The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea

“Riveting… The Ghost Mountain Boys offers a new, harrowing world to explore.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“The Buna campaign in New Guinea was one of the most awful slogs of World War II and one of the least reported. Now we are fortunate to have Jim Campbell’s outstanding Ghost Mountain Boys illuminate the heroes of the 32nd Division.”
–James Bradley, bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys

A harrowing portrait of a largely forgotten campaign that pushed one battalion to the limits of human suffering.

Despite their lack of jungle training, the 32nd Division’s “Ghost Mountain Boys” were assigned the most grueling mission of the entire Pacific campaign in World War II: to march over the 10,000-foot Owen Stanley Mountains to protect the right flank of the Australian army during the battle for New Guinea. Reminiscent of the classics like Band of Brothers and The Things They Carried, The Ghost Mountain Boys is part war diary, part extreme-adventure tale, and—through letters, journals, and interviews—part biography of a group of men who fought to survive in an environment every bit as fierce as the enemy they faced. Theirs is one of the great untold stories of the war.

Click here to view a recent Wisconsin Veterans Museum Facebook post on Army Chaplain Austin J. Henry, from Milwaukee, who served in the 32nd Division:
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