Among the headhunters

the long version

"Flying the notorious "Hump" route between India and China in 1943, a twin engine Curtiss-Wright C-46 plane suffered engine failure and crashed over the mountainous, remote border country. Among the passengers and crew were celebrated CBS journalist Eric Sevareid, a Soviet double-agent posing as an OSS operative, and General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell's personal political adviser. Against the odds, all but one of the twenty-one people on the doomed aircraft survived. But they fell from the frying pan into the fire. Disentangling themselves from their chutes the shocked survivors discovered that they had arrived in wild country dominated by a tribe with a reason to hate white men. The Nagas were notorious headhunters who routinely practiced slavery and human sacrifice, their specialty being the removal of enemy heads. And Japanese soldiers lay close by too, with their own brand of a special hatred for American flyers. Among the Headhunters is the first-ever account of this incredible true World War II story of the adventures of these men among the Naga warriors, their sustenance from the air by the USAAF, and ultimate rescue by a military expedition. In this meeting two very different worlds collided, American and Naga. The young, exuberant apostles of the vast industrial democracy of the United States came face-to-face with an ancient race determined to preserve their local power, based on head-hunting and slaving traditions"--