Customer Reviews

The Imperial War Museum Book of War Behind Enemy Lines

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In order to give an accurate portrayal of this work, it's contents must be analyzed separately. Its information pertaining to the Long Range Desert Group, SAS, and so forth is engaging, accurate, and comprehensive. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the sections pertaining to the Chindit expeditions of General Orde Wingate. In these chapters, unlike the rest of the volume, much information is ignored, and very few sources are cited, astonishingly few considering the mass of information held at the Imperial War Museum itself pertaining to Wingate. As an example, Bernard Fergusson, Chindit column and brigade leader, is cited as a source, but it is not his earlier, more accurate work Beyond the Chindwin that is cited, but a later book, wherein his own personal recollections have been altered due to prodding by the Official Historians. Similarly, Shelford Bidwell's unbalanced book, Chindit War is a source, while there is no mention of the firsthand accounts by, among others, Chindits Peter Mead and Mike Calvert, not to mention historian David Rooney's illuminating works on the area. Instead, the take on Wingate is not dissimilar in any concrete way to the Official History by S Woodburn Kirby, a work which is decidedly, and unprofessionally, biased against the work of Wingate and his men. Still, all in all, the book is a valuable and readable resource for those interested in war behind enemy lines in World War II, with the exception of the Wingate information. Caveat emptor.