Lost in Tibet: The Untold Story of Five American Airmen, a Doomed Plane, and the Will to Survive by Richard Stark

From the Publisher:                                                          

Caught in a violent storm and blown far off their intended course, five American airmen--flying the dangerous Himalayan supply route known as The Hump - were forced to bail out seconds before their plane ran out of fuel. To their astonishment, they found they had landed in the heart of Tibet. There they had to confront what, to them, seemed a bizarre - even alien - people. At the same time, they had to extricate themselves from the political turmoil that even then was raging around Tibet's right to be independent from China. Lost in Tibet is an extraordinary story of high adventure that sheds light on the remarkable Tibetan people, just at the moment when they were coming to terms with a hostile outside world.

I read this book as part of my Summer Reading Program; it fit one of the categories, it was relatively short at 210 pages, and it was set in a country that fascinated me.  What’s not to like?  It would open another of those little windows onto one of the endless number of individual stories that are always out there hanging around the edges of history.  This is a World War II tale, but not about the usual big battles with well-known names, or about concentration camps or massive bombing.  Instead, it is connected to one of the theaters of the war that we seldom think of—China. 

China was caught up in World War II before it even actually started, when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931.  So when WWII erupted, China was already in the thick of it and naturally fell in line with the goals of the Allies.  America stationed troops in China.  To keep them and our Chinese allies supplied with food, medicine and ammunition, we sent our pilots and crews on delivery missions from India, flying  over the Himalayas into China.  Although one seldom hears of these soldiers, many lost their lives flying this dangerous route, plagued by dangerous weather and the psychological trauma of following a route littered with the debris of previous crashes.

 

This book is about five of these young airmen, whose own plane was blown off course and crashed into the side of a mountain in Tibet.  We follow them in the aftermath of their crash in the middle of wilderness, through their experiences with the Tibetans and Chinese, and finally their long trek to the border of India, barely surviving this part of their journey as well.  Throughout, we see how they are used as pawns in the struggle between Tibet and China over Tibet’s independence, which, of course, Tibet ultimately lost.

A fascinating book about a part of the war seldom covered and the politics of the time.  A brief section at the end tells what happened to each of the young men afterward.  Well worth reading!

The Galesburg Public Library has this title at 951.504 STA.