Unbroken relates the extraordinary life
story of Louis Zamperini, born early in the twentieth century in the USA of
Italian stock. Any of several incidents in Zamperini’s life would be considered
remarkable; that he went from on to another through a chain of, mainly,
misfortune makes for a story barely believable.
His wild youth was diverted from delinquency
by the discovery of a talent and love for running, which he pursued, becoming a
top college athlete and a young pretender at the Berlin Olympic of 1936. Great things
were expected at the Helsinki Games scheduled for 1940…
Helsinki of course never happened, with Europe
plunged into war, and by 1942 Louis was in the US Air Force, risking life and
limb as bombsight operator on a B24 in the Pacific. And then he was literally
in the Pacific as the B24 ditched with only Louis and two crewmates alive to
scramble aboard the inflatable life raft.
An incredible number of weeks later, after
surviving storms, hunger, thirst, punctures, sharks and a strafing Japanese
Zero fighter plane, they spot land in the form of a small island and start to
row ashore.
Frying pans and fire have nothing on this –
it is a Japanese base and what follows are two years of “life” as an unofficial
prisoner of war (eventually declared dead by the US authorities). Moved from
camp to camp, each more brutal than the last, he ends up in mainland Japan, and
US air strikes soon make it clear the way the war is going. But is that good
news or bad for the PoWs – will it result in liberation, execution or (an
option unknown to them) nuclear incineration.
Hillenbrand tells the story brilliantly, her
meticulous research producing a balanced mix of personal detail and historical
context; eschewing sensation for clear reportage, which allows events to speak
for themselves and so have even more impact. It is a good approach; Zamperini’s
powers of survival need no exaggeration.
Following on from her earlier “Seabiscuit”,
the excellence of the book is no surprise; the only surprise is that I had
never heard of the remarkable Louis Zamperini before now.
No comments:
Post a Comment