[Milsurplus] "The Airmen and the Headhunters"

[Hubert Miller]

This is a resend of an unsuccessful send yesterday and today earlier. If
bychance all 3 show up, i do apologize for my futzness.
-H M

“On a hill behind the longhouse, two SEMUT1  [ Australian equivalent of
S.O.E. ]  radio operators were wrestling with their Boston wireless
transmitter-receiver, 
which had been damaged in the drop....”

“A small hut...just big enough for a bamboo bed and the small bamboo table
that held his transceiver and signal pad”.

“Luck was on our side for, at the appointed hour, i sent the call sign IRK
and Darwin replied with the letter K....”

“While one Dayak wound the generator handle, his large brass earrings
jangling, the other three were making and smoking local cigars. Bob began
receiving 
messages after all the outgoing messages had been sent, a welcome change for
the Dayaks; receiving took only half the energy that sending did”.

>From “The Airmen and the Headhunters – A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic
Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II”. 
Judith Heimann, 2007. 
I paid less than $10 for this book, shopping Amazon, and it’s one of the
best WWII stories i have read. Crashed B-24 crewman team up with friendly
Dayak
tribespeople to wage war against Japanese, and eventually arrange for
airdrop supplies and help, and rescue via small plane. Japanese occupiers
had from
outset treated forest natives with a high hand, and all kind of heinous
deeds; Dayaks, a proud and independent people, some of whom had gone to
mission
schools and because of remote location hadn’t been as resentful of chafing
colonial rule, took to these Westerners who treated them as equals. Dayaks 
were only too happy, too, to be able to resume their practices of recent
history, and enthusiastically collected the heads of Japanese patrols sent
out to 
find the airmen. 

The book is well researched; the author actually interviewed some of the
principals in Borneo. But – i think she got bum information on the radio
set.
I suspect the “Boston” trans-receiver is really the B2.  It’s possible that
even some veteran mistakenly used this nickname for it. I don’t know if the
B2
set receiver operates from handcrank as well as the transmit. 
What say?
tnx
-Hue Miller
(  Newport, Oregon, USA )