But given the firm decree laid out several years prior by Major Bill Williams and the troops of the Assam Rifles, they were in no place to engage in any headhunting of not only the intrusive white man, but their fellow tribesmen as well. The individuals among whom they crashed-the Pangsha-were indeed reputed and confirmed headhunters. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell’s distrust of the US’s supposed alliance with Chiang Kai-shek – something that ultimately found Stilwell to be in the right and his superiors very much in the wrong the aforementioned punitive expedition and its attempt to spread goodwill amongst those who undoubtedly had no idea they were under British rule given their vast remove from civilization and finally the search-and-rescue procedures established by the US Armed Forces in the wake of the retrieval of the crash survivors. Along the way, he finds ample time to discuss for no apparent reason other than that he can: Gen. Rather than exploring the initial premise, Lyman seems to have found himself more drawn to the expository details of the region.īeginning with the expansion of the British Empire and its attempts to control the native “savages” by keeping their intertribal warring and headhunting to a minimum, he spends far more time exploring what led to the conditions in which the survivors of the plane crash found themselves than their own experience. It’s as though Lyman himself was struck by the interesting premise behind such a story, but then, as he began furthering his research, he realized there was actually little in the way of drama or intrigue-other than the presence of the aforementioned spy, who crops up at the beginning only to be quickly forgotten and left out of the remainder of the story. Instead, less than a quarter of the book is devoted to this particular story.
Admittedly, the expedition proves to be far more engaging than that titular “tale of survival” and it’s easy to see why Lyman would devote nearly half the book to the punitive expedition as it made its way amongst the warring tribes of the Nagas of Burma.īut it’s a misleading narrative structure in that the basic premise is laid out as the story of those who survived the plane crash in the Burmese jungle. Clearly cribbed from primary sources including journals and official reports, Lyman finds a great deal of pleasure getting lost in the minutiae, often wandering so far afield that the original narrative through line becomes a convoluted mess. Instead of focusing on the crew of the plane-one which included famed CBS journalist Eric Sevareid as well as a Soviet double agent-the bulk of the narrative focuses on a 1936 punitive expedition embarked upon by a delegation representing the British Empire’s interests and designed to reprimand those who engaged in headhunting. Among the Headhunters instead feels like the most tedious history lesson one could have the misfortune of sitting through. There are far more compelling narratives surrounding the same time period that read like a thrilling adventure story. Despite its relatively short length, Among the Headhunters feels far longer than it has the right to. Only those with the most nuanced understanding of WWII history, specifically in the Pacific theatre, will be able to follow his scattershot narrative. In this, it feels as though he conceived the grain of a story and, finding himself at a loss of what exactly to say about, slathered what could have been a fascinating story in layers and layers of unnecessary and (more times than not) confusing contextualization and unnecessary details. Instead, Lyman gets bogged down in exhaustive exposition, scene setting and, most frustratingly, numerical statistics pertaining to nearly every mind-numbingly dull detail. But sadly, the story remains largely untold.
On the surface, the basic premise of Robert Lyman’s Among the Headhunters would appear to be one of these: an airplane and its crew crash into the middle of the Burmese jungle, surrounded by fierce, headhunting natives and miles from civilization. Each year seems to bring a new crop of stories from that quickly vanishing generation, captured for posterity and often ending up topping bestseller lists and, in some cases, turning into major motion pictures. There is no shortage of fascinating narratives detailing the valiant and heroic efforts of the men and women who fought in various theaters across the globe during World War II.
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