He Goes Before Them by Meredith Helsby

I am a huge fan of P.O.W. memoirs, so when my sister told me about this book, I knew I had to get my hands on it.

Meredith and Christine Helsby arrived as missionaries to China in 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th brought an abrupt end to their language study classes and marked the beginning of fifteen months of house arrest. Later they were transferred to the “Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center” in Shantung Province with their two-year old daughter, Sandra. Because they were civilians being guarded by civilians, they did not receive the brutal treatment so famously recounted in other P.O.W. memoirs. (Japanese soldiers reportedly had only disdain for Allied soldiers who were “cowardly” enough to surrender and treated them accordingly.) Though the Helsby’s captors were often gruff and unfair, the prisoners’ greatest depravations came from lack of good food and medical care.

At times the story is told from Meredith’s viewpoint and sometimes from Christine’s. They write winsomely of how the Lord brought them through many trials.

He Goes Before Them was fascinating to me on various levels. First, because the Helsbys were able to maintain a vibrant faith in the midst of tremendous adversity. Second, because they were imprisoned with Eric Liddell of “Chariots of Fire” fame. Christine writes of Liddell's godly influence on the young people in the camp and of the tragedy of his death (caused by a brain tumor) in Februrary of 1945:

Funerals in the Weihsien prison camp were common enough during those dreadful days, but there was no funeral like Eric’s. The wave of sorrow which swept over Weihsien was unbelievable. His was by far the biggest funeral held in the two and a half years of our stay in the camp. Impressive was the fact that not only the missionary community attended his funeral, but many others whose lives he so powerfully impacted. Among them were the usually cynical business people, city government administrators, and even prostitutes. His unassuming naturalness had given him rapport with everyone he met. 

The final reason I enjoyed it was because after the war, the Helsbys served in Taiwan and were good friends of my parents. Growing up I always thought of them as a sweet missionary couple, little dreaming of the tremendous suffering they had experienced. 

Blessings,

The Barbed-Wire University by Midge Gillie - Part Two

In last week's post I described G.I. ingenuity in prisoner of war camps. This week I want to focus on just one aspect of The Barbed-Wire University, the importance of the printed word.

Whereas European POWs could order books from home, it was not until March 1945 (after the war in Europe had ended!) that the British Red Cross even began planning to send books to the Far East. Book lovers had had to fend for themselves throughout the war. In some camps libraries were formed. The only requirement for membership was to contribute a book toward the stash. But prisoners were often forced to hand over their books to the censor shortly after capture.

The assortment of available books was eclectic to say the least. Fiction by A.J. Cronin, Daphne du Maurier and Richard Llewellyn were in demand, but bored men would read whatever they could get their hands on. Stephen Alexander remembers reading Gone with the Wind, War and Peace, The Musical Companion, Life of Samuel Johnson, some Dante, and The Oxford Book of English Verse. Childhood favorites such as Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, and Winnie the Pooh were in high demand as read-alouds: As they lay exhausted and starving in their makeshift huts, Alice's transportation to a world of shrinking bodies, summary executions and exotic creatures from which there appeared to be no escape, must have seemed less of a flight of fancy than their own transformation from guardians of one empire to slaves of another. (544)

Artist Ronald Searle held onto his precious books as long as possible, but when forced to march in temperatures of 105 degrees, he lightened his load by discarding his least favorites and by removing the covers of his most treasured volumes. In some Thai camps books were in such short supply that they were cut into pieces so that 12 men could be reading the book at the same time.

Those who loved books had to protect them from smokers who used every piece of available paper to make home-made cigarettes. Paper was so scarce that the chaplain had to give permission for them to use pages of the Bible for this purpose, "after they read it, of course." I found it fascinating that pages of the Bible went up in smoke before any pages containing recipes since food fantasies were everyone's favorite mental escape.

Also of interest is this article on How WWII Turned Soldiers into Bookworms.

Blessings,

The Barbed-Wire University by Midge Gillies - Part One

Many books about WII prisoner of war camps emphasize the tortures, deprivations, and hair-raising escape attempts; Midge Gillies offers a different aspect of POW life by highlighting the daily activities of the captured allies. What did they do when they weren't obsessed with surviving? Well, it turns out, quite a lot.

One Far East POW described their work as "soul-destroying, heart-breaking labor" for which they were paid ten cents a day. Survival was as much about finding mental release as physical endurance. In many detention camps the men turned towards books and classes to relieve their minds of their suffering. By learning new skills and uncovering talents, they stole back some of the months and years that the war had robbed them of. Study kept boredom and depression at bay and it offered a hope that the years in captivity would not be entirely wasted.

Author James Cavell wrote of his POW experience in WWII: "Changi became my university instead of my prison. Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life -- the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting." Amid the hundreds of skills that soldiers imparted to one another were sewing, Roman history, Arabic (and a dozen other languages), pig-farming, accounting, painting, chess, shorthand, and acting. (Denholm Elliot and Clive Dunn pursued acting careers after the war.)  POWs from many different backgrounds enriched each others' lives with their treasure troves of knowledge. 

Painting done in captivity by Terry Frost

Terry Frost had enjoyed art as a hobby before becoming a European POW. In camp he was invited to join a group of artists. Frost later described the camp as a 'university' where he found a pleasure in reading and listening to music and poetry. Painting portraits introduced him to men he might not otherwise have spent time with and who assumed that, because he could paint, he would enjoy other art forms. One man invited him to listen to Beethoven on a Red Cross gramophone. He went to poetry readings and all kinds of plays, and listened to different kinds of musical instruments. He heard (read out loud) books sent by the Red Cross, anything from the classics to an autobiography of Henry Ford. Frost absorbed geography through a map on the wall. All around him men were studying and it was impossible not to be sucked into the process. As he lay on his bunk he listened to someone reading Paradise Lost, while he tested a man in the bed behind him on his German verbs. In the background there was a constant sound of men gambling. (pp. 244-245)

It is important to remember the huge difference between the prisoners held by the Germans and those held by the Japanese. European POWs had access to books, letters from home and Red Cross parcels - and a one percent death rate. Some of them studied law, took exams in the mail and became lawyers after the war. Most POWs in the Far East had few books, letters and packages and twenty-five percent died from malnutrition and tropical diseases. It was a good thing that Gillies wrote of the European prisoners in the first section of the book because once she described the deprivations of the FEPOWs, the others' hardships appeared trivial in comparison.

A fascinating book!

Blessings, 

Miracle on the River Kwai by Ernest Gordon

Of the twenty P.O.W. memoirs that I've read, Ernest Gordon's Miracle on the River Kwai is my favorite. Published in 1963 it recounts Gordon's three years in a Japanese concentration camp in Thailand.

I was drawn into the story by the splendid writing. Phrases like Age, sun and sea had made his face a thing of wrinkled splendor and Apathy and listlessness settled over Bapong Camp like a miasmic fog, made my heart sing. But I kept reading because of the mesmerizing stories of faith  being lived out in the harshest of circumstances. 

Gordon was a young Scotsman whose pre-war life included college studies and yacht racing. When WWII broke out, he became an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Captured after the fall of Singapore, he is taken to work on the Thailand/Burma Railroad. Japanese engineers calculated that the railroad would take 5 to 6 years to complete because of difficult terrain. But when they received permission to use "disposable" workers, they pushed the timeline to 18 months. The Allied prisoners were worked so hard that they lost all consciousness of time. Was it Tuesday the fourth or Friday the seventeenth? Who could say? And who would care? One gray day succeeded another - with no color, no variety, no humanity. Misery, despair and death were our constant companions. As conditions steadily worsened, as starvation, exhaustion and disease took an ever-increasing toll, the atmosphere in which we lived became poisoned by selfishness, hate and fear.

It was every man for himself until a miracle of grace occurred. Gordon had suffered from a number of diseases (diphtheria, beriberi, etc.) and had lost the use of his legs. A friend built him a little shack and arranged for him to leave the Death House (the hospital hut where men went to die). Another man, a quiet young Methodist named Dusty Miller, came daily to bathe and feed him. Dusty also massaged his legs and squeezed out the pus-filled ulcers. As Gordon "came back to life," a general regeneration was going on in the camp. Several men gave their lives to save others. Stories of their self-sacrifice began to outweigh tales of Japanese cruelty.

Gordon's view of Christianity had been that it extracted the bubbles from the champagne of life, leaving it insipid, flat and tasteless. While still recovering from his illnesses, he was asked to lead a religion class. Is there meaning in life? Does faith in Christ make any difference? He did not have the answers but he had a New Testament, which he read and discussed with the men.

He goes on to describe how the atmosphere in the camp changed as the men began to serve one another. The filthiest job in the camp was to collect the used ulcer rags, scrape them clean of pus, boil them and return them for future use. After a man named Dodger came to faith, he took on the job with joy. The last portion of the novel shows the transforming power of God's love in mens' hearts. A very inspiring read.

P.S. Gordon does not describe the torture and hardship in as much detail as other P.O.W. memoirs so this might be a good book for the squeamish. Also, because I loved the book so much I sat through the profanity-laden two hour movie version. (The book title was changed to To End All Wars to accommodate the 2001 film.)  It added lots of people and horrific situations that were not in the book, and isn't nearly as eloquent or satisfying.

Blessings,

The Scarlet and the Black by J.P. Gallagher

A statue of Father O'Flaherty in his hometown of Killarney

A few months ago I reviewed the movie, The Scarlet and the Black, and now that I've read the book, I'm not sure which one I like better.

Both the book and film show the dangerous games played to outwit the Germans as they hunted for escaped POWs. The film was very true to the book (except when it was necessary to combine several characters into one person) and covered all the main incidents. The book, on the other hand, fleshed out the characters, added a few extra hair-raising events, and ended differently. Whereas the book highlighted hundreds of acts of kindness done by O'Flaherty at the war's end, the movie condensed them into one huge act of mercy. Frankly, I loved both endings.

The book does a better job of explaining why there were hundreds of POWs roaming around the Vatican and also explains why the Italians were so willing to look the other way when O'Flaherty and others hid them. Gallagher shows how O'Flaherty's audacity and trustfulness were balanced by the caution and discernment of the others in the rescue organization. His descriptions of the resourcefulness of butler John May from the English embassy had me chortling all the way through.

Get this title if you enjoy stories of heroism on the homefront.

The Righteous by Martin Gilbert

Martin Gilbert's The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust gives an account of the thousands of gentiles who helped the Jews during the Holocaust. Many of us know the names of the more famous rescuers (Schindler, Wallenberg, Corrie Ten Boom, etc.), but Gilbert highlights hundreds more.

He divides the book by countries, which makes for a fascinating study of how different areas in Europe reacted to the Nazi mandate to exterminate the Jews. Some caved in and turned in their Jewish poplulation while others (like Norway) resisted with all their might.

Gilbert writes that there are 19,000 documented "Righteous" but many thousands more whose names will never be known. In fact, for every Jew who was saved at least TEN people were involved either by directly helping or by looking the other way and not reporting them. After the war, one man, Konrade Latte, could name 50 people who had helped him survive. This was more than "doing a good deed" since helping a Jew was punishable by death. When a hiding place was discovered, those in hiding (as well as their host families) were brutally murdered.

By and large most of the rescuers were Christians, but not always. In some cases even anti-semites were hiding Jews as a protest against Nazi savagery. A few rescuers extorted money from their "guests" and turned them out when the money was gone. But most of the stories are about poor people who were willing to share the little they had with those in need. Huge numbers of Jews spent the war hiding in pits under barns and village houses, only coming out at night to get fresh air.

How could 450 pages of statistics and unpronouncable names (Wladyslaw Liszewski, for example) be so compelling? I have to admit that after awhile some of the stories started to run together, but, honestly, reading list after list of rescuers and rescued showed a magnitude of mercy that was staggering.

It was astounding to read that none of the Righteous thought that their actions were out of the ordinary. It was astounding that many were prepared to die for people they hardly knew. It was astounding that many parents handed their babies to complete strangers as they marched off to concentration camps with complete faith that their children would be taken care of. (One huge question in my mind was, "What happened to all those parentless children after the war?")

If you are interested in WWII and also in this fascinating slice of Holocaust history, I recommend this book.

Stay tuned because I'll be giving it away to one of my readers when I head to the U.S. this summer.

Some Survived by Manny Lawton

What is true heroism? On the battlefield it is when men put their lives on the line for the good of others. But what about off the battlefield? In Return From the River Kwai surviving the horrors of a Japanese internment camp during WWII constituted heroism. I don't want to undermine the courage and resilience of those men, but, as I said in my review, I am uneasy with heroism being equated with survival. (I wrote another book review on heroism off the battlefield here.)

Manny Lawton's Some Survived recounts many of the same events as Return From the River Kwai: the fall of the Philippines (spring of 1942), the Bataan Death March, the POW camps and the perilous journey to Japan on the "hell ships" (Dec 1944).

Lawton joined the army fresh out of college in 1940 and was stationed in the Philippines when the U.S. declared war on Japan. (The Philippines was attacked immediately after Pearl Harbor.) He and thousands of others marched the 91 miles to Camp O'Donnell. Of the 12,000 men who fought at Bataan, half would die "lonely, cruel, inglorious deaths"over the next six months (p. 37) Four thousand more would die on the death ships. The numbers are staggering. The conditions under which they lived and died are staggering. The fact that anyone could rise above the cruelty and show kindness is even more staggering.

Lawton tells of how it was "every man for himself" in the camps because they were all sick, starving, and dehydrated. Who had time or energy to think of anyone else? He remembers when he was so sick he could barely move. Tom was a barber who cut hair in trade for money or cigarettes, but this same man came over every evening and gave him a shave for nothing. That small act of decency helped restore Lawton's dignity. Another time when he and many others were severely ill with beriberi and couldn't sleep because of the pain, another POW, Warren Garwick, came in after a day of slave labor in the rice fields to massage the mens' legs and feet until they could fall asleep for a few hours.

Another time two men surrendered themselves to be tortured (confessing to a crime they didn't commit) so that the rest of the men would not have to suffer.

As John Toland wrote in the introduction: Captivity brought out the best and the worst. Some men remained indifferent to the fate of others; some gave their lives for their friends; some stole; some gave up food and fought for the rights of others. Many of those who survived did so because of their selfishness. Others, like Manny Lawton, survived because of faith in God, country and their fellow men...It's time we honored these unsung heroes who got no promotions or medals and who endured without losing their humanity.

That is the key. Remaining human enough to show compassion (rather than capitulating to mere animal instincts) made these men heroes to their fellow prisoners.

This is not a book for the faint of heart. It's a story of human depravity, barbarous cruelty, and desperate measures to stay alive. But because of its excellent writing, riveting stories and astonishing acts of kindness, Some Survived is one of my favorite WWII books.

Hell's Guest by Col. Glenn D. Frazier

Glenn Frazier enlisted in the army at 16, lying about his age to get away from problems at home.  When he was shipped to the Philippines in early 1941, it was considered a tropical paradise.  But after it was attacked by the Japanese on the day after Pearl Harbor, it would become the hell of the book’s title and Frazier would endure three and a half years of suffering and deprivation as a prisoner of war. General MacArthur had ordered the military to defend the Philippines at all costs, but after many months of illness and near starvation, General King was forced to surrender to the Japanese in April of 1942.  The soldiers, already weakened, were forced to march 60 miles to their prison camp.  Any who fell (and any who tried to help the fallen) were brutally murdered.  It is estimated that 10 to 20 thousand of the 70,000 soldiers died on the Bataan Death March.

In Hell's Guest, Frazier writes, By the second day, the reality of defeat had finally sunk into my mind.  While I walked it was time to take stock and think about the reality of being a prisoner of war.  Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the events of the past few days.  I was in a group of men marching in columns of four down a road that I had traveled so many times with big red flags flying on the front of my truck, having priority over the use of the road.  Everything or everyone had to yield to us as we drove the big trucks to the front lines.  Then I realized there were no more front lines, no more fighting for our country.  Now I was fighting for my own life. (p. 77)

As I looked around at all the bodies along the road, the sight made me realize that this was going to be another kind of killing field, totally unlike that of battle.  This time we were like sitting ducks, stripped of our honor, our guns, and most of all, our ability to defend ourselves against such acts of horror. (78)

Things did not improve at Camp O’Donnell where Frazier recounts that they buried up to 200 Allied soldiers per day.  Not only did he face the cruelty of his guards, but he faced the challenge of fellow prisoners who betrayed each other in their desperation to survive. 

After the war Frazier went through thirty years of a different kind of hell, one of broken marriages, drunkenness, bitterness and rage.  He finally found peace when, with God’s help, he was able to forgive his Japanese captors.

Why does a tea-sipping, literature-lover like me read stuff like this?!  Because in the face of mouth-gaping cruelty, comes the equally astonishing will to live and survive.  Add to that the theme of redemption, and you’ve got a powerful story.

Footnote: If I had read this before reading Return From the River Kwai, I would have better understood the behavior of the POWs when they were finally free.

WWII Books from PaperBackSwap

I'm halfway through four different books so I don't have a post this week.  Still, I thought I'd mention how delighted I am with some recent acquisitions from PaperBackSwap.  I enjoy WWII history and was happy to receive these titles:

Escape from Warsaw - teen fiction
The Brass Ring by Mauldin - Mauldin was WWII's greatest cartoonist
The World War II Bookshelf- highlights 50 essential books about the war
Corregidor - written by Sergeant Ben Waldron about his experiences as a P.O.W.
The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust - about Gentiles who risked their lives to help Jews
When Hollywood Ruled the Skies - Aviation film classics of WWII

Nice variety, don't you think? Now, if I could only finish my other books so I can get to these!
.

More on General W. E. Brougher

In an earlier post I mentioned that I was intrigued by General W.E. Brougher who had written of his internment in a Japanese P.O.W. camp. He was described as someone whose “looks, personality, and ways made him one of the most attractive and interesting men at Fort McKinley. Handsome – indeed, dashing – in facial features, he was short but well-built. Since college days he had been interested in creative writing, and he published poems and stories in numerous periodicals during the years between world wars. He also possessed a wide knowledge of classical literature…. A polished orator and a conversationalist with a lively sense of humor, he became an active leader in civic and social affairs wherever he was stationed. He was accomplished in several sports and was also a devout Christian who displayed an unusual concern for his men’s welfare.”

In April of 1945 he wrote: Just think! Three years ago today [we were captured]! If we had known it was going to be three years, could we have faced it? Next to the ability to forget, perhaps the most beneficent provision of Providence for our protection is lack of foresight. If we could not forget it or if we could foresee too much, we would go crazy.

His poem, “A Rusting Sword”, is a prayer expressing his frustration at wasting away as a prisoner. Here is the last stanza:

How long, Oh Lord, how long? While ships delay

My precious years round out, my powers decay.

My birthright lost, by ruthless time’s decree,

To lads who learned their alphabet from me!

A rusting sword upon a garbage heap,

God give me grace to smile when I would weep.

Eternal Justice! Judge of right and wrong!

Does Thou still live? How long, Oh Lord, how long?

In addition to his courage and faith, I was fascinated by his persistence in reading and writing under dire circumstances. He read Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Thoreau, Charles Darwin, Hugh Walpole, Robert Louis Stevenson, Agatha Christie, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Aldous Huxley, among others. Books he enjoyed were Rob Roy, Horatio Hornblower, and Plutarch’s Lives, along with biographies and plays. His favorite novel was Hervey Allen’s The Forest and the Fort (New York Times Best Seller in 1943) which I've never heard of, but will look into. Brougher’s book of short stories, Baggy Pants, is next on my list of books to order.

South to Bataan, North to Mukden by W. E. Brougher

In spite of its goofy title and lack of plotline, South to Bataan, North to Mukden will stand out as one of my favorites of the year. It is the story of General William Edward Brougher and his four years of captivity during WWII. Diaries were not allowed in the prison camps, but Brougher wrote on thin notebooks that he rolled up and hid inside bamboo poles. All but one notebook survived the war.

Brougher was stationed in the Philippines when it fell to the Japanese in April of 1942. He and hundreds of other officers were herded into camps in what he called, “the largest gathering of brass in the history of the war in the Pacific.” (p. 47) For years they suffered from harsh treatment, near starvation, and illness, but the diaries recount their will to endure. Brougher loved to read and to write and used his hobbies as a means of survival. I was touched by the poignancy of many of his diary entries.

July 11, 1943: Issue of one banana each! I was overcome with emotion at the magnanimity of our hosts. Bones in the soup for supper. Potato vines also. They get the potatoes we get the vines. They get the meat, we get the bones! I was “filled” with emotion, but “empty” otherwise.

July 15, 1943: Almost always I find myself under the urge to write – to express in verse or at least in some form to get down on paper some of the sensations and reactions to experiences here in prison camp. A year ago I was well in stride, keeping at it constantly and making some headway… But the time came when I was so reduced in strength and energy through want of nourishing food, our time was taken up with morning and afternoon work on the “farm”, and my feelings were adversely affected by constant abuse of the guards that my feeble sources of inspiration dried up….Also, as time went on, I found it more important to make a good patch on my meager clothing than to make a poem. My patches on my threadbare pants and my little garden patch from which I materially supplemented my pathetically inadequate food issue were my poems of this period.

Oct 15, 1943: Music outside this evening – very nice. Thought a lot of my sweet little wife and how we are going to enjoy life when this misery is over. It shall be one of my principal concerns to discover ways to enjoy the remainder of our lives to the maximum.

I loved how Brougher’s optimism shines through many a hardship: Arrived at this camp one year ago today. Well, I didn’t know that I would still be here on June 8, 1944 – but here I am. And I am better off in many ways than a year ago. In the first place, I have the year behind me instead of ahead of me. And I am in much better physical and mental condition. Have news and pictures of my family and very favorable war news…

I have more thoughts on General Brougher, but will reserve them for a future post. I highly recommend this to WWII history buffs and to those who love a good human interest story.

The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams

As I started to read this WWII escape story, it seemed too vivid to be “made up”. A little research revealed that The Wooden Horse was, indeed, a novelized version of true events. Eric Williams was an Englishman in the Royal Air Force when he was shot down over Germany at the beginning of the war. The wooden horse in the title refers to a contraption the prisoners used to cover up an escape tunnel they were digging. As men dug in the tunnel, other men vaulted over the “horse," pretending to be doing daily exercises.

All the POW stories I’ve read this past year took place in Japanese concentration camps where prisoners were treated quite harshly. It took a bit of mental adjustment to picture the German camps where the prisoners had a very different lifestyle. Sometimes I felt I was experiencing a PG 13 version of “Hogan’s Heroes” (for language and tense situations).

This is a book that keeps you on the edge of your seat.  At times Wooden Horse got my heart to racing so much that I had to put it down and take a break. At other times I skipped over the thrilling details entirely.  Because I never knew what was going to happen next and because I was expending so much emotional energy on the book, I made a rash decision and peeked at the ending. Call me a coward, but it was the only way I could finish it.

A must for fans of WWII literature.  The movie is quite good too.

We Band of Angels - Part Two

Earlier this year I read Return from the River Kwai and was troubled by its definition of heroism as “survival”. We Band of Angels reflects a truer definition of the word since it depicts people working under horrendous circumstances and yet giving selflessly of their time and energies.  Gleaning from government documents, diaries, letters and first hand interviews, Norman tells the amazing tale of military nurses who were serving in the Pacific to get away from their hum-drum lives in the U.S and how they got much more than they bargained for.

Before their actual capture the nurses were running a hospital under jungle trees. “The allies faced two enemies on Bataan: the Japanese with their bombs, bullets, and long bayonets, and a second adversary, more powerful and unforgiving than any army that has ever taken the field…. The effects of malaria, dysentery, dengue fever and half a dozen other conditions were aggravated by the growing problem of malnutrition.” (p. 50, 51)

General MacArthur had left Bataan for Australia in March of 1942. At the end of April and beginning of May he managed to get two small planes and a sub close enough to Bataan to evacuate a handful of the nurses.Fifty-four remained to face the Japanese on May 6 when surrender became inevitable.  The next three years were spent in a concentration camp in Manila. Here again, the nurses showed unbelievable courage as they cared for the sick and dying. Malnutrition, not bullets, was the chief cause of death now. The nurses themselves suffered terribly from beriberi and various tropical diseases.

“And the work was hard. It took all the women’s energy just to change a simple dressing or administer a standard treatment. Any exertion exhausted them, and before moving on to the next patient they would have to sit and rest their painfully swollen legs. But every day they reported for work. They worked because they were nurses, and the sick called them to duty. It was good work, honorable work, especially among the dying, where they were needed most. In a way the work sustained them, for it gave them something most of the others in the camp did not have – a mission, a reason to get up in the morning…” (p. 200)

The nurses interviewed for this book did not want to be called heroes. They claim they were “just doing their job”. But, I, for one, salute them for unusual courage and faithful service to their country throughout the war.  In addition to being a well-told story, this book contains photos, a helpful timeline and a thorough bibliography.

(Part One of this review is here.)

We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M. Norman

I love it when a non-fiction book is so fascinating that you can’t put it down. Such is the case with Elizabeth Norman’s We Band of Angels (subtitled: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese)

C.S. Lewis wrote of two elements in writing. The first is the words (Logos); the second is the craft of putting them together in a compelling way (Poema). I have found that World War Two books often have the words and facts straight, but lack compelling writing, That can hardly be said for this book because Norman has expertly woven her research and survivor interviews into a mesmerizing account of courage in the face of war-time atrocities.

On the same day that Pearl Harbor was bombed the Japanese navy also launched attacks on American naval and army bases on the Philippine Islands. Tens of thousands of soldiers were trapped on the peninsula of Baatan and the island of Corregidor. For months they obeyed Macarthur’s orders to “never surrender”. But by May of 1942, tropical diseases and lack of food had weakened the troops to such an extent that they were no longer able to resist enemy advances.

Knowing a little about the Bataan Death March and the thousands who were killed on that perilous trek, I was surprised to read that all 77 nurses who were captured survived their internment in POW camps. Because the Japanese had never seen women in army fatigues they couldn’t believe that they were on the bases for any other reason than to be “comfort girls” to the soldiers. Hence they were placed in civilian internment camps and not the deadly P.O.W. camps portrayed in films such as “Bridge Over The River Kwai”.

Several movies have tried to capture the saga of this book. My favorite is "So Proudly We Hail", but the nurses who survived Corregidor hated it for the way it romanticized and trivialized their loyal service to their country. Now that I’ve read the book I’ll have to re-watch the film and see what I think.

Part Two of this review is here.

Return from the River Kwai by Joan and Clay Blair, Jr.

A book does not have to be likeable to be worth reading. Return from the River Kwai bothered me a lot. But it made me think, and think, and think some more. As I’ve said before, I enjoy World War II history that emphasizes heroism, patriotism, courage, etc., but I don’t particularly like the gory battle details.

Return from the River Kwai is the story of two shiploads of POWs being sent to Japan for work detail. The Allies bomb the ships, not knowing they are carrying prisoners.  In the first part of the book many uninteresting facts are strung together (based on government reports?) to lead up to the main story. After the ships are torpedoed, eye-witness accounts are included in the narrative, which make the book absolutely riveting.

Most men jumped overboard without a thought to saving other lives. Many prisoners intentionally murdered their Japanese captors before jumping off the ships. Others murdered Japanese in the water as they were trying to climb aboard the rafts. A few rafts held both Japanese soldiers and POWs who held an uneasy truce. The westerners were hoping that if they were recaptured, they would receive mercy for treating their enemies with kindness. Only one man, Vic Duncan, seemed to have a thought for anybody else. He swung into action with a pre -planned evacuation scheme to get as many men out of his ship's hold as possible.

One of the two ships sank slowly enough for every man to escape. The other sank so quickly that many POW lives were lost. Drowning, dehydration, fear of sharks, madness, loss of hope and partial cannibalism were the prevailing (and horrific) themes of the next part of the book. Initially I was quick to judge the actions of the men. But then I realized that it would be normal after two and a half years of cruelty and deprivation to have a sharply-honed instinct for self-preservation. While this does not justify their actions, it does make them more understandable.

All the survivors were hailed as heroes which made me ponder what exactly makes someone a hero? On the one hand, surviving the horrors of a POW camp takes inordinate amounts of stamina and perseverance.  But on the other, were these men heroic when they spitefully murdered their Japanese guards before jumping ship, or when they fought each other for space on the rafts? Were they heroic when they got drunk at every port on their way home? Or when they stole food and bedding from the hotels and hospitals where they stayed during their trip back to England and Australia?

It is a tribute to the resilience of human nature that most of the survivors went on to live normal lives as lawyers, farmers, firemen, postmen, meat inspectors, or artists. Some men remained in the military for their careers.

8/11/12 postscript: Since reading this book I’ve read many other books about POWs and understand more clearly the behavior of the men in this account.