THIS is a harrowing account of the evil of war and the extraordinary feats of heroics that come with it.

Based on the true story of one of the largest and most successful rescue missions by the US Army, Ghost Soldiers will leave you both angry, shocked and lost for words.

It recounts the true story of how an elite but small troop of Rangers managed to rescue more than 500 American POWs from certain death after being put through a living hell.

They did this with 8,000 Japanese soldiers waiting on the other side of a river and after trekking through jungle and bogs for three days.

We are introduced to a hellhole at the beginning of the Second World War in the Philippines and Filipino, American and British troops have been abandoned.

The American and British fleets have been so battered by the Japanese that they cannot rescue them and they are left as POWs.

Due to a misunderstanding, Japanese troops think they are getting around 40,000 relatively healthy POWs instead they have around 100,000 with all manner of conditions.

And so we are taken on the Bataan Death March, through which the numbers are whittled down by random beatings, disease and starvation. And from this, we are taken to Cabanatuan POW camp, where around 50,000 prisoners are expected to survive in a prison made for 9,000.

To say the scenes played out over these events are sickening is an understatement. They are truly horrifying a powerful example of the futile brutality of war.

After news leaks of a massacre at another POW camp, the Allied forces send out the Rangers, together with a team of Filipino guerrillas, to rescue what men remained at the last big camp, Cabanatuan.

Hampton Sides' recounting of how they did this will leave you in awe at a military operation executed to perfection. Following the Rangers as they make their way towards the camp makes for a genuinely thrilling page-turner.

But the images in this book will stay with you for a long time.