9781422277188

L ieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci crouches low in a ditch just 30 yards from the main gate of the Cabanatuan (pronounced “ka-ba-na-TWAN”) detention camp in the Philippines. He checks his watch. The time: 7:30  pm . Any second now, the fighting will begin. It is January 30, 1945. In what will turn out to be the final year of World War II, the tide has turned in the battle in the Pacific. The US-led Allied forces have the Japanese on the run. The enemy forces are retreating fast, about to be driven out of the Philippines by General Douglas MacArthur and his troops. But before the Japanese go, they are hell-bent on leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. So Mucci and his Sixth Battalion of US Army Rang- ers have been assigned the most important task of their lives. They are to ambush the camp at Cabanatuan and liberate the men held captive there. Their mission: get all 500-plus prisoners of war (POWs) out alive. Mucci nervously looks at his watch: 7:35. Why haven’t the Rangers who have snuck around to the back gate fired the first shot yet? That was the M ission B riefing

Words To Understand Allied in the context of World War II, the side on which the United States fought, which also included Great Britain, France, Russia, and others liberate to set free

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