Getting lost in Shangri-La

To us old-timers, Shangri-La means  a very nice and beautiful place.

There is actually a place called Shangri-La in Dutch, New Guinea. During World War II, the Americans had an Army base in New Guinea. One pilot flew over the mountains and saw this beautiful valley. It was so beautiful, they began taking Army personnel there on a sight-seeing tour, it was about 130 miles from their base.

On the first tour, there were 24 soldiers on board, sadly, the plane crashed, there were only three survivors, two men and one Woman’s Army Corps member. This area was also inhabited by many natives who lived like in the stone age, they had had no contact for thousands of years and were had wars amongst the tribes.

Anyway the three survivors began hiking and crawling down hill from the crash site up in the mountains. After a few days, they got in a clearing and were spotted by a plane looking for them. Now the question was how to get them out, so they parachuted six soldiers into that area. Of the 6, two were medics to tend to their wounds and burns from the crash.

The survivors were not in good enough physical condition to walk out through thick jungle terrain. The soldiers finally cleared a short landing spot in the natives (friendly), sweet potato patch and a glider came in. The glider personnel set up poles and a rope and cable device, then a big plane came in 20 feet off the ground, snatched the cable and low and behold, it worked. They then had a total of 15 personnel on the ground that were evacuated, 5 at a time as that was the capacity. This was after weeks and weeks in Shangri-La. The woman was down to 90 pounds.

Roger Gregory is a Vietnam veteran and business owner in Priest River.