Chapter 16
Chapter 16
Tragic News
Betty strained to hear what Marj was saying through the static. “Johnny has found the plane on the beach. All of the fabric is stripped off it. There is no sign of the men. Over.”
Betty’s hand flew to her face at the news. She turned and saw Rachel standing in the doorway. “I copy you, but I have to go, Marj. Rachel is here. Can Johnny come and get us? I think we should all be together right now. Over.” Betty said over the radio, her voice quivering.
“I was thinking the same thing. I’ll radio you back when he’s in the air. Over and out.”
Betty pushed back her chair and slowly stood. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I didn’t want you to have to find out this way,” she said, “but the men are in trouble. We’ve lost radio contact with them, and it doesn’t look good.”
Rachel stared at Betty, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” she asked.
Betty poured a cup of coffee and then sat down and began unraveling the whole story to Rachel. As she spoke, she could see the hurt in Rachel’s expression at not having been informed what her brother was up to and not having been told the reason that she and Jim had visited her informant Dayuma.
There was little Betty could do now except explain as best she could that Jim and the other men involved in Operation Auca had agreed to total secrecy, which included not telling their churches back home, their parents, or even their senior missionary, Dr. Wilfred Tidmarsh.
The radio burst to life again just as Betty finished explaining things to Rachel. Marj was calling to inform them that Johnny was on his way to Shandia to collect them. Betty threw a few things into a bag for herself and Valerie, and then the three of them headed down the track to the airstrip. So much had happened since the last time Betty had walked down this same track with Jim.
Johnny brought the plane in for a landing, and Rachel and Betty, with Valerie on her hip, climbed in. Moments later they were airborne. Betty looked down at the dense jungle as it passed below them. Was Jim somewhere out there trying to get back to her? The three adults in the airplane sat in silence for most of the twenty-minute flight. What was there to say? Johnny had not spotted any of the men, and there had been no word from them. Betty comforted herself with the knowledge that if the men had fled when the plane was attacked, it would take them over a day on foot to reach civilization. It was too soon to draw any conclusions.
Johnny dropped Betty, Valerie, and Rachel at Shell Mera and took off to pick up the other wives, Marilou McCully, Olive Fleming, and Barbara Youderian.
Marj welcomed Rachel and Betty to the house and apologized to Rachel for her having to find out about Operation Auca in such a difficult manner. Rachel did not want to talk about it, and a tense silence pervaded the room. Valerie crawled around after Kathy Saint, who was supposed to be celebrating her seventh birthday that day.
Things at the MAF house in Shell Mera remained solemn. A single question hung in the air: what should they do next? No one seemed to know what the best thing to do would be. Should they contact the Ecuadorian army? The United States embassy? The local police?
As the women sat pondering their next move, they heard a knock at the door. Betty and Marj turned toward the door at the same moment. Perhaps it was the men! Marj rushed to open the door, and there stood Larry Montgomery, a pilot for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Marj invited him in.
Larry quickly explained why, unexpectedly, he was at Shell Mera. “I was passing through Quito, and I had the strangest feeling that I should get on a bus and come visit you folks. It took thirteen hours to get here, and I apologize for not letting you know I was coming.”
Betty and Marj looked at each other in amazement.
“Come in and sit down, Larry,” Marj said. “We have something to tell you.”
Soon the story of Operation Auca tumbled out. Larry sat and listened, occasionally interjecting a question for clarification of some point. He wanted to know how long it had been since Johnny had spotted the plane on Palm Beach and whether the aircraft looked as if it had been wrecked before its fabric skin was stripped off.
When Betty and Marj had told him what they could, Larry stood and said, “If you will allow me, I think the best thing would be to contact my friend General Harrison by shortwave radio. General Harrison is the U.S. military officer in charge of the Caribbean region. He’s a devout Christian, and I know he will help us.”
Marj nodded, and Larry walked to the radio room, just off the kitchen. Betty listened as Larry picked up the microphone and began calling out on the radio. Within half an hour he was talking directly to General Harrison. Tears of relief welled in Betty’s eyes. An hour ago she and Marj were agonizing over what to do next, and now Larry Montgomery was on the radio talking to a high-ranking U.S. military officer.
From that moment on everything began to move swiftly at Shell Mera. General Harrison told Larry that he would instruct Air Force Major Nurnberg, based in Panama, to initiate an immediate search-and-rescue mission. The U.S. Air Force was on its way.
Eventually the other three wives, along with their children, arrived at Shell Mera. And by evening, as word got out about the missing men, people began to converge on Shell Mera.
On Tuesday night, two Air Force C-47 cargo planes touched down at Shell Mera from Panama. One of the planes carried Major Nurnberg and a rescue team; the other, an H-13 helicopter. The following morning the helicopter was unloaded, and a crew began assembling it for flight.
Grady Parrott, the president of Missionary Aviation Fellowship, flew in directly from California, followed by two officials from Christian Missions in Many Lands, the organization the Elliots, the McCullys, and the Flemings served with in Ecuador. Several missionary friends from Quito also hurriedly made their way to Shell Mera to help.
The MAF house at Shell Mera continued to fill up with even more people. Sam Saint, Rachel and Nate’s brother and an experienced pilot with American Airlines, arrived to lend his support. He was followed by Jerry Hannifin, foreign correspondent for Time magazine, and then came Cornell Capa, the famous Life magazine photographer. As well, HCJB, the Christian radio station in Quito, was relaying updates around the world.
All of this passed by Betty and the other wives in a blur. The women did what they had to do—bathe babies, wash loads of diapers, and feed everyone—but their hearts were with their husbands. If only they knew where the men were and whether they were safe. Eventually Marilou insisted on being flown back to Arajuno. She was convinced that any survivors among the men would head for her house, since it was the closest to Auca territory.
A search party led by Frank Drown, Roger Youderian’s co-missionary, was formed, and several other missionaries and thirteen Ecuadorian soldiers bravely headed out on foot from Arajuno into the jungle. Meanwhile, search planes made low passes over the area looking for any sign that the men were alive.
On Wednesday morning, January 11, 1956, two days after the news that Nate’s plane had been spotted on Palm Beach stripped of its fabric skin, Betty was upstairs with Barbara and Olive. Suddenly Marj’s urgent cry filled the room. “Betty! Barbara! Olive!”
Betty raced down the stairs, with Barbara and Olive right behind her. Marj was standing with her head in her hands. Her eyes were closed. Betty waited, heart pounding, and then Marj finally spoke. “They found one body.”
Marj went on to explain what she knew from Johnny’s radio call. Johnny was flying over Palm Beach again and spotted one body floating facedown in the river about a quarter of a mile downstream. The body was clad in khaki pants and a white T-shirt. Betty’s mind raced. Jim had taken khaki pants and a white T-shirt with him, but then she quickly learned that so had all the other men except Roger.
Later in the afternoon, the radio crackled again—more bad news. Johnny had spotted a second body floating in the river about two hundred yards from the beach.
On Thursday, the helicopter and the Air Force planes were in the air and headed for the site where the two bodies had been spotted. That night, Major Nurnberg and another Air Force officer, Captain DeWitt, flew to Shell Mera. The major had a solemn look on his face. “Is there somewhere privately we could meet with the wives?” he asked Marj.
Marj nodded and turned to lead them upstairs to her bedroom.
Some of the wives sat on the bed and others preferred to stand as Major Nurnberg cleared his throat. Betty knew he was about to deliver bad news—very bad news.
And so it was. Jim was dead. All of the men were dead—killed by Auca spears. Four of the bodies had been spotted from the air by the helicopter, and a fifth body, that of Ed McCully, had earlier been discovered by a canoe party of Quichua Indians. The major explained that the Quichuas were Christians from Arajuno, and when they learned their missionary was missing, they loaded into two canoes and headed downstream in search of him, even if it meant crossing into Auca territory. They had made it all the way to Palm Beach, where they found Ed’s body at the water’s edge. After discovering the fate of their missionary, they took Ed’s watch from his wrist and made their retreat from Auca territory. On the way upriver, they met the ground search party headed for Palm Beach. They told Frank Drown about finding Ed’s body and handed Ed’s wristwatch to him.
It was a solemn moment as Major Nurnberg read the descriptions of the bodies from his small notebook and each wife identified her husband from the description.
When the major had finished, there was nothing more to say. After twenty-seven months of marriage, Betty was now a widow and the single mother of a ten-month-old daughter. Olive Fleming was a widow. Marj Saint was a widow with three children; Marilou McCully, a widow with two children and another on the way; and Barbara Youderian, a widow with two children. In an instant their worlds had changed forever.
The next few days were a blur of activity. On Friday the ground search party made it to Palm Beach and recovered the bodies from the water. The party was able to find only four of them: the river had washed away Ed’s body. A mass grave was dug at the foot of the tree in which the tree house was located, and the four men were buried there. Before their bodies were lowered into the common grave, Frank Drown took the men’s wedding rings and whatever else the men had in their pockets to return to the widows. A tropical rainstorm burst over Palm Beach as the bodies were buried.
When he arrived back at Shell Mera, Frank handed Jim’s wristwatch to Betty, along with some torn-out pages from Jim’s prayer notebook. He had also located Nate’s waterlogged camera, still with film inside it, from where it had fallen into the river.
On Saturday, six days after the men had gone missing, Betty and the other wives were flown over Palm Beach in a U.S. military aircraft to see the site of the killing for themselves. Betty peered down at the peaceful sight of Palm Beach below. She could see on the sand the skeleton of the little yellow MAF Piper Cruiser that she and Jim had flown in so many times. She could see the cooking shelter that Jim had sketched out on the kitchen table weeks before back in Shandia and the prefabricated tree house he had made for the men to sleep in at night.
As she looked down at the sight below, Jim’s words came back to Betty: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”
Yes, she thought, Jim has given his life, the most precious thing that he had to give, but he has traded it for an infinitely better life in eternity.
Jim had died obeying God, and that was enough for Betty.