The homecoming: Why the US wants to claim remains of American airmen scattered across Arunachal

“What happened?”

“We hit a mountain.”

On a foggy morning in 1944, this was the conversation two pilots of the US Air Force were having shortly after being smacked against a slope in the Himalayas. CJ Rosbert and Charles (Ridge) Hammel would eventually hobble to a nearby village in the Mishimi Mountains in eastern Arunachal Pradesh, where they “held court” for two weeks, until they were found by a British scouting mission. Their Chinese radio operator, Li Wong, died in the crash.

More than 60 years later, journalist Kai Friese was led to the wreckage of the CNAC-58 that had pitched them into the mountains. It was still wedged on the rocky slope, frilled by shattered glass and fragments of what seemed to be a recipe for pork with apples.

Rosbert and Hammel were lucky. Hundreds of others never made it back. About 350 American personnel are still marked as missing in action and, over the last decade, the United States has been trying to persuade India to repatriate the remains that lie scattered on the slopes of Arunachal Pradesh. Excavations by a team from the US Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency started in 2008, but then the United Progressive Alliance got cold feet. Parts of Arunachal Pradesh were still disputed territory and the UPA did not want to risk annoying China.

The Narendra Modi government, however, had no such qualms. In 2015, Delhi allowed the excavations to continue and in April 2016, remains of the B-24 bomber nicknamed “Hot As Hell” were repatriated to the US. As Modi hit American shores last week, Washington prepared to make fresh requests for permission to excavate about 20 more crash sites where US Air Force pilots met their end.

But how did they get there in the first place?

Flying the Hump

From 1942 to 1945, American pilots flew military transport aircraft from Chabua in Assam to Kunming in China, a perilous 800-kilometre journey that lay over the east Himalayan uplift, popularly called “The Hump”. Pearl Harbour had already gone up in flames and the US was at war with Japan. So was China, which had been trying to ward off the Japanese since they invaded in 1931.

As the US opened up the “China Theatre” of operations, it needed to bolster Chinese troops. By 1942, Japanese forces had taken control of large tracts of land in the region, including the Burma Road, connecting southwest China with Burma. With the land route cut off, the only way to reach supplies to beleaguered Chinese forces was by air.

John D Plating argues that the massive airlift operation over the Hump started out as a display of US support for China. But by 1944, air supplies flown over the Hump were meant primarily for US troops preparing to make the final push against Japan in the eastern theatre of the war. Over two and a half years, about 740,000 tonnes of cargo were ferried over the Himalayas. Plating calls it “the first sustained and most ambitious combat airlift operation in modern history”.

Mountains higher than Everest

The odds were tremendous, though Plating cautions his readers against lurid reports that tend to overstate the dangers of the Hump. Still, the pilots flew over some of the highest mountains in the world. The route lay through jagged ridges about 15,000 feet high, masses of brooding cloud, strong southwest winds, lashing rain and thunderstorms.

Ordinarily, pilots would wait for clear weather to make a trip. But Rosbert recounts that the Hump pilots needed bad weather to cloak them from stalking Japanese fighter planes. Rosbert, for instance, set out that ill-fated morning in a “pea-soup fog”. Add to that the fact that pilots usually flew without radar altimeters, so they did not know how high above the mountains they were. They usually relied on an ominous sounding technique called “dead reckoning”, based on largely inaccurate compass headings. No wonder, then, that the casualty rate was high. Figures vary across sources, but nearly 500 aircraft were lost and 1,314 people killed.

The swirling mists and snows of the Himalayas gave rise to a rich mythology. To begin with, pilots tended to magnify the height of the mountains. In his gripping book, Trespassers on the Roof of the World, Peter Hopkirk records the legend of “The Thing”, a monstrous peak that was said to be higher than the Everest and part of the Amne Machin range. Pilots blown off course while flying over the Hump suddenly found themselves looking up at this terrifying giant. According to a wartime superstition, pilots who saw “The Thing” were doomed. More than 20 years after the end of the war, Amne Machin range was found to be a modest 24,982 feet.

The Ledo Road

Given the tales of heroism and danger that surround the Hump, it is no surprise that the US should still push to bring its fallen airmen home. But the joint statements and eulogies do not mention another silent multitude. Thousands of feet below the cargo planes, another gargantuan project was under way. The Ledo Road was being built, under the stern command of General Joseph Stilwell, nicknamed “Vinegar Joe”.

Meant to replace the Burma Road as a land route to China, the road snaked through 1,079 miles of dank mountain and fetid forest, some of it uncharted terrain. By the time it was completed, in 1945, there was no need for the road anymore. About 28,000 American soldiers were deployed to build it, most of them African-American, consigned to segregated army units. They were joined by 35,000 Indian and Burmese workers. Casualty rates were so high that it was often called the “man a mile road”. At least 1,133 American soldiers lost their lives. Of the thousands of local workers who died, there is no official count.

The builders of the Ledo Road, later renamed the Stilwell Road, faced their own set of perils – leech-infested jungles, swarms of malarial mosquitoes, angry rivers and 140 inches of rain beating down on the ground during the five-month monsoon season. Many drowned or slipped off cliff edges, others died from disease, some were killed in combat against the Japanese.

Blues in the night

There were other trials, quite separate from weather and terrain. Evelio Grillo, a black soldier who served with the units dispatched to build the road, recalls white officers appointed to head the troops because they were “deemed to know how to handle black men". Black troops were shipped to the region in harrowing conditions and officers doubled their workload through sheer incompetence. Decades later, Grillo still could not forget the indignities inflicted on black soldiers or the sense of being considered expendable.

But even in that “dim, matted world”, there were some consolations. The US Army thoughtfully dispatched musicians to India to keep troop morale from sinking too low. In 1944, the jazz singer, Alberta Hunter, arrived in Calcutta. She had recently signed up with the United Service Organisation, which helped provide entertainment for troops across the world.

Sporting army jackets with a US flag on the back, Hunter and her troupe of musicians travelled to military sites in Assam, creating quite the stir. Her letters back home were sent from “Somewhere in India”. Unlike other contemporary accounts, which harped on malarial forests and vicious beasts, Hunter spoke of being in “one of the most picturesque countries in the world”. She was also careful to crowd her letters with names of soldiers serving in the forest, letting anxious families know that they were still alive.

Then there was the Red Cross club in Margherita, Assam, which let in both black and white servicemen. Fitted out with a library, a card room and a canteen, the club received hundreds of guests every day, some of whom settled down at the battered standing piano to bang out a few tunes.

But these songs and that time, like the Ledo Road itself, soon disappeared into the jungle. For years, explorers searching for the remains of the ill-fated project called it the “ghost road”. Local officials said it was impossible to find and the terrains that it once traversed were overrun by the armies and insurgencies of the subcontinent.

In recent years, however, the road has suddenly been resurrected. As India tries to secure trade ties with China, building a road to connect the two countries has become a matter of great interest. In December 2015, the Ledo Road was opened for the first time in 70 years and Chinese trucks lumbered into Arunachal Pradesh. Though it was only temporary, traders in the North East hope the land routes will become fully operational one day. Maybe if the Ledo Road comes to life once again, so will the stories of those who built it.