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Lieutenant General Edward M. Flanagan
Jr., USA (ret.) is the author of Angels at Dawn: The Los Banos Raid; Battle for Panama: Inside Operation Just
Cause; The Angels: A History of the 11th Airborne Division, 1943-46; Airborne: A Combat History of American Airborne Forces;
and, Lightning: The 101st in the Gulf War.
One reader of Angels at
Dawn: The Los Banos Raid said, “This well-written book is a "must-read" for anyone who is interested
in U.S. military actions in the Pacific during WWII. Angels at Dawn tells the little-known story of the February 1945 rescue
by 11th Airborne Division paratroopers and Filipino guerillas of American civilians and other nationalities who were being
held by the Japanese in a prison camp at Los Banos on the Philippine Island of Luzon. This book does a better job than many
dealing with the Pacific war in explaining why prisoners of the Japanese were at much risk. In part this was due to the threat
of starvation and disease, but also because during the latter stages of the war in 1945, Japanese murders of prisoners increased
as Allied troops advanced. Against this backdrop the author, who was a member of the 11th Airborne Division during the 1945
fighting in the Philippines, recounts how General MacArthur called on the "Angels" as the division was nicknamed,
to mount a hazardous parachute and ground assault behind enemy lines to rescue the prisoners at Los Banos before starvation
or Japanese violence could take their lives. As a former soldier who served in Korea, this book reminded me once again of
how important the actions of U.S. military forces were during the 20th Century. We live in a better world because of what
they did. Angels at Dawn tells the story of one of those actions, which resulted not so much in the destruction of the enemy,
but in the preservation of the lives of American civilians, and other foreign nationals.”
The MOAA said of Airborne:
A Combat History of American Airborne Forces, “This is a combat history of American Airborne forces from
their birth in 1940 with the test platoon to Airborne operations in Europe and the Far East in World War II, Korea, Vietnam,
the Gulf War, and the many commitments of the XVIII Airborne Corps after World War II in Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, and
Haiti, among others.”
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