Provides an account of the crash of a transport plane carrying twenty-four American servicemen and WACs on May 13, 1945, during a sightseeing trip over the Shangri-La Valley in the mountains of Dutch New Guinea, tells how survivors Margaret Hastings, John McCollom, and Kenneth Decker, injured and grieving, braved man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese troops to find refuge with a primitive tribe which had never seen white people, and discusses their daring rescue.