Lost and Found

I have never seen the ABC program “Lost” but, as I understand it, a planeload of people are lost on a tropical island and face various unknown terrors and dangers, trying to survive till the next episode. There is an unknown and obviously sinister group on the island, known as “the others”. At the Circa History Guild we had the privilege of listening to the stories of an 88 year old World War II veteran who slipped into the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia in 1942 with a Burmese tribal force known as the Cachins, to face real terrors and real others.

Jim Fletcher of Columbus, Georgia, enlisted in the United States army in 1940, not expecting to fight a war, much less end up in the disease and insect ridden horror of trackless jungles, harboring a victorious and ruthless enemy. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor put Jim on the road to the almost forgotten China-Burma-India (CBI) Theatre of WWII. His became a reality show from which no actors, much less most soldiers, would have ever emerged alive.

Most of his service was top secret; they operated at times under Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS (the precursor to the CIA), sometimes under independent command on raids, and at times with the storied Merrill’s Marauders. He viewed the aftermath of a massacre by the Japanese army, of thousands of refugees, mostly women and children. He carried out secret missions to blow up bridges, build roads, and ambush enemy patrols. He was one of the few survivors of cholera, carried malaria with him for years, and was wounded in battle. In his book Secret War in Burma, Mr. Fletcher describes the awful consequences of being covered with leaches which infested every leaf and every trail during rainy season and what happened when he profited from a bank robbery (temporarily).

He fought in and survived the largest battle in Burma, Myitkyina, and returned to the jungle time and again after being flown to India for medical treatments. Jim could have come home or been reassigned given the maladies and injuries sustained in the jungle, but he insisted on returning to the fight every time. Through it all, Mr. Fletcher retained his sense of humor and eye for the absurd. He is in good health, still ruggedly handsome, and without an ounce of rancor toward his former foes. His memoir of the conflict is well written, exciting and is full of the personal touch of his own photography (”we weren’t s’posed to take cameras but I did anyway”). His picture was taken by famous combat photographers and he became well known to the Japanese, who put a price on his head and published his photo in leaflet form to the Burmese natives.

Reality programs are phony. Most feature films trying to depict war are phony. Jim Fletcher and his WWII comrades are as real as can be. Visit a Circa History Guild program sometime and help us give honor to men like this indefatigable Georgia original and hear their stories before they’re gone.

Bill Potter