Three months ago, a local farmer who was clearing the land along the riverbank to plant crops for his family stumbled upon the mangled wreckage from what could only be an old military transport plane. After calling the authorities, the plane was identified by a professor from the University of Luzon. Unmistakably, the wreckage was the remains of an old US Dakota transport plane that had crashed sometime during the Second World War. Having lost numerous planes to probable mechanical breakdowns or enemy action during the war over the Philippines, the US State Department financed a dig. They were eager to identify the plane and to repatriate the remains of any US servicemen killed in the crash.
Forensic archaeology was far from Jen’s field of expertise, but when the original team leader went down with appendicitis a day before the team of grad students was due to leave, Jen volunteered to step up, but only if she was allowed time off from teaching to write a book about their findings. Arriving in the capital, Luzon, Jen and her gang of a dozen graduate students were met at the airport by her counterpart on the dig, Professor Carlos Laurel. Laurel was a large and jovial man who wore pop-bottle glasses and a constant smile across his broad face. Jen and Laurel instantly hit it off, and a strong bond soon developed between the two disparate groups of students living and working shoulder to shoulder in the heat and humidity of the Philippine jungle.
Her stomach rumbled loudly, reminding Jen that once again she had worked straight through lunch. Turning in the direction of the communal mess tent, Jen walked over and joined a short lineup of local workers mixed in with Filipino and American grad students, all loudly chatting away like a gang of old friends. Jen slowly made her way forward to the cooks. Seeing the meal, she cringed. It was to be another meal of chicken, rice and steamed vegetables. With a weak smile on her face, Jen grabbed her food and looked around for a seat to eat her all-too-routine supper meal. Finding a quiet spot, Jen sat down in a far corner of the mess tent, dug out a small black notebook from a pocket in her shorts, and reviewed her day’s work while she disinterestedly picked away at her meal.
“May I join you?” said a voice with a strong Filipino accent.
Looking up, Jen saw Professor Laurel standing there with a heaping tray of food. With a quick smile, she motioned for him to join her at the empty table.
Jen felt the table dip as Laurel sat down.
“A good day, wouldn’t you say?” said Laurel as he helped himself to a heaping forkful of rice.
“Oh yes, very much so,” Jen replied, thumbing through her notebook. “The serial numbers found on the engine block were the clue we needed to positively identify which missing plane it could possibly be. I emailed the Department of Defense the photos taken this afternoon of the engine, along with its serial number. I suspect that by tomorrow morning we should have a flight manifest of those US and Filipino service personnel who are still listed as missing on the flight. From there, we can go about expanding the search for the remains, if any have survived this long.”
“The jungle is not too kind on the dead. If the local animals did not cart off the remains after the crash, then they would have decomposed very quickly in this humid climate. For the families’ sake, I hope we do find something that can be returned home and buried with some dignity,” said Laurel solemnly.
Jen thought about Laurel’s words for a moment and added, “Amen to that.” She was about to go over her thoughts about the tomorrow’s dig with Laurel when a small, lean, bespectacled Asian-American girl wearing a tight-fitting Lady Gaga world tour T-shirt walked over to their table holding a plate with nothing but vegetables on it.
“Can I join you two, or is this not business talk?” asked Alanis Kim, looking enviously down at the empty spot at the table.
Jen shrugged her shoulders and pointed towards an empty spot on the bench; Laurel did not even bother to look up from his food.
Kim slipped down onto the chair and cleaned her cutlery with a napkin before cutting up some broccoli. “Oh, I hope I wasn’t intruding?” said Kim mischievously.
Jen shook her head. She had noticed that Kim had an overly active imagination and had become the de-facto team gossip. Nothing escaped her vigilance. An innocent smile or friendly wave at an associate was instantly turned into the latest romance or secret affair between seemingly unconnected colleagues, all of which was meticulously recorded and posted on Facebook and Twitter for the world to read.
“You should really slow down when you eat,” lectured Kim, as she watched Laurel finish off his plate of food until not a scrap remained.
A loud belch escaped Laurel’s mouth. He patted his belly and smiled over at the horrified student.
“You should eat more,” said Laurel, “you might be able to attract a man if you put some weight on. I like my women with a bit of meat on them.”
Kim scrunched up her nose at the thought. “I guess that takes Professor March out of the equation then.”
“Kim, really,” said Jen, shaking her head at the graduate student’s foolish remarks.
“I have a beautifully round girlfriend waiting for me in Manila,” said Laurel with a warm smile on his face. “I’m going to get a coffee and perhaps some cake. Can I get you two beautiful ladies anything?” asked Laurel, rising from the creaking table.
Both women asked for a cup of green tea, but no cake. Laurel smiled politely and went off to fetch the order. A minute later, Laurel returned and handed a piece of cake heaped with icing to Kim with a smile on his face that said you had better enjoy it.
They spent the rest of the evening talking about what they hoped to accomplish the next day. Feeling fatigued, Jen turned in early and was out seconds after her head hit the pillow.
The next morning began like any other. There was a quick, chaotic breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs, immediately followed by the daily brief from Professor Laurel on the activities ahead, which to Jen always seemed more like a sermon. After that, the students broke down into their respective teams and went about the painstaking work of carefully excavating the crash site.
As Jen had predicted, an email file was waiting on her computer in the morning from the DOD. It was the flight manifest of the doomed flight known by its call sign, Whiskey-35. Skimming the document, Jen saw that seven American and five Filipino servicemen had been on the plane when it disappeared over the jungle on March 3, 1945. The plane had been bound for Manila, but when it failed to arrive on time, a search was initiated. After two weeks of fruitless effort, the search was called off and the flight was officially listed as missing.
That was, until today.
Jen smiled to herself; things were going as planned. She quickly printed off a couple of copies of the flight manifest (one for herself, the other for Professor Laurel) and stepped out from the dingy tent into the bright morning sunlight. Slipping on a pair of sunglasses, Jen headed off into the already humid morning to look for Laurel to tell him that they had the information they had been waiting for.
The crash site was marked off with yellow barrier tape in the rough shape of an airplane. All around the dig, students, and local workers toiled side by side; most had grown used to the stifling heat and humidity that seemed to envelop the site throughout the long day.
Jen soon found Laurel, his head down, looking over some mangled remains that vaguely looked like the plane’s steering wheel. Walking over, she looked at the bent wheel and wondered how the men felt in the last seconds before the crash, knowing they were going to die. A cold shiver ran down her spine. Shaking such thoughts from her mind, Jen handed Laurel a copy of the flight manifest. Together, they began to discuss the next step in trying to find the crew’s remains, when an excited voice called out. Jen and Laurel trotted over to the site of the commotion. A group of students and locals were huddled around a freshly dug hole. Gently prying the people apart, Jen and Laurel stepped down into the large square dug knee deep into the ground; the smell of fresh earth wafted in the air.