Chindit Column 76; with Nine Full-Page Illustrations and Two Maps

22 cm, [8--including frontispiece], 137, [1] pages. Front endpaper map with color. Previous owner's bookplate on verso of frontispiece. Illustrations. Maps. The dust jacket DJ badly frayed with some tears and loss of material, corners bumped, sticker on front DJ flap., In March, 1944: A Nippon Army of 3 divisions had crossed the broad Chindwin river and climbed into the Naga hills, mighty barrier between Burma and India. In the towns below, however, men of sterling worth, Europeans and Indians, oiled their rifles and sited their big guns, determined at all costs to keep out the invaders. In April 1944, Chindit Column 76 was detached from the main body commanded by the legendary Orde Wingate, and sent behind Japanese lines in Nagaland, the easternmost part of India. Wilcox details the time he spent with 76th Column. He was with the R.A.F. He tells the story of the ranks relentless struggle through jungle,sweltering heat,monsoon, and all manner of disease. The author was a Flight-Lieutenant of the Royal Air Force. Prior to WWII he had been a newspaper reporter. In December 1943 he was posted to India and volunteered to act as R.A.F. liaison officer with Wingate's Special Force--the Chindits. He was sent to the 23rd Infantry Brigade as liaison officer to 76 column of the 2nd Battalion, The Duke of Wellington's Regiment. The Chindits, officially known as Long Range Penetration Groups, were special operations units of the British and Indian armies which saw action in 1943–1944 during the Burma Campaign of World War II. Brigadier Orde Wingate formed them for long-range penetration operations against the Imperial Japanese Army, especially attacking lines of communication deep behind Japanese lines. The name Chindits is a corrupted form of Chinthe, the Burmese word for "lion". Their operations featured long marches through extremely difficult terrain, undertaken by underfed troops often weakened by diseases such as malaria and dysentery. Controversy persists over the extremely high casualty rate and the military value of the achievements of the Chindits. The first Chindit unit, the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, was gradually formed in the area around Jhansi in the summer of 1942. Wingate took charge of the training of the troops in the jungles of central India during the rainy season. Half of the Chindits were British: the 13th Battalion, the King's Liverpool Regiment (nominally a second-line battalion, which contained a large number of older men) and men from the former Bush Warfare School in Burma, who were formed into 142 Commando Company. The other portion of the force consisted of the 3rd Battalion, the 2nd Gurkha Rifles (a battalion that had only just been raised) and the 2nd Battalion, the Burma Rifles (a composite unit formed from several depleted battalions of Burmese troops that had retreated into India in 1942). Wingate trained this force as long-range penetration units that were to be supplied by stores parachuted or dropped from transport aircraft and were to use close air support as a substitute for heavy artillery. They would penetrate the jungle on foot, essentially relying on surprise through mobility to target enemy lines of communication (a tactic that the Japanese had previously used in 1942 to great effect against British forces in Malaya and Burma). The Chindits had suffered heavy casualties: 1,396 killed and 2,434 wounded. Over half had to be confined to hospital and prescribed a special nutritional diet whilst hospitalized. As bad as the casualty figures may seem, those suffered by the force in 1943 were proportionally much higher. The Chindits were finally disbanded in February 1945. It has been argued that the Chindits contributed to the overall success of the Allied armies in Burma through the innovations in air supply techniques and organization that their operations required.…