During World War II, Roger Hilsman fought in Burma with the legendary Merrill’s Marauders until he was machine-gunned. Then, at age twenty-five, he led a battalion of indigenous troops behind Japanese lines. At the war’s end, he headed a POW rescue mission to Manchuria, where the prisoners included his own father. An exciting, unusual coming-of-age story, American Guerrilla concludes with reflections on how Hilsman’s wartime experiences influenced his involvement in early Vietnam War policymaking when he served in the Kennedy administration.