March 5, 1944 - The Burmese jungle - US Army
849th Engineer Aviation Battalion Camp “Get back!” yelled twenty one year old
Private Herman Perry. He stood in the road brandishing his M1 Garand
rifle. Lieutenant Cady ignored the warning and stepped
closer. Sweating, sobbing, probably coming off an
opium high, Perry was losing it; having a breakdown. He wasn’t going to let Cady take him into
custody. He wasn’t going to do more time at that
parasite infested hellhole known as the Ledo Stockade. Despite Perry’s erratic behavior, Cady wasn’t
about to back off. This boy had a smart mouth, he had been AWOL-he
was a troublemaker. He needed to be punished. Beside there was no way that Perry would shoot--that
would be suicidal… Now less than a foot away from Perry, Cady
stretched out a hand towards him...BAM! Cady jerked and crumpled to the ground. For a split second everyone stared in disbelief
at the fatally wounded Cady. Then Perry swung his gun around and trained
it on the other officers as he backed away down the road. As he neared the trees, he turned and ran,
vanishing into the brush. During World War II the United States segregated
its Armed Forces. Sure, there were a couple of African American
combat units created mainly for political reasons, but the majority of African Americans
who served were relegated to menial tasks including cooking, cleaning and construction. That’s how close to 10,000 African Americans
ended up being shipped to Burma. These men are stationed there to build what
will end up being a boondoggle-- a 1,072 mile ( 1,726 kilometer) supply road to run through
the Burmese jungle connecting Ledo, India to Kunming, China. Some 5,000 white Americans are also sent to
work on the Ledo road, however many of them are officers overseeing the black soldiers. The Burmense jungle is torturous. It’s hot, humid, the vegetation’s dense,
the terrain rough. It’s easy to get malaria or dysentery, and
hard to avoid the leeches, lice and mosquitoes. Even worse, sometimes man eating tigers lurk
in the brush. Clothes rot and the food rations are poor. Building the Ledo road is back breaking--
far harder than Perry’s North Carolinian childhood of picking cotton in a sharecropping
family. The soldiers have mandatory 16 hour shifts. Bulldozers supplied by the Army quickly break
down and the GIs are forced into manual labor. They use hoes and pickaxes to dig the muddy,
rocky red soil. Many of the black soldiers work side by side
and become friendly with coolies--unskilled native laborers. As a result, black soldiers pick up bush lingo,
Urdu and Hindi. They trade in the local black markets for
moonshine known as jungle juice. Some soldiers, including Perry seek solace
from the grim drudgery of their lives in opium and marajuana. When Cady was attempting to take him into
custody, Perry was coming off a 2 day drug bender. After shooting Cady, a panicked Perry runs
into the jungle. Oh God, he killed someone! For 3 days, Perry stumbles through the jungle
in a daze. Not knowing what to do, he veers back to the
Ledo Road. He runs into some soldiers from a different
unit working on the road. They feed him and pass along messages from
his friends in the 849th Battalion--Military police are looking for him. Perry decides to surrender. At nightfall, he stands by a bridge for the
Namyung River. Sooner or later, a patrol will come by and
he’ll turn himself in. While waiting, Perry sets down his rifle. Hearing gunshots somewhere nearby, Perry gets
worried the MPs are gunning for him and they’ll kill him outright instead of arresting him. Spooked, he slips into the jungle again, accidently
leaving his gun behind. Perry spends several days wandering in the
jungle. Luckily, he speaks some bush lingo which allows
him to beg for rice from Naga farmers. The Naga are an ethnic group native to Northeastern
India and Northwestern Burma. Some of the tribes live remotely and stick
to traditional practices...including headhunting. For the most part, the British and Americans
ignore the Naga, as long as they stick to making war on each other and not Westerners. March 18 - Around 2 weeks after he had killed
Cady and fled into the jungle, Perry runs into some British troops. Perry, who’s always been a smooth talker,
thinks fast and makes up excuses as to why he’s alone in the jungle. He’s able to charm the Brits into giving
him some food rations. It’s hard going trekking through the remote
Patkais foothills, but the farther away Perry gets from the Army, the better. One day Perry’s hiking up a dense mountain
slope when he sees something spine chilling. A basha or temporary shelter often made with
bamboo. This basha is decorated with human skulls
to which water buffalo horns have been attached. (SEE PIC) Perry has stumbled into the headhunting
Naga village of Tgum Ga. Believe it or not, Perry delights the villagers
by giving them the remaining canned food rations he got from the British. The Ang or village chief invites him to be
his honored guest. Perry takes a liking to the Chief’s 14 year
old daughter; she seems to return his interest. Perry has a new problem. How do you flirt with a girl and impress her
warrior father when you don’t know the culture or speak the language? The answer is gifts. Perry hikes some 8 miles down the mountain
back to the Ledo road. Somehow he manages to get ahold of a load
of Army goods. Most importantly, he gets an M1 Garand. In Naga culture, tiger pelts and claws are
prized. The act of killing a tiger is seen as a virile
feat of masculinity. Compared to the clubs and flintlocks the Naga
have, with his modern gun, Perry is seen as having the ability to kill many a tiger. The village is impressed, Perry is considered
an important man and the chief allows Perry to marry his daughter. The first few months of Perry’s married
life are pretty good. He struggles with malaria, but due to his
stockpile of Army rations, he’s rich enough to hire servants to work his fields. Perry spends much of his time hunting monkeys
and tigers. He grows fluent in his wife’s language. The couple’s excited to find out that they’re
expecting their first child. Many nights the tribal musicians play flutes
and drums while the tribe chants, takes psychoactives and dances. Meanwhile, the Army has offered a 1,000 rupee
reward for information leading to Perry’s capture--that’s upwards of $14,500 USD in
today’s money. They assume that he’d headed for the city,
so they’ve been searching for him in Calcutta. The legend of Perry is beginning to grow. Warranted or not, he’s becoming a folk hero. To the black GIs who stew with the resentment
of daily petty racial humiliations, Perry’s awesome. Apropos of what actually happened, they see
Perry as someone who fought back against ‘The Man’ and won. Eventually Perry becomes homesick. When he was drafted into the Army, he left
behind a young daughter and a girlfriend in Washington, DC. Also, his stockpile of rations is quickly
dwindling. He begins to hunger for Western items, especially
cigarettes. He hires runners to go down the mountain to
trade at the black market in rural towns. Finally, the Army finds a clue. In the summer, some 5 months after Perry vanished,
a coolie finds the rifle Perry accidently left behind when he panicked by the bridge. The Army realizes they’ve been searching
in the wrong place. They put out feelers in rural towns near where
the gun was found. Eventually a rumor reaches their ears about
the chief of Tgum Ga having a black soldier as a son-in-law. Army brass is incredulous; they never would
have expected an unarmed tenderfoot like Perry to survive for so long in the jungle. A runner who had gone to the town of Namyung
to get rice quickly comes back to tell Perry that there are men searching for him. Perry leaves his wife in Tgum Ga and goes
to a noksa or satellite village. July 20th - Captain Walter McMinn and a small
posse of MPs along with hired Naga guides go on a 3.5 hour hike up the mountain to Tgum
Ga. None of the Americans speak any Naga, they
use a picture of Perry and hand signs to communicate. The posse learns that Perry’s gone to the
noksa. By the time that the posse huddles outside
of the noksa making a plan, it’s twilight. The MPs get a guide to go ask Perry to borrow
his gun for a hunt. The ploy works; it’s a common request and
Perry agrees--which leaves him unarmed. Army snipers sneak through the brush and position
themselves around Perry’s basha; they have to be careful, it would be diplomatically
unwise to accidentally kill any Naga. While eating dinner Perry sees flickers of
light outside. The Naga don’t have flashlights, it can
only mean Westerners. Perry thinks about trying to sneak into the
pitch black jungle behind the village, but tigers have recently been a problem. He grabs a dao or short Chinese sword and
lights a bamboo staff to use as a torch. Getting up his nerve, Perry goes outside. McMinn immediately blinds Perry with his flashlight,
ordering him not to move. McMinn fires, but misses. Perry takes off, the soldiers chase him, shooting
as they go. Perry seems to vanish into the jungle, escaping
the ambush...but then they find his body at the bottom of a hill. Perry’s been shot in the chest. Around 10 pm, McMinn hikes several hours back
to Namyung to get a doctor and more soldiers. Even with the extra man power, it ends up
being a 9 hour ordeal to carry the stretcher bearing the 170 pound (77 kg) severely injured
Perry down the mountain to reach the Ledo road. From there, an ambulance takes Perry to the
Seventy-Third Evacuation Hospital at Shingbwiyang. Perry spends the next several days recovering. While Perry’s hyped up on morphine and other
medical drugs, he’s frequently interrogated. At first, he denies being Perry, but then
finally admits his identity and confesses to shooting Cady. He’s coerced into signing a 3 page document
that he’s told is a statement of what had happened. Though Perry thinks some key facts are missing
or distorted, against his better judgement he notarizes and signs the paperwork. On August 28, Perry is deemed healthy enough
to be transferred to prison. He’s sent to the notorious Ledo Stockade--the
very prison he was trying to evade when he shot Cady in the first place. This is his second stint in the stockade,
several months before the whole shooting incident, Perry had spent hellish months in Ledo, convicted
for disobeying orders when an officer tried to assign him extra work. Though Perry’s sentence for disobedience
was 90 days, he had been forced to serve an extra couple of weeks in the stockade without
explanation. The army assigns Perry a lawyer, Captain Clayton
Oberholtzer. Unfortunately for Perry, Oberholtzer only
has experience as a civilian lawyer and has never handled a felony. The fact that Perry killed Cady is indisputable,
but Oberholtzer hopes to get the charges reduced from premeditated capital murder to manslaughter,
the difference being life in prison versus execution if convicted. Perry is also accused of desertion and willful
disobedience. Sept 4, 1944 - Perry’s court martial takes
less than 6 hours. Oberholtzer fumbles a chance to get the sworn
statement Perry made while drugged tossed. He botches explaining that the morning of
the murder a distraught Perry was headed to see Lieutenant Colonel Haitt, the commander
of the camp who had an open door policy to chat with soldiers white or black. Cady went out of his way to accost Perry with
the intent to take him into custody, consciously seeking to prevent him from seeing Haitt who
might have limited Perry’s punishment for going AWOL. When Oberholtzer brings up Cady’s history
of abuse towards black GIs, the tribunal warns him that Cady’s character isn’t on trial. The vote is unanimous. Perry is dishonorably discharged, must forfeit
all pay and will be hanged by the neck until dead. As part of the Army’s due process, the verdict
condemning Perry to death must undergo a review by three members of the Judge Advocate General’s
Department in New Delhi. All the way across the world, Perry’s mom
gets a letter from the Army informing her that her son has been court martialed, convicted
of murder and is sentenced to hang. Bewildered and frightened, she scrapes together
some money and hires the best lawyer she can get. Her lawyer submits a brief to the Washington
based office of the Judge Advocate General's Department. The Washington office informs New Delhi that
a brief for the Perry case will shortly arrive in the mail. Nearly a month later on December 15th, the
New Delhi office transmits a classified message asking about the brief--it hasn’t arrived,
it’s been lost in the mail. Meanwhile Perry has been stuck in limbo, imprisoned
in Ledo Stockade. He’s spent his time watching and memorizing
guard schedules. Also on December 15th, Perry makes his move. Late at night, he crawls under the rear of
his tent. The sleepy soldier standing guard at the entrance
to his tent doesn’t notice. Perry only has 11 minutes before the next
time the guards make a circuit. Using wire cutters he stole while on work
detail, he quickly cuts a hole in the prison fence just big enough to wiggle through. Protected by strips of coarse wool cut from
his prison issue blanket, Perry crawls through drainage ditches filled with barbed wire. After that, he runs through the field at the
stockade’s edge and disappears into the jungle. Sweet freedom. Perry stops to catch his breath. He’s free, but some 80 miles (129 km) of
mountainous jungle separates him from his wife and unborn child. How’s he going to get home? Army brass loses their minds when they realize
that Perry has escaped. The Ledo Stockade’s warden and 8 guards
are formally reprimanded for negligence. The Army again puts a 1,000 rupee bounty on
Perry’s head. They radio broadcast Perry’s description
in several languages and print wanted posters. By airplane, they drop some posters on the
village of Tgum Ga. The illiterate Naga villagers collect them,
impressed that pictures of the chief’s son-in-law are falling from the heavens. MPs begin stopping black soldiers at random
based on the chance they may be helping Perry. Whenever they can, many black soldiers tear
up the wanted posters. They enjoy swapping tales and rumors of the
‘Jungle King’. The law brief in defense of Perry finally
reaches New Delhi on December 27. The advocate judges review finds some of the
Army’s actions questionable, but reconfirms the verdict of execution. In the wee hours of Jan 1, 1945 Perry is almost
caught at an abandoned timber camp by a posse of MPs who had heard rumors of a black soldier
hiding there. Luckily for Perry, he’s a light sleeper
and escapes into the jungle just in time--a bullet barely grazes hin. The MPs recover a .45 pistol Perry accidently
left behind. February 19th - Two black soldiers, Staff
Sergeant Toomer and T/4 Troxler are buying liquor in the town of Makum when Perry suddenly
storms the bootlegger’s shack. Somehow he’s gotten a replacement .45 pistol. He mugs the two soldiers of 95 rupees and
forces the bootlegger to cook him dinner. Perry asks Toomer and Troxler to do him a
favor. He wants them to bring him a truck stocked
with rations, clothes, a tent, a knife and ammunition in the next 24 hours. They agree to meet Perry in Makum the following
night. Even though he stole money from them, Toomer
and Troxler debate what to do. Ultimately, they decide to tell the Army,
mainly out of fear of what could happen to them if the Army found out that they had suppressed
information about Perry. They inform Major Earl Owen Cullum, commanding
officer of the 159th Military Police Battalion at nearby Chabua camp. Cullum decides to set up a trap. The soldiers will arrive with the truck and
the Army will ambush Perry. Toomer and Troxler agree to help as long as
the Army keeps it a secret that they betrayed the Jungle King. However, Perry has anticipated a trap. A crowd of coolies show up to meet Toomer
and Troxler. The Army doesn’t see Perry, but even if
he’s there, they can’t shoot without risking a diplomatic incident. Suddenly from among the crowd, Perry sprints
for the truck and hops aboard. He forces Toomer and Troxler to drive away
down the road. But there’s a snag, a checkpoint’s coming
up. Perry gets out of the truck to trek through
the jungle around the checkpoint. Tommer directs Perry to meet them at a grassy
field on the farside. Perry doesn’t know that this is the Army’s
Plan B. As he reaches the field, MPs fires at Perry,
but again he escapes into the jungle. This time he’s wounded. A bullet’s nicked his right foot, he packs
it full of moss so it won’t get infected--a trick he has learned from the Naga. Perry limps through the jungle and hides in
a rice paddy. Hours later he awakes to the barking of German
Shepherds-- the Army's caught up to him. Perry escapes yet again, this time the tip
of his nose gets grazed by a bullet. He puts moss on this wound too. Cullum receives a scolding note from his commanding
officer for letting Perry get away. Cullum vows to capture Perry. February 22nd - A desperate Perry hides by
the side of the Ledo road. His new plan is to board a truck, hide among
the supplies and hitch a ride over the mountains. When the truck reaches Burma, he’ll ditch
it and disappear into the jungle. But Perry’s unwell. The gunshot on his foot’s very painful. Also he’s had to drink river water and has
caught dysentery. When Perry tries to hop on the back of a slow
moving truck, he’s too weak and falls in the road, dropping yet another .45. The gun skids further away as it hits the
ground. Perry realizes that a coolie has witnessed
his failed hijack attempt. Spooked, he quickly melts back into the jungle,
for the third time he leaves a gun behind. Cullum starts a mobile posse to hunt Perry. He begins visiting town after town to question
locals. He also coordinates with the British and native
police forces. He and his posse follow Perry’s trail for
over two weeks. Cullum eventually figures out that Perry’s
headed in the direction of the town of Namrup. Perry’s following the southeastern branch
of the Disang River. It’s a long indirect route to Tgum Ga. However, Perry’s probably taking this way
because just south of Namrup is considered the gateway to the Naga heartland. Here Perry would be able to make friends;
chances are some of the Naga tribes speak the same language as Perry’s wife. Cullum realizes he had only a few days to
catch up with Perry before he vanishes into a remote area again--maybe this time forever. Meanwhile, Perry’s been growing weaker day
by day from dysentery and malnutrition. He’s surviving on stolen sugarcane and begging
farmers for rice. Stupidly, Toomer and Troxler mention their
snitching on Perry to a colleague. The Army has to evacuate them from Asia over
threats of murder from Perry’s fans. After a long, rough journey the posse arrives
in Namrup. Cullum receives a tip as to where Perry is;
he’s staying at a rural farm a few miles away. The posse waits until nightfall before hiking
to the farm. Cautiously the posse fans out and surrounds
the farmer’s basha. They find 3 Naga tribesmen wearing traditional
dhotis sitting by a fire, outside of the home. Cullum senses that there’s something not
quite right, he takes a closer look at the men. He then grabs one of them. It’s Perry. He’s cut his afro and borrowed native clothing
hoping that he can pass for Naga by firelight. For the last time, Perry is taken into custody. Under tight security, a sickly Perry is transported
to the Chabua Stockade and kept in an isolation cell. The Army decides not to return him to Ledo
Stockade, they fear a potential racial uprising. Perry’s interrogated by MPs who want to
know where he got his guns. Perry refuses to snitch. He’s sorry over Cady’s death, but also
says that he would have killed his pursuers if he had a chance. March 15, 1945 - A few days after his capture,
Perry is woken before dawn and under extremely tight security transported to Ledo Stockade. Per his last request, Perry is allowed to
write a farewell letter to his brother Aaron and given a final cigarette before he’s
quietly hanged just after 7 am. March 17 - Perry’s mother receives a notice
from the army informing her of her son’s death by ‘judicial asphyxiation...due to
his own misconduct.’ Despite repeated requests for information,
she hasn't heard anything since her lawyer submitted the brief in December. She knows nothing of her son’s escapades
or anti-hero status. Some months later, a small group of black
GIs are on an expedition through the Patkais mountains to check for survivors of a crashed
cargo plane. They hire some Naga guides and ended up spending
the night at a remote village where one of the guide’s relatives lives. As guests, the GIs are served a special treat
for dessert--canned fruit cocktail. One of the soldiers curiously inquires as
to where the cocktail has come from. The next morning before they leave the soldiers
are taken to the only basha in the village painted a bright yellow-orange. It turns out to be owned by the Chief’s
teenage daughter. Inside the walls are decorated with wanted
posters of Perry. The dwelling is filled with a stockpile of
Army goods. The young mom proudly shows off her curly
haired 6 month old son. Wow. That was a wild ride! Now that you've reached the end of our video,
why not keep the watch party going?! For another crazy story of a soldier surviving
in the jungle, check out the story of Aussie Robert McLaren who performed emergency surgery
on himself . Or if you’re interested in famous battles, you’ll enjoy our video about
the amazing Battle of the Bugle! Don't wait, click now!
