‘Mastah Preddi’ fell from the sky, into hearts

Reassurance comes in song
Villagers here on the north coast had seen the distant plane go down. Now, in an outrigger canoe on an upriver hunting trip, they had their eyes out for a pilot.

Finding Hargesheimer by the riverside, Lauo, their "luluai," or chief, showed the bearded, haggard white man a note written by an Australian officer saying these villagers had saved other pilots and could be trusted.

That night by the river, Lauo's party exploded with wild singing and feasting, unnerving the young American, who had been warned by intelligence officers of headhunters in these highlands. Then, as they sang in an island tongue, he picked out the melody: "Onward, Christian Soldiers." He felt reassured.

They took him downriver to their seaside village, Ea Ea, a place of grass-roofed lean-tos. They gave him a hut and fed him boiled pig, shellfish and taro, their starchy tuber mainstay. He went fishing with them in their canoes under cover of darkness, and began to learn Pidgin, the islanders' simple, English-based common language.

In his tattered aviator's uniform, he joined in services each Sunday led by three Christian missionaries, natives who had fled New Britain's main town, Rabaul, when the Japanese landed 17 months earlier.

Because enemy troops patrolled the beaches, Hargesheimer spent many days in a hut hidden in a nearby swamp. But one day he was caught away from his hideout when an alarm went up that Japanese were approaching. Village friend Joseph Gabu led the American into the rain forest, sending him up a eucalyptus tree to hide.

Bitten, sick and too weak to eat
Through the night, he was tormented by swarms of mosquitoes, until finally the next day Gabu came for him. All was clear, but within weeks Hargesheimer was stricken with the severe chills and fever of mosquito-borne malaria.

It left him prostrate, weakening, not eating for days. He asked for milk, but there was none. Then the missionary Apelis asked whether he would drink "susu." He brought his wife, Ida, to the hut, carrying their month-old baby.

She slipped behind the grass wall and returned with a cup of milk. For 10 or more days following, she supplied Hargesheimer with her "susu," mother's milk that helped restore his health.

Villagers protected "Mastah Preddi" — Master Freddie — apparently because they hated the Japanese for their cruel treatment of natives. Time and again, the low echo of a conch shell blown by a villager would warn of Japanese. If Mastah Preddi wore his boots as he rushed to hide, children would follow with makeshift brooms, sweeping away his prints from the sand.

The village took a great risk by protecting him from the Japanese, he says.

"If they'd seen my boot prints, I think they would have tortured everyone in the village until they produced me."

When he finally left, "some of them wanted me to take their children back to the States with me," he recalls, sitting so many years later in the afternoon light at his dining table, sharing indelible memories of human kindness.

Fred Hargesheimer walked repeatedly through the 23rd Psalm's "valley of the shadow of death," always emerging safely with the help of the people of Ea Ea.

'Debt I had to repay'
In February 1944, eight months after he was shot down, Hargesheimer was picked up from a New Britain beach by a U.S. submarine, in a rendezvous arranged by Australian "coastwatcher" commandos operating behind Japanese lines.

He returned to civilian life after the war ended in 1945. By then he had married Dorothy Sheldon of Ashtabula, Ohio, and by 1949 they had three children — Richard, Eric and Carol. In 1951, he took a sales job with a Minnesota forerunner of computer maker Sperry Rand, his employer ever after.

But the people of Ea Ea never left his mind. He corresponded with a missionary to learn how they had fared. He studied and restudied international air schedules.

"The more I thought about my experience with the people in New Guinea, the more I realized what a debt I had to try to repay," he said.

MORE FROM WONDERFUL WORLD

Wonderful World Section Front

Man returns stolen plaque after 50 years Potato peelers put him on Park Avenue DWI suspect thanks officers after stop Man, 112: Secret to long life is being active Swimmer Hansen reunited with lost gold medal Dog calls 911 after owner has seizure Good girl! Pooch comes to sick neighbor's aid Mouth to meow-th: Firefighter revives cat Wonderful World Section Front   Add Wonderful World headlines to your news reader: