Jack Bowsher has set out in this book – his first – to reprise the role of armour in the Burma campaign. He has achieved much more, however, as this excellent book is an accessible study of the campaign as a whole. It has much to recommend it. The fruit of lots of good research in the archives for primary sources, as well as in books for the memoirs of men who served in tanks in the Far East, Bowsher has produced not merely a good summary of the campaign, seen through the gun sights of a Stuart, Valentine, Lee, Grant or Sherman tank, but a rattling good story as well. The memoirs of the time from tankmen are limited, but he’s managed to get hold of them all, using them to provide really excellent accounts of the fighting, including the only real tank on tank action of the war, at Tamu in March 1944. The book is written with some panache as well. Bowsher isn’t reluctant to hide his opinions and they’re pretty rational. This certainly doesn’t feel like his first book. He writes with the tautness of a literary veteran, keeping his arguments tight, his sentences short and with an eye on ensuring that his observations about the campaign and its key personalities are judiciously mixed with a series of brilliant first-hand stories of men who were there. It really is, as James Holland says in his introduction, ‘Superbly researched and compellingly told.’
The only criticism is that there is not much – or enough – about Japanese armour, but this is a very minor quibble, given the insignificant role that armour played in Japanese tactics, a major failing in their way of war.
The very good news is that this foray into writing military history has energised Bowsher to write another book, being published (I hope) by Chiselbury in 2025. The subject? He’s going to develop Chapter 13 – Thunder Run to on Meiktila – into a full blown account of the 1945 campaign. Bravo. 2025 is the 80th anniversary of Slim’s last great campaign in the Far East, one in which the Burma Area Army of General Kimura was savaged by a triumphant 14th Army led, from the front, by tanks of both British and Indian Armies. I, for one, can’t get enough of them, and look forward to Bowsher’s next instalment with eagerness. So should you.
Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma, by Jack Bowsher is out now and published by Chiselbury.
Robert Lyman is the author of A War of Empires.
