Letters From the Burma Front

The Burma campaign against the Japanese in the Second World War involved rebuilding a defeated multi-ethnic, multi-lingual Allied force, trench warfare like that of the First World War, hand-to-hand fighting of ancient ferocity, combined operations with air and naval forces, artillery barrages, opposed crossings of great rivers, tank warfare in the Burmese central plain, and a final rapid advance ahead of the monsoon to Rangoon. It was followed by the Japanese surrender in Singapore and by violent peace-keeping operations in former European colonies in South-East Asia. Harry Walker was a young doctor in a mobile surgical unit which worked close behind the fighting front. He was a witness to these great events and his letters to Annie and Flo illuminate the bald facts of the campaign.