CROSSING THE IRRAWADDY

In 1944, the penultimate year of World War Two, the Japanese offensive to invade British India was severely defeated with the Japanese suffering heavy casualties. As a result they were forced to withdraw far back into Burma with the British and Indian forces in close pursuit.

Towards the end of that year, it became evident to the British senior command that the Japanese intended to make a stand - not on the Shwebo plain north-west of Mandalay as was originally expected - but rather to use the wide Irrawaddy River as an obstacle behind which they would position their main strength. Thus British plans were quickly modified.

This book,after initially looking at the battles of Kohima and Imphal - both disastrous defeats for the Japanese - traces the British advance into Burma pushing the Japanese back eastwards. It then focuses on in some detail the British crossings of the Irrawaddy at three places south of Mandalay - at Pakokku, Nyaung U, and Bagan - and the respective battles fought on the river's banks and shores. The text is augmented with not only rarely seen World War Two photographs but also with the author's own photographs taken when he visited the area.

WAR IN THE TENASSERIM

The entry of Japan into the Second World War with its attack on Pearl Harbour found the British defence of Burma very much unprepared. No invasion threat from the east had been envisaged. The British deemed the jungle and the precipitous mountain ranges surrounding three sides of Burma to be impassable by any invader. At that time Britain was more concerned with the war against Hitler in Europe.

The Japanese invaded southern Burma - "the Tenasserim" - in early 1942 in order to protect the flank of their invasion of Malaya. And they subsequently occupied the rest of the country because they viewed it as the western bastion of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", their name for their conquered territories. 

This book begins by tracing the initial Japanese thrust by two relatively small forces to take the key airfields of southern Burma, their objective being to cut the British Imperial air route to Singapore. The book then follows the advance of the main invasion force which crossed the border with Siam (Thailand) at Myawaddy. The newly-formed 17th Indian Dvision did little to arrest the momentum of the Japanese advance,culminating in the fiasco at the Sittang Bridge.

The author has visited many of the battle sites of southern Burma. His colour photographs along with numerous black and white photographs of wartime Burma - both British and Japanese - vividly portray the story of the first phase of the Burma Campaign.

DUNKIRK OF THE EAST

The author's previous book, War in the Tenasserim, traced the Imperial Japanese Army's invasion of southern Burma in early 1942, from its crossing the Siam (Thailand) border to its capture of Rangoon, Burma's capital city. This present book carries on the dramatic story of that invasion and the British Army's withdrawal and retreat - from the capital to distant India. Now hampered by the presence of thousands of refugees - mainly Indian - the British/Indian forces were continually harrassed by the Japanese push northwards.  With little time left before the arrival of the monsoon rains and with Japanese forces in close pursuit, newly-appointed Lieutenant-General William Slim supervised the long retreat across nearly 1,000 miles of difficult terrain back to the safety of India. In their trek thousands of refugees, struggling along remote mountain tracks in the jungle,died of illness, exhaustion and hunger.

This book is illustrated with many rarely seen wartime photographs along with a number of photographs supplied by Myanmar nationals before the recent military coup and lockdown of the country. The end result is a gripping story of the British retreat in Burma, one which Winston Churchill, Britain's Prime Minister at the time, had noted was similar in many ways to the tragedy of Dunkirk in France of two years before.