Rating: 
Summary: "Take A Rescue Mission & Produce Dead Narrative in 21 Days"
Review: ... should really be this book's title.I am not a writer or an expert literary reviewer, but I am an avid reader of war-related books. In my humble opinion, a book of this type has to achieve one of three major goals: either produce a true epic, storytelling account of a military situation, like James Clavell's excellent "King Rat" (by developing characters, situations, and giving a reader a memorable feel for the conditions and people involved), produce a heart-pounding page-turning reporting piece like Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down", or give a reader all the facts straight without overweight commentary, like any decent college history book. "Ghost Soldiers", sadly, does not achieve any of those goals. To be honest, I am not sure what it is trying to accomplish by jumping back and forth in time line, plot, historical facts, places, and military units. One thing for sure: Hampton Sides accomplishes confusion and boredom. The author's language is also somewhat strange, and seems more suitable for a gothic novel than a war account. The vocabulary used often feels completely out of place when discussing daring assaulters, suffering prisoners, and cruel prison guards. I could go on here, but all in all, my advice would be to find a better selection on the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Best war book ever
Review: What these soliders went through was amazing, and to consider that they were all young men who chose to go to war is incredible. As usual, the best history stories and lessons are never taught in the classroom.
Rating:
Summary: War Is Hell
Review: As I write this review, America is engaged in another war that puts our youth in a foreign battlefield, as foreign as Bataan and the Philippines of this story. If anything, this book should convince all who read it that there's nothing "fun" about conflict or being a POW or being rescued. There's nothing "fun" about war or about this book. The story of this rescue mission is particularly relevant today because it's about a conflict of cultures, that of the imperial Japanese army and that of the American army, and their utterly impossible attempts to understand each other. Those who suffered and died in Bataan and in the horrific POW camp in which the American prisoners languished for over two years are shown here to be far more than nameless, faceless, casualty statistics. They are shown to be living, breathing human beings. And to the author's great credit, he presents some members of the "enemy" army to be human too, breathing even more compassion and empathy into his powerful narrative. Hampton Sides, the author, is thoroughly successful in graphically describing this remarkable rescue mission in minute-by-minute detail, filling us in with background information, and bringing us right to the gates of the awful hellhole POW camp in which so many perished and a few survived, disease ridden, starved, and haunted by an overwhelming fear of being executed and thrown into a mass grave.
Readers must ask themselves if they would have survived. And one must ask today what horrors and terrors are going on in Iraq, on both sides of the conflict.
I advise all those who think war is exciting or heroic, or who think of themselves as invulnerable, to read this book and appreciate the real story. This book gives it to you, blood, guts, and all.
Rating:
Summary: A gritty account of what good, brave men can accomplish
Review: As I write this, our country stands on the edge of war. In these frightening times, I found this captivating account of the ugly face of war and the heights good men can reach uplifting. The author, Mr. Sides, masterly weaves the past with the present, bringing the reader from the horrors of the Death March up to the rescue mission's first gun shot. While the author does not engage in a lot of flag waving, I felt proud of the accomplishments of my father's generation - people who fought a desperate fight they never asked for but didn't back away from either. If we still have people in America like the POWs and the Rangers who went into harm's way for them, maybe we still have a chance. Read it yourself and be inspired.
Rating:
Summary: An Historical Document and More
Review: I find maybe one book a year that I can't put down and this was the one for 2003. Hampton Sides has given us a riveting story about the rescue of a heroic band of survivors of Bataan and Corregidor who almost surely would have been massacred by their Japanese captors were it not for the resolve and bravery of an untried unit of U.S. Army Rangers. I have a cousin, with whom I've lost touch, who was a Navy lieutenant on Corregidor when it fell and may well have been one of the men rescued from this camp, so the book had an added resonance for me. Contrary to at least one other reviewer, I enjoyed Sides' somewhat cinematic narrative that gave us alternating chapters between the raiders and their preparations and progress and the experience of the prisoners with the story lines converging in a dramatic crescendo. This is a first-rate book that makes you proud to be an American. The atrocities committed by the Japanese are well-documented but Sides avoids stereotyping and gives us a deeper understanding of the cultural and historical sources for the savage brutality, along with the realization that the Imperial Japanese Army included humane and cultured men as well as sadistic butchers. If you have an interest in history, particularly in WWII, this book belongs on your reading list.
Rating:
Summary: Classic heroism
Review: Narrative history at it's best! This book will make you feel that you are living next to the characters. Hampton Sides has given us a tale of a little known heroic rescue of POWs. Sides allows the reader to see both the pain of the prisoners and the ingenuity and perserverance of the rescurers. He also shows the extreme inhumanity the Japanese inflicted on the prisoners. If you are looking for an exciting, suspenseful read that is historically accurate, this is your book!
Rating:
Summary: A Fleshed Out Magazine Article....Still a Fun Story
Review: It was nice to see the men of Bataan get their just due when this bestseller came out. It's a fun book, but at times, I thought I was reading a magazine article that was fleshed out to make it into a book. Mr. Sides writes well and his book kept me going. But I didn't like the shifting chapters. One chapter was on the ordeal of the POWs, the next on the mission to raid the Cabanatuan POW camp. Not all of the veterans interviewed were at Cabanatuan when the Rangers attacked it. I personally think he should have stuck to a standard story line, first, follow the POWs and their terrible odyssey, then go to the Rangers and their daring rescue of these starved and emaciated heroes. But again, it was nice to see a book about the Pacific capture the public's imagination after all these ETO books, get so much publicity. It's a fun, exciting read, but I believe far from the best. Try reading Dorothy Cave's Beyond Courage, One Regiment against Japan 1941-1945. That is a superb work.
Rating:
Summary: An Exhaustive Account of a Neglected Mission of Salvation.
Review: Mr. Sides recent book reflects an exhaustive review of information on this mission and many, many interviews with surviving combatants. In addition, his writing style of moving back in forth in time and in different combat scenarios reminds me of Tom Clancy. It is exceptionally well written, with a good eye to detail and weighty use of the decriptive talents of the author. The description of the condition of the Bataan survivors after three years' of captivity and their courageous will to survive is dramatic. Backgrounds of all the key (and not so key) players in this narrative are amazingly complete. My only complaint with the book is that due to this detail and back and forth motion in the book it reads more like a novel and has you wanting to get on with the story of the action parts as you near the climax. Mr. Sides has protean storytelling ability, but his style of writing lends itself more to novels than pure history. Nevertheless, I can give no higher recommendation for this compelling treatise on courageous action to save prisoners of war late in WWII.
Rating: 
Summary: An Interesting, and Captivating account
Review: Ghost Soldiers is very well written, book. It makes you realize the unspeakable atracities the Japanees did to Captured Americans and Civilians.
The main focus of the book is the rescue of survivors of the Baatan death march. The book first takes you on the death march. You will find out things you never though a human being would do to a fellow human. It is important that we learn about what the prisoners went through. Then you learn about life in the camp. The guards were rutheless. The book quotes a veteran of the camp on the camp guards, he says of them, "The Japanees werent Beasts, a beast kills to eat, the Japannees killed for fun." I think this quote show how bad these prisoners had it, and what they went through. Hampton Sides does an Excellent job in this book.
Also he focuses on the rescue of the prisoners. He goes through the planning, which took very little time because of the short notice, and of course, the execution of the plan. This book shows the strong will to live many of the men in this camp had, and the will to die and get it over with. I think you will find this action packed, true horrific acount gripping, sad, and triumphal.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for fans of military history
Review: Hampton Sides has done a remarkable job telling the story not only of the brave Rangers and Filipino guerillas who rescued the POWS of Cabanatuan, but also of those held who endured enormous suffering while at the hands of the Japanese. It is a discredit to those heroes that so few Americans have even an inkling about the horrors of the Bataan Death March and the prisoner of war camps of the Imperial Japanese Army. GHOST SOLDIERS is a first-rate account of the deprivation, brutality, and starvation which killed so many Allied soliders and sailors. The authors allows the survivors to "bear witness" much like the survivors of the Nazi death camps do so compellingly in other books. But GHOST SOLDIERS is never slow or tedious or maudlin or sentimental. The pacing is double-quick and the whole book has a cinematic quality to it. It would make a fine movie (an all-American "Bridge on the River Kwai"). WWII and history buffs will devour the book quickly, but others should not be dissuaded, simply because GHOST SOLDIERS is "military history." It is much more than that. It is a story of human beings enduring the unendurable, and of making enormous sacrifices for the sake of their fellows. The historical context, geography of the Philippines, and the military tactics are all expertly and unobstrusively explained. Readers not familiar with military jargon or tactics will not find themselves lost, but rather rooting for the brave rescuers as they advance stealthily to liberate the walking skeletons of Cabanatuan.
|
