Reviews for From Bataan to Safety: The Rescue of 104 American Soldiers in the Philippines

The average rating for From Bataan to Safety: The Rescue of 104 American Soldiers in the Philippines based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-07 00:00:00 Jung Jin Hyuk Jung A unique and fascinating first-hand look at the life of a French prisoner on a British prison hulk ship, in the early 1800s, during the Napoleonic wars. A prison hulk is basically an old ship, that has all of it's masts and sailing apparatus removed and becomes just a big floating tub, chained together in a line, well off shore, as a way of cheaply confining and isolating prisoners. The copy I read included a well-researched forward and afterward that challenges some of the authenticity of what was published. Not so much that the incidents described never happened, but that they were "borrowed" from other published sources. Probably a lot easier to challenge and verify this now than back in the 1820s when it was first written. This, however, didn't factor into my enjoyment of the book. All in all it was an interesting inside tale of the day to day musings and scheming - which were both worse than, and not as bad as I had imagined. It's fascinating how people can adapt and thrive in almost any environment. An interesting piece of this story is that the author, a Louis Garneray is actually a successful painter who throughout the course of his imprisonment until his death produced many paintings and illustrations of the hulks, french navy, people, places, and is considered one of the premier sources of images of these type. The book included about a dozen of the illustrations. I'm a big fan of the Age of Sail and was looking for something from the French perspective, so this was enjoyable to me. But I don't believe it would hold that much appeal to the average reader.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-03-13 00:00:00 Stephen Kannankara I was not even aware the Nazis had occupied Norway in WWII (that far north??). This book tells the true story of a group of expatriate Norwegian commandos who sailed in a fishing boat from northern England to arctic Norway, with the aim of organizing and supplying the Norwegian resistance. They were betrayed soon after arrival; the Nazis ambushed them and only one man, Jan Baalsrud, survived (though wounded) and escaped. The book tells the story of his flight across Norway to exile in Sweden. Baalsrud suffered extreme exposure, survived an avalanche, had frostbite and snowblindness; but aided by a remarkable string of people who quietly risked their lives to aid his flight from the pursuing Nazis, he lived to tell a remarkable story.