Herman Perry’s heart hammered against his ribcage. He was cornered. Officer Harold Cady and two imposing US servicemen loomed before him, their silhouettes stark against the dense Burmese jungle. Perry’s mind raced as he confronted the grim reality of being taken back into the depths of the notorious Ledo military Stockade.

Delirious on poppy, emotionally shattered, and driven by a fierce determination to evade the nightmarish conditions of the Stockade at any cost, Perry did the unthinkable and trained his rifle on Cady. To Perry, the thought of returning to that forced-labor, malaria-ridden hell, where he and other prisoners languished at the bottom of the pecking order, was inconceivable. In a broken shriek, Perry said: (QUOTE) “Get back!... Get Back!”

Cady stepped forward anyway. Perry was shaking now, begging: (QUOTE) “Lieutenant, don’t come up on me.”

Having fled the Stockade after his 90-day sentence for insubordination was unjustly extended, Perry now felt the oppressive weight of the sweltering jungle air, its humidity squeezing out the last remnants of sense he had left. As tears spilled down his face, he fired once, then one more time, and ran into the maddening embrace of the jungle towards a terrifying head-hunter tribe. The Greatest and most insane manhunt of World War 2 was on, and Perry would become a Jungle King…

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