As we come to the end of our focus on the War in the Pacific, Warlord boss John Stallard was at pains to point out that it wasn’t just Americans fighting the Japanese. British and Commonwealth forces also battled the expansion of Imperial Japan, being pushed back in the early war but steadily retaking lost ground in the late war.
The 14th Army fought through the dense, sweltering jungles of Malaysia and Burma – and we’ve produced articles on the history of this ‘Forgotten Army‘ as well as a Bolt Action scenario for playing out a Jungle Road Ambush.
The Chindits were the largest allied special forces in operation during WWII. Formed from the British Indian Army as well as the British Army, these men operated deep behind enemy lines in North Burma to bring the battle to the Japanese. The jungles of Burma provided plenty of hardship transforming these fighting men into some of the toughest and grizzled soldiers of their day.
Ordinary soldiers asked to do the extraordinary, the British Chindits of Burma in WW2 have earned a fearsome reputation for bravery and sheer bloody mindedness in their drawn out daring raids behind Japanese lines. In a hostile environment, these men, nicknamed after a mythological Burmese temple beast, fought a hard war to win back Burma from the all conquering Japanese army and forged a name that will be remembered in history.
A quarter of a million Gurkas served in the Second World War – recruited from Nepal into over 40 battalions. Famed for their ferocity, bravery and very big knives, they fought in Syria, North Africa, Italy, Greece, as well as in Burma against the Japanese.
Our boxed set is led by Major James Rutherford Lumley, who was in the thick of the fighting at the battle for Mogaung in northern Burma in June 1944, one of the fiercest and most brutal in the entire campaign against the Japanese in the Far East.
Dan Hewitson
Tom Mecredy
Craig Nixon