Book Review: Ghost Soldiers

I recently finished reading Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides, which I got as a Christmas present (thanks, Cute Paul!). It follows the story of "WWII's greatest rescue mission." Now, I don't often read war stories because I sometimes find all the details of tactical maneuvering to be slightly boring, but this book was excellent. The author is not an academic historian, so the book reads like a fast-paced story targeted to the layperson, rather than a dry recounting and analysis of events. I found myself unable to put the book down towards the end and continually wondering "what's going to happen next?!"

Ghost Soldiers tells the story of the liberation of Cabanatuan in the Philippines, one of the largest World War II POW camps in the Pacific. The majority of the inmates were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. Sides begins his narrative by detailing the horrific treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese. The POWs were treated little better than the Nazis treated the Jews during the Holocaust. The Japanese would rather exterminate their prisonors than have them rejoin their countrymen. They disregarded the Geneva Convention for the most part. This is why the US Army devised a plan to rescue the prisoners of Cabanatuan; there was little or no chance the prisoners would survive the war without oustide help. 121 Army Rangers were hand-picked for the expedition. They needed brilliant leadership and fearless men to execute the task.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the steps of planning the mission and kept wondering how exactly they would pull off something on such a grand scale. There were a few glitches along the way, but in the end it was a huge success and the men came home as heroes. They were expected to become legends in American history that would never be forgotten. However, not long after the rescue mission, landmarks such as Iwo Jima and the dropping of the atomic bomb overshadowed the event and it seemed to fade from the collective memory. Which is sad, really.

I highly recommend this book. It demonstrates the epitome of courage, patriotism, and the triumph of the human spirit. These men should not be forgotten.