Hell is so green

Bill Diebold was a lieutenant with the Army Air Transport Command in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II, but he never fired a shot in combat. Like other crews on the Hump, he worked a different front: pulling downed airmen out of the wreckage and saving lives. The Hump route carried food, fuel and munitions over the eastern Himalayas to the Allied forces in China, a lifeline meant to keep Japan from focusing its strength on the Pacific. Pilots flew through zero visibility, and many went down against mountainsides or were driven out of the sky by Japanese Zero fighters. Diebold went after the survivors.

His account puts the reader inside that world, from the suffocating heat and stench of the jungle to the lice, leeches and vermin that came with it, and from the towering peaks to the rivers that roared below. Diebold's voice is full of soldiers' slang, dry jokes and expressions from another era, which gives the narrative a strong sense of how these men actually talked and lived. The book also preserves the experiences of many airmen whose stories were rarely recorded.

Diebold died early, and his manuscript stayed in an attic for decades before it was found and published. Hell Is So Green is his own record of the war in the skies over the Himalayas.