Ghost Soldiers Essay

Words: 661
Pages: 3

"Ghost Soldiers" by Hampton Sides was a phenomenal novel. Right from the beginning, I knew that I was going to enjoy this book. I’ve always been a fan of war stories, because of their true depiction of what war is actually like. War is not like it is in the movies, it’s a terrible thing, and not something that should be taken light-heartedly. Ghost Soldiers clearly showed that to me, even in the book they expressed their dissatisfaction for war by stating, “These men suffered enough for a hundred lifetimes, and no one in this country should be allowed to forget it.” The book opened up in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during WWII, where US soldiers worked day in and out, or else they would be brutally murdered. As I was reading the introduction, …show more content…
In fact, Colonel Henry Mucci stated, “You have to be ready to die for this mission, it's a one way trip.” Mucci only accepted volunteers for this raid, as he only wanted people that would take a bullet to save a fellow soldier. It takes a lot of courage to die for a cause, and these men knew what they were getting themselves into before they made the hike through the forests of the Philippines. It’s hard to understand why a soldier would die for a country in which the majority of people don’t even realize what they sacrifice. One thing was exponentially good at, was going into descriptive detail of what was taking place. I remember imagining the battle field thanks to all the specific details the author threw into the text, such as the grenades falling, running out of ammo, and even being pinned down inside a bunker taking motors from thousands of yards away. Throughout their stay at Cabanatuan, US soldiers used their free time to listen to music or write poems. These are the exact same tactics that I use on a everyday basis, in the event that I am faced with stress. Humans often do similar things to relieve stress, although the soldiers at Cabanatuan were not treated like humans. Henry Giroux a cultural critic, feels exactly the same way in his paper named, The War on Terror. Giroux stated, "The basic rights of every human is thrown away once in