Lost Battalion: Railway of Death

by Kyle Thompson

Thompson pens a gripping, personal account of how he, as a teenage soldier from rural Texas, became a member of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery--the Lost Battalion--and became one of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743493273
• ISBN13: 9780743493277
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: iBooks
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

One Young Man's Wartime Ordeal

During WWII, Kyle Thompson survived six years of military service in Asia, four of them as a prisoner of war with the "Lost Battalion." As a sixteen-year-old, he enlisted in the Texas National Guard at Wichita Falls, and was inducted into the U. S. Army following mobilization of the U. S. Forces in 1940. The 2d Battalion of the 131st Field Artillery, destined for the Philippines, diverted to Australia when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. From there they went to Java to aid the Dutch in holding the Dutch East Indies. When the Dutch surrendered Java to the Japanese, the captured men took a lengthy and uncomfortable voyage by rail and sea, ending up in Thailand. The Japanese objective was control of India, and for that they needed an overland connection across Southeast Asia through Thailand and Burma. Prior to the war, the British had abandoned plans to build a railroad across that forbidding terrain, but the Japanese tackled thejob with prisoners of war and workers captured in countries they had overrun as WWII began. The public has heard of that railway in the story and movie, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, one part of the same railway. Mr. Thompson tells of the good times of which there were few and the bad of which there were many. He praises the comraderie of the men that helped offset the cruelty of their captors. He describes the miserable living conditions lacking in even a minimum of food, clothing, and shelter. He speaks of the long hours of back breaking labor and nights made sleepless by heat and insects. He tells how the men kept their courage up by listening to a forbidden radio ingeniously rigged to bring in news of help on the way. He communicates the joy of final liberation of the men who remained, and he lists in the book the names of the many who died of tropical diseases, neglect, and malnutrition. The book strikes at the heart of any American conscious of the debt owed to courageous men such as Mr. Thompson who endured so much to ensure freedom for all. It reminds us of the need to review th story,to remember the heroic deeds, to express gratitude for the wartime service of this great generation.

story of POW's 3 years saga & how belief in God got him thru

This story is about a young man from the Texas National Guard who gets captured by the Japanese. He is one of the few Americans who toiled long hard hours along side British soldiers constructing a railroad thru Burma. The movie Bridge on the River Kwai is a ficticious account of this terrible ordeal. Mr Thompson tells how his faith in God got him thru those grueling times with only " a thousand cups of rice " to eat.