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Show Thursday, September 8, 2005 NORTH COUNTY NEWSPAPERS Flying the 'Hump' VtJLtJId 4 t x John C Huish Editor's note: This is (he second of a two-part series about John C. Huish, an Orem resident, who flew the "Hump" in World War II the route from India to South ern China over the Himalayas. After a long trip across the Atlantic, Atlan-tic, and stops in Africa, Karachi, and India, John Huish arrived in Misamari, in the Assam Valley, India, a major base for flying war materiel into China. All veterans (mostly airmen) who flew in the China-Burma-India theatre rehearse the same details about life in India: the jungle, the heat, malaria, life in a basha (the living quarters), monsoons (heavy seasonal rains), house boys, cobras, monkeys and especially beer. aybe I shouldn't have done this, but if you were flying I the Hump, you were given a ration of a case of beer a month, and a case of "toddy," an English chocolate drink. And every time you made a flight, you could stop by the doctor's doc-tor's office and get a two-ounce shot of whiskey to calm your nerves. Or you could save your "red dog" until you got enough that you qualified for a fifth. When the men found out that I was a Mormon, they started dickering: "I'll give you my toddy if you'll give me your case of beer." I made friends that way. I made 65 round trips over the Hump, flying right off the bat as co-pilot. When pilots were interrogated inter-rogated just after coming back, they reported what the weather was like though you couldn't rely on what they said. We were told in debriefings that it was just a rough deal all the way. We were mainly flying gasoline in 55-gallon barrels. As soon as you were in the air, you checked for leaks, though I never had that problem. We flew troops four or five times. We once flew into a border town in Burma to pick up 50 troops and their gear, to fly them into Kunming, China. They were trained there, then sent further east to combat the Japanese. ! later picked up these same troops to fly them east, and that was a scary mission. We sat with our .45's on our laps, and the stench from the Chinese was terrible. At 15,000 feet, they'd thrown up their rice all over everything. Stink! We were told that if we had any trouble with any of them, we were to just open the door and march 'em out. No parachutes. Get rid of them. These were our orders. Life didn't mean a thing to the Chinese troops. I heard of an incident in Kunming Kun-ming when a Chinese kid had gotten into an aircraft and stolen sto-len something. His own troops marched him into a field and shot him in the head. No trial no nothing. Another time when we were returning to India, and I was co-pilot, we ran off the runway and into the mud. We nosed our C46 up and broke a gas line on the left engine. Gas was pouring out onto the engine and it erupted erupt-ed into flames on the wing. The only exit was right by where the wing was burning, and the fire was too big when I was ready to get out. I went out a little side window, my chute on, and into the mud, never getting a scratch. As I looked back at the window, I didn't know how I'd done it. The fire equipment came, but all they could do was let the airplane burn. In flying back one night, we found ourselves in a tremendous tremen-dous storm. In a C46, you were not to let your wheels or flaps down above 125 mph, and the plane cruised at about 165-170 mph. Yet when you got into rough weather, that was the first thing you did 15 degrees of flaps and wheels down, to slow your aircraft up, so there wasn't so much stress on it. We were pointing down, indicating indicat-ing 160 mph, and an updraft suddenly took us up 2,000 feet. That's some thunderstorm. St. Elmo's fire (a static charge of electricity) was dropping drop-ping off the instrument panel, going between us, landing on the floor, and burning out. The wings and props also had St. Elmo's fire around them all the time. You get a little nervous when that happens. Our beds were two-by-fours with ropes strung across, with a regular old mattress. I saw at the hospital some bed springs, off a frame, so I took and used them instead of the ropes. After that, I had to fight for my bed. If I wasn't in it, somebody else was. The food was tolerable a lot of rice. We lived in a two-room two-room basha, and our basha boy was a Catholic. I think he was earning 25 rupees a day. Each of us would chip in another 50 rupees (50 cents) every time he came in. He would hang all our clothes out in the sun to dry. We all took Atabrine, for malaria, ma-laria, and we all turned yellow. These excerpts from Orem veterans are courtesy of the Orem Heritage Committee. Complete stories of the veterans will eventually be put on the Orem City Web site, www.orem.org. 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