dustjacket information:
Although the soldiers of XIVth Army ensured their immortality by calling themselves 'The Forgotten Army', it cannot be said that they have since been overlooked. Apart from the Official History and the memoirs of nearly all the top brass, there have been many personal memoirs, mostly written by former prisoners of war, whose suffering at the hands of the Japanese should not be forgotten.
Charles Evans' recollections of his service in Burma are in a different vein. This quiet, unassuming young officer in the RAMC, who was mentioned in despatches in 1945, had a marked bent for exploration and mountaineering and was open to all new impressions. Unusually observant and perceptive, his keen eye missed no detail of his surroundings. Where most servicemen saw only an unpleasant and inhospitable environment, he was able to appreciate and to convey, in words and sketches, the geography and vegetation, the bird life and the peoples of Burma, as well as events as they occurred and the personalities and idiosyncrasies of his companions. He writes with humour and compassion, in a simple, direct style which shows his deep love and understanding of language.
After the war he studied surgery and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He climbed and explored extensively in the Himalayas, was deputy leader of the famous 1953 Everest Expeditions and, in 1955, led the successful Kanchenjunga Expedition, for which he was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He was appointed Principal of the University College of North Wales in 1958 and was twice Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales. He was knighted in 1964 and died in 1995, leaving behind an inspiring and lyrical account of his part in the Burma campaign.
Foreword Senior Officers did not much like us to talk of 'The Forgotten Army'; they thought it bad for morale. I liked the phrase; it was how men told you that they could put up with things. They knew that we were not much in the news and were low on lists of priorities, but they could laugh at all that, and they could carry on.
I kept a detailed diary during nearly all my short time in the army, and these notes are assembled from it. I have departed from the diary form where it would interrupt the narrative, but dates and places and events are all taken from the diary and from letters. Without them many of the details would have been forgotten. Conversations are as I wrote them down at the time, and comments about people and things are my own as written then in the heat of the moment. They often say more about me than about the subject of the comment.
Although I have used the official histories and other material to place the story in the general setting of the 1944/45 campaign in Burma, I must emphasize that the book is personal reminiscence, not an attempt at history. Some paragraphs, and some whole chapters, are printed in maroon typeface: they deal with the geographical and strategic background of my text and are intended to introduce the reader to the setting and circumstances of the story.
work under copyright
copies may be available at:
