Nineteen-year-old Andrew Carson enlisted in the Army in March 1941. Less than three months later, he was fighting the Japanese at Corregidor in a desperate, losing battle. Forced to surrender with his unit, Carson was taken to the Japanese prison camps. There he remained, starved, beaten, desperately ill, until he was liberated in September 1945.

Becoming a prisoner of war took only an instant. Learning to live as one - to adapt to deprivation and cruelty beyond imagining - took many months. Learning to live again as a free man, says Carson, will take the rest of his life. To free himself, if only in some small way, Carson has now told his story. Often horrifying, always moving, it is the story of a man - and of every man - who served his time in hell.