1/4: Burma '44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East Hardcover – June 11, 2024 by James Holland (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
Burma '44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East Hardcover – June 11, 2024
by James Holland (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Burma-44/dp/0802160581
In February 1944, in one of the most astonishing battles of World War II, a ragtag collection of British clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews, managed to defeat a much larger and sophisticated contingent of some of the finest infantry in the Japanese army on their march towards India.
What became known as the Battle of the Admin Box, fought amongst the paddy fields and jungle of Northern Arakan over a fifteen-day period, turned the battle for Burma. Not only was it the first decisive victory for Allied troops against the Japanese, more significantly, it demonstrated how the Japanese could be defeated. Lessons learned in this otherwise insignificant corner of the Far East set up the campaign in Burma that would follow, as General William Slim’s Fourteenth Army finally turned the tide of the war in the East.
In Burma ’44, acclaimed World War II historian James Holland offers a dramatic tale of victory against incredible odds. As momentous as the Battle of the Bulge ten months later, the Admin Box was a triumph of human grit and heroism and remains one of the most significant yet underappreciated conflicts of the entire war. In Holland’s hands, it is finally given its proper place in the history of World War II.
1944 Burma
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the World with John Bachelor. |
| 0:09.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:11.0 | It is February |
| 0:12.9 | 1944 in the jungles of Burma. It's 6 a.m. local time. There is a lot of |
| 0:22.4 | shouting and screaming and gunfire to the immediate north. |
| 0:27.0 | A man named Messerby commanding the 7th division is in its pajamas and awakens immediately. |
| 0:34.2 | There have been talk for days now of Japanese forces to the north of the position of the |
| 0:41.0 | Seventh Division. |
| 0:42.0 | However, nothing's come of it until this outbreak of fire. |
| 0:47.2 | What does it mean? The general must make decisions immediately. He dresses and heads to the radio to inform his command. |
| 0:55.0 | This is a scene that opens a struggle for not only Burma, but all of the Far East between the Japanese Imperial Army |
| 1:08.0 | and the British India Army of 1944. I welcome the author of Burma 44, the battle that turned the war in the |
| 1:19.4 | East, James Holland. James is written very carefully of these events |
| 1:25.7 | and they start picture within picture within picture. |
| 1:29.4 | So we're starting with the detail of a man in his pajamas, |
| 1:32.4 | a fighting general who's fought his way across the British |
| 1:36.1 | Empire map from Africa, now he's in India, given the command of an infantry division, |
| 1:42.3 | it's part of a general advance designed by Lord |
| 1:46.1 | Boutton commanding all the forces, General Slim commanding all the forces, each of these, |
| 1:52.4 | think of them as dolls within dolls and |
| 1:55.6 | uh... general messur v at the point of the sphere a spear |
| 2:00.1 | in these jungles that you cannot see through. |
... |
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