A harrowing account of an epic, yet nearly forgotten, battle of World War II--General Douglas MacArthur's four-year assault on the Pacific War's most hostile battleground: the mountainous, jungle-cloaked island of New Guinea. One American soldier called it "a green hell on earth." Monsoon-soaked wilderness, debilitating heat, impassable mountains, torrential rivers, and disease-infested swamps--New Guinea was a battleground far deadlier than the most fanatical of enemy troops. Some 600,000 Japanese began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the Empire's strategy to knock Australia out of the war. Allied Commander-in-Chief MacArthur committed 340,000 Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Australian, Dutch, and New Guinea troops, to retake New Guinea at all costs. What followed was a four-year campaign that involved some of the most horrific warfare in history. At first emboldened by easy victories throughout the Pacific, the Japanese soon encountered in New Guinea a quagmire akin to the Germans' disastrous attempt to take Moscow. For the Americans, victory in New Guinea was the first essential step in the long march towards the Japanese home islands and the ultimate destruction of Hirohito's empire. Winning the war in New Guinea was of critical importance to MacArthur. His avowed "I shall return" to the Philippines could only be accomplished after taking the island. Here, historian James P. Duffy chronicles the most ruthless combat of the Pacific War, a fight complicated by rampant tropical disease, violent rainstorms, and unforgiving terrain that punished Axis and Allied forces alike.--Adapted from dust jacket.