A naive young man anxious to prove himself. A mother determined to protect him from a world at war. A government running short of manpower. And an implacable enemy committed to fighting to the death. What actually happens to this sheltered youth when he is sent to war on the other side of the world?
This tale is a true-fiction story about a typical draftee inducted into the U.S. Army in 1944. Our central character, an aspiring musician, finds himself instead serving in a front-line rifle company in the Philippines as the American forces struggle to take back the islands from the Japanese empire. The story follows his journey through the cataclysm and chronicles the changes he undergoes, for they will define him for the rest of his life. It is a historically-accurate Everyman story which leaves the reader asking, "How well would I have done in such a situation?"
Jim Griffin's story is painstakingly researched from his personal journals and anecdotes, government documents, combat reports, press reports, audio recordings, and other sources. The period's cultural themes are woven into a tapestry of context, providing a lush background for the compelling narrative of a journey into hell and back.
An entire generation of men experienced a version of this trauma. The following generation knew that their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and friends had undergone something, but often had no idea what, precisely, it had been. The author is no exception, assuming blithely that what Dad had experienced was not really that bad.
He could not have been more wrong.
The documents and stories, when reconciled, revealed an unimaginable degree of horror never shown on Hogan's Heroes. The rosy impressions of the uninformed never scratched the surface of the truth. The heroism of that conflict was undeniable, but it was not clean. It was messy and brutal. Nothing less could overcome the determined enemies arrayed against the Allies. But that brutality also took a massive toll on the souls of the men called upon to do the fighting.
Unsung takes a frank look at these stressors and their psychological impact on the men doing the ugly work on the ground. Some snapped, some became callous, some became damaged, some managed to cope. And many, many never came home. But ultimately this is a story of redemption. Let's hear their stories, told again, told for the first time in a lifetime, and understand. After all, the same stories are experienced again and again with each generation of warriors.