The Green Hell — J. Scott Payne

A gritty and gut-wrenching story of Midwestern unfortunates who drew the shortest stick of World War II. Told through the eyes of an infantry private, these men were the first U.S. Army division sent into combat. And they had the misfortune to be the spearhead of General Douglas MacArthur's first and inept offensive against the Japanese in New Guinea. Told they would face a push-over â€" a starving, sickened enemy -- the green 32nd Infantry Division found itself outnumbered and outgunned by veteran Japanese troops, adversaries of unparalleled tenacity quite at home and willing to die in New Guinea's impenetrable jungles and fetid malarial swamps. In the end, the 32nd logged more days of combat than any other American division.