Product Description

This author is extraordinarily lucky to be alive! All those who read this splendid Second World War memoir will doubtless come to the same view.

After joining up in 1939 with the Queen's Royal Regiment the Author was posted to the North West Frontier of India where he cut his teeth chasing Pathan tribesman bandit gangs for two years. This was exciting enough but only a taste of what was to come. The Japanese advance into Burma threatened India and along with many thousands of British and Colonial troops Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region. Conditions were appalling and the fighting was extremely bitter by any standards. His Battalion was cut off by the Japs for three weeks but refused to surrender yet even worse was to come as the Battalion was thrown into the thick of the action at Kohima which is rated as the most desperate defensive action for the campaign. In one week 173 members of this Battalion were lost. Lowry himself was seriously wounded when a Japanese officer dropped out of a tree onto him. All this is vividly described in this fascinating and inspiring book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27496 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Evocative personal perspective of the battle of Kohima
Many readers will remember Michael Lowry's superb account as a Company Commander in Arakan in 1944, a book published shortly after the war and now long out of print. He has now returned to print with an excellent, readable and very personal account of the war, taking his infantry company through the `Box' battles in Arakan in February and March 1944 to the turning point battles of the Kohima hills in April and May 1944. Lowry begins by painting in the fascinating context of his time at Sandhurst at the outset of war followed by regimental service on the North West Frontier, an experience that bonded him fully into his regimental family and taught him the necessary detail of soldiering in plenty of time before he was thrown into the maelstrom that was Burma. He writes as an ordinary man, leading well-trained and disciplined troops in the desperate struggles against a fanatical enemy in the gloom of the Arakan jungle and the mud, rain and hand-to-hand terror of the Kohima ridge. In so doing, however, he comes across as a professional, caring and diligent leader, looking after each of his soldiers as he would one day care for the sheep on the farm he went on to run after his retirement.

The book is a refreshing antidote to the `jungle hell' variety of Burma Campaign history. Lowry's perspective by contrast is that of an infantry leader in a well-ordered and disciplined team, in no way dominated or outclassed by the fanatical `warrior ants' (as Slim called them) of the Japanese Imperial Army against whom they were fighting. It is a story of complete professionalism, of a commitment to maintaining the highest standards in the fastidious detail of an infantryman's existence, and of hard and relevant training. It is also a story of the camaraderie and affection that builds up between men dependent upon each other for their very lives, and who become lifelong friends through the shared experience of battle. Because of this it is possible in part vicariously to experience the loss Lowry feels when describing the death of his friends and to wonder again, for those of us who were not yet born at the time of these events, at the extraordinary sacrifices of this gallant generation.