On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected troops from the elite U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March 30-miles in an attempt to rescue 513 American & British POWs who had spent 3-years in a hellish camp near the city of Cabanatuan. The prisoners included the last survivors of the Bataan Death March left in the camp & their extraordinary will to live might soon count for nothing—elsewhere in the Philippines, the Japanese Army had already executed American prisoners as it retreated from the advancing U.S. Army. As the Rangers moved through enemy-occupied territory, they learned that Cabanatuan had become a major point for the Japanese retreat & instead of facing the few dozen prison guards, they could possibly confront as many as 8,000 battle-hardened enemy troops. Hampton Sides’s vivid minute-by-minute narration of the raid & his chronicle of the prisoners’ wrenching experiences are masterful. RLTW!