Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this unique book provides a distinctive account of military medical service activities in India and Burma during World War II. This valuable information—particularly the lessons learned concerning jungle operations, line versus medical command responsibility, and medical planning—will now be available to all members of the Army Medical Department, and to other students of medicomilitary history. This volume, in part, expresses forthrightly and candidly the experiences of many dedicated medical personnel who labored and in the main, succeeded under great hardship and against many odds; it may well become a primer for medical plans and operations in Asian environments. This work is, in truth, in many ways a passionate account of a nonending battle to save lives and preserve the fighting strength in a theater of operations which, at least for those who were there, was the end of the line. It makes for fascinating reading despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it is a true and unvarnished report of a way of life which our medical troops endured in a far-off land under most trying circumstances.

PREFACE * Book One * North Tirap Log: A Record of Patience * Robert W. Fromant, John L. Savage, Paul E. Lotze, and Donald C. Everingham * I. "Morale is Very High" * II. "We Have Something to be Proud of" * III. "This Godforsaken Country" * IV. "Start Packing" * Book Two * Chinese Liaison Detail: A Record of Tolerance * Walter S. Jones, M.D. * I. "Across the Far Hills" * II. "My New Happy Home" * III. On the Ledo Road * IV. Along the Tincha Trace * V. The Refugee Trail * Book Three * The Diary of Colonel John M. Tamraz, MC: A Record of Trial and Error * I. 9 February-30 April 1943 * II. 25 May-17 November 1943 * III. 19 November 1943-27 May 1944 * BOOK FOUR * With Wingate's Chindits: A Record of Heedless Valor * Major General W.J. Officer * I. History and Operations * II. Personnel, Intercommunications, and Evacuation * III. Supply, Equipment, and Rations * IV. The Medical Disaster * V. Conclusions * BOOK FIVE * The Marauders and the Microbes: A Record of Righteous Indignation * James E. T. Hopkins, M.D., Henry G. Stelling, M.D., and Tracy S. Voorhees * I. The 5307th * II. September 1943-March 1944 * III. From Walawbum to Nphum Ga * IV. March-May 1944 * V. The Twilight of the Gods * VI. After May 1944 * VII. Epitaphs * REFERENCES

The documents which are here presented are of this kind. They do not provide a comprehensive view of the medical service in India and Burma, nor is their clinical significance very great. Each one, however, puts ordinary men before us, in the situations and scenes typical of war in general and of service in the Orient in particular. Two—originating during the Second Campaign in Burma—go well behind the defense lines of official writing and show how catastrophic that eventually successful engagement might have been. All are records of trial and tedium, tolerance and anger: records humanistic.