Alethia Fair answered her nation’s call to bring her talents to help the war effort. Little did she know she’d lose her life in a jungle as part of her sacrifice.

When Alethia May Fair was born in Downingtown, Pennsylvania on September 16, 1894,[i] It must have been a happy day for her parents. John C. Fair and his wife, Alethia “Leta” Brinkerhoff Fair, and her older brother, John Schneck Fair, welcomed her. The Fairs, both from New York, married in 1886. John Fair was known as Father John Fair, an Episcopal priest.[ii]

By 1900, the Fair family was in Richmond, NY where John supported them as a clergyman. The little family of four lived in a boarding house. While John worked, Leta kept house and Alethia and little John attended school.[iii]

Alethia is a teenager of 15 when the census rolls around for 1910. Her father is still a priest. Her brother married the year before and no longer lives at home. The family lives in a rental home in Delford, Bergen, New Jersey.[iv] Alethia left school after the 9th grade, according to the 1940 census.

HER LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

Five years later, the family is living in New York, New York. Now 20, Alethia is teaching school according to a state census.[v]

Things might not have been peaceful for Alethia. Her parents end up living in different states. Her father, John, is a boarder in someone’s home in Bergen, New Jersey. He is no longer employed.[vi] Meanwhile, Alethia, and her mother, Leta, are supporting each other and living together in a rental in Manhattan, New York. Leta works as a lunchroom cashier and Alethia as the assistant cashier in an accounting office.[vii]

Just two years later, Alethia’s life changes when she marries Harry Lester Campbell in the Episcopal Church in Yonkers, New York. The Christmastime wedding took place on December 9, 1922.[viii] She’s 28 and he’s 25. Harry works for the railroad.

Ten days after their wedding, Alethia’s father, John, dies on December 19, 1922 at the Home for the Incurables in Bronx, New York, a chronic disease hospital.[ix]

Sometime after Alethia weds, her widowed mother goes to Illinois to work at a church. Not surprising for the wife of a minister and daughter of a minister. She dies in Aurora, Illinois on Feb 28, 1926.

Alethia and Harry Campbell make a big change and move across the country. They were married 8 years when the 1930 census comes along. They are renting a home in Alameda, California. Harry is a commercial salesman of ladies’ dresses. Alethia is a clerk in a shipping office.[x] The couple also lived in nearby Berkeley.

Ten years later, Harry Campbell is no longer in the picture. Alethia is once again using her maiden name and goes as Alethia Fair. She’s living five hours south in Glendale, California as a boarder and working as a telephone operator[xi] for the Forest Lawn Memorial Park and at Menasco Manufacturing.[xii]

HER MILITARY STORY

As more and more women are encouraged to enlist, Alethia steps forward and enlists in Los Angeles, California on April 12, 1944, becoming a WAC. Her service number was A-920130.

With her mother and father gone and divorced from a childless marriage, Alethia turned her office skills over to the military. Before heading into the war, she named her friend, Mrs. Ferne Tudehope of Hollywood, California as well as her brother, John, who had also relocated to California, as her next of kin.

Another New Guinea stationed WAC was Ruth Coster, whose daughter talked about that time with the Bakersfield Californian newspaper. It was reported the WACs slept in tents protected with barbed wire as protection from Japanese soldiers on the island. The ranking female officer in each tent was issued a firearm as additional protection.[xiii]

HER LAST DAY

The WACs didn’t just work hard, they also had fun. Coster’s daughter remembers stories of picnics with pork and beans, sausages, and bourbon.[xiv] On one particular day off, the girls in the office decided to play tourist.

With a day off to spend, Alethia joined 23 other Army personnel for a site-seeing trip in a transport plane.[xv] Colonel Peter J. Prossen was the pilot. Prossen was the chief of maintenance for the Far East Air Service Command. Others on board were:

· Major George H. Nicholson

· Major Herman F. Antonini

· Major Phillip J. Dattle

· Captain Herbert F. Good

· Captain Louis E. Freyman

· Lieutenant Lawrence F. Holding

· Lieutenant Robert E. McCollom

· Staff Sergeant Hilliard Norris

· Corporal Charles R. Miller

· Corporal Melvyn A. Weber

· PFC Melvin A Mollberg

· PFC George R. Newcomer

· T/3 Marion W. McMonagle

· Staff Sergeant Laura Besley

· Sergeant Helen G. Kent

· Sergeant Belle G. Naimer

· PFC Eleanor Hanna

· PFC Mariam C Gillis

· PFC Mary Landau

· Corporal Margaret Hastings

· Lieutenant John B. McCollom

· Sergeant Kenneth W. Decker[xvi]

Corporal Margaret Hastings described the day in The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper months later. Hastings’s boss was Colonel Prosson, the pilot. She reported the eight WACs were excited for a chance to fly over the legendary area nick-named “Shangri-La.” The pilots who had flown over the area came back with many tall tales of the sights they had seen – or imagined they had seen- from native’s the size of fictional Paul Bunyon to native women who looked like movie stars.

The WACs filed into the camouflage-painted plane first and the men filled in around them. Hastings said she took the first seat but when she realized she didn’t have a good view, she moved to the last seat near the back door, near Eleanor Hanna and opposite of Laura Besley who she recalled winking at during takeoff.

The plane, taking off from Santini Airstrip, flew at 9,000-10,000 feet for 55 minutes before arriving over Hidden Valley. It only took a few minutes to cross the valley. The plane was in a climb. Suddenly the plane was shearing the tops off tall, jungle trees.[xvii] The plane shook fiercely, and suction drew the walls inward. Upon impact with a mountain, the tail section broke off and the plane burst into flames.[xviii]

The plane crashed into a 4-mile thin but 25-mile-long jungle surrounded by the Oranje Mountains. The only gorge that serves as an entrance to the valley is cut off by a mountain wall running at direct cross angles, according to a Pittsburge Sun-Telegraph article. It is believed the wall was hidden by clouds when the plane crashed.[xix]

Only three people survived the crash including Corporal Margaret Hastings, Lieutenant John B. McCollom and Sergeant Kenneth W. Decker.[xx] Hastings and McCollom crawled out of the torn tail. Decker, with a head wound, was thrown out of the front of the plane. McCollom heard screaming and went into the burning plane and pulled out two women, Eleanor Hanna and Laura Besley. It was too late to save Alethia or any of the others.[xxi]

Eleanor Hanna died the first night in the jungle, May 13, 1945.[xxii] Laura Besley died during the night of May 15, 1945, at Balim Valley, Dutch New Guinea which is now Papua New Guinea, Indonesia,[xxiii] presumably from internal injuries.[xxiv]

The crash happened in the nearly inaccessible Owen Stanley Mountains of Netherland New Guinea.[xxv] The survivors buried Alethia and the others at the crash site.[xxvi] It was three days later before the survivors were spotted.[xxvii] They had hiked through the jungle to a rock clearing so they could be seen.

The three survivors suffered burns and shock,[xxviii] and eventually two had developed gangrene. Decker had deep back wounds[xxix]. They were trapped in the jungle for 47 days, were delivered a walkie-talkie, food, and medical supplies by parachute. Eventually, a medical team and other help parachuted in to tend to them.

An airborne funeral service was held at 11,000 feet above the wreckage site with Jewish,[xxx] Catholic, and Protestant rites. Volunteer service members parachuted into the area then hiked to the wreckage. Alethia’s body and the others were then deemed impossible to move so were buried properly at the crash site. Twenty crosses and the one Star of David, for Belle Naimer,[xxxi] were dropped into the jungle.[xxxii] The crosses and Star of David were placed by the volunteers on the graves.

Another team, that parachuted in, built a landing strip to support a glider. It was hacked into the jungle. It took several days to create. After the injured were deemed well enough to make a three-day hike through the jungle, they were moved to the landing strip. For several days, failed attempts were made before the glider rescue worked. The glider was then lifted aloft by a C-47 with a grabline.[xxxiii]

PFC Alethia M. Fair’s body remained buried near the wreckage in the New Guinea jungle for the next 14 years until it could be recovered for a proper burial. According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin newspaper, the army believed at first it would not be able to retrieve the body from the rugged mountains. [xxxiv] Many years after the crash, men sent by the Army traveled by plane, boat, and foot, traveling over mountains and through jungles, to reach the Hidden Valley.[xxxv]

Alethia’s body was recovered and buried at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

COMMENDATIONS

World War II Victory Medal

American Campaign Medal

Army Presidential Unit Citation

Army Good Conduct Medal

Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal[xxxvi]

HER GRAVE

Alethia M. Fair’s body remained on the mountainside until 1958 when an American Search and Recovery team recovered and identified her body.[xxxvii] On June 29, 1959[xxxviii], she was reburied at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.[xxxix]

MEMORIALS

PFC Alethia M. Fair is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing however her name is noted with a rosette which indicates her remains were eventually recovered. The Walls of the Missing are in the Manila American Cemetery in Taguig City, Philippines.[xl]

In 1947, after the war, a woman’s chapter of the Disabled American Veterans was formed in Burbank, California. The chapter was named May Fair 90 in honor of PFC Alethia May Fair of Glendale, California.[xli]

AFTER THE WAR

Alethia May Fair’s will left her brother, John, and his wife, Jane, her war bonds. She left her friends her jewelry and personal items. Her good friend, who was listed as next of kin, Ferne Tudehope, served as executor.[xlii]

RESEARCH NOTES

Research did not reveal any information on Alethia’s education beyond a U.S. census that declared her to have one year of high school.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS WWII CRASH

FILM- Rescue from Shangri-La- A documentary made in 1945 by Alexander Cann, who parachuted in to film the actual rescue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57jwMM8MVKI

BOOK- Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuchoff, a former Boston Globe reporter, wrote this New York Times’ bestseller about the crash that killed 21 and left three survivors lost in the jungle.

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Shangri-Mitchell-Zuckoff/dp/0061988359

NPR DOCUMENTARY

https://www.npr.org/2011/04/26/135710893/a-wwii-survival-epic-unfolds-deep-in-shangri-la

American Battle Monuments Commission Page

http://api.abmc.gov/decedent-search/fair%3Dalethia

Other Fold3 Page

https://www.fold3.com/page/639642554/alethia-m-fair/stories

STORIES OF OTHER VICTIMS OF THIS CRASH

**Laura Besley - Fold 3 Page **

https://www.fold3.com/page/641412304/laura-e-besley

**Eleanor Pauline Hanna - Fold 3 Page **

https://www.fold3.com/memorial/83043223/eleanor-p-hanna

**Helen G. Kent - Fold 3 Page **

https://www.fold3.com/page/639645262/helen-g-kent/stories

**Belle G. Naimer - Fold 3 Page **

https://www.fold3.com/page/638655497/belle-g-naimer/stories

Alethia May Fair – Fold 3 Page

https://www.fold3.com/memorial/83131513/alethia-m-fair/stories

Marian C. Gillis- Fold 3 Page

https://www.fold3.com/memorial/83119392/marian-c-gillis/stories

Mary Landau- Fold 3 Page

https://www.fold3.com/page/638773424/mary-m-landau/stories

Marion McMonagle

https://www.fold3.com/page/657097886/tec3-marion-walk-mcmonagle/stories

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org ). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3 and on TogetherWeServed. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

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