Escape from Davao
by John D. Lukacs
Simon & Shuster 2010
*Full Disclosure HERE
Imagine that you were a U.S. Marine serving in a remote part of the world, striving to defend local people and your country’s interests from a hostile, well equipped, and superior force of advancing enemies. Your country provides the most rudimentary supplies and armaments, as its focus is in another part of the world. Your fate is in the hands of a famous general who departs for his own safety.
How would you react? Would you lose faith in your country, your comrades, or yourself? Would you shrivel up and let death take over?
Assume that you and tens of thousands of your comrades are then marched through jungles for miles with constant abuse and no edible food. You watch thousands die. A prison camp continues the abuse and death.
How would you be feeling about your country and yourself now?
Let’s say that you never lost faith, escaped through swamps and jungles to get to safety, were transported home, and forbidden to discuss the plight of those left behind because “no one would believe you.” Your own government still had other priorities.
How would you feel if this was your son or daughter and you knew that they were forbidden to talk?
This is was the experience of tens of thousands of U.S. military men and women early in World War II in the Philippines, and their families back home. Escape from Davao is the story of the heroism of ten men who experienced all of these emotions and events. John Lukacs weaves the stories of these men, and the brave Filipinos who helped them along the way, into a riveting story that I read straight through.
Whether you enjoy stories of war and heroism, testaments to the strength of faith and fortitude, or fine writing, you will breeze through this easy and riveting read. Luckas writes with confidence and aplomb, shedding light on a story that has been lost over time.
Escape from Davao is a great story. Perhaps more importantly for a general audience of readers is that it has meaning for you and me today. We encounter hellacious circumstances in our lives. They may not be as outwardly intense as incarceration during war. Nonetheless, the trauma that we feel, the stress on our bodies and mind, and desire to escape are every bit as real. The question for each of us in such circumstances, is the same as faced my the men in Bataan – do we give in or do we overcome?
Put this winner on your reading list.
Warms, Cym
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John D. Lukacs
