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Rating: 
Summary: Focuses on one doomed unit from New Mexico the 200th Reg.
Review: Dorothy Cave has really done an excellent job of research and storytelling with this book. She was able to accuratly document the fate of many of the soildiers that were mobilized in 1940 in New Mexico.I hope that Dorothy Cave will write a second book on the 200th and include more of the research material that would mean so much to the relatives and decendents of the warriers of the 200th Regiment. Since I was born in Silver City NM and am now a member of the New Mexico National Guard, I request that all new Officers assigned to my Battalion to read Beyond Courage so that they may better understand the importance that history may place on their contirbution to New Mexico and the United States.
Rating:
Summary: Focuses on one doomed unit from New Mexico the 200th Reg.
Review: Dorothy Cave has really done an excellent job of research and storytelling with this book. She was able to accuratly document the fate of many of the soildiers that were mobilized in 1940 in New Mexico. I hope that Dorothy Cave will write a second book on the 200th and include more of the research material that would mean so much to the relatives and decendents of the warriers of the 200th Regiment. Since I was born in Silver City NM and am now a member of the New Mexico National Guard, I request that all new Officers assigned to my Battalion to read Beyond Courage so that they may better understand the importance that history may place on their contirbution to New Mexico and the United States.
Rating:
Summary: American Heros display fine mettle amid gruesome horror
Review: When I first moved to New Mexico in 1963, I became aware that many of the troops on the Bataan Death March came from New Mexico. They used to have an annual reunion here in Las Cruces, and I met a few of those men. This book is by a professor of history at Eastern New Mexico University, who is I think a relative of one of the men on the march. The book entails the experiences of the 200th and 515th Coast Artiliary units, which were based in New Mexico. I had always imagined that the worst part of their ordeal was the 60-mile forced march (and at war's end in 1945, I traversed that 60 miles in a jeep, a truly terrible ride in the Philippine heat and humidity). But far worse were the trips those heros made in the holds of enemy cargo vessels. They were put in the holds, so crowded that everyone had to stand, where the human urine and excrement simply dropped to the deck for everyone to stand in, and where people died standing up. The cruelty was worse than anyone could possibly imagine. These units were the first to fire on the Japs and the last to lay down their arms when surrender came. And you learn of the espionage these guys performed when doing their slave labor in the factories and the mines of Japan and Manchuria. Such labor, and the treatment forced on the prisoners, were in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, of which Japan was a signatory. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The author is a superb writer.
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