As the Imperial Japanese Army swept across China and South Asia at World War II's outset, closing all of China's seaports, more than 200,000 Chinese laborers embarked on a seemingly impossible task: to cut a 700-mile overland route -- the Burma Road -- from the southwest Chinese city of Kunming to Lashio, Burma. But when Burma fell in 1942, the Burma Road was severed. As the first step of the Allied offensive toward Japan, American general Joseph Stilwell reopened it, while, at the same time, keeping China supplied by air-lift from India and simultaneously driving the Japanese out of Burma. From the breathtaking adventures of the American "Hump" pilots who flew hair-raising missions over the Himalayas to make food-drops in China to the true story of the mission that inspired the famous film The Bridge on the River Kwai, to the grueling jungle operations of Merrill's Marauders and the British Chindit Brigades, The Burma Road vividly re-creates the sprawling, sometimes hilarious, often harrowing, and still largely unknown stories of one of the greatest chapters of World War II.

Søgeord: Y-Force; Kinesiske Hær; Kina; Wheeler, R.A.; Yu Fei-peng; Wavell; Japan, Japanske Styrker; US War Department; General Marshall; Stimson, H.L.; Trident; Krigshjælp; SEAC; Soong, T.V.; Somervell, B.B.; SOS, Services of Supply; Rangoon; Mountbatten; Magruder, J.; Lo Cho-ying; Ledo Road; MacArthur; McCloy, J.J.; Ho Ying-chin; Guerrillakrig; Burma Campaign; Currie, L.; CEF; Churchill; Chennault, C.L.; Wingate; Bissel, C.L.; Arnold, H.H.; Alexander, H.

In a theater of war long forgotten and barely even known at the time, James Harry Hantzis and his fellow soldiers labored at a thankless task under oppressive conditions. Nonetheless, as Rails of War demonstrates, without the men of the 721st Railway Operating Battalion, the Allied forces would have been defeated in the China-Burma-India conflict in World War II. Steven James Hantzis's father served alongside other GI railroaders in overcoming danger, disease, fire, and monsoons to move the weight of war in the China-Burma-India theater. Torn from their predictable working-class lives, the men of the 721st journeyed fifteen thousand miles to Bengal, India, to do the impossible: build, maintain, and manage seven hundred miles of track through the most inhospitable environment imaginable. From the harrowing adventures of the Flying Tigers and Merrill's Marauders to detailed descriptions of grueling jungle operations and the Siege of Myitkyina, this is the remarkable story of the extraordinary men of the 721st, who moved an entire army to win the war.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 secured for Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist forces what no amount of pleading had been able to produce: an influx of U.S. supplies. This volume explores the strategies of the Allies in China, Burma and India in World War II and the politically charged campaign waged in that theater. After an overview of the Allied situation in early 1942, the work presents the personal accounts of six individuals who served as part of the resupply effort in the CBI theater: Captain Edward Goodman, Captain David C. Hall, Staff Sergeant Robert Boehm, Corporal Anthony R. Silva, Corporal Alexander McVean and Tech Sergeant Kenneth R. Quigley. The service of African Americans in the CBI theatre is also discussed in detail. Appendices contain information on the organization of a motor transport truck regiment in Persia during World War II and an extract from a December 1944 log of an Air Jungle Rescue Unit in Burma.

Søgeord: Y-Force; Kinesiske Hær; Kina; Wheeler, R.A.; Yu Fei-peng; Wavell; Japan, Japanske Styrker; US War Department; General Marshall; Stimson, H.L.; Trident; Krigshjælp; SEAC; Soong, T.V.; Somervell, B.B.; SOS, Services of Supply; Rangoon; Mountbatten; Magruder, J.; Lo Cho-ying; Ledo Road; MacArthur; McCloy, J.J.; Ho Ying-chin; Guerrillakrig; Burma Campaign; Currie, L.; CEF; Churchill; Chennault, C.L.; Wingate; Bissel, C.L.; Arnold, H.H.; Alexander, H.