Chindits (1 results)

This superb and unusually comprehensive collection documents the Chindit campaigns in Burma through official reports, field-used artefacts, contemporary SEAC publications, and an impressive body of memoirs. Centred on rare primary material - most notably Wingate's Report on the Operations of 77th Brigade, the original manuscript of Major John Hedley's Jungle Fighter, and a remarkable "panic flag" carried in the field - it also includes items from the papers of serving Chindit officer Major J. E. B. Rippingale, among them intelligence reports, exceptional press photographs, and operational maps still marked with use. Alongside these are privately issued commemorative works, the Chindits Old Comrades' Association's appreciation of Wingate, and a strong run of personal narratives, including signed or working copies by Fergusson, Calvert, Boyle, Brett-James, and others. Named for the leonine guardians of Burmese temples, the Chindits were created by the charismatic and controversial Orde Wingate, a champion of long-range penetration and unconventional warfare. Their two campaigns - Operation Longcloth in 1943, a 3,000-man incursion deep into Japanese-held territory, and Operation Thursday in 1944, the second-largest airborne operation of the war - demonstrated that Allied forces could operate effectively in the Burmese jungle and played a critical role in loosening Japan's hold on the region. This archive brings together rare contemporary testimony from these operations, the personal effects of a participant, and a representative selection of the subsequent literature shaped by those who served. A detailed listing of the items is available on request. Approximately 30 books concerning the Chindits, including Wingate's Report on the Operations of 77th Brigade; the original MS of Hedley's book Jungle Fighter; a number of SEAC Chindit publications; a small trove of pieces from the collection of a serving Chindit officer, including intelligence reports, some excellent press photographs, and a remarkable original "panic flag" - the escape map, neckerchief, signal flag carried by the Chindits; the privately produced Chindits Old Comrade's Association appreciation of Wingate; together with a group of Chindit memoirs. These last are not the best copies in all cases, but most of the major books are here including a signed copy of Fergusson's The Wild Green Earth, Anthony Brett-James's copy with his pithy notes, and one of Patrick Boyle's MS note-books used in the composition of Jungle, Jungle Little Chindit. Overall very good.