What was it like to participate in some of the bitterest fighting experienced by the Allies in the Second World War, against the toughest enemy they encountered?
Using quite extraordinary and mainly unpublished material from the great archives of the Imperial War Museum and with the aid of his masterly accompanying text, Major General Julian Thompson reveals the reality of combat in the biggest ground war fought by the British, Americans and Australians against the Japanese.

The Japanese were formidable opponents at all levels. In the Burma Campaign, the Allied forces rapidly learned the terrible truth that man for man the Japanese were even better soldiers than the Germans.

On the Allied side, the campaign was one of the most multiracial in the history of warfare. This book is a tribute to these soldiers, many fighting someone else’s war in a strange land against a formidable enemy, a very long way from home.