The Airmen and the Headhunters - by Judith M Heimann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

November 1944: Their B-24 bomber shot down on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast, a scattered crew of Army airmen cut themselves loose from their parachutes--only to be met by loincloth-wearing natives silently materializing out of the mountainous jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? Or would the Dayaks risk vicious reprisals to get the airmen safely home in a desperate game of hide-and-seek?

A cinematic survival story featuring a bamboo airstrip built on a rice paddy, a mad British major, and a blowpipe-wielding army that helped destroy one of the last Japanese strongholds, The Airmen and the Headhunters is also a gripping tale of wartime heroism unlike any other you have read.

From the Back Cover

Judith M. Heimann is a career diplomat and the author of "The Most Offending Soul Alive." She spent seven years living in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, including two years in Borneo, where she learned to speak Malay/Indonesian.She traveled to three continents and interviewed all the surviving Dayaks and airmen in her research for this book. She lives in Washington, D.C., and Brussels."

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR THE MOST OFFENDING SOUL ALIVE

"Lively and scrupulously researched." --The New Yorker

"Explorer, museum curator, guerilla fighter, pioneer sociologist, documentary filmmaker, anthropologist--Tom Harrisson was all these things. He was also arrogant, choleric, swashbuckling, often drunk, and nearly always deliberately outrageous. In spite of these contradictions, he became a key figure in every enterprise he undertook . . . A brilliant and insightful biography." --David Attenborough --