Rating: 
Summary: Burma Road is worthy of a movie!
Review: Snakes made me read Burma Road. A herpetologist friend urged me to visit Burma but he died of a snakebite, in Burma, before I ever made the journey. Since then I have devoured anything Burma in anticipation of a future trip. Hideyuki Takano's "The Shore beyond Good and Evil, a report inside Burma's opium kingdom" and Alan Rabinowitzs' "Beyond the Last Village: a journey of discovery in Asia's forbidden wilderness" have proven to be insightful reads. I heard that Donovan Webster had hiked the entire Burma road twice and was writing a book about it; so I pre-ordered it sight unseen."Burma Road", as it turned out had nothing to do with Webster's ramblings but was a world war two documentary instead. I am NOT a war buff and nearly returned the book unread. Luckily I started thumbing the pages and became thoroughly engrossed not only with Webster's wonderful ability to turn a phrase but the incredible story that unfolded before me. Inch by inch, foot by miserable foot, Allied forces eek a supply road eastward to free a starving China caught in a Japanese stranglehold. Fighting disease, snakes, snipers and the relentless jungle itself these heroic figures resolutely power onward. Meanwhile, equally valiant warriors wing over "the hump" to drop supplies over the Chinese border. During the course of the war over six hundred planes perished in the airlift. "Burma Road" is a story of tremendous courage, indomitable spirit, and powerful men. At times it is uplifting and at others equally depressing. Humor and good spirits somehow rise to the surface. Webster has given a face to the faceless and a voice to those silenced on the Burma Road. Only someone who actually walked the Burma Road could write in such a convincing style. Tom Clancy buffs will be enthralled by this better than fiction tale. It was such an entirely wonderful read that I just ordered Webster's first book, "Aftermath". "Burma Road" is a story worth being told and a book worthy of being a movie.
Rating: 
Summary: servicable history which is fair to Wingate
Review: The book is a reasonable work, but it really brings little new
to a subject that has had a great deal written about it already. Some will dislike the treatment of Wingate in the book, but
it is very fair and, in fact, dead on. Wingate is a complicated
person and in history, as in life, he tends to either attract
followers who are blind to his faults or those who go too far
in attacking him. He was a brave man and a natural leader,
but he was also a religious fanatic with very exccentric
personal habits who tended sometimes not to think what he was
doing through. This is a man who insulted everyone around
him, ran his command unclothed and attempted to commit
suicide by cutting his own throat shortly before being offered
a new chance in India. And as a military commander, he allowed
and encouraged flogging of his men contrary to army rules
during the first chindit expedition (see Trevor Royle). The Wingate missions into Burma, in both cases, were special
operations not done in the context of a achiving a military
objective worth their cost in terms of lives or resources.
And while brave men can do great things in such a situation,
war is not a boys adventure. Real people pay the price for
reckless and ill-considered operations. Wingate has also attracted a following among the far-right in
certain parts of the world. Particularly among political leaders
who favor military adventures and who long for fanatics to take
the place of cautious military officers who actually care about
the lives of soldiers. In conclusion, the book is a workable if not terribly original
rehash of well-known events in the Burma campaign. For those
not familiar with the history of the period, its a reasonable
intruction to the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Fast Informative Read
Review: The Burma Road is an extremely well written and interesting little look at the China,Burma, India theatre during World War II. While the book is not as in depth as say the recent "An Army at Dawn", Webster tells a lot of story in under 350 pages. Clearly the most interesting character is Vinger Joe Stilwell. Webster in my opinion does a better job telling his story than Tuchman did in her book, plus Webster has access to more and better balanced sources. Again, Stilwell and the American Experience is a classic, but The Burma Road is more up to date. The book also shows how difficult Chiang Kai Shek was, and if anyone can not believe how someone like Mao could take over China, just read more about Chiang Kai Shek, he lost China just as much as Mao won it. Anyone who likes WWII or just good easy to read history will enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: History That Reads Like a Novel
Review: The immediately preceding review essentially criticizes this highly readable and engaging first book by a talented new writer for not covering enough historical territory. That's akin to criticizing The Hobbit for not being The Lord of the Rings. "The Burma Road" does not purport to be a comprehensive history of the entire Burma theatre of the Second World War (which could not be accomplished in a single book without being a dry broad-brush overview). It does cover in fascinating detail the amazing experiences of Vinegar Joe Stilwell (the book's greatest hero, and deservedly so), the hilariously eccentric but also brilliant Orde Wingate (did you know that he had previously, without the permission of his superiors, trained the precusor of the Haganah and Palmachi--including the young Moshe Dayan--to protect Jewish settlers in late 1930s Palestine?), "The Peanut" Chiang Kai-Shek, the courageous pilots who flew "The Hump," Merrill's Marauders, and Gen. Chennault and the Flying Tigers. Buy it, start reading it, and you won't be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: History That Reads Like a Novel
Review: The immediately preceding review essentially criticizes this highly readable and engaging first book by a talented new writer for not covering enough historical territory. That's akin to criticizing The Hobbit for not being The Lord of the Rings. "The Burma Road" does not purport to be a comprehensive history of the entire Burma theatre of the Second World War (which could not be accomplished in a single book without being a dry broad-brush overview). It does cover in fascinating detail the amazing experiences of Vinegar Joe Stilwell (the book's greatest hero, and deservedly so), the hilariously eccentric but also brilliant Orde Wingate (did you know that he had previously, without the permission of his superiors, trained the precusor of the Haganah and Palmachi--including the young Moshe Dayan--to protect Jewish settlers in late 1930s Palestine?), "The Peanut" Chiang Kai-Shek, the courageous pilots who flew "The Hump," Merrill's Marauders, and Gen. Chennault and the Flying Tigers. Buy it, start reading it, and you won't be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: This book and Wingate
Review: This book, unlike so many others, is reasonably fair on the
subject of Orde Wingate. His fanatical followers both among
servicemen and in Israel will certainly disagree. But the
book presents the truth about the man, rather than the pleasent
mythology that those want treated as fact.
Its also worth noting that these people have run a campaign
of smears and intimidation against any historian who writes
about Wingate in anything but an utterly positive way.
To say that Wingate was subject to lapses in judgement isn't
more than stating the obvious. He was an impulsive man and
he didn't always think things through. Anyone familiar with
the actual history of his plans for operations will know that.
His personal behavior was also impulsive and reckless.
Whatever Wingate's good personal qualities, he also had quite
a few bad ones.
He didn't care about the lives of his men.
He said in 1943 that losing 1/3 of his entire force was nothing
meaningful because lots of soliders in India die for various
reasons not connected with operations every year.
He was openly racist against Indians, Gurkhas (Nepalese) and
Arabs. In pratical terms, he didn't want non-white soliders
in his force unless there were no alternative. And even in
the case of his british soldiers, he made statements such
as the idea that widespread access to doctors had made British
soliders weak hypochondriacs. It never seemed to dawn on him
that training his soliders in the indian jungle during the
monsoon next to a flooding river might cause real medical
problems. Of course given that he was rarely there, how would
he have known.
He was also mentally unstable. He could not function in the
army chain of command and only got things done through political
patronage in london. He attacked his commanders, his
subordinates, the army, the government and almost everyone
around him at one time or another. After he had apparently
destroyed his career after Ethiopia, he tried to kill himself
by cutting his own throat in Egypt. Not a sane or healthy man.
As far as Wingate's time in Palestine, this book doesn't go
far enough in telling the truth of events. Wingate's Zionism
wasn't based on love of Jews. Wingate was a fanatical christian
who believed that restoring Israel was necessary as part of
bringing about the end of the world. Like his men in Burma,
he could seem to Israelis as the most caring and focused man
in the world on their well-being. But somehow the truth has
never come out that believed in prophecies that required Israel
first to be restored and then destroyed along with 2/3rd of
all jews in a great war.
Wingate was sent to help settlers defend themselves in Palestine
in the 1930s. But when he got there, his fanatical beliefs
took over. He politically compromised himself by open alliances
with jewish political groups in palestine and by a pattern of
ignoring or disobeying his orders. He was so out of control
that he was finally kicked out of the country. Now while there
is nothing wrong with helping jewish causes in palestine, there
was a great deal wrong in trying to do so while wearing a
british army uniform.
Some will try and say that Wingate studied Zionism when he
arrived in palestine and became a sympathizer at that point.
Thats rubbish. His religious background tells most of the
story. He was in sympathy before he ever arrived. And as
far as Arabs, he had a low opinion of them despite his earlier
career among them. But generally Wingate never liked non-white
non-europeans. That certainly didn't change when he got to
India.
What his supporters will also not talk about is that he floated
a plan for making the Jews in Palestine into a something like
a force of spartans which would dominate the entire middle
east in the name of the British Empire. The middle east
would be developed as kind of a sub-empire.
And there is so much more. This is a man who tried to bring
back flogging into the British Army and there were actual
incidents of it under his command in Burma. You will not
read much (if anything) in the santized histories of Wingate's
cult, but just because he friends don't mention it doesn't
mean it didn't happen.
Among other things, the cult of Wingate used control over access
to his papers in order to control what would be published about
the man. Christopher Sykes biography was more of a propoganda
exercise than the truth. In fact, most works published before
recently are either incomplete or compromised because of the
control of access to the Wingate papers.
This is a good book. But the parts on Wingate are going to
bring it the hate that comes to all those who try to tell the
truth about the man. Its well past time to stop building
a nonsense mythology and tell the real story, good and bad,
of the man.
Rating:
Summary: Readable, exciting, inaccurate about Wingate, unfortunately
Review: This is a timely, exciting, and fairly comprehensive book on the China-Burma-India theater in World War II, a sadly often neglected area. The characters come to life in a manner that is rare to find in historical works, and are more intriguing therefore. As I was wholly engrossed in reading, however, one point came out and began stinging me repetitively: the statements and characterizations of Orde Wingate. It was only here that the veracity and thoroughness displayed by the author throughout becomes lost. Several examples follow:
For one thing, Webster constantly refers to Wingate in terms like 'flashy' and 'brash,' while painting him to be a glory-seeking man whose judgement was characteristically prone to "lapse[s] of judgement." (p. 186) While in this regard he could easily be reliant on the manifestly innacurate and vendetta-infested Official History written by a certain General Kirby, who was an almost pathological denigrator of Wingate, the sections dealing with Wingate's early career left me more perturbed. It is here that speculation and inaccuracies dominate, at the expense of not only Wingate, but the Zionists as well.
To begin with, inaccuracies such as the rendering of Wingate's Hebrew nickname as 'Hatedud' as being the actual 'Hayedid' abound. The preceding example is glaring largely due to the fact that the word has been often transliterated into English, and is easily verifiable. These, however, are minor, and are no more than worth of a nit-picker's notice, where it not for greater mistakes, or obfuscations.
It is perhaps due to current political considerations that Wingate's Zionism and the situation of Israel at the time prior and through her independence are viewed through a distorting lens, but while it is not particularly crucial to the book as a whole, in the block of 20-some-odd pages on Wingate, it stands out like the proverbial sore thumb. Examples follow.
Wingate's sympathy towards the Zionist cause is presented as resultant to his becoming "...transfixed by the vigor and bravery of the Zionist settlers..." (p. 85) It is also stated that his prior view had as a component the theory that the Arabs were being pushed off their land.(ibid) What actually took place was that his prior viewpoint was largely vague, with some indefinite concept of Lawrencian ideals of the Bedouin archetype. When he arrived as an Intelligence officer, equipped with a translators rating in Arabic and no Hebrew, he decided to literally read all he could on the situation. It is well documented that his exhaustive study, in the first month or so of his stay in Israel was the real impetus for his later embracing of Zionism and the Jews. It was a question of morality and justice to him, only amplified or rather supplemented by his fraternizing with the Jews.
It is certain, however that he believed whole-heartedly in the Zionist cause, and supported it with, as his admirers and detractors both admit, sheer fanaticism. With this in mind, a later statement to the effect that he discourse on length in Burma on a "...delicate balance between Zionism and Palestine..."(p. 104) is not only unlikely due to his nature and beliefs, but is a concept which is only retroactively introduced as a consideration of the time by anyone not speaking out of a position of consolidating power in the region - which he was certainly not doing.
What is far more glaring historically speaking than an analysis of motivations and predispositions is the manner in which Webster describes the Special Night Squads period, and especially the decline and elimination of that group. He contends that the force devolved into "...bullying Arab combatants and prisoners..."(p. 87) and that on one occasion SNS soldiers "...forced their captives to eat oil-soaked sand."(ibid) Let me be quick to point out that the error in facts is most certainly NOT that of the author, but rather in the choice of sources he utilizes. These events and behaviors are not mentioned in ANY place in any of the many biographies that cover Wingate's life in any way. After a comprehensive re-reading of Tulloch's 'Wingate in Peace and War,' Mead's 'Wingate and the Historians,' Rooney's 'WIngate and the Chindits,' Bierman and Smith's 'Fire in the Night,' and the authorized bio by Christopher Sykes in English, as well as the definitive Hebrew texts by Avraham Akavia, it becomes clear that the said events owe their inpiration to recent revisionist historians, largely stemming from Israel's extreme-Left wing.
These events, and any similar to them NEVER appeared prior to the notorious Tom Segev book 'Days of the Anemones,' wherein he cites unnamed sources to promote his version. As my own review of Segev's 'One Palestine Complete' can readily attest, Segev's historical accuracy takes a far-removed back seat to political considerations. (For a better analysis and debunking of such drivel consult Michael B. Oren's outstanding essay "Orde Wingate: Friend Under Fire" in the Winter 2001 issue of Azure.)
I should state again in closing that I enjoyed this work very much, and would not bother writing so passionately if this one flaw were not so glaring and isolated. It is a welcome addition to my personal library.
Rating:
Summary: Needed addition the China, Burma, India Theater, WWII
Review: Webster's "The Burma Road" is an in-depth look at an often over looked theater during World War II. He does a great job showing how difficult it was for the American Command to try to induce the wavering and self-bickering Chinese to fully enter the war, something they never did. Webster also does a great job highlighting Merrell's Marauder's, that group of commandos that fought the Japanese so successfully in Burma.
But the main theme of the book is the effort of the Allies to try to re-open the vital Burma Road, linking India, through Burma, to China, to bring much needed resources to beleaguered China, suffering under the heal of the ever oppressive Japanese.
A great read for Military History enthusiasts and any who love a good read.
Rating:
Summary: The Burma Road
Review: What we have here is a great story well written and giving you the feel that you were there. A world War II story of building the Burma road with the Japanese army making its move throughout China and South Asia. The men that put there lives on the line to build a road that would be shut down only to be reopened by the Americans. Mr. Webster in writing this book makes you part of a story that little has been told about. He puts you in the pilots seat not dropping bombs but food to the chineese and the battles that took place in the jungles below the pilots on their missions. If you like war stories this is a great one and one every person interested in past wars should read. Larry Hobson-Author- The Day Of The Rose
Rating:
Summary: I've got my machete and my gun...
Review: When most people think of World War II, they think of the fight against Nazism in Europe. Even if they do consider the fight against Japan, most think of the US Marines jumping from one bloody island to another on their long march north. Largely forgotten by many, there was a war in Asia as well. Japan invaded China in 1937, starting 8 years of combat ranging from mountains of China to the jungles of Burma and other southeast Asian countries. It wasn't a pretty campaign, but it was very important. Donovan Webster has written a definitive account of this war from an American and British perspective. The Burma Road covers the war from the American entrance into the war until its Japan's final collapse. A large part of the book is focused on General Joseph Stillwell, or "Vinegar Joe" as his men called him, but Webster does cover almost every aspect of it. While the war in China is neglected for a long period of time, The Burma Road effectively shows us the blood, sweat and disease that dominated this campaign. It's a fascinating book. There is a bit of a framing story around the book, with Webster trying to walk the full length of the Burma Road, a road from Burma to China that was supposed to supply the Chinese and keep them in the war. A large portion of northeast India is still restricted, especially from journalists, and Webster is unsuccessful in the beginning of his journey. He then segues into the beginning of Stillwell's story, giving a brief summary of his career up until he gets assigned to the Southeast Asian sector of the war. Notoriously under-supplied and undermanned, Stillwell is forced to make do with what he can to keep the Japanese out of India at all costs. While Japan successfully invades Thailand and Burma and Stillwell is forced to slog through the jungles to escape, he manages to keep them from their ultimate goal. He is less successful with the Chinese, however, forever clashing with China's leader, Chiang Kai-shek. After three years of fighting both the Japanese and his own allies, Stillwell is finally relieved of command, despite his many successes. While a large portion of the book is told through Stillwell's point of view, other areas are not neglected. We hear a lot about the British army, especially the Chindit special forces (one whole chapter on their beginning plus numerous chapters when they are fighting alongside Stillwell's men) as well as the beginning of the world-famous "Flying Tigers," a group of American pilots who had resigned their commissions so they could fight for China before the United States entered the war. Their leader, Claire Chennault, later became a real thorn in Stillwell's side, siding with Kai-Shek in all of the battles between the two leaders. The book follows a semi-chronological format, taking us from the beginning of Stillwell's involvement in the Asian theater of operations to the end of the war, but it does jump around a bit when it moves on to another subject. It gets to a certain point in Stillwell's career and then backtracks to tell the beginning of Chindit operations, for example. It also pauses to give brief biographies of major characters, such as the British General Orde Wingate. This back and forth style does make it confusing at times, and there was one time reference that I swore didn't add up until I realized that Webster was talking about something else. However, it does make the book feel even more comprehensive, as it seems to cover every conceivable angle of the war. The one aspect of this where The Burma Road fails, however, regards China. The constant lend-lease supply of goods to the Chinese is covered, the Chinese contribution to Stillwell's campaign is documented beautifully, and Chennault's Flying Tigers are represented. On the other hand, other than a brief chapter near the end of the book and a few mentions in between, none of the fighting in China is actually discussed. Webster spends a brief time discussing the decision to finally bring the Chinese Communists into the war, and makes a few small references to their savagery in fighting the Japanese. Given the depth of the rest of the book, however, it feels very small. That being said, though, The Burma Road is a very valuable resource for anybody wanting a general history of the Asian campaign in World War II. It corrects some myths that have been fostered about the war. One chapter takes special aim at the book and movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai. It calls the book fictional with the movie being even worse. Webster gives the real details behind the building of that bridge, and the railway in general. He tells us how the Japanese mistreated not only the prisoners, but also their own men. That's where The Burma Road excels: the details. Webster doesn't pull any punches, telling us of the disease, leeches, poisoned water, the condition of the corpses, and other hardships that the valiant men who fought in this theater went through. He even interviewed some of the Japanese soldiers who managed to survive the conflict, showcasing the ordeals they had to go through. They were chronically under-supplied and often subsisted on nothing but small quantities of rice and bad water. Webster gives us so much detail that you may not want to read this book over lunch. I haven't read a better book on this subject, and I'm very glad I picked this up. I couldn't put it down. If you're a military history fan, I don't think you'll be able to either. It's a book that the men who fought and died in the jungles deserve to have written about them. It especially does old Vinegar Joe justice. David Roy
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