End of the Trail

On April 3rd, 1942, the Japanese infantry staged a major offensive against Allied troops in Bataan in the Philippine Islands. The invasion was led by General Masaharu Homma, who had already forced General Douglas MacArthur’s troops from Lingayen. The Japanese began to fire every half hour, increasing in intensity each time, while the defenders crouched down in their foxholes. At the same time the Japanese 22nd Air Brigade started dropping more than sixty tons of bombs. Dive bombers flew low to strafe troops and trenches. USAFFE Artillery and telephone lines were neutralized. Bamboo thickets, banyan trees, sugar cane fields were set ablaze. Then, as the dust cleared on April 9th—the anniversary of the death of legendary Emperor Jimmu, the first ruler to sit on the Japanese imperial throne— General Edward King of the United States Army Forces of the Far East surrendered to General Homma and the infamous Bataan Death March began. In this novel war, an evil wind, rages over a beautiful planet Earth. Like a scythe, it claims all the young men in their teens and twenties. This is the story of five on their journey to the end of the trail in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.