Recovery In The Jungle

Reprinted with permission of Legion Magazine.

by Major Bill Leavey

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row..."

There's a slight waver in Shelly Whiting's voice as she recite "verbatim" the immortal poem of lament by Canadian WW I surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. It's Dec. 5, 1996, and the second secretary from the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, is standing in the remote, almost impenetrable jungle of northern Myanmar in what was once known as Burma.

The scene "not far from the India border" is sombre, for on a tree at the foot of an airplane crash site, six poppies, each symbolizing the life of a young Canadian serviceman, form a crimson cross. At the top of the crash site, on another tree, there's a large Canada Remembers flag fluttering at half-mast. Sergeant Major Jim Vienneau had placed six small Canada Remembers pennants in an irregular line that stretched up the slope between the cross and the flag. Each pennant represented one of the six airmen who were declared missing and presumed dead after their C-47 Dakota failed to return June 21, 1945, from delivering supplies to the British 14th Army in northern Burma. The pilot was Warrant Officer William Rogers of Halifax and the co-pilot was Pilot Officer William Kyle of Perth, Ont. The others were Flight Sergeant Charles McLaren of Campbellville, Ont., Flying Officer David Cameron of Oshawa, Ont., Warrant Officer Stanley Cox of Beresford, Man., and Leading Aircraftman Cornelius Kopp of Duchess, Alta. We now know the WWII airplane crashed in the thick rainforest, probably because of severe monsoon weather. Whiting finishes McCrae's poem, and before the minute of silence, the team leader of the Burma Recovery Mission, Philip MacDonald of Veterans Affairs Canada recites the Act of Remembrance.

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

The minute of silence is perhaps the longest in memory as 10 hardened soldiers, two rough-cut National Film Board photographers, and MacDonald and Whiting choke back the palpable emotion of the ceremony. The long, difficult silence ends when Vienneau orders: "Packs on! Move back to LZ (landing zone)! The major will lead." More than 15 months of detailed planning, co-ordinating and diplomatic discussions went into the Burma Recovery Mission. Parts recovered from the aircraft would be displayed in museums in Canada, while the individual personal effects belonging to some of the crew would be catalogued and returned to the families. The remains of the crew would be buried with full honors during a military funeral in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Taukkyan near Rangoon (now Yangon).Dakota KN 563 was from the wartime 435 Royal Canadian Air Force Transport Squadron. RCAF record books show 435 Sqdn. delivered 24,906 tonnes of freight and 14,000 passengers, and evacuated 851 casualties during 15,681 sorties over Burma.

The fascinating story behind the recovery mission began in 1990 when a hunter in northern Myanmar came upon the crash site. He found a watch inscribed with William Kyle's name and service number. Through a somewhat circuitous route, the information about the watch travelled from the hunter to a Christian missionary before ending up at the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Yangon. Veterans Affairs Canada became aware of the watch in July 1995, but the mission to visit the crash site was complicated by the need for permission to enter a restricted area, monsoon weather conditions and the need to organize for the mission both in Canada and overseas.

An attempt in the fall of 1995 to recover the remains for burial during a Canada Remembers ceremony at Yangon in December was unsuccessful. A second attempt in March 1996 to launch a small reconnaissance party, including MacDonald, forensic dentist Lt.-Col. Martin Field, and myself met with no better result. It quickly became apparent that organizing the recovery mission would be no simple task. However, as more information about the site and the necessary clearances and procedures became available, diplomatic channels in Canada and overseas opened up. Our task came into clearer focus. Excellent advice and whole-hearted support was provided by the federal government as well as the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok and Dr. Kyaw Win, the ambassador of the Union of Myanmar to Canada.

On the surface, the mission itself appeared simple: Locate, identify and recover the remains of the crew of KN 563. The execution would prove to be easy compared to the planning and co-ordination. After more than a year of meetings, conferences and diplomatic notes back and forth between Canada and Myanmar, permission was finally received to start the mission.

I was tasked to put together a military team to do the job. Field would conduct the forensics, while Chief Warrant Officer Terry Cyr, a military policeman from Cold Lake, Alta., would be responsible for team security, both at home and abroad. Vienneau, a jungle expert from the Airborne Training Centre in Trenton, Ont., would ensure that the team could move and live in the jungle. WO Tim Robinson, a jungle-trained infantryman from the Light Infantry Battalion at Petawawa, Ont., would assist Vienneau and ensure all stores and equipment required for the mission were available.

Communications specialists, master corporals Steve Cruickshank and Wade Patterson from 79 Communication Regiment in Kingston, Ont., would provide the satellite and radio links. Corporals Frank Hudec and Mark Lamontagne from the Canadian Forces Photo Unit would be responsible for still and video coverage of the mission. Captain Homer Tien, a medical officer from Ottawa, was our team doctor. His main concern was having anti-venom snake bite serum available to counter any of the dozen poisonous snakes in the area of the crash. Garth Pritchard and Daron Donahue from the NFB would record the mission on video for a future documentary. To ensure that we were up to the task, each member was subjected to a regimen of over a dozen immunization shots for everything from rabies to Japanese encephalitis.

An intense, three-day training session in Ottawa last October covered such diverse subjects as snakes and creepy crawlies, movement drills, jungle living and crash site forensic procedures. After that, the team gelled into a proud, cohesive unit. In MacDonald's words, we were "knitted together with an absolute determination in a single common aim to do everything within our human power to recover the remains."

After a couple of false starts, the team finally embarked on Nov. 20, 1996. We travelled via Vancouver and Tokyo to Bangkok where we spent one night before heading on to Yangon the following morning. We were met by our liaison officer Maj. Si Thu [pronounced Sea Too] from the Myanmar foreign liaison office. He was to prove very helpful and friendly, and was a pleasure to deal with.

What followed was seven days of acclimatization in the 35 C heat and humidity. The patrons at the Inya Lake Hotel were entertained daily by our group of 14 fatigue-clad Canadians with 35-pound packs slogging around the grounds and along the lake for two hours each morning. This ritual became known as the hump parade because we all resembled camels or mules with large protrusions on our backs. In the afternoons we conducted refresher training for water crossings, using ropes and snap-links. And finally, we practised mountaineering techniques to traverse jungle ravines and precipices under the tutelage of Vienneau and Robinson. By the end of the week, we were almost comfortable with the torrid temperature, confident we could cross water and ravine or tie knots with the best of them.

At last, on Dec. 1, we headed north and flew more than 1,600 kilometres by Myanmar Airways to our base camp at Khamti, a wilderness outpost. Arriving late in the afternoon, we were greeted by the commander of the tactical operations command headquarters, Khamti Colonel Kyaw Myint. Right away he began treating us like long-lost brothers. He and all of his officers and men went out of their way to support our mission.

We completed our planning with our hosts from the Myanmar army and air force and then prepared for the trek to the crash site. This included helicopter loading drills, order of march, action by each team member at the site as well as command and control measures. These latter included timings and drills for snake bite or wild animal attack.

The next morning -- after a 20-minute helicopter ride -- we landed at the LZ. This was located 50 kilometres southeast of Khamti in the deep jungle.

Arrival at the crash site totally surprised, if not shocked most of us. The scene was one of total devastation. MacDonald summed it up best: "The aircraft had fallen out of the sky and hit a hillside. It was lying on its back and there had been a fire. Only the tail section was in one piece...all of us were convinced that the crew was killed instantly."

Wreckage was scattered over an area of approximately 30 square metres, in a ravine with a steep slope. The largest part was roughly 1.5 metres long, but there were hundreds of small fragments scattered both on and below the jungle soil and mire. No remains were immediately apparent, and more than 50 years of erosion, vegetation and monsoon storms had altered the site significantly. The only solution was to dig. And dig we did. It was quite warm by Canadian standards and after about 30 minutes we were soaked with sweat.

For three days straight we dug and dug and dug some more. One team member described it this way: "We in essence moved a mountain, then we moved it a second time, and then we moved most of it a third time." In the end, we uncovered a number of human remains, aircraft parts and personal effects. Day two was the most significant. It was on that day that Cruickshank found a watch. "It made a pile of rusty metal come to life," he said. The inscription read: Jim, from Mom, 26-12-1943. "We've all got little children and it was from this guy's mom."

Vienneau was nearby when the watch was found. "I think I'll always remember when we found the second watch. We were digging and the watch came up.... It was a heart wrenching experience...." We noted that the owner of the watch, WO Stanley Cox, was a wireless operator just like signaller M.Cpl. Cruickshank. We held the memorial service after the third day's work. We then returned with silent thoughts to our base camp at Khamti.When the mission was over a CBC reporter asked me the obvious question. What did you feel? I thought for a second and then replied: "It was an honor to be on this recovery team. These men are heroes. They are symbolic of the million young Canadians who fought for Canada. They are representative of the 44,927 young soldiers, sailors and airmen who made the supreme sacrifice and gave their lives for democracy and freedom in WW II. To me, the crew of KN 563 reminds me of my dad who went into Dieppe. They also remind me of my uncle who fought through France and Holland, and my other uncle who participated in the Battle of Britain. This experience is up close and personal. These men are like family. They are Canadian heroes."

I also told the reporter that I've served in the Armed Forces for 30 years and I've never had to fight because of men like these. My son is 22 years old, the same age as several of these men and he, thank God, has never had to fight because of the sacrifices these men made more than 50 years ago.In an interview with The Canadian Press, Field summed things up this way: "The last day we had a ceremony on the site and, well, there were 14 Canadians there wearing the uniform who were heads down, trying to hide their tears. No one who was in the jungle was unaffected by the site. I know now that when I'm retired and look back on my career there'll be no doubt in my mind that I've done something useful.... I'd do this again in a heart beat." Sleep well, brave warriors. You have earned your rest.