I stumbled upon this absolute gem, through online bookseller Abe Books, 'The Wild Green Earth' by Bernard Fergusson. (
Bernard Fergusson, Baron Ballantrae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )
(I wasn't aware of the author's [shall we say] 'slightly colourful' immediate post war career in Palestine until I saw the Wikipedia entry.)
It gives an account of the author's second Chindit operation in 1944 behind the Japanese lines in Burma, where the then 32 year old author led a Brigade of 4000 men.
(He refers quite a few times to the 1943 Chindit expedition, which seems to have been something of a disaster.)
For those who insist on Aviation content, the book is rich in description of the (then) very novel glider and C47 aerial resupply operations that allowed the Chindits to survive. He also describes in detail (and waxes lyrical) about the operations of the mostly USAAF (but some RAF) light aircraft units that flew into the extremely rudimentary "airfields" the Chindits cut for them in the jungle.
I think it would be safe to say that the book is long out of print. However, it is well worth seeking out for anyone who enjoys a good military read. Published in 1946, it has an immediacy about it, with much naming of names of people obviously still alive.
Refreshingly, Fergusson admits to cock ups and getting things wrong. One incident he describes is sobering. After the war, he sought out the few men who had gone missing on the second expedition and survived Japanese captivity. When only 100 yards into their day's march after leaving their night camp, one soldier realised he had forgotten a piece of his kit and returned to recover it - and was captured by the Japanese patrol that had been closely shadowing the column. Fergusson admits not to having any idea that the Japanese even knew where the British column was, let alone being so close to them.
I found the second part of the book fascinating. More a series of after action reports or staff papers, Fergusson gives what amount to lessons on a number of varying topics, e.g., 'Jungle Travel' / 'Food, Water and Health' / 'The Jap as an Opponent'
(refreshingly honest in the high praise he gives to the Japanese soldier, if not to the Japanese senior officers) / 'Signals and Animals'
(mules were vital to the Chindits) / and, perhaps of most interest to readers of this site, 'The Light Plane Force'.
I've made a precis of his introduction to the Light Plane Force chapter.
THE LIGHT PLANE FORCE
From time to time, General Wingate would summon us to conference to comment on the progress of our training. At one such meeting he introduced a small, broad-shouldered American colonel. Phil Cochran had come to command No. I Air Commando, which itself included the Light Plane Force.
Phil took the stage. For half an hour there poured from his eager mouth a fantastic stream of advertisement. One really blushed to hear him. His boys were marvellous; there was nothing they couldn't do. They would fly us into Burma, and they would fly us out.
He had us laughing, he had us entertained, but he failed utterly to convince us. Wingate looked at us from the stage, to see how we were taking it, and his fierce eyes had a twinkle in them at our obvious disbelief. It was usually his role to startle us, and to make us wonder whether or not he really believed what he was telling us. To-day Phil Cochran was stealing his thunder.
At the end of the meeting I tackled Phil direct. He had spoken about his light planes, which took off (so he said) in seven hundred and fifty feet. I told him outright that I found his claims hard to believe, but that I would like to give them a fair try; and could I have the first experiment? I should welcome the chance to see whether or not the aircraft had the performance which he claimed for them, and whether or not they could really operate on the rough landing strips which were all we could hope to build them.
There was no question, of course, of building strips in the jungle proper; it was a matter of smoothing out existing patches of pasture.
The first two L-5’s had barely arrived when a genuine SOS came in from one of the columns. A man had been kicked in the groin by a mule, was unconscious and totally unfit to be moved. They were building a strip. Had the light planes arrived, and would they come and get him? It sounded like the perfect test of whether or not Phil Cochran's claims were genuine or empty boastings, of whether or not light planes could really land at short notice to evacuate casualties.
An hour later we drove out to the strip, and for the first time I found myself looking at an L.5 - that ugly but serviceable contraption to which thousands of our men were to owe their lives in the next few months. Its own mother could not have called it beautiful; the "flying mess-tin," as our men speedily christened it, was its aptest title. The clumsy, narrow wings were secured to the fuselage by round tubes which looked like the frame of a bicycle.
Flying at fifteen hundred feet, we soon saw some fifty figures working like ants on a patch of pasture not far from the river. The strip looked desperately small. We touched down on the extreme edge of the strip. I saw that we were at the downward end of a hill, and that the far end of the strip was well over the crest. However, we bumped to a halt; and were immediately surrounded by fifty soldiers with picks and shovels, stripped to the waist, sweating from their labours, and all agog to see the new toy.
The injured man, groaning and grey with pain, was hoisted into my seat in the air¬craft, which was to take him away and come back for me. She took off amid the cheers of the crowd; we had arranged for an ambulance to wait at the strip, and the news spread round the Brigade like wildfire, at the end of the exercise, how the poor fellow had been safely in hospital twenty minutes after leaving the ground.
For those of us who earlier in the year (on the 1943 Chindit expedition) had so often had the misery of abandoning our wounded, this first demonstration of the powers of the light aircraft lifted a great weight from our hearts. Nor did this good omen play us false. The pilots were as stout as the aircraft; and to the end of my days when I think of America, or when I hear Americans mentioned, my mind will flicker across the boys of the Light Plane Force before it finally focuses on the relevant context.