'Ghost Soldiers' is narrative history at its best. This true story of one of the most extraordinary episodes of World War II is to become Spielberg's next epic film.
For the American soldiers surrendering on the Philippine peninsula of Bataan in April 1942, their war was just beginning. Forced to march through some seventy-five miles of miasmal swamps, they died of disease, water deprivation and brutality at a rate of five hundred a day: those who survived were sent to languish in prison camps, the largest and most deathly of which was Cabanatuan. By 1945 its population had dwindled to the sickest and weakest: the ghosts of Bataan.
To rescue them involved travelling deep behind enemy lines. When Lt. Colonel Henry A Mucci, commanding officer of the 6th Ranger Battalion, announced the plan to his troops, the risks were such that he insisted on volunteers. He said, "I only want men who feel lucky."
