Lester Tenney, World War II veteran and author of My Hitch in Hell, passed away the last week of February at the age of ninety-six.

In 2000, Potomac Books published My Hitch in Hell: The Battan Death March, Tenney’s account of life as a POW during World War II, in the Memories of War series. Captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan, Tenney was one of the very few who would survive the legendary Death March and three and a half years in Japanese prison camps. With an understanding of human nature, a sense of humor, sharp thinking, and fierce determination, Tenney endured the rest of the war as a slave laborer in Japanese prison camps. My Hitch in Hell is an inspiring survivor’s epic about the triumph of human will despite unimaginable human suffering.

You can read more about Tenney’s life and work in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.