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| Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II | 
 enlarge | Author: Brendan I. Koerner
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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New (49) Used (14) Collectible (2) from $10.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 76937
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 1594201730
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.548
EAN: 9781594201738
ASIN: 1594201730
Publication Date: May 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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 wars 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 junglenot 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 Chinas 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 mens flesh to pulp.
Perry could not endure the jungles 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 downan emotional collapse that ended with him shooting an unarmed white lieutenant.
So began Perrys flight through the Indo-Burmese wilderness, one of the planets 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 blissand 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 Perrys ghosta 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 Roads 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 herowhom they named the Jungle King.
Sweeping from North Carolinas 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "LIEUTENANT, DON'T COME UP ON ME!" June 24, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
This story of the life and death of Herman Perry plays out mainly on the stage of World War II. The author recounts Perry's life from the cotton fields of North Carolina to Washington D.C. to the searing hot, disease infected jungles of South Asia. Perry a drug-addled African American soldier, shoots and kills an unarmed white United States Lieutenant named Harold Cady, and flees into the untamed jungles that are inhabited by tigers, head-hunters, leeches, and armies of malaria carrying mosquitoes among other things. Perry becomes the object of the greatest manhunt of World War II.
The reader is told of this murderous crime on the first and second page of the book, so you are not kept in suspense very long as to the felonious offense the protagonist commits. From there the author spends the next one-hundred-forty-one laborious pages getting you to the point in time portrayed on the first two pages. That is not to say those pages don't have many historically interesting facts imbedded in them, they do... but the seemingly endless trip from New York to Asia via troop ship and railroad, seems like they'll never end. With endless detail of the close quarters, dank circumstance, and very little daylight, makes the reader get seasick and claustrophobic.
One point is made powerfully clear, and that is the hate and prejudice in the world during World War II. Of course it goes unsaid that there is still too much in today's world, but sometimes we need a reminder that racial, religious, and ethnic hatred is not solely indigenous to America. During the time period covered in this book, there was segregation in America, there were SIX-MILLION-JEWS being systematically executed in Europe, and "the Japanese were trained to view their Chinese foes as less than fully human, the victorious Japanese, dutifully obeyed their commanders' "Three Alls Policy": kill all, burn all, loot all. In Nanjing, Japanese soldiers raped upward of TWENTY-THOUSAND-WOMEN, many of whom were subsequently disemboweled, decapitated, or nailed to walls and left to suffocate." "Perhaps when we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman," one of the participants recalled. "But when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig." "Tens of thousands of men were similarly massacred, often buried alive in mass graves. Some were spared at first, only to be later used for bayonet practice." And of course in Asia there were "coolies" who were less than a step above a slave, receiving pennies a day to work on building a road "stretching from the thickly forested mountains of North East India across the tiger-infested valleys of Burma." The American troops assigned to this job were mostly African Americans. The accepted thinking of America's upper echelons during those days was that African Americans couldn't be trusted in battle for numerous reasons. So, despite being originally assigned to an engineering battalion that was supposed to build airfields, Perry and his mates were relegated to menial labor related to building roads through jungle wilderness. The boredom led to rice beer, marijuana and opium.
On the fateful day that Perry committed murder, he had already missed roll call, missed work, and was suffering from the after effects of his growing addictions. The remainder of the story is about the unbelievable manhunt that literally elevated Herman Perry to an almost mythical figure throughout the military, and especially among other African American soldiers. He not only disappeared into the jungle and evaded capture on numerous occasions, but he wound up befriending the chief of the feared head-hunting Naga's, whose village was adorned with more human skulls than the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center had lights. If that isn't enough, Perry wound up marrying and impregnating the Chief's fourteen-year-old daughter, though he never got to see the birth.
 Victims of Jim Crow July 31, 2008
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Among the many strange and sad tales of World War II, one of the most peculiar ones is that of Private Herman Perry, who died in the jungles of Burma, one of the Americans sent there for the expensive and doomed Ledo Road that was to link India and China. Perhaps his story has been forgotten because of the futility of that particular expedition; perhaps it was because Perry was executed as a murderer; perhaps it is because his story is part of the shameful Jim Crow attitude of the Army, and of the nation, at that time. Whatever the reason, there are many important aspects of history surrounding Perry's story, and Brendan I. Koerner has done an admirable job covering a previously untold story in _Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II_ (Penguin Press). Although Koerner has written most extensively on technology, he was researching military executions when he came across Perry's story, and became obsessed with telling it. He has produced an insightful book of history, in addition to telling Perry's sad and forgotten tale.
Perry was drafted after Pearl Harbor, but there was a delay in his entry because the Army didn't have enough segregated facilities to train black enlistees. He was one of the fifteen thousand American troops assigned to Burma to build the Ledo Road, whose ostensible purpose was to keep supplies flowing into America's Chinese Allies. Perry and the other soldiers worked sixteen hours a day. They got rations of corned beef and rice, and water with bacteria in it. Most of them got malaria. They fought off leeches and lice. Some were mauled by tigers. Perry's carefree disposition would not last in such an environment. He shot and killed a Lt. Cady when Cady attempted to arrest him, and he fled into the jungle to join a camp of Naga tribesmen, headhunters who had a mistrust of the strange newcomers to their region. When he was caught, he was sentenced to hang, but he escaped, and successfully eluded capture by the Army, tantalizing them with near-misses. His eventual capture was inevitable, and he was driven to the gallows on 15 March 1945. The Army worried that since Perry had symbolized the frustrations of the black soldier, there might be an attempt to attack the convoy, and the officers were told that in such a situation, they were to kill Perry before defending themselves. There was no such attack.
Perry's family in Washington knew little of what was happening to him on the other side of the world. They were bewildered by what they knew of his situation, his trial, and his death. They did not know even where he was buried, but Koerner has played a role last year in bringing Perry's ashes back to his remaining sister. There was a China-Burma-India Veterans Association until attrition closed it in 2005; anyone who served three weeks in the region could join, but not one black was seen at the meetings, for it seems they had no nostalgia for their time there. Perry's story deserves the remembrance in this exciting and illuminating book. He was a clever guy, not a beacon of morality but also not born to be a murderer. Even if his life was not particularly important, his actions played out in a stupid and brutal arena of war, during a time when the Army and American society deliberately and overtly advocated oppression of black Americans. Understanding these times is still important; the crimes here (and they are more than the murder of Lt. Cady) did not have to happen.
Roll out. May 30, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Brendan Koerner is a friend of mine, so you can take this for what it's worth. But I think "Now the Hell Will Start" is fantastic. It is a truly unique book. On the one hand, it's a thriller about a killer who goes on the lam in the Burmese jungle and dodges U.S. Army officers by living among headhunters. (This really happened.) On the other, it's a really rich history--a portrait of World War II and its forgotten backwaters unlike any I'd ever read. Call it a historical thriller. Or maybe a thriller historical. Buy it and experience the greatness yourself.
Great book, serious action -- should be a movie! May 30, 2008
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is great -- it's got action and adventure, crazy intrigue, fascinating characters, plus is filled with amazing facts about WWII and Burma. I learned so much reading this thing, and had a lot of fun along the way. It's an important story about war, race, American history, and what it means to be human during a time of conflict -- topics everyone should be reading about these days. Highly recommended.
I'm disappointed ... June 4, 2008
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
... that Koerner didn't write a novel sooner. Where has this guy been hiding? This story grabbed me from the first paragraph. I'm no World War II buff, but Herman Perry's story is extraordinary. Looking forward to more great historical nonfiction from this writer.
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