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Pete Bell pbellemail005d — To relieve the boredom of allied personnel stationed in Dutch New Guinea during the waning days of World War II, their commander arranges to have some of them flown with him over an interior section variously known as Hidden Valley or Shangri-La to observe primitive tribal life from the air. But the plane crashes, with just five aboard -- two men and three women -- initially surviving. Two of the women die from their injuries, leaving three survivors in jungle so dense there's no hope of being spotted from the air. Although two of the three are seriously injured, they painstakingly work their way to a clearing where it's possible to see them and drop supplies their way. This is also where they first encounter the natives who they assume to be headhunters. Although this assumption is not entirely unfounded, the natives conclude that these strange visitors are spirits and choose to treat them with compassion and friendliness. But there is no airstrip, helicopters of the day can't handle the terrain, and it's 150 miles to safety through headhunters in one direction and Japanese soldiers in the other. The extraordinary effort to rescue the trio makes up the bulk of Mitchell Zuckoff's engrossing and entertaining book. Zuckoff expertly weaves together a story that's nearly 70 years old from documents, diaries, journals and the recollections of the few people who were still alive to tell their tales. Dutch New Guinea is now known as Papua Indonesia. It's the region where I visited missionary friends last summer. The tribe my friends live among hadn't known Westerners until my friends arrived a decade ago, and the natives seem remarkably similar to the natives that the Americans first encountered in this book -- right down to the penis gourds many of the men still wear and the grass skirts many of the women still wear. The rescue effort described here troubled me in a sense. My father, who was a bomber pilot in the Pacific during World War II, has told me about a seeming lack of concern on the part of the brass for rescuing Army Air Corps personnel who were shot down in conflict, at least in one instance. Certainly, those men deserved as much effort as the threesome stranded in New Guinea. But that caveat takes nothing away from Zuckoff's first-rate narrative journalism. "Lost in Shangri-La" accompanied me on a trip last week, and the only thing wrong with it was that I finished it before I finished the trip.