As a boy growing up on an Indiana farm, Steven Hantzis loved looking through a red photo album with the word “India’ scribbled on the cover. Hantzis liked  all the exotic-looking animals like mongooses, water buffaloes and elephants. As he turned the pages, the photos changed. He started seeing jeeps on rail cars, trains and military personnel. The scene was 1944 India from his father’s days as a member of the 721st Railway Battalion stationed in Bengal. 

Six decades later, Steven chronicled his father’s days in World War II India in his book, “Rails of War: Supplying Americans and Their Allies in China-Burma-India.” The story tells how railroad workers, like James Hanzis, went from being exempt from the military draft to being specially selected to rebuild India’s railway. In 1942, Japan blockaded Burma which effectively cut off supplies to the U.S. ally China. In response, the Allies decided to supply China by transporting supplies by rail through Burma. 

But this specialized task required experienced railway personnel. So the American railroads worked with the U.S. government to select a specialized battalion for the mission. And in 1943, James Hantzis was drafted and sent halfway around the world to rebuild a railway between India and China. 

Steven Hantzis began writing his book in 1993. His day job as the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers executive director didn’t leave much time for writing. He started with his father’s photos and conversations about India. He also read the 680 letters his parents wrote to each other during the war. Steven Hantzis also researched World War II and Chinese, Burmese  and Indian history and interviewed nearly two dozen 721st Battalion veterans.

Hantzis retired in 2013, and eventually finished his two-volume work with over 1,000 pages. He found a literary agent who edited the manuscript to 232 pages by focusing the story on the war.

“It’s a heckuva of story. It tells about the education of young men during a crisis stuck on a boat heading to famine-stricken India to operate a railroad in wartime,” Steven Hantzis said. Before working in organized labor, he, like his father, worked on an Indiana railroad.

The 721st was made up of 600 experienced railroad workers charged with rebuilding India’s out-of-date rail system. In the ’40s, India’s rail system was used mostly for passengers and transporting tea from plantations. World War I had also taken a toll on the India rail system. The  British disassembled a significant part of it to aid their World War I efforts. 

So when James Hantzis arrived in India in 1944, his battalion encountered a massive undertaking in rebuilding the railway. Steven Hantzis said history describes the China-Burma-India conflict as “war long forgotten and barely known even during World War II.” The story describes how his father and fellow soldiers labored at a thankless task under oppressive conditions. “As ‘Rails of War’ demonstrates, without the 721st, the allied forces would’ve lost the China-Burma-India conflict,” he said. 

“Rails of War” also details how the GI railroaders overcame danger, disease, fire and monsoons to move the “weight of war” in the China-Burma-India theatre. These soldiers travelled 15,000 miles to Bengal to do the “impossible” of maintaining 700 miles of track through the most inhospitable environment imaginable. 

Steve Hantzis lives in Alexandria, Virginia and in Boothbay as a summer resident. 

This article has been updated from its original posting.