Review: The Damned By Nathan Greenfield
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 3:16PM 
Reviewed by Alex Davis
Christmas morning I sit cross-legged on my parents couch, with a bright little package in my lap. Excitedly I tear open the paper, with vigor that I have always had since I was a little tike, and beneath the shiny red paper I find what you see before you. Nathan M. Greenfield’s The Damned, a story of the Canadians at the battle of Hong Kong and the POW experience. I have heard about this story from my college professor, who happens to be the author, and I am very excited about its release. I have seen its smooth cover and engraved text in Chapters, and have longed to examine its crisp pages. Now that it is in my hands, I spend most of Christmas day to myself, reading with fevered interest.
The Damned was a very exciting read, and a welcome addition to my collection of Canadian military history. The book is, in a nutshell, the largely untold story of the Canadian garrison in Hong Kong that fought off a massive Japanese attack during World War 2. Having little knowledge of the battle before reading this book, I have found myself quite interested in Canadians in the Pacific Theater after I finished reading. It is an engaging book, and certainly gives you that warm patriotic feeling when you hear of how Canadian soldiers fought bravely in defense of this small colony. The first part of the book contains the battle itself, wherein the Canadian garrison alongside British, Indian, and American soldiers attempted to stymie a brutal assault by the Imperial Army of the Japanese. It is a very well documented account of the battle, and I found it was very interesting reading about all the physics of combat, and how fighting an enemy works in war. The second part of the book is the Canadians and the POW experience. This part was very well written, and details the Canadians during their hellish stay in the Japanese POW camps.
It is a sore understatement to say that this book has been well researched. Every name, date, place and time that has to do with the battle of Hong Kong is in this book, I am not kidding! The first part of the book is chock full with as much information as Dr. Greenfield could stuff into it, and I feel that it would be a very informative read for historians and people who enjoy the historical facts and literature of the war. For me however, it came out as a very difficult read, as I kept on losing my place, and wandering off as I read. Though the intensity of the battle scene and the soldiers is not lost while reading the book, I found the events hard to keep track of, as well as the names. For amateur readers, or readers who like engaging in numbing battle scenes and the like, The Damned may be a little full for you. The first part of this book is quite long, and is very full of names and facts, and if you are not up for a tough read, you are most likely to be left in the dust.
The second half of the book, the POW experience, is an emotional and extremely intense read. After the battle of Hong Kong, what was left of the Canadian garrison was forced to surrender to the Japanese, and as a result, was sent into slave labor by the unprepared Japanese commanders. It is a very well written explanation of how Canadian soldiers suffered as slave laborers in Japanese POW camps, and how many died from starvation and disease. It was an eye opening experience as I learned of how my countrymen suffered just as horribly as did the Russians of the Eastern Front. It is a great tribute to these men, and it is a story that is done injustice by not being told alongside that of the Dieppe Raid, or the Battle of Ortona.
The Damned was a thoroughly engaging book, a challenge to get through, but an ultimately rewarding and enriching experience. Once again, it is a well written, heavily researched and developed book, with enough content to keep an avid reader busy for months. The Damned has a powerful story that is close to the heart, even if you are not a really big patriot. After having read this book, I have begun to do my own research into Canada’s military history in the Pacific, and I thank The Damned for showing me what I was missing. I would recommend this book to veteran readers or perhaps historians, but probably not to amateur readers or those reading for fun. But even if you’re just looking for a good book to read, The Damned is a story not well known but certainly a story that you will never forget.
Canadian, History, Nathan Greenfield, Review, The Damned, WW2 in Review
Reader Comments (2)
Good review, Alex. I liked the energy of it.
A couple of editing suggestions: Just watch for cliches here and there: eg. "in a nutshell," "chock full."
Trim adverbs - eg. You don't need to use the word "Excitedly" because we get from the description of your actions that you were excited.
I don't get this cliche thing, how are you supposed to know what a cliche is and what isn't? I come from smiths falls and we use cliches all the time, litterally. I'm having trouble identifying them.