Author: Bernard FergussonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Burma
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Beyond the Chindwin
Author: Bernard FergussonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Burma
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Beyond the Chindwin
Author: Bernard FergussonPublisher: Isis Large Print Books
ISBN: 9780753157077
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
An 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 BerkePublisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 139901689X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Book Description
This 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. KolakowskiPublisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636240976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
An 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.
Hidden Weapons
Author: Basil CollierPublisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473814928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569
Book Description
In his Foreword, Professor Jones writes 'Mr Collier takes the opportunity to review the contributions of all forms of Intelligence, and the use and misuse that was made of them, in all the major phases of World War II. His task has required very wide reading of the great volume of original documents and derivative literature now available, and I admire the judgement that is evident throughout the book. Within the limits of treating the widest aspects of Intelligence in World War II in a small compass, Mr Collier has told the whole truth, fortunately without it turning out to be very unfavorable; and in the lessons to be drawn from it we indeed have one element of security if properly applied'.Basil Collier throws fresh light on the low priority given to Intelligence between the wars; the tendency of ministers and senior officials to rely less on intelligence reports than their own individual hunches; the failure to foresee the invasion of Norway; why, even with the aid of Enigma it was impossible to turn the scales in Crete, and why the Americans, though privy to some of Japans most closely guarded secrets, allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to take them by surprise.
The Making Of The British Army
Author: Allan MallinsonPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409085813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575
Book Description
Edgehill, 1642: Surveying the disastrous scene in the aftermath of the first battle of the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell realized that war could no longer be waged in the old, feudal way: there had to be system and discipline, and therefore - eventually - a standing professional army. From the 'New Model Army' of Cromwell's distant vision, former soldier Allan Mallinson shows us the people and events that have shaped the British army we know today. How Marlborough's momentous victory at Blenheim is linked to Wellington's at Waterloo; how the desperate fight at Rorke's Drift in 1879 underpinned the heroism of the airborne forces at Arnhem in 1944; and why Montgomery's momentous victory at El Alamein mattered long after the Second World War was over . . . From the British Army's origins at the battle of Edgehill to the recent conflict in Afghanistan, The Making of the British Army is history at its most relevant - and most dramatic.
The Soldiers' Tale
Author: Samuel HynesPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101191724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317
Book Description
The 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.
The Minbu, Mandalay, Sagaing, and Meiktila divisions; and the native states
Author: Far East Air Operations 1942-1945
Author: John GrehanPublisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1783462124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
Despatches 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 Battle for Burma: Wild Green Earth
Author: Bernard FergussonPublisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 147387842X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Bernard 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.