RETREAT, HELL I I

As fiction -- rather than non-fiction (see Page 414 -- last issue) this seems somewhat less important, though nonetheless good reading. Perhaps the biggest feather in its cap to date is the fact that it passed so convincingly as fact. That it emerged as an authentic personal story of a fighting man. Viewed as fiction, one might quite naturally think of it as a ""three musketeers"" of Bataan, for in dialogue and narrative the moving story of the friendship of three marines makes the focal point of the story. Just as Signed with their Honour by James Aldridge made the Greek campaign intensely personal, so Retreat, Hell! does for the land-based struggle to hold against the onslaught of the enemy. William Camp, the author, is on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle. He has, quite evidently, soaked himself so thoroughly in the close-up details of the skirmishes, the jungle scouting parties, the beach head attacks and so on that he tells the story of his ""three musketeers"" against the background of action and makes it read like an authentic record. This is how they felt and thought and acted -- as well as this is what must have happened. We agree with the enthusiastic estimate of the quality of the story. We can think of no other fictional attack on the war front in the Pacific that has so far appeared to compete with it. The market wont be an easy one to find. The man in the armed services have enough to take without reading anything as real as this; the families of those men should read this if they would know what their men are meeting.