In the decades since the end of World War Two military historians have published
\nthousands of books on the campaigns, operations, and battles fought during this most global of
\nworld wars. The campaign in Northwest Europe garnered the lion\u2019s share of the reporting, the
\nanalysis, and the story-telling. It was followed in popularity by, in uncertain order, the campaigns
\nwaged across the deserts of North Africa, the island hopping operations in the Pacific Theater,
\nand since the fall of the Soviet Union an increasing number of corrective histories and
\nbiographies on the Russian-German war experience. Throughout this war, one obscure but none
\nthe less highly important area of operations remained consistently underappreciated. This area
\nand the campaign fought there was the Allied war against Japan in Southeast Asia. Perhaps it
\nwas inevitable that the primary Allied warfighting formation in this campaign, the British
\nFourteenth Army, became known by its veterans as the Forgotten Army.
\nThe British Fourteenth Army received units and soldiers from throughout much of the
\nBritish colonial empire (the United Kingdom, British East Africa, India (including soldiers from
\nwhat would become Pakistan), Nepal, and Burma. It partnered with Nationalist Chinese forces
\ndefending the Burma Road, the only secure land transportation route connecting India\u2019s ports
\nand supply depots containing the food and supplies, the weapons and aircraft, and the supporting
\nmilitary elements sent from Great Britain and the United States to train and sustain the Chinese
\nForces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek in southern China and northern Burma. Today we
\nwould describe this type of warfare as both coalition and multinational, and requiring
\ninteragency integration to insure that the diplomats of the countries protected and promoted the
\nnational interests of their governments, while supporting and sustaining the military operations
\nof their one of a kind military coalition. It is fortunate then that three of this war\u2019s best histories
\nare autobiographies written by soldiers that saw combat during the Burma campaigns from three
\ndistinctly different levels of command producing important and highly relevant perspectives on
\nground operations.
\nMajor-General William J. Slim was leading the Indian Army\u2019s 10 th Division in Iraq in
\nearly March of 1942 when he was directed to leave the division he commanded and fly to India
\nto assume another as yet unspecified role but soon to become Commander of I Burma Corps. At
\nthis point General \u201cBill\u201d Slim had already led British soldiers at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia
\nduring World War I, sought and received transfer to the Indian Army where he eventually
\ncommanded the 1\/6 th Gurkha battalion of riflemen on the Northwest Frontier of British India (to
\nbecome the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan), graduated from the British
\nStaff College at Camberley, and instructed in the Indian Army staff college at Quetta. In every
\nrespect he was considered highly capable through his hard work, success in command, and
\nsuperior record of service. General Slim went on to lead his Corps with distinction after first
\nbeing kicked out of Burma by the Japanese Army, fought to a draw in the Arakan peninsula of
\neastern India that would later become part of Bangladesh, reorganize, retrain, and rebuild the
\ntroops and formations under his command that came from many different parts and peoples of
\nthe British Empire. Promoted to command the Fourteenth Army Slim would adopt and perfect
\nmethods of air support that would successfully pioneer supplying formations totally by air, rely
\nupon medical evacuation (medevac) of seriously wounded or ill soldiers, and pioneer many of
\nthe concepts of joint and multinational operations now relied upon today. Promoted to Field
\nMarshall and Chief of the Imperial General Staff of the British Armed Forces, Slim obtained the
\nequivalent position of the United States\u2019 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Telling his own
\nstory, in his own words, his autobiographical work Defeat into Victory (MacMillan Publishers
\nLimited, 1986) is generally considered the best of all general\u2019s books to come out of World War
\nII and frequently appears on many senior military leader lists of best books for both junior and
\nsenior officers to read. Field Marshall Slim relates the defeats as much as the victories and
\nengages in self-criticism of his own actions and decisions to an unheard of degree by modern
\nstandards. He clearly identifies the causes and the effects, and focuses on the actions then taken
\nto achieve success, always relating success to the efforts of his subordinates and the
\nextraordinary efforts they took to achieve victory.
\nThe second book, The Road Past Mandalay (Cassell, 2002, Orion Publishing Group
\n2012) was written by John Masters and originally published in 1961. It is the second of a two
\npart autobiography with the first volume Bugles and a Tiger (Cassell, Orion Publishing Group
\n2012) originally published in 1956. The two books combined tell the true story of Master\u2019s
\nmilitary service before and during World War II that roughly parallels Field Marshall Slim\u2019s own
\nexperiences. Masters was the son of a British family whose ancestors had served in India for a
\nhundred years before he graduated from the British Army\u2019s own military academy at Sandhurst
\nin 1932 and took up service in the British Army in India. Masters would also serve in a Gurkha
\nbattalion of riflemen, the 4 th Gurkhas. His service took him to the Indian Northwestern Frontier
\nand along the tribal territories designed to limit confrontation between the Pathans (or Pashtuns)
\nwho lived astride this land of hills and mountains and whose tribes raided the lowlanders inside
\nIndia proper. The first book then deals with life in this environment and is notable for its focus
\non military stability operations and counter-insurgency tactics. The second book deals with the
\nservice of Masters as a field grade officer serving in World War II. Like Slim, Masters served in
\nboth Iraq and Burma during World War II. Like Slim, Masters\u2019 service with Gurkha soldiers and
\nleadership informed his view of working with coalition and multinational forces. Unlike Slim,
\nMasters service never extended much beyond the breakup and partition of the Indian
\nsubcontinent into Pakistan and India. Instead, Masters background and experience allowed him
\nto rise to command of an infantry brigade organized as columns of light infantry called Chindits
\nand designed for long range penetration raids to interdict lines of supply in the hills and jungles
\nof northern Burma in 1943-44. Major John Masters was the Brigade Major (a staff appointment
\nthat combined the roles of the executive officer and the operations officer) of the 111 th Infantry
\nBrigade. With the death of Major General Orde Wingate, Masters\u2019 brigade commander took
\ncharge of all Chindit forces operations during the raids deep into Burma during the spring and
\nsummer of 1944. Major Masters stepped up to command and established the brigade\u2019s defensive
\nposition interdicting vital lines of communication. The heroic defense and losing battle for
\nBlackpool Block becomes the heart of the powerful narrative of The Road Past Mandalay. Few
\nmilitary histories are as exciting and moving as this book. After the defeat of the Japanese in
\nWorld War II and the breakup of British India, Masters left India and eventually settled in the
\nUnited States where he pursued a successful career as a talented writer of fiction based on his
\nknowledge of India. Several of his novels were turned into movies in the 1950s. His novel
\nBhowani Junction became a popular film starring Ava Gardner as an Anglo-Indian lieutenant
\nand Stewart Granger as a British Army officer commanding a battalion of Gurkhas engaged in
\nstability operations securing a vital railway line amidst the violence of the Indian partition.
\nThe third author of an autobiography on the writer\u2019s military service is George
\nMacDonald Fraser. A Scot, Fraser volunteered for service in 1943 in the Border Regiment of the
\nBritish Army. His unit deployed to train and acclimate in the Indian theater before participating
\nin the last offensive in 1945 to retake Burma and finally defeat the Japanese. During the course
\nof the campaign the author masterfully portrays the life of a serving soldier in the infantry best
\ndescribed as long periods of boring weariness and interrupted by moments of abject terror. The
\nnarrative of this history is in turns moving, and funny, but always authentic. A masterful read,
\nthe book depicts the lives of the author and his mates. He tells the stories of their preparation for
\ncombat, and their shared experiences of combat, the days of intense boredom, too often
\ninterrupted by intense moments of terror. Sometimes his small unit operations engaged in
\nsuccessful bouts of combat, sometimes, a few were lots and mourned, until the next firefight.
\nFraser himself departs the battlefield before operations end when he is selected for attendance at
\nOfficer Cadet Training School. Told to grab his kit, he departs the scene but well understands
\nthe story is not over. An epilogue, written fifty years after the first Victory over Japan Day
\nprovides his own ending for himself, the veterans he marched with on that anniversary, and his
\nown mates left behind in Burma. A talented writer of histories, novels and screenplays, Fraser
\nwrote the Harry Flashman series of novels inserting his cad and scoundrel of an action hero into
\nalmost every significant military engagement of the British Empire post-Waterloo until pre-
\nWorld War I. Based loosely upon historical fact, Fraser has been read during deployments by
\nmilitary members around the world since their initial publication in the 1970s.
\nIn this new but still familiar world of near parity of military forces among competitive
\nworld powers, with all sides possessing effective anti-access area denial weapons, perhaps one
\nday the serious and meaningful works of Fraser, Masters, and Slim and the role and lives of the
\nsoldiers deployed and fighting a long way from home will enjoy their own popularity and respect
\nonce again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the decades since the end of World War Two military historians have published thousands of books on the campaigns, operations, and battles fought during this most global of world wars. The campaign in Northwest Europe garnered the lion\u2019s share… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1225],"tags":[1189,1190,1069,1010],"class_list":["post-7824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-global-conflict","tag-burma","tag-cbi","tag-second-world-war","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7826,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7824\/revisions\/7826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}