This well written account of a horrendous episode in military history uses one survivor, Ben (Bud) Steele as a focal point. But it also includes personal accounts of others who fought the doomed Battle of Bataan to be taken prisoner in the Philippines in 1942 and forced on a 60+ mile walk with 80,000 other U.S. and Filipino troops. During the march the men were given little food and water, were beaten, tortured, bayoneted, and beheaded. About 3,000 died on the march with nearly 28,000 dying at the Camp O'Donnell prison camp. Many of the prisoners died of malnutrition, dysentery, malaria, beriberi, made worse by the lack of food, medicine, water, forced labor, and thr brutality of their captors. Ben Steele nearly died of malaria while a prisoner. When the Allies began to retake the Philippines, many who still survived were put on "death ships" that transported them to Japan to work in mines not far from where the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Once the survivors were freed, the book focuses again on Ben Steele who went on to be an artist and professor of art in his home state of Montana. The little bit I knew of what occurred was based solely on movies and other sources. The one relative I had who survived the march and POW time never spoke of it which seems to be the way most coped with it.
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