“But what happened?” Betty asked, her mind scrambling to absorb the news Grady had just delivered. “Did he crash the plane?”
“No, the plane wasn’t crashed. He was ferrying four men into the area when they all disappeared. At least I think that’s what’s happened. The ham radio operator didn’t know any more. But it looks bad.”
“Shall I come with you?” Betty asked.
“No, it would be good if you could stay here and hold down the fort. I think there’s something really wrong, and I’d feel a whole lot better knowing you were here dealing with the media and everything else.”
Betty nodded, thinking about the best way to cancel her plans to go to the Sudan the following week.
That night, Betty tossed and turned in bed, praying for Nate Saint and the four other men who were missing. She thought about the first time she met the blue-eyed, blond-haired pilot with the ready smile and willing attitude. Nate Saint had been the person who’d come down to Mexico to rebuild the Waco biplane after the crash at El Real. He never complained, not even when the job took five times longer than anticipated. Nate and his new wife, Marj, had volunteered to work with MAF at a remote station in the middle of the Ecuadorian jungle. They’d had three children there and established a reputation for themselves as being a hospitable, fun-loving family.
The next morning Betty waited for news of Nate and the other missionaries. The situation did not look good. The yellow Piper Cruiser Nate was flying had been abandoned on a lonely strip of sand beside the Curaray River, where it had been stripped of its canvas skin and vandalized. There was no sign of the men. “Palm Beach,” as the small strip of sand had been nicknamed by the missionaries, was inside the territory of the infamous Auca Indians. Even in the Amazon jungle, where many tribes practiced head-hunting and ritual killing, the Aucas were feared and avoided by other tribes. They had a reputation for killing anyone who came into their territory, and they waged bloody battles against each other. Betty, like most others who knew the situation, had grave fears about the men’s safety in such an inhospitable environment.
By week’s end, everyone’s worst fears were realized. A helicopter from the U.S. Air Force base in Panama had spotted bodies in the water, and a rescue party made up of Ecuadorian soldiers and local missionaries had trekked into the jungle and found four of the five missing men’s bodies. The men had been speared to death. The bodies were buried under a tree at the end of Palm Beach.
News of the “mid-century martyrs,” as the men had been dubbed, soon made its way around the world. Life magazine sent its top photographer, Cornell Capa, to cover the story. Meanwhile, the phone at MAF headquarters rang off the hook with newspaper reporters wanting background details on Nate Saint or churches wanting MAF to know how much they cared and that they were praying for everyone.
Ten days later, Grady Parrott returned to California and reported on the situation in Ecuador. All five of the widows were determined to continue serving God in some way, and for the time being, Nate Saint’s wife, Marj, had decided to stay on in the jungle and man the radio and help Johnny Keenan, MAF’s second pilot there, carry out the increased workload. MAF promised to send another pilot as soon as possible.
Betty, like everyone else in MAF, was greatly affected by the tragedy. Nate Saint was MAF’s first worker to lose his life in the course of carrying out his duties, and people wondered whether stricter MAF guidelines or policies might have saved his life. They would never know for sure.
Some good did come out of the deaths of the five missionaries, however. The widespread coverage in magazines such as Time and Life meant that just about anyone in the world who kept up with the news had heard about the deaths. Many Christians asked themselves whether they were willing to lay down their lives to take the gospel message to tribes who had never heard it before. Over the next decade, thousands of young people dedicated themselves to becoming missionaries in response to the story of the deaths of the five young men in the South American jungle.
By April 1956, Betty felt things had calmed down enough in the MAF office for her to leave for the Sudan. She booked passage on the S.S. America, which sailed from New York to Southampton, England. She had never been on a long ocean voyage before, and it made her appreciate the role of airplanes in getting people to places fast.
Once in England she spent three days in London being briefed for her new assignment in the Sudan. After the briefing, she boarded a commercial airplane to fly to Cairo, Egypt. From there she took another flight on to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. And from there she flew on to Malakal, where she was to be stationed.
Chapter 14
The Sudan
The sun blazed down on Betty as she unfolded her long legs and climbed from the small commercial aircraft. She was glad to be out of the cramped passenger cabin and finally standing in Malakal, a city perched on the edge of the Nile River with a population of about seven thousand people. Waiting to greet her were Stuart and Phyllis King, along with Milton and Peggy Thompson, the missionary couple she would be staying with until the new MAF house was completed. They all welcomed Betty to Malakal, and Milton helped get her papers in order for the customs and immigration officers.
Once all the official details had been taken care of, the Thompsons drove Betty past the MAF hangar at the edge of the airport. Betty could see the De Havilland Rapide through the open doors. The craft was a large twin-engine biplane with room in its cabin for eight passengers and plenty of luggage.
The following morning, Betty awoke refreshed and anxious to get to work. At 9 A.M. Gordon Marshall, the South African pilot she would be replacing, arrived to take her up for her first flight in the Rapide. By 11 A.M. she was soaring through the skies above Malakal. She found the Rapide remarkably easy to handle for its size, and the visibility from the cockpit was good. As Betty familiarized herself with the controls and various instrument settings, Gordon explained about the work of MAF-UK in the area. The organization served 150 missionary families, most of them located at remote outposts that were days away by truck from any sizable towns where they could find medical help, buy supplies, or send their children to school. Indeed, most of the children attended boarding schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, or in Egypt, and MAF was kept busy at the beginning and end of school vacations ferrying children to and from their homes. Since there were so few airplanes in the area, MAF also flew government officials around when the need arose. The officials paid regular commercial fares on such flights.
One of Betty’s first flying assignments in the Sudan was to fly three government officials to El Renk and back. El Renk was an ancient city located 175 miles north on the banks of the Nile. Betty got an early start and took a book with her to read while waiting for the officials to conduct their business at the airport in El Renk. By lunchtime, the men hadn’t finished. Just as Betty was beginning to wonder what she should do for lunch, one of the officials came into the airport passenger lounge where she was waiting and asked, “Would you like to have lunch with us?”
Betty was a little unsure of what the man exactly meant. Although she had not been in the Sudan long, she’d had time to observe that there were big differences between Islamic men and women. The women wore long dresses with veils covering most of their face. Men, on the other hand, dressed like Westerners in long pants and shirts. The men and women didn’t interact much. And they especially never ate together. So the official’s invitation to have lunch with a group of Islamic men took Betty by surprise.
Betty followed the official to a small military building located at the edge of the airport, all the while wondering what she might be in for. When they reached the building, the official opened the door for her. As her eyes adjusted from the bright glare of the midday sun outside to the low level of light in the room, Betty could make out five men sitting around a table. There were two empty places at the table.
“Please, sit down and join us, Captain Greene,” the official said, pulling a chair out for her.
Betty was surprised. She was actually going to sit at the same table with the men and eat with them.
The food was delicious. The first course was a green dip served with fresh baked bread. It was followed by roast chicken and a huge platter of fresh fruit to finish off. At first they all ate in silence, but as the men began to feel comfortable around Betty, they started asking her questions. Did many women fly in America? How did she learn to fly? Where had she flown before? And just as they were starting in on the fruit platter, the question Betty had been waiting for was asked. “What is it that made you come to the Sudan as a pilot?”
Betty smiled and began to tell the men about how she had dreamed of combining her two great interests in life, her love of flying and her love of God, into a single career. She had found a way to combine them in the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, which she had helped found. And like her, there were now other pilots in other countries around the world who had also combined these two loves and were doing the same thing as she was: helping make the work of missionaries easier by transporting them where they needed to go and keeping them stocked with supplies. The Sudanese men were impressed with her answer and thanked her for sharing the meal with them.
As she flew the men back to Malakal, Betty thought about the unique opportunities being a female pilot gave her. Flying opened many doors to sharing the gospel message with people that were often closed to regular missionaries.
Several weeks later, Betty had another experience that was much more typically Sudanese. She was logging her flight plan when Said Hilmi, Malakal Airport’s chief officer, walked up to her. “Ah, Captain Greene, it is so good to see you this lovely morning. It is a good day for flying,” he said.
Betty nodded and gave him a smile.
“I would like to invite you to a celebration at my house. My baby son is about to turn forty days old, and it is our custom to have a party then. The governor, deputy governor, and chief of police will all be attending, and I would be honored to have you come too,” Said Hilmi said.
“Thank you. That would be wonderful. I flew the governor to Khartoum recently, and I look forward to meeting him again,” Betty replied.
Said Hilmi gave Betty a strange look before giving her the details of how to get to his house. He gave her an invitation for fellow pilot Ernie Krenzin and his wife, Doreen, to attend as well. The Krenzins were an American couple who had recently arrived in the Sudan to fly with MAF.
As the night of the celebration approached, Betty wondered what she should wear. After all, it was the biggest social event she had been invited to in the Sudan so far. She settled on a light blue linen suit with cream piping and buttons.
Doreen Krenzin dressed up for the occasion as well, and she and Betty laughed as they walked together in their finery to MAF’s old pickup truck for the drive to Said Hilmi’s home. Betty was surprised by his house, which was much more lavish than she had imagined it would be.
Ernie dropped the two women off at the front gate and went to park the pickup. Said Hilmi was waiting inside to greet them. “Welcome. I am so glad you could come,” he said in his excellent English. “Please, follow Nada,” he added, gesturing toward a woman covered from head to toe in her traditional Islamic dress.
Betty and Doreen followed the woman up a central staircase, through a room in which all manner of mouthwatering food was laid out on long tables, and onto a balcony. The woman then opened a door and led them into a long dormitory-like room with six single beds lined up neatly against the far wall. A woman was perched on the end of one of the beds.
