Lots of brutal descriptions of Japanese POW camps, which were nasty. Kind of sets the scene with a terrible massacre at the beginning. Sides tries valiantly to work out why the Japanese treated POWs as they did, in a way he can square with the type of book he's writing, and I appreciated that.

Most of the book is actually about the camps and the Death March, which makes sense when it turns out that "one of the greatest rescue missions in history" is kind-of not-that-exciting. Yeah, I can see it was daring and a bit precarious, but it doesn't rally carry the book. So instead, the appalling treatment of prisoners and the trials they went through just to survive cut in and out of Lt Colonel Mucci and his chaps rambling through the jungle and trying to be quiet.

Sides' writing tends to be a bit turgid, but really the big problem with the book is the insistence that it's about the rescue, causing the narrative to jump chapter-to-chapter from details of the internment to the Rangers and back again in what feels like a really disruptive way.