The Expendable: The True Story of Patrol Wing 10, PT Squadron 3, and a Navy Corpsman Who Refused to Surrender When the Philippine Islands Fell to Japan

Finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Awards. 2021 1st Prize Nonfiction Winner New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards, Nonfiction winner, Arizona Authors’ Association 2020 Literary Contest and #1 Amazon Best Seller in multiple categories.

2021 is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and will be accompanied by a great deal of ceremony and remembrance of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but little about what happened 8,500 miles to the west that same day. As time passes, fewer are aware that only 6 hours after Japanese planes sunk the USS Arizona, Japan attacked their main objective, the Philippine islands, with the full force of its naval, ground, and air forces. Thus began a heroic American and Filipino resistance, buying with blood and lives enough time for the Allies to regroup in Australia. Five months later, 78,000 American troops were surrendered in the greatest defeat in the history of the United States. "A riveting page-turner," THE EXPENDABLE is a captivating, true story from the opening months of WWII in the Pacific. As smoke billows skyward from Pearl Harbor, Japan throws its full military might against the outnumbered and under-equipped Filipino forces. Hart sends his U.S. Asiatic Fleet south, to the safety of Allied waters. When the remnants of PBY Patrol Wing 10 depart with the fleet, Charles Beckner, corpsman for PBY Squadron 102, is left behind with no apparent avenue for escape. Under relentless pressure from General Homma's troops and air forces, American-Filipino troops retreat to the tip of the Bataan Peninsula. Sick with malaria and dysentery and nearly out of food and ammunition, surrender is imminent for those who survive. Charles wrangles a transfer to Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 as machine gunner and corpsman on PT-34. After two months of engaging enemy forces along the Bataan coast, Squadron 3 is tasked with a critical, covert mission that once more leaves Charles stranded, this time on the southern Philippine Island of Cebu. As the Japanese noose tightens, Charles joins other sailors and soldiers preparing for guerrilla resistance from the interior mountains of Mindanao Island. His plans are interrupted by a secretive assignment that unexpectedly reunites him with crewmen of his old seaplane squadron. With advancing Japanese troops only minutes away, there is one possibility for escape, though It is risky and failure will be fatal. "This long (500+ page) saga crescendos from the start. I stayed up all night finishing the last 200 pages, unable to put it down." - Ex-Navy Corpsman.

"We are losing our World War II veterans by the thousands daily and along with them we all too often lose their stories. John Floyd has done an admirable job of preserving the stories of his father-in-law in a fast-paced and highly readable narrative; he knows his military history as well as his family’s." -Walter Borneman, Author of The Admirals and MacArthur At War.

John Lewis Floyd is a retired physician and the son-in-law of Charles Conrad Beckner CWO4 (Dec). John has published dozens of peer-reviewed scientific journal papers, but this is his first book. The Expendable is based on John's close, four-decade relationship with 'Mr. Beckner' and on meticulous primary research on the opening months of the Pacific War. John and his wife Barbara, both USAF Veterans, reside in Colorado and Arizona when not exploring far-flung corners of the world.