My Hitch in Hell - Lester I. Tenney

   1995; 210 pages.  Full Title: My Hitch in Hell – The Bataan Death March.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : World War 2; Military history; Memoirs; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    The Bataan Death March.  It was perhaps even more of a shock to the “American Invincibility” myth than our country's initial World War 2 event: the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor.

 

    Because the Death March came on the heels of something unthinkable: the complete surrender of the American forces stationed on the Bataan peninsula of the Philippines.  Americans surrendering?  To those sneaky Japanese?  Perish the thought.

 

    The Death March became a catalyst for intense hatred by America against Japan, and an effective recruitment tool.  Lots of books have been written about it, written by lots of authors.  Lester I. “Ten Spot” Tenney is one of them.  But he stands apart from the other writers in one crucial way.

 

    Lester Tenney was a participant in, and a survivor of, the Bataan Death March.

 

What’s To Like...

    As the book's subtitle suggests, the Bataan Death March certainly is the highlight of My Hitch in Hell, and the longest chapter is devoted to it.  However, that catastrophic event only lasted eight days (April 9-17, 1942), and this book actually chronicles Lester Tenney’s full 4-year stint of overseas US military service, 3½ years of which was spent as a POW of the Japanese.

 

    I was impressed by Tenney’s even-handed “ground-level view” of the fight for the Philippines.  It is portrayed in our history books as a noble sacrifice of the American forces to slow down the Japanese advance.  But snafus abounded (see Chapter 2 and the first excerpt below), and if you were part of the units being sacrificed, facing death, torture, starvation, and brutal beatings (see second excerpt below), you might more abandoned than noble.

 

    I was pleasantly surprised to find the rest of the book just as interesting as the Death March itself.  Lester Tenney’s decision to join a local National Guard unit in 1940 eventually resulted in his being stationed in the Far East.  After the Death March and captivity in two POW camps in the Philippines, he was shipped off to Japan itself to endure barbaric conditions while working in a coal mine.  Freed only once the war ended, the latter chapters recount his repatriation and return to the US, in some ways just as excruciating as his POW ordeals.

 

    It was enlightening to see the steps Lester took to keep his sanity intact and his spirits up.  One of his tricks was to learn some basic Japanese phrases from his captors so he could understand what they were screaming about.  It also helped to keep a mental image of his wife, in order to have something to motivate him to stay alive.

 

    There were lighter moments as well.   Lester sets up a craps game while on the prison ship headed to Japan, which eased everyone’s mind since allied submarines were torpedoing any and all boats flying the Rising Sun flag and the Japanese refused to mark prison ships with Red Cross markings.  At the POW camp in Japan he helped set up, with the permission of the commandant, a musical talent show titled “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1944”.  He also arranged a sort of  black market goods-exchange system where items were bartered between both POW and Japanese patrons, with the middle man (Lester) charging an “agent’s fee”.

 

    The ending is bittersweet.  Lester comes home to a postwar America that has changed a lot in the five years he’s been away.  His wife Laura also has changed, and that needs attending to, especially since they had married in secret.  War is hell, even for the victors.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 220 ratings and 98 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.35*/5, based on 399 ratings and 62 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    We still did not have any training on the new tanks.  While we were in Honolulu, our commander tried to borrow two 37mm (the types mounted in our new tanks) and enough ammunition to practice from our transport deck while en route to the Philippines; but post ordnance in Hawaii refused this request.  When our tank unit arrived in the Philippines, we asked for the use of a firing range so that we could become familiar with the weapons mounted in our new tanks.  This request was also denied.  Therefore, it was not until the Japanese bombers and Zeros came over Clark Field that we were able to get in our “practice.”  On-the-job training does not work very well under these conditions.  (pg. 19)

 

    One of the men had a very bad case of malaria and had barely made it to the rest area.  He was burning up with fever and severely disoriented.  When ordered to stand up, he could not do it.  Without a minute’s hesitation, the guard hit him over the head with the butt of his gun, knocked him down to the ground, and then called for two nearby prisoners to start digging a hole to bury the fallen prisoner.  The two men started digging, and when the hole was about a foot deep, the guard ordered the two men to place the sick man in the hole and bury him alive.  The two men shook their heads; they could not do that.

    Once again without warning, and without any effort to settle the problem any other way, the guard shot the bigger of the two prisoners.  (pg. 57)

 

“Anyone can learn Japanese in ten easy beatings.”  (pg. 100)

    There’s not a lot of profanity in My Hitch in Hell, which surprised me, given the gruesome settings.  I noted just 8 instances in the first 50% of the book, and these were of the "milder" ilk.  This was helped by the author often choosing non-vulgar options when he was able, such as defecate, urinate, bowels, anus, feces, and others.

 

    There were some negative reviews at Amazon for this book.  Some people wondered whether the author “tweaked” some events to make himself look good.  That’s possible, but hey, that could be true in any autobiography, and I’d counter that quite often Lester suffers beatings for getting caught doing something underhanded, or for no reason at all other than Japanese barbarity.  Others thought the writing was rather amateurish.  They have a point, but I thought it added to the realism of the account.

 

    For me, My Hitch in Hell was a brutal and eye-opening read.  I’ve read about the Bataan Death March in my history books.  It’s quite different to “see” it through the eyes of one who survived it.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  On pages 211-213 in the back of the book there's an Appendix listing the 80 servicemen in Lester Tenney’s unit who didn’t make it back, along with (where known) their place, date, and cause of death.  It made for a sobering read.