The Jungle is Neutral: The memoir of a British lieutenant in WWII Malaya who conducts guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. It’s not a very gripping story. All the successful guerrilla work takes place in the first quarter of the book, and from there on it is one long anticlimax of malaria, dysentery and thrashing through the jungle.
Its all about stay behind parties in the deepest jungles, tricky enough in peacetime but when as googolplex of japanese over run the islands well they didn't count on nutters like Spencer F. Chapman, all I will say is that if the British army breaks and runs well any sane person would try and run faster than they can, but hell no, one man turned and strolls into the jungle to commence a random sort of guerrilla warfare on them.
So whilst the British and entire commonwealth military scarpered or surrendered (very bad option with hindsight!) he set up a kind of scratch force and decided to fight back, slowly and rather painfully Chapman ended up on a massive jungle learning curve and after a lot of suffering cracked it. Its well written and funny with a particular British cruelty to the gallows humor as well.
His major accomplishment between all the not succumbing to illness is training up the Malayan Communist Party cadres in tactics. The book ends with the war so I’m left wondering to what degree the post-war MCP insurgency against the British was more effective because of the good lieutenant’s training.
Worth a read if you are into guerrilla warfare... =)
No comments:
Post a Comment