The Race to Rangoon : A Commander's Account of the Battle for Burma, 1944-1945

It was a casual encounter, a conversation between holidaymakers abroad.As all such discussions inevitably do with people of a certain age, the subject of children was raised.One said that his son was a military historian who specialised in the Fourteenth Army - often known as ‘The Forgotten Army’.The other said that her late father was a senior officer with that very same forgotten force.She had retained all his papers; would the other’s son be interested?Those papers included maps, diagrams and orders compiled by Brigadier Charles Ian Jerrard.Jerrard commanded the 98th Brigade during the re-invasion of Burma in 1944, a formation which participated in the great battles which saw the Fourteenth Army crossing the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy, taking Mandalay in bitter close-quarters fighting, and, eventually, driving the Japanese out of Burma. On 6 October 1944, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia, arrived at Janori in India to inspect all the units