Customer Reviews

Chindit 1942-45 (Warrior)

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An area not really well known to most, this book covers the raising of the Chindits, the Chindit's battles against the Japanese in the SE Asia theater. The jungle proved an opponent as tough and dangerous as the Japanese. Well written with good illustrations and enough detail for the modeler and gamer. Recommended.

CHINDIT 1942-45
TIM MOREMAN
OSPREY PUBLISHING, 2009
QUALITY SOFTCOVER, $18.95, 64 PAGES, MAPS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ILLUSTRATIONS


Author Tim Moreman, as do most of the writers about the Chindits, starts off on the wrong foot. Along the way, he gets his footing. The so-called "Chindits" received their name through a mispronunciation of the Burmese word Chinthe by Major General Orde Wingate. Wingate always was a bubble off-center. The author describes them, as do almost all of the writers about the Chindits, as a spiffy new form of specialized unit. They weren't. They were merely a well-trained and well-led light infantry unit. In point of fact, the model for the Chindits was the German Schutztruppe Askari led by Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa in World War I. During the 1970's, this unit was "discovered" by an individual attempting to establish credentials as an expert of guerilla warfare. He described this German unit as a "guerilla unit" and the best example of "guerilla warfare" during World War I. That "expert's" assertions were a joke, merely one of many in the book. But, the book has become a standard reference among non-practitioners in the field, i.e. it is a "popular" reference, not a specialist's reference. This German Army unit in East Africa during World War I was a standing German Army unit prior to the outbreak of the war and it remained so throughout the war. It was the only German Army unit in the field which was never defeated in World War I. Its operations in East Africa were a classic example of maneuver warfare, nothing more, nothing less. The Chindits in World War II were the updated version of this German unit. They engaged in dismounted maneuver warfare and did it well. They deserve credit for what they actually did. They don't need to have their professionalism misrepresented.


Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida