Red Arrow Men

Red Arrow Men: The 32nd Division on the Villa Verde Trail, first published in 1945, is the account of 'embedded journalist' John Carlisle with the U.S. Army's 32nd Infantry Division in Luzon, Philippines, in 1945. At that time, the 32nd was engaging the Japanese on the Villa Verde Trail. It would take 119 days of fierce, close-quarters combat to advance slightly more than 20 miles over rough, jungle-covered terrain, and seize their objective of the Cagayan Valley. As author Carlisle states in the Foreword: "This was a mauling fight against the Jap in his remarkable defensive positions, against the terrain, supply and climate. In those 119 days the Red Arrow boys fought 22 miles, sometimes 35 yards at a time, with the Jap never more than 30 feet away. The division killed 9,000 Japanese and took 50 prisoners. It lost 4,226 men, about a third of the division strength." Their hard-won victory saw the surrender of Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita and his exhausted, starving troops. Red Arrow Men portrays these experiences from the perspective of the foot-soldier, most of whom were from Michigan, and Carlisle talked with many men (and a number of WACs and female Red Cross workers), and relates their moving stories. Of note is that in World War Two, the 32nd Division logged a total of 654 days of combat, more than any other United States Army division.