Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides: April Book of the Month

[Beestie]

I finished it yesterday. I still think the parallel timeline thing was utterly maddening. While everything comes together in the end, its very confusing while one is reading it.

***SPOILER ALERT****

For example, Sides leads up to the raid and took us as far as the Rangers being in the grass 100 yards from the camp. Then, he starts another timeline to discuss when the Japs up and left the compound leaving all the food and resources to the prisoners. Too bad they didn't conduct the raid then, while the camp was unguarded - an irony that Sides never acknowledged. Its still unclear at what stage the raid was in during this time.

In the epilogue, Sides points out that Homma took a bullet by firing squad for the atrocities but fails to mention that the racist bastard who ran camp O'Donnell was allowed to walk in 1951 - a free man with the blood of thousands on his hands. The details are in one of the links I posted earlier.

Another thing that troubled me a little is the numbers. Sides starts out with the surrender of nearly 100,000 soldiers (including 40,000 Fillipinos). Sides ends with a raid freeing ±550 soldiers. Sides discusses attrition of several thousand during the march and several thousand more in camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan. I never got a sense of the fate of the other ±60,000 -80,000 POWs. Were there only ±550 (non-Fillipinos) left out of the original 100,000?

But, concerns aside, I really enjoyed the book and the story. A very good history lesson for me.