Beyond the Chindwin
Author: Bernard Fergusson
Publisher:
Published: 1962
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPosts
The Battle for Burma: Wild Green Earth
Author: Bernard Fergusson
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-11-30
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 147387842X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBernard Fergusson was one of Orde Wingate's Column Commanders in the heroic but battered Chindit expedition behind Japanese lines in Burma in 1943. By 1944 Wingate had persuaded Churchill and Roosevelt that a bigger force, on the same unorthodox lines, could make a strategic difference. Aged 32, Fergusson returned to Burma as part of this, as a Brigadier, leading the only Brigade in the new force which entered Burma on foot. It was one of four Brigades which established well-defended strongholds within Japanese-occupied Burma. Fergusson also reflects candidly, and often humorously, on different aspects of the campaign. These include the ingenuity and sheer courage of the US Army Air Force pilots who flew in supplies and evacuated wounded. One glider pilot whom Fergusson saw making a particularly bad landing turned out to be Jackie Coogan, child star of Chaplin's The Kid, and later known as Uncle Fenster of the Addams Family. In apparently light hearted, but often profound sections, he analyses the management of a large and diverse force, up against physical extremes far from normal amenities and command structures; the importance of maintaining morale and of medical management; and, not least, an immediate portrait of Wingate himself, whose death at a crucial stage of the campaign and the conflicting or at least confusing orders he left behind directly affected Fergusson's men and the fate of the campaign.The Wild Green Earth follows the author's account of the 1943 campaign, Beyond the Chindwin. Both were written with the events, and reactions even the smells fresh in the author's mind, and vividly but sensitively conveyed. The excitement of the narrative remains today. And the reflections are timeless, fascinating for those with an interest in leadership and motivation as much as for readers of military history.
Beyond the Chindwin
Author: Bernard Fergusson
Publisher: Isis Large Print Books
Published: 2001-01
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780753157077
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn account of Number Five Column of the Wingate Expedition into Burma, 1943. Over fifty years after its first publication, this account of a remarkable expedition still stands as a classic. For those who took part, the Wingate Expedition was a watershed in their lives. Bernard Fergusson was one of the men whose whole perception of life and values were changed by the experience, and by the charisma of its leader, Orde Wingate. Written in 12 days, merely a year after the events themselves, the narrative is as exciting and immediate as a novel.
Captured Behind Japanese Lines
Author: Daniel Berke
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Published: 2021-12-30
Total Pages: 197
ISBN-13: 139901689X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis WWII biography vividly recounts one man’s experience as a Special Ops soldier and POW in Japanese occupied Burma. In his postwar life, Frank Berkovitch was a quiet, reserved tailor. But during World War II, he served with the legendary Chindits in Burma and endured years of Japanese captivity. He fought as a Bren-gunner on Operation LONGCLOTH, the first mission to take them deep behind enemy lines. He was even General Orde Wingate’s batman. The Chindits were Wingate’s inspired idea. Under his dauntless leadership, they dispelled the myth that the Imperial Japanese Army was invincible. Outnumbered, outgunned, and reliant on RAF air drops for supplies, the 3,000 men of the Chindit columns overcame harsh jungle terrain to take the fight to the enemy. They wreaked havoc with enemy communications and caused heavy enemy casualties while gathering vital intelligence. During the desperate race to escape from Burma, Frank was captured crossing the Irrawaddy river. He spent two years imprisoned by notoriously cruel captors. Superbly researched, this inspiring book vividly describes the Chindits’ first operation and the heroism of Frank and his comrades, many of whom never returned.
Nations in the Balance
Author: Christopher L. Kolakowski
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2022-03-18
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 1636240976
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn account of the decisive WWII battles that helped shape Asia’s future: “Reminds us of the high stakes at risk for both Allies and Axis powers in Burma.” —Military Review From December 1943 to August 1944, Allied and Japanese forces fought the decisive battles of World War II in Southeast Asia. Fighting centered around North Burma, Imphal, Kohima, and the Arakan, involving troops from all over the world along a battlefront the combined size of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The campaigns brought nations into collision for the highest stakes: British and Indian troops fighting for Empire, the Indo-Japanese forces seeking a prestige victory with an invasion of India and the Americans and Chinese focused on helping China and reopening the Burma Road. Events turned on the decisions of the principal commanders—Admiral Louis Mountbatten and Generals Joseph Stilwell, William Slim, Orde Wingate, and Mutaguchi Renya, among many others. The impact of the fighting was felt in London, Tokyo, Washington, and other places far away from the battlefront, with effects that presaged postwar political relationships. This was also the first U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and Stilwell’s operations in some ways foreshadowed battles in Vietnam two decades later. Nations in the Balance recounts these battles, offering dramatic and compelling stories of people fighting in difficult conditions against high odds, with far-reaching results. It also shows how they proved important to the postwar future of the participant nations and Asia as a whole, with effects that still reverberate decades after the war.
Almost Englishmen
Author: Ruth Fredman Cernea
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 210
ISBN-13: 9780739116470
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBefore the Second World War, two golden 'promised lands' beckoned the thousands of Baghdadi Jews who lived in Southeast Asia: the British Empire, on which 'the sun never set, ' and the promised land of their religious tradition, Jerusalem. Almost Englishmen studies the less well-known of these destinations. The book combines history and cultural studies to look into a significant yet relatively unknown period, analyzing to full effect the way Anglo culture transformed the immigrant Bagdhadi Jews. England's influence was pervasive and persuasive: like other minorities in the complex society that was British India, the Baghdadis gradually refashioned their ideology and aspirations on the British model. The Jewish experience in the lush land of Burma, with its lifestyles, its educational system, and its internal tensions, is emblematic of the experience of the extended Baghdadi community, whether in Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Singapore, or other ports and towns throughout Southeast Asia. It also suggests the experience of the Anglo-Indian and similar 'European' populations that shared their streets as well as the classrooms of the missionary societies' schools. This contented life amidst golden pagodas ended abruptly with the Japanese invasion of Burma and a horrific trek to safety in India and could not be restored after the war. Employing first-person testimonies and recovered documents, this study illuminates this little known period in imperial and Jewish histories.
First Overland
Author: Tim Slessor
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
Published: 2016-03-07
Total Pages: 329
ISBN-13: 1908493208
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy Not? After all, no-one had ever done it before. It would be one of the longest of all overland journeys – half way round the world, from the English Channel to Singapore. They knew that several expeditions had already tried it. Some had got as far as the desrts of Persia; a few had even reached the plains of India. But no one had managed to go on from there: over the jungle clad mountains of Assam and across northern Burma to Thailand and Malaya. Over the last 3,000 miles it seemed there were ‘just too many rivers and too few roads'. But no-one really knew … In fact, their problems began much earlier than that. As mere undergraduates, they had no money, no cars, nothing. But with a cool audacity, which was to become characteristic, they set to work – wheedling and cajoling. First, they coaxed the BBC to come up with some film for a possible TV series. They then gently persuaded the manufacturers to lend them two factory-fresh Land Rovers. A publisher was even sweet-talked into giving them an advance on a book. By the time they were ready to go, their sponsors (more than 80 of them) ranged from whiskey distillers to the makers of collapsible buckets. In late 1955, they set off. Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two very weary Land Rovers, escorted by police outriders, rolled into Singapore – to flash bulbs and champagne. Now, fifty years on, their book, ‘First Overland', is republished – with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough. After all, it was he who gave them that film.
Return Via Rangoon
Author: Philip Stibbe
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 1994-06-01
Total Pages: 250
ISBN-13: 0850524768
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is one young officer's war story about training and inspiration in the Burmese jungle behind enemy lines. Beaten up and water tortured, yet only giving his captors false information, Stibbe was moved around Burma until he was eventually imprisoned in Rangoon jail. Now stricken with Parkinson's disease, probably as a result of his prison diet, Stibbe with his eldest son, also a soldier, has revised his book and this edition published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Wingate's second triumphant Chindit expedition.
Far East Air Operations 1942-1945
Author: John Grehan
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2014-09-30
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 1783462124
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDespatches in this volume include Air Operations in Burma and Bay of Bengal 1 January to 22 May 1942 by General Wavell, the despatch on air operations in South-East Asia November 1943 to May 1944, by Air Chief Marshal Sir R.E.C. Peirse, the despatch on air operations in South-East Asia from June 1944 to May 1945, by Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, and the despatch on air operations in South East Asia between May 1945 and September 1945, by Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park.??This unique collection of original documents will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history.
The Soldiers' Tale
Author: Samuel Hynes
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1998-04-01
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 1101191724
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Soldiers' Tale is the story of modern wars as told by the men who did the actual fighting. Hynes examines the journals, memoirs, and letters of men who fought in the two World Wars and in Vietnam, and also the wars fought against the weak and helpless in concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and bombed cities. Interweaving his own reflections on war with brilliantly chosen passages from soldiers' accounts, he offers vivid answers to the question we all ask of men who have fought: What was it like? In these powerful pages the experiences of modern war, which seem unimaginable to those who weren't there, become comprehensible and real. The wide range of writers examined includes both famous literary memoirists like Robert Graves, Tim O'Brien, and Elie Wiesel, and unknown soldiers who wrote only their war stories. Using these testimonies, Hynes considers each war in terms of its special circumstances and its effects on men who fought. His understanding of the psychology of warfare—and of each war's role in history—gives this study its intellectual authority; the voices of the men who were there, and wrote about what they saw and felt, give it its powerful dramatic impact.
