A SIGNAL HONOUR - With the Chindits and XIV th Army in Burma by Painter, Robin

London, Leo Cooper, hard bound in dust jacket, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 1999, 6 1/2 X 9 1/2, , xxv, 174 pages, illus & maps, ..............................................................The Fourteenth Army was once called the Forgotten Army. This description, however, can no longer be used for the campaign in Burma has been well chronicled not only by those who served in the theatre but by numerous later historians some who were not even born at the time........................................................... Robin Painter was very much 'there', taking part in the legendary Chindit operations under Orde Wingate's inspirational leadership with 77 Brigade during the 1943 operation, as well as the bitter fighting at Imphal with 80 Brigade of 20th Indian division. His vivid account of fighting in the ghastly terrain and appalling climate against an enemy who gave no quarter and who had never even heard of the Geneva Convention is certainly an epic of its kind. Derived mostly from diaries he kept at the time, he recreates the total horror of the fighting with grisly immediacy................................................. What sets A Signal Honour aside from other often excellent accounts of the Burma campaign is the effect, which can be felt throughout the narrative, that it had on the author. When the war was over most soldiers thought of nothing but how soon they could return to civvy street. Painter, on the other hand, had been so impressed with the espirit de corps which shared hardship and danger naturally engendered among the men who served with and under him that he chose to remain in the Army. In this respect the book is probably unique: it is not so much the story of one man's fight for survival in a bitter and bloody campaign, rather it is his discovery of the bond that held him and his comrades together.A Signal Honour is unashamedly a Soldier's Story and, as such, a moving account of war at its most basic.