UNBROKEN: A WORLD WAR II STORY OF SURVIVAL, RESILIENCE, AND REDEMPTION

UNBROKEN:  A WORLD WAR II STORY OF SURVIVAL, RESILIENCE, AND REDEMPTION by Laura Hillenbrand was read for the Just For Fun Reading Challenge 2011.

From Amazon.com:

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini.  In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails.  As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.  But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in SEABISCUIT.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, UNBROKEN is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

This was a fantastic book.  Written in a matter-of-fact style, with no embellishment of the facts, it was frightening to read.  As I read about the experience of Louis and his two raft-mates, I thought how terrible that must have been for them.  But then it got worse for them, and I turned each page, wondering what else could be done to these men.

I don't understand war.  I don't understand how people can be turned into sadists and do the things that the officers of the POW camps did.  The will to survive of the POWs is the only thing that kept them alive.  They refused to allow their spirit to be broken, to be stripped of their dignity.  Even the smallest of victories gave them the strength to take whatever was done to them.  I admire these men.

But how they must have suffered, both during their time as POWs and after they returned home.  No one who hasn't experienced what they did could understand it or know how to treat them.  During nursing school, I did my Psych rotation at a VA Hospital.  I sat in groups with men who suffered PTSD after coming back from Vietnam to a country that ignored them and their problems.  Now I have a slight, very slight, understanding of what they must have been feeling and seeing and hearing.

Ms. Hillenbrand took seven years to write this book.  Her research was outstanding, ranging from personal interviews with Louie and other POWs to war documents and pictures and medical evaluations.  The subject matter made this book hard to read, but one I could not put down.  Please read this.