Marj nodded, and Larry walked to the radio room, just off the kitchen. Betty listened as Larry picked up the microphone and began calling out on the radio. Within half an hour he was talking directly to General Harrison. Tears of relief welled in Betty’s eyes. An hour ago she and Marj were agonizing over what to do next, and now Larry Montgomery was on the radio talking to a high-ranking U.S. military officer.
From that moment on everything began to move swiftly at Shell Mera. General Harrison told Larry that he would instruct Air Force Major Nurnberg, based in Panama, to initiate an immediate search-and-rescue mission. The U.S. Air Force was on its way.
Eventually the other three wives, along with their children, arrived at Shell Mera. And by evening, as word got out about the missing men, people began to converge on Shell Mera.
On Tuesday night, two Air Force C-47 cargo planes touched down at Shell Mera from Panama. One of the planes carried Major Nurnberg and a rescue team; the other, an H-13 helicopter. The following morning the helicopter was unloaded, and a crew began assembling it for flight.
Grady Parrott, the president of Missionary Aviation Fellowship, flew in directly from California, followed by two officials from Christian Missions in Many Lands, the organization the Elliots, the McCullys, and the Flemings served with in Ecuador. Several missionary friends from Quito also hurriedly made their way to Shell Mera to help.
The MAF house at Shell Mera continued to fill up with even more people. Sam Saint, Rachel and Nate’s brother and an experienced pilot with American Airlines, arrived to lend his support. He was followed by Jerry Hannifin, foreign correspondent for Time magazine, and then came Cornell Capa, the famous Life magazine photographer. As well, HCJB, the Christian radio station in Quito, was relaying updates around the world.
All of this passed by Betty and the other wives in a blur. The women did what they had to do—bathe babies, wash loads of diapers, and feed everyone—but their hearts were with their husbands. If only they knew where the men were and whether they were safe. Eventually Marilou insisted on being flown back to Arajuno. She was convinced that any survivors among the men would head for her house, since it was the closest to Auca territory.
A search party led by Frank Drown, Roger Youderian’s co-missionary, was formed, and several other missionaries and thirteen Ecuadorian soldiers bravely headed out on foot from Arajuno into the jungle. Meanwhile, search planes made low passes over the area looking for any sign that the men were alive.
On Wednesday morning, January 11, 1956, two days after the news that Nate’s plane had been spotted on Palm Beach stripped of its fabric skin, Betty was upstairs with Barbara and Olive. Suddenly Marj’s urgent cry filled the room. “Betty! Barbara! Olive!”
Betty raced down the stairs, with Barbara and Olive right behind her. Marj was standing with her head in her hands. Her eyes were closed. Betty waited, heart pounding, and then Marj finally spoke. “They found one body.”
Marj went on to explain what she knew from Johnny’s radio call. Johnny was flying over Palm Beach again and spotted one body floating facedown in the river about a quarter of a mile downstream. The body was clad in khaki pants and a white T-shirt. Betty’s mind raced. Jim had taken khaki pants and a white T-shirt with him, but then she quickly learned that so had all the other men except Roger.
Later in the afternoon, the radio crackled again—more bad news. Johnny had spotted a second body floating in the river about two hundred yards from the beach.
On Thursday, the helicopter and the Air Force planes were in the air and headed for the site where the two bodies had been spotted. That night, Major Nurnberg and another Air Force officer, Captain DeWitt, flew to Shell Mera. The major had a solemn look on his face. “Is there somewhere privately we could meet with the wives?” he asked Marj.
Marj nodded and turned to lead them upstairs to her bedroom.
Some of the wives sat on the bed and others preferred to stand as Major Nurnberg cleared his throat. Betty knew he was about to deliver bad news—very bad news.
And so it was. Jim was dead. All of the men were dead—killed by Auca spears. Four of the bodies had been spotted from the air by the helicopter, and a fifth body, that of Ed McCully, had earlier been discovered by a canoe party of Quichua Indians. The major explained that the Quichuas were Christians from Arajuno, and when they learned their missionary was missing, they loaded into two canoes and headed downstream in search of him, even if it meant crossing into Auca territory. They had made it all the way to Palm Beach, where they found Ed’s body at the water’s edge. After discovering the fate of their missionary, they took Ed’s watch from his wrist and made their retreat from Auca territory. On the way upriver, they met the ground search party headed for Palm Beach. They told Frank Drown about finding Ed’s body and handed Ed’s wristwatch to him.
It was a solemn moment as Major Nurnberg read the descriptions of the bodies from his small notebook and each wife identified her husband from the description.
When the major had finished, there was nothing more to say. After twenty-seven months of marriage, Betty was now a widow and the single mother of a ten-month-old daughter. Olive Fleming was a widow. Marj Saint was a widow with three children; Marilou McCully, a widow with two children and another on the way; and Barbara Youderian, a widow with two children. In an instant their worlds had changed forever.
The next few days were a blur of activity. On Friday the ground search party made it to Palm Beach and recovered the bodies from the water. The party was able to find only four of them: the river had washed away Ed’s body. A mass grave was dug at the foot of the tree in which the tree house was located, and the four men were buried there. Before their bodies were lowered into the common grave, Frank Drown took the men’s wedding rings and whatever else the men had in their pockets to return to the widows. A tropical rainstorm burst over Palm Beach as the bodies were buried.
When he arrived back at Shell Mera, Frank handed Jim’s wristwatch to Betty, along with some torn-out pages from Jim’s prayer notebook. He had also located Nate’s waterlogged camera, still with film inside it, from where it had fallen into the river.
On Saturday, six days after the men had gone missing, Betty and the other wives were flown over Palm Beach in a U.S. military aircraft to see the site of the killing for themselves. Betty peered down at the peaceful sight of Palm Beach below. She could see on the sand the skeleton of the little yellow MAF Piper Cruiser that she and Jim had flown in so many times. She could see the cooking shelter that Jim had sketched out on the kitchen table weeks before back in Shandia and the prefabricated tree house he had made for the men to sleep in at night.
As she looked down at the sight below, Jim’s words came back to Betty: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”
Yes, she thought, Jim has given his life, the most precious thing that he had to give, but he has traded it for an infinitely better life in eternity.
Jim had died obeying God, and that was enough for Betty.
Chapter 17
Visitors
Betty and Valerie Elliot returned to their home at Shandia. Everything about the place reminded Betty of Jim: the split-bamboo bed he had made for Valerie just before leaving on Operation Auca, his journal left open on the table, his clothes—some in the laundry hamper still needing to be washed. Each day brought back painful memories, but Betty determined to carry on. There was the regular work of the mission to accomplish. She oversaw the maintenance of the airstrip and the school buildings, taught at the girls’ school, and continued where Jim had left off translating the Gospel of Luke into Quichua.
Sometimes Betty wondered whether Jim had had a premonition that he would die. He had worked so hard before Operation Auca to hand over leadership to the local Christian men. And now the locals took on much of the responsibility for the local fellowship and boys’ school.
News of the five missionaries who had died at Palm Beach while trying to make contact with the Aucas quickly spread around the world. The deaths were reported in Time magazine, and a lengthy article accompanied by photos by Cornell Capa of the rescue mission appeared in Life magazine. With all this publicity, letters began arriving at Shandia from around the world, many from people Betty did not know. Most of the letters were comforting, but some of them offered all sorts of suggestions and ideas as to what Betty should do next.
One woman enclosed sixty dollars with her letter so that Betty could buy Bibles for the Aucas. The woman appeared to have no idea that the Aucas could not read any language or that the Auca language had never been written down. Another person wrote to say that he felt that all would be well if Betty would just write out the Ten Commandments and drop them from an airplane over Auca territory. Surely then these Indians would understand that the Word of God said, “Thou shalt not kill.”
The most opinionated letters Betty received were about what should happen to Valerie now that her father was dead. Some people felt that Valerie should be returned immediately to the United States, as she was in harm’s way in Ecuador. As Valerie’s mother, Betty took these warnings seriously, but in the end she decided to trust God in the situation.
Rather than make her bitter or angry, Jim’s death had made Betty feel more compassion than ever for the Aucas. She often found herself telling those who asked how she felt toward the Aucas, “The fact that Jesus Christ died for all makes me interested in the salvation of all, but the fact that Jim loved and died for the Aucas intensifies my love for them.”
As time went on, Betty began to wonder what this love for the Aucas would eventually translate into. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had the idea that one day she and Valerie might be able to go and live with them, but for now that seemed impossible.
Meanwhile, the other widows of Operation Auca were getting on with their lives. Olive Fleming, the youngest of the widows, returned to the United States to live. Barbara Youderian and her two children stayed on at Macuma. Marj Saint stayed put at Shell Mera until MAF could send another pilot to Ecuador to replace Nate. After that she planned to move with her children to Quito to run the World Radio Missionary Fellowship missionary guesthouse. And Marilou McCully immediately flew home to Pontiac, Michigan, where she gave birth to a son two weeks later.
February 27, 1956, was a bittersweet day for Betty when Valerie turned one year old. Betty was delighted with the lovely little girl that Valerie was becoming, but she wished that Jim could be there to see their daughter grow up. She knew it would be the first of many milestones in Valerie’s life where her father’s absence would leave a gaping hole.
A month later Betty’s mother and Mrs. DuBose from the Hampden DuBose Academy came to visit Betty and Valerie at Shandia. Katherine Howard told her daughter that she had come to see how Betty was coping with Jim’s death. Betty was thrilled to see both her mother and Mrs. DuBose. The two women had meant much to her and had taught her much over the years. Their words and helping hands encouraged her to continue her missionary work, even though she desperately missed having Jim at her side.
Soon after the killings at Palm Beach, the five widows designated Betty to write an official account of the tragedy. Betty set to work on the project. Drawing heavily on both Jim and Nate’s private diaries, she traced the events that led up to the men traveling to Palm Beach, and then she tried to piece together the events at Palm Beach and the killing of the men. Some of the photographs from Nate’s waterlogged camera were salvaged, and journal entries from the camp helped fill in the missing pieces. The account came together quickly, and Betty was soon sending off the finished manuscript to the publisher. In August 1956 the book titled Through Gates of Splendor was published.
