Synopses & Reviews
Five CDs, 6 hrs.
On that parched evening in the Philippines 53 years ago, 511 American prisoners of war were saved from almost certain death. A force of elite American troops from the Sixth Ranger Battalion slipped 30 miles behind enemy lines and marched three days without sleep through jungles and peat swamps. They stormed the camp at dusk, achieving total surprise, and killed more than 250 Japanese soldiers while rounding up the dazed prisoners and leading them out the gate. With bullets and mortar shells whining through the trees, the rangers pulled the prisoners across the Pampanga River in carabao carts, and then led them down a network of secret paths. They almost didn't make it: a phalanx of 8,000 Japanese troops, encamped just a few hundred yards away from Cabanatuan, heard the gunfire and soon went on the offensive, intent on cutting down the prisoners and their liberators before they could return to the safety of the American lines. But an American-led guerilla force of a few hundred men ambushed the Japanese, destroying a series of bridges along the Pampanga, and holding off the enemy long enough for the prisoners to disappear into the night jungle. The raid was a surgical strike of utmost intricacy, one that depended on utter stealth, the perfectly synchronized actions of hundreds of players, and enormous stores of luck.Today, more than a half-century later, the raid of Cabanatuan remains the largest and most successful operation of its kind ever undertaken by the US Army—a jail brake on an epic scale. It was in every sense a mission of mercy, for the risks of saving 500 diseased and wasted men far outweighed any possible strategic gains. But the raid carried immense symbolic importance. It was a definitive revearsal of fortune in an otherwise desperately bleak chain of events—a second act, a story of redemption, of return, of coming back for one's belongings. All of the Philippines would eventually be liberated, of course, but it was the raid of Cabanatuan, this searing yarn at the heart of the larger story, that would resonate most powerfully for the thousands of American troops engaged in retaking the archipelago. As General Douglas MacArthur wrote shortly after the war, "No incident of the campaign in the Pacific has given me such satisfaction as the release of POWs at Cabanatuan."
Synopsis
Sides renders a tense, powerful, grand account of one of the most daring exploits of World War II: the rescue of American and British POWs behind enemy lines in the Philippines. "Ghost Soldiers" is far more than a thrilling battle saga as the author explores the mystery of human behavior under extreme duress.
Synopsis
Five CDs, 6 hrs.
Read by James Naughton
In January 1945, 121 hand-selected troops fom the elite U&.S Army Sixth Ranger Battalion slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: Attempt to rescue 513 American and British POWs who had spent over three years in a surreally hellish camp, near the city of Cabantuan, thirty miles distant. The prisoners were the last survivors of the Baatan Death March left in the camp, and their extraordinary will to survive might soon count for nothing-elsewhere in the Philippines , the Japanease Army had already executed American prisoners as it retreated from the advancing U.S. Army. As the Rangers carefully evaded Japanease troops, they made a disquieting discovery. Cabanatuan had become a major transshipment point for the Japanease retreat, and instead of facing a few dozen prison guards, they would possibly confront as many as 8,000 battle-hardened enemy troops.
Ghost Soldiers is far more than a thrilling battle saga, Hampton Sides explores the mystery of human behavior under extreme duress-the remarkable resilience of the prisoners who defied the Japanease authorities even as they were subjected to starvation, tropical diseases, and unspeakable tortures; the violent cultural clashes with Japanease guards and soldiers, trained in the warrior ethic of Bushido; the complicated heroism of the Rangers and Filipino guerillas; the complex motivations of the U.S. high command, some of ehom could justly be charged with abandoning the men of Bataan in 1942; and the nearly suicidal bravado of several spies, including priests and a cabaret owner, who risked their lives to help the prisoners during their long ordeal.
At once a gripping depiction of men at war and a compelling look of redemption, Ghost Soldiers joins such landmark books as Flags of our Fathers, The Greatest Generation, The Rape of Nanking, and D-Day in preserving the legacy of World War II for future generations.
About the Author
HAMPTON SIDES is a contributing editor for
Outside magazine, and the author of
Stomping Grounds, a book of stories about American subcultures. His work has appeared in The
New York Times Magazine,
DoubleTake, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and on NPR's "All Things Considered." He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.