Customer Reviews

Britain's Secret War: The Indonesian Confrontation 1962 - 66 (Men-at-Arms)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This interesting account of the military operations that afflicted British forces in Malaysia between 1962 and 1966 mostly concentrate on the problems in Borneo. The English army had only recently suppressed the Malaya emergency in which tnes of thousands of Communist Chinese peasants had tied up some 40,000 British troops. When that had ended in 1960 things began to deteriorate with recently independent Malaysia (ind. 1957) fighting with Indonesia which had become independent in 1945 and was in the midst of a campaign fo ethnic-cleansing against its Chinese minority who were suspected of being Communists.

A series of gueilla fights ensued in which some 20,000 British troops took part. A fascinating story about Southeast Asia, one that was not reported at the time and its rarely spoken about today. An interesting history.

Seth J. Frantzman

Excellent artwork by K.Lyles and a good deal of background information on the conflict from the author. Had the latter aspect been examined further and the links to the Malayan Emergency investigated more thoroughly (to the detriment of some of the less interesting information on purely operational matters), this work would no doubt have deserved a five star review. In any event, highly commended.

Another great Osprey publioation. See South African special forces review. It will be the same. Cheers!