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The hopeless yet determined resistance of American and Filipino forces against the Japanese invasion has made Bataan and Corregidor symbols of pride, but Bataan has a notorious darker side. After the U.S.-Filipino remnants surrendered to a far stronger force, they unwittingly placed themselves at the mercy of a foe who considered itself unimpaired by the Geneva Convention. The already ill and hungry survivors, including many wounded, were forced to march at gunpoint many miles to a harsh and oppressive POW c& many were murdered or died on the way in a nightmare of wanton cruelty that has made the term "Death March" synonymous with the Bataan peninsula. Among the prisoners was army pilot William E. Dyess. With a few others, Dyess escaped from his POW camp and was among the very first to bring reports of the horrors back to a shocked United States. His story galvanized the nation and remains one of the most powerful personal narratives of American fighting men. Stanley L. Falk provides a scene-setting introduction for this Bison Books edition. William E. Dyess was born in Albany, Texas. As a young army air forces pilot he was shipped to Manila in the spring of 1941. Shortly after his escape and return to the United States, Colonel Dyess was killed while testing a new airplane. He did not survive long enough to learn that he had been awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor.
[Illustrated with over 30 photos of the author, his unit, escape, his kit etc.] As General MacArthur sailed away from the Philippines vowing to return, he left behind him many American soldiers that had been swept up by the victorious Japanese tide of invasion. One such man was Lt.-Colonel William Edwin ‘Ed’ Dyess, he and his unit of the 21st Pursuit squadron flew their obsolete P-40 Warhawks against the superior Japanese fighters until no more planes remained. Undaunted he fought on as an infantryman before his eventual capture by the Japanese his deeds of selfless bravery were legendary, including giving his own plane to a fellow aviator so he could fly to safety. Dyess and his brave men deserved a better fate than that which awaited them at the hands of their Japanese captors on the infamous Bataan Death March. Driven north from Bataan, the American and Philippino prisoners were beaten, starved and prodded at the tip of the bayonet toward prison camps that had been callously unprovided with the basic means of existence. In the only successful mass prison escape, Dyess along with his men broke out of their prison camp and made contact with resistance groups. After a time waging further Guerilla operations, Dyess and two other American servicemen were evacuated by submarine to Australia. As Dyess recuperated the American Government knowing the effect that the truth of the atrocities committed by the Japanese would galvanize public opinion allowed the release of his story via the Chicago Tribune. The story created a huge storm of outrage directed at the Japanese and of respect and admiration for Dyess and his fellow soldiers who had endured so much on their behalf. Dyess returned to active service as soon as was possible but tragically died in an airplane accident in 1943, a hero to his men and country. A tragically vivid and gruelling account of one of the most heroic escape stories yet told.
This major new work about World War II exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate. "Tears in the Darkness" makes clear, with great literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides.
William Edwin "Ed" Dyess (August 9, 1916 - December 22, 1943) was an officer of the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He was captured after the Allied loss at the Battle of Bataan and endured the subsequent Bataan Death March. After a year in captivity, he escaped and spent three months on the run before being evacuated from the Philippines by a U.S. submarine. Once back in the U.S., he recounted the story of his capture and imprisonment, providing the first widely published eye-witness account of the brutality of the Death March. He returned to duty in the Army Air Forces but was killed in a training accident months later.
Captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan, Lester I. Tenney was one of the very few who would survive the legendary Death March and three and a half years in Japanese prison camps. With an understanding of human nature, a sense of humor, sharp thinking, and fierce determination, Tenney endured the rest of the war as a slave laborer in Japanese prison camps. My Hitch in Hell is an inspiring survivor’s epic about the triumph of human will despite unimaginable suffering. This edition features a new introduction and epilogue by the author. Purchase the audio edition.
With Dear Daughters, Susie Davis creates a bridge between two groups of women–dear daughters and spiritual mamas. Dear daughters are young women in search of spiritual guidance and spiritual mamas are women just a little further down the road with age-old wisdom to share. Each group has valuable insight for the other and the hope is that the reader will invite someone to come alongside them, pore over the included letters together, and pass along wisdom and advice that will make both lives more beautiful, wherever they are in their God story. This book, ideal for a gift, is a casebound hardcover with ribbon.
From a small-town football star to walking on and playing four remarkable seasons under the legendary "Bear" Bryant at Alabama; returning home only to get involved in the drug culture and becoming a meth addict; cooking the drug; painting at Times Square Church in New York City; and eventually carrying out God's word. New Set of Downs takes us through Dyess' glory years on the gridiron, as well as many dark locations, including a warehouse in Atlanta where he carried a large gun to protect himself during a drug deal. A dozen years later, Dyess was actually saved by people from ironically the Auburn/Opelika area, home of his most bitter rival from the gridiron. Just a country boy from South Alabama, he was given life-restoring advice from as far away as New York City, eventually returning home to face the legal music. It was capped off by a full pardon from the board of the Alabama Pardon and Paroles Department. Today, Dyess speaks of his unrelenting faith to high schools, church groups and more, and he is enjoying life as an assistant football coach at his high school alma mater.
Includes The Prisoners Of War In Japanese Hands During World War Two pack with 130 photos, plans and photos. In Give Us This Day a young Oklahoman, a survivor of Bataan, reveals the terrible truth about a little-known aspect of the Pacific war as he experienced it from the beginning in the Philippines. He was a captive of the Japanese for more than three years; he knew one after another all the torments of confinement in conditions of primitive barbarism. True though his story is, it almost defies belief. With touching simplicity he recounts the stark and shocking details of one of the most shameful features of that war — the treatment of American soldiers who fell into the hands of the Japanese. At first Stewart hated his captors, but in the end hatred gave place to a dawning comprehension that the Japanese were as different from us as the men of Genghis Khan. “It is one of the most harrowing and debilitating chronicles that I have read. . . . He describes the ordeal brilliantly; he harbors no resentments apparently, and he has emerged from an inferno of bestiality with utter serenity.” — Maxwell Geismar, Saturday Review “An impressive and moving book.” — David Dempsey, New York Times “His is no ordinary prisoner-of-war story; better written than most, it contains no tales of swashbuckling defiance. . . . The force of this book is its testimony to the indomitable strength of the human spirit.” — Manchester Guardian “The plain narrative of this story would by itself have been fascinating, but this book is far more than a story, it is a work of art.” — André Siegfried, Academie Francaise “Sidney Stewart’s composed narrative is one of the most noble documents ever penned by a prisoner of war. The companions he writes about remained men to the end, until at last only one man remained; he survived to write this unforgettable, this magnificent story.” — George Slocombe, New York Herald Tribune [Paris]
