ISBN 0-89141-717-6
408 pages

Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; Notes; Bibliography; Index

   With this, his first book, author Brian Altobello has produced a memorable, vivid, highly ambitious history of the campaign on New Georgia in the Solomon Islands in 1943.
   Altobello opens his book by tracing in colorful and dramatic language the initial phases of the war in the Pacific, the onset of "victory disease," and the outcome of the battles on Guadalcanal and in Papua New Guinea. In the final paragraph of his Introduction he foreshadows the bloody, tumultuous, and mostly pointless nature of the campaign he is about to chronicle. He also introduces a theme to which he returns over and over again throughout the book: the inner struggles of men to prove themselves in combat.

   Combat, more than any other human experience, has the unique power to strip from a man any pretense that masks his character, not only from others, but more importantly from himself. True self-discovery is achieved because every mortal emotion is played out and embellished on the battlefield. Hate, love, sadness, joy, indifference, excitement—emotions that are dulled by the routines of peace, are each so amplified in battle that noncombatants never comprehend and soldiers struggle forever to articulate. But more than anything else it is a litmus test from which to gauge a man's doubts about his courage, his essence. This is the sine qua non of the infantryman. In June 1943, the novice National Guard troops ordered to New Georgia were about to join this exclusive fraternity of self-discovery. But theirs would be a distinct kind of hell from the one that the marines on Guadalcanal endured, and, sadly, one that likely could have been avoided.

   The book is divided into sections whose events proceed on their own timelines and mostly in their own geography, separate from the events and geography of other sections. In "First Communion"—most of the chapter titles are as colorful as Altobello's text—the 4th Marine Raider Battalion lands at Segi Point on the southern tip of New Georgia on 21 June and struggles—mostly overland—to Viru harbor which it takes—behind schedule—on 1 July. In "Rising Shadows" the 43rd Infantry Division lands on Rendova Island off the coast of New Georgia, and the naval actions in Kula Bay ensue on 4-5 July and 6-7 July, with the lengthy story of US Navy Lieutenant Hugh Miller who survives to be rescued from a Japanese-held island on 16 August. The next chapter, "Dragons Peninsula," backtracks and describes the arrival of the Northern Landing Group—1st Marine Raider Battalion and two battalions of the 37th Infantry Division—at Rice Anchorage on the night of 4-5 July and its subsequent, unsuccessful two-week effort to dislodge the Japanese defenders from Bairoko Harbor, thereby cutting off the route for Japanese reinforcements and supplies from Kolombangara while simultaneously blocking the retreat route of the main force at Munda. In "Terra Incognita" Altobello backtracks again and turns to the main advance from Zanana toward Munda by the 43rd Infantry Division, beginning on 6 July and continuing to the end of the book.
   Compared to Eric Hammel's Munda Trail, Altobello offers broader and deeper coverage of the New Georgia campaign. For example, Hammel mostly ignores the Northern Landing Group. Altobello also includes more information on subsidiary actions, such as the denouement on Arundel Island, as well as the air and naval campaigns. Similarly, Altobello goes into more depth on many events. For example, Hammel devotes about five paragraphs to Lt. Nicholas Kliebert and the massacre of wounded GIs on the Barike River, while Altobello expends almost ten pages on the same incident.
   Although he provides considerable information about almost every aspect of the larger air-land-sea campaign, the main American advance on the ground toward Munda proves to be the focal point of the Into the Shadows Furious, with detailed descriptions of the combat—mostly from the American perspective, but not ignoring the Japanese—as well as much about the day-to-day life and suffering of troops engaged in jungle combat. Altobello also quotes from post-war accounts by GIs and from diaries found on dead Japanese soldiers. Quite a few pages are given to discussion of the serious problem of combat neurosis among the soldiers on New Georgia.
   Not everything revolves around the infantry, however. There are stories long and short about native islanders who can navigate at sea by the feel of ocean current against scrotum, legendary coastwatcher Donald Kennedy and his seventeen-year-old Melanesian mistress, a gay soldier who specializes in female impersonation in camp shows, downed pilot William Coffeen who spent three months moving from island to island before returning safely to Guadalcanal, assorted shipwrecked sailors (including John F. Kennedy and the crew of PT-109), and more. In some ways, the New Georgia campaign is simply a framework for presenting a series of adventurous anecdotes about colorful characters.
   Indeed, much of the book, with its constant use of phrases like "angry sea," "curtain of murderous steel," "cruel rain," "steamy, rigid air," and "curtain of murky and swollen darkness," seems as adjective-laden and over-written as a war story from a 1950's men's magazine. Likewise, Altobello returns again and again to the theme of men who must measure themselves in combat and prove themselves in the eyes of their buddies, with their manhood constantly on the line. Some pages almost need to be read with the accompaniment of cigarette smoke and strong whiskey. Altobello doesn't just describe movement along jungle trails, he examines the psyches of the men as they advance.

   It seemed like a thousand years since that day when they had returned home to announce that they had enlisted in the Corps. The laughter and love at family farewell dinners; the looks of admiration from friends; the adulation they received when they visited home after boot camp; fawning neighbors and girlfriends; going to church in a perfectly creased uniform adorned with crimson stripes and a rifle qualification badge—where had those moments gone? Where had that world gone? The nationalistic passion that just a few months before had burned hot within them had cooled, blurred by a new passion: their squads and platoons. The instinct to survive still remained, sharpened by the tumult of war, but even it had been dulled by the Raiders conditioned instinct to fight. It was a metamorphosis that every warrior since antiquity has experienced. But each man had had to struggle with the transformation in his own unique way. Now, with each unsteady step deeper into the seamless New Georgia jungle, these men, like their dead comrades before them, edged closer to self-actualization.

   Some readers will probably decide Altobello has been overly ambitious with his book, trying to pack into it so much that it sometimes proves difficult to see the whole jungle because of all the individual trees. Other readers are going to immerse themselves in the experience and enjoy all the elaborate stories of personal adventures that decorate the progress of the campaign itself. Either way, Into the Shadows Furious looks like a promising start for Altobello, and there is every likelihood that he will hone his craft with more and better books.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Presidio Press.
   Thanks to Presidio for providing this review copy.