United States Army surgeon John H. Grindlay served in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II in 1941-1944. Drawing on his unpublished war diary and letters, this book sheds new light on the conduct of battlefield medicine in the tropics and provides a new perspective on such personalities as General Joseph W. Stilwell, the famed "Burma Surgeon" Dr. Gordon S. Seagrave, and Chiang Kai-shek. Stilwell's famous 1942 "walkout" retreat from Burma to India is covered, along with the 1943 Allied return to Burma to push the Japanese from the Ledo Road connecting northeast India to southwestern China.

WINNER OF THE GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY An engrossing, epic history of the US Army in the Pacific War, from the acclaimed author of The Dead and Those About to Die “This eloquent and powerful narrative is military history written the way it should be.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian "Out here, mention is seldom seen of the achievements of the Army ground troops," wrote one officer in the fall of 1943, "whereas the Marines are blown up to the skies." Even today, the Marines are celebrated as the victors of the Pacific, a reflection of a well-deserved reputation for valor. Yet the majority of fighting and dying in the war against Japan was done not by Marines but by unsung Army soldiers. John C. McManus, one of our most highly acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor—a rude awakening for a military woefully unprepared for war—to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower. At the pinnacle of this richly told story are the generals: Douglas MacArthur, a military autocrat driven by his dysfunctional lust for fame and power; Robert Eichelberger, perhaps the greatest commander in the theater yet consigned to obscurity by MacArthur's jealousy; "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, a prickly soldier miscast in a diplomat's role; and Walter Krueger, a German-born officer who came to lead the largest American ground force in the Pacific. Enriching the narrative are the voices of men otherwise lost to history: the uncelebrated Army grunts who endured stifling temperatures, apocalyptic tropical storms, rampant malaria and other diseases, as well as a fanatical enemy bent on total destruction. This is an essential, ambitious book, the first of three volumes, a compellingly written and boldly revisionist account of a war that reshaped the American military and the globe and continues to resonate today. INCLUDES MAPS AND PHOTOS

Recent years have offered no more human story than Dr. Seagrave’s Burma Surgeon, the account of his medical mission in the jungle wilds and his experiences in the battle of Burma. Now in this new book, he tells what happened to himself and his hospital unit after the retreat with Stilwell. Safe at last in India, survivors of an epic struggle, bereft of home and family, the doctor and his nurses felt that it was the end of all their hard work and dreams; but they had only one thought—to help drive the Japs out of Burma, and some day to see again their home in Namkham. Dr. Seagrave extracted from General Stilwell a promise: that when new action developed against the enemy he would save for them “the meanest, nastiest task of all.” Burma Surgeon Returns tells how that promise was kept.