BOOTS STILL WANTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1943, Page 3

BOOTS STILL WANTED

AMERICAN AIRMAN’S ADVENTURE MONTH SPENT IN JUNGLE WILDS. FOLLOWING ON FORCED LANDING. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.10 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. An American Lightning fighter pilot, Captain Charles Sullivan, of Illinois, who crash-landed in Jap-anese-held territaory beyond the Ramu Valley, has reached his base, after 30 days spent in wild jungle and mountain country. Once he bargained for his life with hostile natives, who surrounded him armed with knives, bows and arrows. He clinched the bargain by shooting -, two natives who tried to rush him. Captain Sullivan lived for eighteen days on four pawpaws and two wild passion fruit. On the twenty-fourth day he found an encampment of an Australian forre on an isolated modntain peak. When he arrived at his base Captain Sullivan discovered that he had been given up for dead, and that his flying gear had been divided among his comrades. His favourite flying boots had gone to America with a friend who had returned home on leave. Facetiously Captain Sullivan cabled his fel-low-pilot: “Bring back those boots, you vulture!”