Summary

"The struggle of British, Commonwealth and American-Chinese troops against the Japanese in Burma was one of the decisive campaigns of the Second World War.

"The struggle of British, Commonwealth and American-Chinese troops against the Japanese in Burma was one of the decisive campaigns of the Second World War. With British India significantly threatened by the relentless Japanese advance, the fate of the British Empire in the East hung in the balance. The tropical climate of dense malarial jungle infested with vermin and swept by torrential monsoon rains made the fighting, for both sides, a remarkable feat of arms. Yet the war in Burma rarely receives the attention it deserves. Roy C. Nesbit aims to change this. In vivid detail he describes the British retreat and humiliation at the hands of the Japanese invaders in 1942, with some men fighting and retreating almost a thousand miles, the longest distance in British history. The Allied response was to build up their forces on a massive scale, eventually numbering over 1,300,000 personnel, and to train them to fight in jungle conditions. Their counter-offensive, launched in 1944, culminated in the battle at Imphal and Kohima which turned the course of the conflict and the reconquest of Burma was achieved just before the atom bomb was dropped."--Publisher description.