![]() Some very funny stuff there, but his memoir of the war in Burma is another thing altogether funny, but tragic, and true. ![]() Fraser in the Flashman series, you should do so. Not for the faint of heart, but so truthful in its description of the combat infantryman's world. They were there to do a job and get out alive, and that's how most soldiers feel. ![]() And yet, Fraser and his comrades were not blood-thirsty few soldiers are, and those that are, are usually poor soldiers. His battalion had spent months being shot at and losing men in the jungle, by Japanese who melted away in the forest, and finally they were fighting in the open he tells of his happiness in being able to finally see and shoot the enemy. Fraser is brutally honest, as when he describes being in the last battle of the war, in which, finally, the invisible enemy became visible. ![]() The strange decisions the soldiers had to make, like whether to shoot Japanese soldiers while sleeping, or to wake them up first, are the reality of the grunt's world (they decided it didn't matter much, one way or the other). Having served in infantry units myself, I felt the truth of this account in my bones. Fraser described his service in General Slim's Army in Burma as the "last echo of Kipling's world", and that is not so far off the mark. Fraser's talents as a fiction writer, but it's all true. ![]() Written by the author of the Flashman historical novels, it benefits greatly from Mr. This is, hands down, the best first person account of war in the China-Burma-India Theater in WW2. ![]()
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May 2023
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