Corregidor The End of the Line Author:Eric Morris Corregidor was the twentieth-century American Alamo. — This island fortress in the Phillippines was the place to which General MacArthur's troops retreated after the first surrender ever of an American army in the field, on the Bataan peninsula. — In the tradition of Cornelius Ryan, Eric Morris, a writer who teaches at the British Military Aca... more »demy at Sandhurst, has reconstructed, through first-hand research and interviews, the moment-by-moment actions by which an inadequately prepared army of Americans and Filipinos -- lied to by Washington -- were humiliated and defeated by the triumphant Japanese invaders.
Before Pearl Harbor, American civilians and servicemen in the Philippines led an easy, colonial life not unlike the British in India. Within hours of Pearl Harbor, they were under attack, bewildered, hopeful, confused, and ultimately in despair. Yet the story of how that wasted, largely untrained, and poorly equipped American army fought back and what really happened during the defense of Corregidor has never been told from first-hand sources in such vivid detail. The heroes are given their due. The blundering villains are displayed for all the world to see.
Through the eyes of the men in the field and the gun pits, the nurses and doctors in the jungle and tunnel hospitals, the American military personnel who were shuffled off like slaves on what became known as the Death March, and the civilians in the internment camps, Eric Morris gives us history of the most intense kind, as we view it in progress.
Each event and battle is brilliantly and clearly described, as is the men's increasing despair as they realize that, no matter what President Roosevelt has told the press, they are being sacrificed and abandoned to their fate while the United States devotes its full energies to the war in Europe.« less