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Loading... The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacificby James Campbell
  
None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) davidconner | May 10, 2023 |  The leadership of the armies was groping to find a solution and under tremendous opposition within their own sides. A hell of a way to fight a war. The author is clear that his task was to tell a specific story, not the whole battle or campaign. He does this well. The soldiers who carried this fight to the end deserve the highest regard. War is ugly and the war in this corner of the world, particularly so. (  ) Whiskey3pa | Feb 9, 2021 | General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Forces, fresh from having been run out of the Philippines, is unflatteringly portrayed as more of a master of publicity than a master of war and tactics. ( ) Hagelstein | Jan 22, 2019 | - The details provided of the wounded and the fighting are graphic and not for the faint of heart. - The presentation of MacArthur is not an overly positive one as it tars the war hero, explaining some of the 'fictions' MacArthur wrote and said about the war effort. This didn't surprise me - I had refused to believe he was the amazing leader that he was painted to be - but I was still horrified to learn that he made sweeping statements without even setting foot on the battlefield, AND that his wife and child travelled with him in the Pacific theater during WWII while he was overseeing activities. He took his family into the war zone with him. Good Grief. - Great presentation of Papua New Guinea, its population, their customs, history and geography which was the real reason I decided to listen to this audiobook as I usually don't read war books of this nature. Some cringe-worthy mentions - like the cannibalism bit and the fact that a wife is shut up in her hut with the dead body of her husband were rather unsettling to read about. Overall, a well presented, intimate examination of a battle between the Japanese and Allied forces that really reminded me just how global the battles of WWII were, touching corners of the world that do not get the same mention or importance in the history books as the battles that were fought in Europe and the Northern Pacific regions receive. (  ) lkernagh | Aug 2, 2015 | James Campbell does an excellent job of recounting the terrifying battle, striking a good early balance between MacArthur's overall strategy and the experience of the men on the ground - American, Australian, and even Japanese. He effectively points out the folly of generals who "fight" far from the actual fighting (and then take the credit), as MacArthur blamed the National Guardsmen for failing to quickly defeat their enemy without knowing the true conditions or even visiting the island. Told with frequent quotes from letters and journals (Japanese soldiers, too), Campbell puts a very human face on the war, and I couldn't help but wonder at the madness of it all. He regularly quotes from Army surgeon Simon Warmenhoven's letters to home, and one to a young daughter is especially touching. For readers who want a real whiff of jungle battle, this is an excellent account that reads as easily as a novel and makes you feel like you've been there in the mud with bullets tearing up the foliage all around you. I listened to the audio version, which is read extremely well by Stephen Hoye. (  )2  J.Green | Aug 26, 2014 | no reviews | add a review
Awards
Lying due north of Australia, New Guinea is among the world's largest islands. In 1942, when World War II exploded onto its shores, it was an inhospitable, cursorily mapped, disease-ridden land of dense jungle, towering mountain peaks, deep valleys, and fetid swamps. Coveted by the Japanese for its strategic position, New Guinea became the site of one of the South Pacific's most savage campaigns. Despite their lack of jungle training, the 32nd Division's Ghost Mountain Boys were assigned the most grueling mission of the entire Pacific campaign: to march 130 miles over the rugged Owen Stanley Mountains and to protect the right flank of the Australian army as they fought to push the Japanese back to the village of Buna on New Guinea's north coast.Comprised of National Guardsmen from Michigan and Wisconsin, reserve officers, and draftees from across the country, the 32nd Division lacked more than training-they were without even the basics necessary for survival. The men were not issued the specialized clothing that later became standard issue for soldiers fighting in the South Pacific; they fought in hastily dyed combat fatigues that bled in the intense humidity and left them with festering sores. They waded through brush and vines without the aid of machetes. They did not have insect repellent. Without waterproof containers, their matches were useless, and the quinine and vitamin pills they carried, as well as salt and chlorination tablets, crumbled in their pockets. Exhausted and pushed to the brink of human endurance, the Ghost Mountain Boys fell victim to malnutrition and disease. Forty-two days after they set out, they arrived two miles south of Buna, nearly shattered by the experience.Arrival in Buna provided no respite. The 32nd Division was ordered to launch an immediate assault on the Japanese position. After two months of furious-sometimes hand-to-hand-combat, the decimated division finally achieved victory. The ferocity of the struggle for Buna was summed up in Time magazine on December 28, 1942, three weeks before the Japanese army was defeated: "Nowhere in the world today are American soldiers engaged in fighting so desperate, so merciless, so bitter, or so bloody."Reminiscent of classics like Band of Brothers and The Things They Carried, this harrowing portrait of a largely overlooked campaign is part war diary, part extreme adventure tale, and-through letters, journals, and interviews-part biography of a group of men who fought to survive in an environment every bit as fierce as the enemy they faced. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)940.54History & geography History of Europe History of Europe 1918- Military History Of World War IILC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.81)
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