ceeemvee's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
What an incredible book, and many who lived through it found others thought it was impossible to believe. I don’t think you need to be a WWII buff to enjoy this story. The author indicated she was presenting the story without embellishment. Such a rich tale of courage, daring and fortitude stands on its own. The author based her writing on thorough research, as well as interviews with the participants and their families.
November 1944, and U. S. Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead, they find themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleet, and were shot down. Most parachuted to safety, but their landings were scattered across the island’s mountainous interior. Alone in a jungle, the airmen are discovered by Dayak tribesmen, known headhunters, wielding blowpipes.
As the Dayaks were influenced by Dutch Christian missionaries, they had given up headhunting, well more or less given it up, for the last decade. There will be some of that later in the story, so beware. The Dayak’s Christian belief is also why they didn’t turn the airmen over to the Japanese. The Dayaks risked their lives, indeed the lives of their whole villages, to keep the airmen’s presence secret until their rescue six months later. In the meantime, another plane is shot down, and the Dayaks lend refuge to those airmen also.
The story is exciting in the telling, and touching. Both diverse cultures without a common language came to admire, respect and love each other. Excellent read from beginning to end!
https://candysplanet.wordpress.com/
November 1944, and U. S. Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead, they find themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleet, and were shot down. Most parachuted to safety, but their landings were scattered across the island’s mountainous interior. Alone in a jungle, the airmen are discovered by Dayak tribesmen, known headhunters, wielding blowpipes.
As the Dayaks were influenced by Dutch Christian missionaries, they had given up headhunting, well more or less given it up, for the last decade. There will be some of that later in the story, so beware. The Dayak’s Christian belief is also why they didn’t turn the airmen over to the Japanese. The Dayaks risked their lives, indeed the lives of their whole villages, to keep the airmen’s presence secret until their rescue six months later. In the meantime, another plane is shot down, and the Dayaks lend refuge to those airmen also.
The story is exciting in the telling, and touching. Both diverse cultures without a common language came to admire, respect and love each other. Excellent read from beginning to end!
https://candysplanet.wordpress.com/
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, Murder, Colonisation, Medical trauma, and War
headhuntingnkmeyers's review against another edition
4.0
[a:Judith Heimann|4169894|Judith Heimann|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg] tells an incredible story of American airmen stranded in Borneo's headhunter country during WWII!
The story of these men is also the subject of an PBS documentary series Secrets of the Deadepisode titled The Airmen and the Headhunters . You can watch the whole epsiode on pbs.org . PBS Episode Description:
This spectacular long-lost story of heroism, perseverance, and ingenuity follows the tale of lost WWII soldiers, their unlikely rescue and companionship with the Dayak tribe in Borneo, and their eventual rescue conceived by an eccentric British Major — an airway built out of bamboo in the middle of the jungle.
I haven't watched it yet, but you can bet I will now that I've finished the book!
I for one am glad Mrs. Heimann took the time to research and tell this incredible story.
Judith Heimann, historian and author -PBS
A career diplomat, Judith spent seven years living Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including two years in Borneo where she learned to speak Malay/Indonesian. She traveled to three continents and interviewed all the surviving Dayaks and airmen in her research for this book.
She conducts over thirty oral histories many requiring multiple interviews, and does a ton of research both on the ground, in libraries, and with personal papers of those involved.
Her thoroughness amazingly does not result in a dry or academic history. Her story is alive with the people, intersection of cultures and outsized events and accomplishments that characterize many WWII stories yet she modestly says in her preface:
"We like to think of war stories from the twentieth century and earlier as straightforward accounts of derring-do, with a familiar cast of heroes and villains. There is even a subcategory of stories about how our brave soldiers managed -or died trying- to make their way home from behind enemy lines. But the circumstances of war can be more complicated. This story happened during World War II -which was truly a world war, drawing into its orbit even such normally isolated people as the headhunting Dayaks . . .. This morsel of Borneo's World War II history has never before been told in its entirety. No single person knew more than a fragment or two if it."
Note to future readers: The glossary and notes on sources toward the end of the book are very well done -read that glossary first before you start and you'll be glad you did !
The story of these men is also the subject of an PBS documentary series Secrets of the Deadepisode titled The Airmen and the Headhunters . You can watch the whole epsiode on pbs.org . PBS Episode Description:
This spectacular long-lost story of heroism, perseverance, and ingenuity follows the tale of lost WWII soldiers, their unlikely rescue and companionship with the Dayak tribe in Borneo, and their eventual rescue conceived by an eccentric British Major — an airway built out of bamboo in the middle of the jungle.
I haven't watched it yet, but you can bet I will now that I've finished the book!
I for one am glad Mrs. Heimann took the time to research and tell this incredible story.
Judith Heimann, historian and author -PBS
A career diplomat, Judith spent seven years living Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including two years in Borneo where she learned to speak Malay/Indonesian. She traveled to three continents and interviewed all the surviving Dayaks and airmen in her research for this book.
She conducts over thirty oral histories many requiring multiple interviews, and does a ton of research both on the ground, in libraries, and with personal papers of those involved.
Her thoroughness amazingly does not result in a dry or academic history. Her story is alive with the people, intersection of cultures and outsized events and accomplishments that characterize many WWII stories yet she modestly says in her preface:
"We like to think of war stories from the twentieth century and earlier as straightforward accounts of derring-do, with a familiar cast of heroes and villains. There is even a subcategory of stories about how our brave soldiers managed -or died trying- to make their way home from behind enemy lines. But the circumstances of war can be more complicated. This story happened during World War II -which was truly a world war, drawing into its orbit even such normally isolated people as the headhunting Dayaks . . .. This morsel of Borneo's World War II history has never before been told in its entirety. No single person knew more than a fragment or two if it."
Note to future readers: The glossary and notes on sources toward the end of the book are very well done -read that glossary first before you start and you'll be glad you did !
cspiwak's review
5.0
Fantastic. The only criticism I have is that it was a bit disjointed, hard to keep track of which individual or group was where, but, in a way, that probably made it closer to the experience as it was lived.
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