Ghost Soldiers

Archival Summary & Scope

National Bestseller *Ghost Soldiers* by Hampton Sides (author of *Blood and Thunder*) is hailed by *Esquire* as "the greatest World War II story never told." This enthralling account vividly recreates the harrowing January 1945 mission to rescue the last survivors of the Bataan Death March. Facing imminent massacre, 513 POWs languished in a hellish Philippine camp when 121 elite U.S. troops undertook a desperate thirty-mile march behind enemy lines. Sides delivers a minute-by-minute narration of the daring raid, intertwined with intimate portraits of the prisoners who defied starvation, tropical diseases, and torture, banding together in an extraordinary display of human endurance. A testament to bravery and self-sacrifice, this poignant history captures a remarkable act of courage under the most trying conditions.