sight of their lives. The passengers pressed eagerly against the windows.

Their enthusiasm gave me an idea. I would slide back the aircraft door when we got under the clouds. It would give the people sitting in the back an unobstructed view of the Valley. In preparation for doing that... I secured myself with the belt the jumpmaster uses when he opens the door during a combat drop. Since, the only things that you want falling out of the plane are the things you INTEND to drop.

Then... the world went into slow motion. The engines screamed as emergency power was applied and the plane pitched radically up and there was the all-consuming shock of impact. I saw stars as the restraining belt pounded me in the gut, while the passengers flew out of their seats and started bouncing around the cabin like so many rubber balls.

I glanced toward the front and the fuselage walls were crumpling toward me like a giant was squeezing a tube of toothpaste. Meanwhile, the entire universe was consumed by a hideous, never-ending scream of rendering metal. Then the aircraft must have hit a tree. Because it wrenched violently sideways, like cracking a whip. And the tail cone, where I was sitting, snapped completely off the back of the plane.

Blue sky whirled dizzyingly past. I saw the port wing catapult off into the distant trees, engine still running. While, the entire tail section, elevators, rudder, and all, spun violently down the hill. My wild ride ended with me hanging upside down, almost completely out of the broken off tail section.

The jumpmaster belt had saved my life. But it was jammed now. So, I gingerly reached into the side pocket of my coveralls, retrieved my faithful jackknife, and cut myself loose - falling flat on my face on the fetid smelling ground in the process.