Purchase
One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II
Penguin Press
June 2008
On Sale: May 29, 2008
400 pages ISBN: 1594201730 EAN: 9781594201738 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction History | Non-Fiction Memoir
Part history, part thriller, Now the Hell Will Start tells
the astonishing tale of Herman Perry, the soldier who
sparked the greatest manhunt of World War II— and who
became that war’s unlikeliest folk hero A true story of murder, love, and headhunters, Now the Hell
Will Start tells the remarkable tale of Herman Perry, a
budding playboy from the streets of Washington, D.C., who
wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle—not
because he yearned for adventure, but rather to escape the
greatest manhunt conducted by the United States Army during
World War II. An African American G.I. assigned to a segregated labor
battalion, Perry was shipped to South Asia in 1943,
enduring unspeakable hardships while sailing around the
globe. He was one of thousands of black soldiers dispatched
to build the Ledo Road, a highway meant to appease China’s
conniving dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. Stretching from the
thickly forested mountains of northeast India across the
tiger-infested vales of Burma, the road was a lethal
nightmare, beset by monsoons, malaria, and insects that
chewed men’s flesh to pulp. Perry could not endure the jungle’s brutality, nor the
racist treatment meted out by his white officers. He found
solace in opium and marijuana, which further warped his
fraying psyche. Finally, on March 5, 1944, he broke down—an
emotional collapse that ended with him shooting an unarmed
white lieutenant. So began Perry’s flight through the Indo-Burmese
wilderness, one of the planet’s most hostile realms. While
the military police combed the brothels of Calcutta, Perry
trekked through the jungle, eventually stumbling upon a
village festooned with polished human skulls. It was here,
amid a tribe of elaborately tattooed headhunters, that
Herman Perry would find bliss—and would marry the chief ’s
fourteen-year-old daughter. Starting off with nothing more than a ten-word snippet
culled from an obscure bibliography, Brendan I. Koerner
spent nearly five years chasing Perry’s ghost—a pursuit
that eventually led him to the remotest corners of India
and Burma, where drug runners and ethnic militias now hold
sway. Along the way, Koerner uncovered the forgotten story
of the Ledo Road’s black G.I.s, for whom Jim Crow was as
virulent an enemy as the Japanese. Many of these troops
revered the elusive Perry as a folk hero—whom they named
the Jungle King. Sweeping from North Carolina’s Depression-era cotton fields
all the way to the Himalayas, Now the Hell Will Start is an
epic saga of hubris, cruelty, and redemption. Yet it is
also an exhilarating thriller, a cat-and-mouse yarn that
dazzles and haunts.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|