Profile of MajorBloodnok

Jump back to quoted post1 May 2015, 19:26 PM__deleted__

No I did not, however, by the power of google, this shall be rectified...

This is a book about to pass into history; as indicated by its curious use of an accent in the word 'material'. Slim's urbane and contemplative nature compounds the prejudices of his time. "Our losses were light," he writes (I paraphrase) "only around 2,500". Well. That's all right then. He comments how the Japanese "...turned their slanted eyes to Assam" (no reference, obviously, to the ovoid intensity of allied Chinese eyes). Of course, soldiers deal in death and the enemy is inevitably demonised; and it would be banal (as much as offensive) to denigrate the courage and sacrifice - on both sides - of the troops in Burma during WW2. But this is a book that is routinely cited (along with 'The Art of War', 'The Prince" or any half-decent biography of Napoleon) as being a tract for business leaders. And for all Slim's liberal conviviality towards self-aggrandising, would-be mythical generals (mostly, but not all, American) or his gracious admiration for his Japanese counterparts, his is a military mind. His notions of morale are based on activating people who are conscripted; who are removed from all aspects of domesticity and persuaded that their situation offers only victory or defeat. The paradigm here is not a 'business situation' or at least (since some extreme capitalists might think otherwise) not a social situation. Slim operates in a rigid hierarchical context - as indicated by his own willingness (curious to the civilian mind) to accede to orders that he feels are wrong. If he cites his own temper it seems merely to demonstrate his modesty; while his praise for subalterns is without stint. In fact, so exceptional do Slim's colleagues appear that you marvel that the war in the West took only 5 years to complete - the Western front might have had superior technical resources but by Slim's reckoning all the best soldiers ended up in the East! Stubborn positivism has its virtues but it's still an authoritarian mode. Slim has the martial love of aphorisms. "When unable to decide which of two options to take, a general should take the bolder course" he writes in the first half of the book (again, a paraphrase); but when the options present themselves later in the campaign, he actually takes the middle course (and profits by it). He even has the chairman-like propensity for micromanagement - inventing hemp parachutes or putting together ineffectual flotillas of junk ships. Resumes of this book tend to celebrate the way that Slim began his campaign by taking care to marshal superior forces against specific enemy units so that they developed 'the habit of victory' - with the effect that they ultimately learned to defeat enemy units that were greater in number. But it's not that simple. The successful allied campaign to recoup Burma surely owes more to belatedly improved techniques of jungle warfare and to the superior management of logistics - oh, and not a small part to the opportunity for respite afforded by the monsoon season. Slim evidently played a key role in two of these factors. He was a skilled commander and, for his times, a decent man. But he killed people for a living. Let's not pretend there isn't a problem here.

Almost two decades later the British Offical History of the Burma campaign of 1944 was published. It contained strong adverse criticism of Wingate. This was hurtful and dismaying for the Chindit veterans. By detracting from the good reputation of their hero and questioning the significance of the campaign in Northern Burma, it attacked their selfworth.
David Rooney's book is the latest counterattack against the Official History and its editor, Woodburn Kirby and his colleague Michael Roberts.
The first four chapters deal with Wingate's upbringing and education, his military apprenticeship in Sudan, his militarily successful but politically embarassing operations in Palestine and his return to Sudan to take a leading part in the liberation of Ethiopia during 1941.
In this part Rooney largely succeeds in his attempt to make "an objective assessment of the achievements of Orde Wingate". It is in the middle part - especially Chapters 7 and 8 - that his historical judgement fails, because his friendship and loyalty towards the Chindit veterans prevent him from dealing objectively with the material.
Rooney complains that, "the Official History disregarded any favourable comment, and launched into a destructive attack on Wingate both as a character and as a soldier. It made a series of unsubstantiated criticisms which are clearly designed to destroy his reputation, and it made no attempt to give a balanced view". These comments could equally apply to Rooney's treatment of Lentaigne, who replaced Wingate as commander of Special Force.