Job Done!
Lucy Betteridge-Dyson, Jungle Commandos (Osprey, 2025)
The story of Lieutenant-General William Slim’s brilliant campaign to drive the Japanese out of Burma in 1945 has rightfully captured the imagination of military history students. Set against that, the simultaneous operation to reclaim the crucial coastal Arakan region has been seen as something of a sideshow. In this new book from Osprey Publishing, Lucy Betteridge-Dyson rescues the fight for the Arakan from the shadows, highlighting an equally stunning victory without which Slim’s campaign might have stalled or maybe have even been defeated.
The Arakan campaign in 1945 was built on lessons learned from previous failures. This time, the campaign would have better commanders leading better trained troops in a combined arms operation some had doubted could succeed. At the forefront of the drive south to entrap and destroy the Japanese 28th Army were the Royal Marine and Army Commandos, in which Betteridge-Dyson’s grandfather fought, more than ably assisted by West African and Indian infantry. Betteridge-Dyson describes the formation of the Commandos and the raising of the West-African and Indian Divisions, and relates the myriad problems they faced, particularly from the unforgiving Burmese terrain, which included the familiar jungles and knife-edge mountains and adds the almost impassable mangrove swamps found along the Arakan coastline. And then there were the highly experienced and often fanatical Japanese soldiers determined to hold their ground to the last drop of blood. Yet Britain’s imperial forces out-manoeuvred and outfought the Japanese in a series of bloody fights culminating in the all-out struggle for Hill 170 at Kangaw.
Jungle Commandos is an excellent narrative history that brings the Arakan campaign fully into the light and easily earns its place on the Burma War bookshelf alongside Fergal Keane’s Road of Bones and James Holland’s Burma ’44. Betteridge-Dyson takes a while to set-up the campaign, but then the narrative flows, leading to the crescendo at Kangaw. The author also keeps the events grounded in the soldiers’ experiences, on both sides, allowing her readers to follow individual soldiers, their trials and tribulations, and their courage. She is particularly adept at emphasising the contributions from Indian and African soldiers, when most Anglocentric historians had relegated them to support forces. Betteridge-Dyson integrates those soldiers’ stories seamlessly into the broader operational narrative. All in all, this is a first class narrative of which Betteridge-Dyson’s grandfather would be proud.
