THEY FOUGHT ALONE by John Keats. 425 pages. Lippincott. $6.95.
Rice farmers by day, they fought by night. Their bullets were chunks of brass curtain rod, which the women had sharpened by whetstone; the cartridges were loaded with a mixture of dynamite, amatol, and the flash powder from Chinese firecrackers. For every two men, there might be one obsolete rifle and 15 rounds of ammunition; with luck, a platoon would also sport several carbines or an automatic weapon. Yet these ragtag guerrilla forces, scattered across 36,000 square miles of mountain and malarial jungle, were...
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