As the United States prosecuted a bloody campaign to pacify its newly-won Philippines territory, a secret mission of mercy went terribly wrong, resulting in our nation's first overseas prisoners of war. The epic struggle for survival that followed was not only a test of the human will to live, but a crucible for heroes. In April 1899, Admiral George Dewey dispatched the "USS Yorktown" to liberate a detachment of Spanish soldiers under siege by native Filipinos. A crew of fifteen sailors rowed ashore in an armed cutter to reconnoiter enemy defenses. Then, Lieutenant James C. Gillmore, Jr. recklessly pushed upriver into heavy jungle--and headlong into an ambush that would kill four of the men. The survivors were dragged across mountains and through dense jungle from one pestilent prison to the next along what Gillmore called "a veritable Devil's Causeway." Their captivity and the torturous expedition sent to their rescue, recalled today as one of the greatest marches in U.S. Army history, features a tightly-hewn cast of characters--including a frail yet determined teenaged sailor and his hardened seafaring mates; battle-tested veterans of the Civil War and the Indian Wars; and a fiery revolutionary commander who gave orders to bury wounded Americans alive. A sweeping military epic drawing on international primary sources, "The Devil's Causeway" tells their extraordinary story in its entirety for the first time.
