Fate of the generals : MacArthur, Wainwright, and the epic battle for the Philippines
MacArthur, Wainwright, and the epic battle for the Philippines The fate of the generals
Jonathan Horn
- First Scribner hardcover edition.
- New York Scribner 2025
- xi, 427 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-405) and index.
Paths to honor -- Fatherland -- The call of history -- First steps to a last stand -- Tunnel view -- Battling bastards -- The trough -- A dreadful step -- Down under -- Honor of another kind -- Bypass -- Solitaire -- The return -- The other return -- When men have to die.
"For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese. In The Fate of the Generals, bestselling author Jonathan Horn brings together the story of two men who won the same medal but found honor on very different paths. MacArthur's journey would require a daring escape with his wife and young child to Australia and then years of fighting over the thousands of miles needed to make it back to the Philippines, where he would fulfill his famous vow only to see the city he called home burn. Wainwright's journey would take him from the Philippines to Taiwan and Manchuria as his captors tortured him in prisons and left him to wonder whether his countrymen would ever understand the choice he had made to surrender for the sake of his men. A story of war made personal based on meticulous research into letters and diaries including boxes of previously unexplored papers, The Fate of the Generals is a vivid account that raises timely questions about how we define honor and how we choose our heroes, and is destined to become a classic of World War II history"--
9781668010075 1668010070
2024051725
MacArthur, Douglas 1880-1964. Wainwright, Jonathan Mayhew 1883-1953.
United States. Army --Officers--Biography. Allied Forces. South West Pacific Area.
World War--Campaigns--Philippines.--1939-1945 World War--United States.--1939-1945 Generals--United States--Biography.