ISBN 0-275-98003-0
xiv + 283 pages

Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; Glossary; Bibliography; Index

Appendix: The Indian Army in 1944

   Although the sub-title of Daniel Marston's new book might make it sound like an Indian-centric view of the war in Burma, that turns out not to be entirely the case. Instead, the author has written an analysis of the reforms in the Indian Army—tactics, organization, recruiting, "Indianization" of the officer corps—during the period 1942 through 1945. The campaign in Burma serves mostly as the stage on which Marston displays the results of those reforms.
   Although the book covers almost every phase of the war in Burma, it intentionally does so in a disjointed manner, because the transformation of the units takes precedence over the flow of the campaign. In that sense, this is a book about an Army rather than its battles. Marston has relatively little to say about purely British units, and even less to say about American, Chinese, African, and Japanese forces in Burma. Likewise, there's little mention of Indian units deployed in Malaya, North Africa, East Africa, the Near East, Italy, or Greece.
   Instead, as examples of how the ongoing reforms affected the Army, the book examines the wartime experience in Burma of twelve specific Indian units (one of which was actually a Gurkha battalion), referred to collectively here as the "Phoenix" units:

Prewar Units
5th Probyn's Horse
7th Light Cavalry
2/1st Punjab Regiment
1/11th Sikh Regiment
4/12th Frontier Force Regiment (FFR)
2/13th Frontier Force Rifles (FFRifles)

War-Raised Units
4/3rd Madras Regiment
7/1Oth Baluch Regiment
8/12th Frontier Force Regiment (FFR)
14/13th Frontier Force Rifles (FFRifles)
4/8th Gurkha Rifles
1st Battalion, Sikh Light Infantry

   To begin with, Marston makes some general remarks about the Indian Army as it existed between the world wars.

   The character of the Indian Army of the 1920s and 1930s can be considered in the light of three of the central goals of this period: first, to begin the slow process of Indianizing the officer corps; second, to limit recruitment of troops to certain native peoples; and finally, to make the main duties of the army the control of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and internal security.

   Marston then proceeds to review those three topics. His background information makes it clear that the fragmented nature of Indian society was reflected in the regiments of the Army. Not only were regiments organized and recruited to contain troops from a specific region, but within each individual company the troops typically comprised a specific tribe, caste, or race. (Generally referred to as a "class.") For example: "The 5th Probyn's Horse was designated to have only three squadrons: one of Hindustani Musalmans and Musalman Rajputs, one of Rajputs, and one of Jats. The 7th Light Cavalry, again a former Madras-based regiment, was restructured to comprise one squadron of Punjabi Musalmans, one of Sikhs, and one of Dogras." This kind of segregation greatly increased the difficulties of recruiting and replacing troops, especially as the war dragged on.
   Providing officers was another issue with roots in pre-war regulations and traditions:

   The Indian Army was officered for over 100 years by a system of British officers and Native (later viceroy) commissioned officers. Indians were not allowed to receive commissions from Addiscombe, the East India Company officer training academy, or, later, from Royal Military College Sandhurst. Only white British officers were put in charge of battalions or regiments. The reason given for this was that Indians were not considered capable of leading battalions or regiments in the field, a myth that was perpetuated for many years. Only British officers were considered able to command many different classes of Indians without getting caught up in the men's religious or class issues; Indian commissioned officers were considered incapable of rising above these controversies. The system had been designed to ensure that British officers would not be commanded by Indian officers, no matter how junior in age or experience they might be.

   After the initiation of hostilities in Europe, it took more than six months before serious expansion of the Indian Army commenced. Expansion faced obstacles in lack of equipment, low priority for modern weapons, lack of trained leaders, and—to a certain extent—lack of Indian support for the war effort. Also as a result of expansion and the need for more officers, training tended to suffer.

   The training time given to Emergency Commissioned Officers (ECOs), both British and Indian, was drastically shortened from the normal schedule as a result of wartime expansion. Regular prewar British commissioned officers received 18 months of training at Sandhurst, and prewar Indian commissioned officers, 30 months at Dehra Dun. Both then received a year's further training in a battalion before being posted to take up their own commissions. In wartime circumstances, emergency commissioned officers (ECOs), both British and Indian, received only four to six months of tactical training at the various officer training schools set up in India. Then, when an officer was posted to a battalion or regiment, his instruction continued, at least in theory.
   Shortening the training time also affected the way that officers, both British and Indian, generally learned Urdu, the language of the army. All commands to the VCOs and men were traditionally given in Urdu, and prewar instruction for officers encompassed a year's training with a personal munshi, or language teacher. At the end of this time, the officer was expected to pass an exam in Urdu and receive his certificate. Wartime conditions meant the instruction was seriously curtailed, which in practice meant that, at least at first, neither British nor Indian officers had sufficient knowledge of the language of command to give orders.

   Marston goes on in the second chapter to discuss how the units adjusted to changing equipment and roles during 1939-1941. The needs of the drastic wartime expansion brought about many other changes. For example, while pre-war Indianization meant that only a few chosen units would be (eventually) fully officered by Indians (with most British officers transferred so they would not be under the orders of Indian officers), during 1940 the policy was changed so that Indian officers could serve in command positions throughout the Indian Army, even over British officers. Also, because of difficulty in recruiting some of the specific "classes" required to fill individual companies and their battalions, there was renewed recruitment among the "non-martial races" such as the Madrassis.
   By the end of 1941 the Indian Army was in the throes of expansion, and it was also stretched thin by unexpected commitments in Africa and the Near East as well as Burma, Malaya, and Hong Kong. When the Japanese invaded Burma, the Indian Army learned some very hard lessons in exactly the same manner as the British, the Yanks, and other Allied forces learned their own lessons in the early months of the war against Japan.
   The third chapter covers the loss of Burma by mostly following the fortunes of the 4/12th FFR, 7/10th Baluch, 2/13th FFRifles, and 1/11th Sikhs. Along with all the other difficulties imposed by rapid expansion and unexpected commitment throughout the British Empire, the Indian units especially suffered because their tactical doctrine was not completely suited to the terrain of Burma or to the tactics of the Japanese. Marston strives to portray the unreadiness of Indian units and their unsuitable maneuvers and dispositions, particularly in the jungle, but this is an area where his descriptive prose doesn't always live up to the standards he sets in the rest of the book, with too many stilted, clumsy phrases that seem not to always reflect traditional military usage:

"...the defense of the town took a conventional-style perimeter layout...."

"...the 4/12th FFR was ordered to array on the ridge...and they, too, were arrayed in a conventional-style linear formation...."

"...overland encompassing movements...."

"...the division was stretched out in a linear formation...."

   Although the descriptions of movement, deployment, and combat tend to be a little weak in this chapter, the analysis remains strong. British generals in India were also carefully analyzing the results of the campaign.

   Defeats in the Malaya and Burma campaigns convinced the Indian Army that new tactics and training were required. Over the course of 1942 and 1943, the army set out to develop and implement the necessary reforms, with varying levels of success.
   The British commanders involved in the first Burma campaign set out almost immediately to learn from their defeats. Others in India Command also recognized the need for tactical reform, and various units throughout India Command began to explore new ways of operating in the jungle. For many units, the Army in India Training Memoranda (AITM) and Military Training Pamphlets (MTPs) published by GHQ India were the starting points for this process. Veterans from both campaigns were sent by GHQ India to different formations to lecture about their experiences.
   Even previous to the establishment of the Infantry Committee, India, in June 1943, reform was underway at different levels throughout India Command, but there was no consistent application of new tactics or processes. Furthermore, there had not yet been any redevelopment of basic training and reinforcement procedure for units in the field. GHQ India had recognized the need for development of new tactics and training procedures and had produced and disseminated these through the AITM and MTPs. This was an excellent first step, but at this early stage each unit was left to its own devices as to what to do with the information, so implementation of the suggestions was piecemeal. The performance of the 14th Indian Division in the first Arakan offensive demonstrates the difficulties of this transition period.

   In particular it proved necessary to train units to operate effectively in jungles, but all training was complicated by the constant shuffling of units in India and the need for as many as sixty infantry battalions to serve on internal security duties due to local disturbances and fear of disruptions caused by the Quit India movement.
   Veterans of the defeat in Burma, experts from other theaters including LtCol Ian Stewart of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (see Moon over Malaya), and local authorities lectured on "what went wrong" and offered various schemes for fixing things. When British commanders attempted to fashion new tactical doctrine for the jungle, however, not all innovations were equally effective. At one point a division was expected to divide itself into separate brigades of tank-supported shock troops, jungle shock troops, and river shock troops. The plan to create horse-mounted reconnaissance companies for jungle operations also raised considerable controversy.
   Ongoing problems were further revealed in the first Arakan offensive during December 1942 through March 1943. Although 14th Indian Division had created its own jungle warfare school and undergone some self-training, it clearly was not ready to defeat the Japanese in jungle conditions. Marston describes the offensive, noting its unpropitious beginning when one British officer "brought his classical musical collection with him into the jungle on mule transport." (Although Marston makes no further comment, it should be noted that the officer's musical collection, and the encumbrance of requisite paraphernalia, predated the availability of MP3s and the iPod.) In following the exploits of the "Phoenix" battalions in the Arakan, one particular attack seems to mirror much of the Allied, not just Indian, experience against the Japanese at this stage of the war:

   The attack by the 2/1st was ordered for 0400 hours on February I8, 1943. D Company was to move out on the right, with B Company on the left, followed up by A Company. C Company was to be held in reserve. The companies were to move out from a jungle tree line and attack across an open field. There appear to have been no patrolling activities undertaken beforehand to identify the Japanese positions. The whole attack was launched against well-entrenched enemy positions in a frontal movement; there were no attempts to undertake any kind of flanking maneuver. As B Company moved out, it was immediately hit by medium machine gun fire on the flank, as was A Company moving up behind. Both companies were caught in the open and being hit from all directions, and men began to pull back to the jungle edge. D Company had progressed at a faster pace; it was able to take its objective but in doing so had exposed both its flanks to possible counterattacks. The Japanese saw this opening and attacked. Captain Budh Singh decided to withdraw but had to fall back across open ground, and as he withdrew his company, it was raked by the Japanese positions. By 0630 hours, all three companies had fallen back to their original start lines. The battalion had suffered heavily, losing 3 British officers, 2 VCOs, and 7 Indian other ranks (IORs) killed; 2 VCOs and 99 IORs wounded; and 17 missing, including a British officer.

   In large measure due to the Arakan failure, India Command decided to centralize its jungle warfare training programs. Both the tactics and the methods of teaching them were gradually refined, and eventually all units—and all individual replacements—would pass through the jungle training schools before being deployed for combat in Burma. One of the important tools for producing the training program was the Infantry Committee convened by Field Marshal Archibald Wavell in June 1943. The recommendations of the Infantry Committee in large measure stand as the point at which the doctrine and training of forces in India began to match what would be needed to re-conquer Burma. Strongly supported by Claude Auchinleck when he returned to become Commander-in-Chief India (and Wavell was promoted to Viceroy) as well as 14th Army commander William Slim, these reforms in many ways signalled a new beginning for the Indian Army in World War II.
   Marston devotes several pages to describing and assessing the nitty gritty of the tactics in which units were being trained, including patrol techniques, box formation in the defense, flanking movements, avoiding road-bound movement, etc. Earlier problems (such as failure to provide troops with shovels for digging slit trenches) were also gradually overcome. To anyone who has studied the jungle battles of WWII, these techniques might not sound overly innovative or exciting, but they represented a huge step forward for British forces previously schooled in internal security duties and fighting on the Northwest Frontier.
   The next chapter, "Theory into Practice," shows how these reforms eventually manifested themselves on the battlefields in 1944.

   The Indian and British units that arrived along the Arakan and Assam fronts in late 1943 and early 1944 were a different force than the Japanese had encountered previously. The infantry units were trained to fight in the dense jungles of Burma, equipped with mules and jeeps to operate over difficult terrain. They no longer had to rely entirely on land communications but could be supplied by air if necessary. They would not engage in retreats motivated by panic but would hold their ground if attacked. Units were trained to operate at all times with all-round defense to offset Japanese infiltration tactics. They were trained to take the war to the enemy using patrolling to gather information and deny control of no-man's-land to the Japanese. All of the infantry and cavalry regiments had been retrained and benefited additionally from the establishment of Allied air superiority in the form of resupply and ground support.
   The initiatives of 1943 began to bear fruit when the first reinforcements arrived from the training divisions. Instead of coping with raw, half-trained recruits, all units were supplied with replacements who were familiar with the basic elements of jungle warfare. Units were able to maintain consistent levels of efficiency and, most importantly, performance.

   The bulk of the chapter follows the "Phoenix" units in the second Arakan campaign and at Imphal. Although there were failures, in general Marston demonstrates that the period of centralized training in standardized, appropriate jungle tactics paid off handsomely. In most cases, higher levels of training translated directly into improved performances. Most units proved adept in aggressive patrolling, individual replacements arrived with a high degree of preparedness, the so-called "non-martial races" units performed well, and the new Indian officers led units as competently as British officers. In short, the Japanese belatedly discovered they were facing an entirely different opponent, and one which was prepared to fight and win in the jungle.
   Evaluation and revision of doctrine and training continued after the victory at Imphal, including more reorganization of divisions to include an HQ protection battalion, a reconnaissance battalion, and a machine gun battalion. Much emphasis was still placed on constant patrolling and immediately digging in whenever an objective was captured. In chapter six, Marston looks at the "Phoenix" units during the return to Burma and the amphibious operations in the Arakan in 1945. Especially noteworthy, units highly trained and experienced in jungle warfare found it necessary to adjust their tactics when they arrived in the open terrain of central Burma, and then switch back to jungle tactics.

   The 7th and 20th Indian Divisions advanced down the Irrawaddy River basin to destroy any remaining or retreating Japanese forces and seize the town of Prome, strategically located on the Irrawaddy River. The 4/8th Gurkhas were part of this force; from February to early April, they had been involved in the defense of the 7th Indian bridgehead. The battalion performed well in defending the area with a mobile defense around Milaungbya and Singu from Japanese attacks, setting up box formations and sending out reconnaissance and fighting patrols in the area, both on foot and with tank support. The open terrain forced the battalion to adapt their plans of defense to cover more ground. During early April, the battalion was pulled out of the line for rest and refitting, and during this period it carried out more training in accordance with the lessons already learned.
   As the 7th Indian Division recrossed the Irrawaddy River on April 25 and proceeded south, the terrain through which it was traveling changed, from flat and open to hilly and jungle covered. This meant the division was to be resupplied by air and that each brigade operated almost independently of the others. Each battalion organized its own airdrops. The march south on the western side of the river was characterized by constant skirmishing and patrolling....
   The 4/8th Gurkhas had retrained thoroughly in Kohima, learning the basics of jungle warfare once again. When faced with the open plains of central Burma, it adapted to those conditions, then reverted to jungle warfare as the battalion proceeded south. The defensive layout and encircling movement of the battalion at Taungdaw denied a large portion of the 54th Japanese Division access to the Irrawaddy River and the possibility of escape to the east. For the period from February 25 to May 21, the battalion accounted for 508 Japanese killed (counted), an estimated further 300 probably killed, and many more wounded. The battalion itself lost 1 British and 1 Gurkha officer and 32 other ranks killed, as well as more than 100 wounded. Unquestionably, the battalion had proven itself when confronted with the changing conditions of the 1945 campaign.

   The final chapter assesses the changes in recruiting so-called "non-martial" classes in the last years of the war and examines the great increase in the number of Indian officers in the Army. According to Marston, in January 1941 the ratio of British officers to Indian officers was 12:1. By the end of the war, the ratio had changed to about 2.5:1. To achieve this increased proportion of Indian officers, OCS training was done almost entirely in joint British-Indian groups, pay scales were equalized, and by mid-1943 Indian officers had finally been granted the power to punish British soldiers and sit on British courts-martial. Interestingly, Wavell, Auchinleck, and most of the British establishment in India supported these moves, but officials in London tended to resist. By the end of the war, the officer corps was fully integrated and Indian officers were regularly commanding British officers. "The numbers of Indian COs of regiments and battalions had risen by 1945, and three Indian Brigadiers had been rewarded for their service with the DSO. This was not good enough for some supporters of independence, but it demonstrates how hard Auchinleck had pushed to get that many officers promoted."
   While there were certainly instances of discrimination, Marston claims they were relatively low in number, largely because Auchinleck refused to tolerate such behavior. Indeed, Auchinleck emerges as one of the most visionary British leaders in this respect.
   The chapter concludes with a very interesting discussion of the impact of the Quit India movement and the Indian National Army on Indian troops and officers, along with information about two minor incidents of mutiny in 1940. Throughout the book, most readers will be at least partly aware of the anti-colonialism sentiment within India, the demands of the Congress Party, and Gandhi's refusal to support the British war effort. These issues are mostly outside the scope of the book, but Marston eventually brings all this into focus in the final paragraph of his Conclusion.

   The victory in Burma was the high-water mark of the British Indian Army. It demonstrated the success of an innovative, wide-ranging program of reform, and it made a significant contribution to the Allied victories that ultimately decided the outcome of the Second World War. In doing so, it achieved several crucial short-term goals. It also was eventually to have an important long-term political impact, of which some of the highest level commanders were probably aware in formulating their plans for reform. Personnel and organizational reforms ultimately provided a corps of experienced officers and men who were to form the foundations of the independent armies of India and Pakistan, following partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The experience gained in the victories won on the battlefields of Burma by South Asian troops would supply a much-needed level of confidence in the armed forces of the subcontinent during the rapid transition from British rule to independent government.

   More than that, although Marston doesn't say it, his book leads inescapably to another conclusion. In a sense, the British were the victims of their own progressive policies with regard to the Indian Army. They recruited and trained a huge number of Indians from all over the sub-continent, created experienced, self-confident units, and gave them a large number of thoroughly competent leaders, all of which in the long run almost certainly helped to ensure—if not hasten—the British departure from India.
   Throughout the book Marston writes fairly dense, relatively slow-going prose full of specialized terminology and very thickly annotated. The first chapter of about twenty pages includes 148 notes which amount to another ten pages of explanation. The second chapter runs to over eleven pages plus another five pages of notes. Despite all this supporting material—and there's a great deal of extra information tucked away in the notes—a few tangential points still get slightly mixed up. For example, in Chapter Two Marston seems to refer to Winston Churchill as prime minister at a time when that job was still held by Neville Chamberlain. A note in the same sentence mistakenly refers to a pair of Indian divisions serving in France in 1941 (although that might just be a typographical error for 1914).
   The vast majority of the book appears to contain information thoroughly researched and rigorously analyzed, which seems completely appropriate for a book which apparently had its roots in a doctoral thesis. Marston does a good job of using archival documents, unit war diaries, and regimental histories, as well as, on occasion, works such as Kirby's official history volumes, Louis Allen, and other leading secondary sources. Most impressively, the author has conducted original interviews (in person or via correspondence) with a large number of retired officers who served in the Phoenix units during the war.
   Phoenix from the Ashes succeeds admirably in analyzing the evolution of the Indian Army, and it's a worthy addition to any WWII library, but it will probably be enjoyed more by those who like a dense, academic treatment of doctrine and planning as opposed to those who prefer a fast-paced narrative of men in battle.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Praeger.
   Thanks to Praeger for providing this review copy.