Written by James D. Hornfischer
Read by Robertson Dean
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

This engrossing WWII epic by Hornfischer (TheLast Stand of the Tin Can
Sailors) recounts the exploits of the Houston, mainstay of the skimpy
Allied fleet opposing the Japanese onslaught in the war's early days,
until her sinking in a desperate battle with overwhelming Japanese forces
in the Java Sea in 1942. This part of the story features a superb evocation
of naval combat as the harnessing of immense destructive forces—booming
eight-inch guns, plunging bombs, stealthy torpedoes—by the crew's frenzied
yet meticulous choreography. The narrative then shifts gears to follow
the Houston's several hundred survivors through Japanese POW camps in
Southeast Asia, focusing on the labor camps on the Burma-Thailand railway
(glamorized in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai). Shorn of their weapons
and confronting starvation, disease and the brutality of Japanese guards,
the prisoners cultivated a different kind of heroism, where survival
hung on the ability to absorb hardship and humiliation without complaint,
and the pilfering of an egg or a can of condensed milk for the dying
was the ultimate act of courage. The result is a gripping, well-told
memorial to Greatest Generation martyrdom.