In late 1944, the Allies invaded the Japanese-held Philippines, and soon the end of the Pacific War was within reach. But for the last 150 American prisoners of war still held on the island of Palawan, there would be no salvation. After years of slave labor, starvation, disease, and torture, their worst fears were about to be realized. On December 14, with machine guns trained on them, they were herded underground into shallow air-raid shelters - death pits dug with their own hands. Japanese soldiers doused the shelters with gasoline and set them on fire. Some thirty prisoners managed to bolt from the fiery carnage, running a lethal gauntlet of machine-gun fire and bayonets to jump from the cliffs to the rocky Palawan coast. By the next morning, only eleven men were left alive, but their desperate journey to freedom had just begun. -- From the publisher.

Part one: Bataan -- The death march -- Prisoners of the Rock -- Passage to Palawan -- Part two: Palawan -- Camp 10-A -- Palawan's "fighting one thousand" -- "We got the third and fourth degree" -- Escape and evasion -- Changing of the guard -- Code name "Red Hankie" -- Sub survivors and coastwatchers -- The Weasel and the Buzzard -- "Annihilate them all" -- The gauntlet -- Part three: Escape -- Hunted -- Fights and flight -- Swimmers and survivors -- Mac's odyssey -- Eleven against the elements -- Exodus from Brooke's Point -- The long road home -- Trials and tributes.