Category Archives: military

by | 12 February 2026 · 11:52 pm

Royal Navy Intel Dept., 1943

From Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, 2010), Kindle pp. 29-31:

At thirty-eight, Ewen [Montagu] was too old for active service, but he had already volunteered for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. With the outbreak of war, he was commissioned as lieutenant (acting lieutenant commander) and swiftly came to the attention of Admiral John Godfrey, the head of Naval Intelligence. “It is quite useless, and in fact dangerous to employ people of medium intelligence,” wrote Godfrey. “Only men with first class brains should be allowed to touch this stuff. If the right sort of people can’t be found, better keep out altogether.” In Montagu he knew he had the right sort of person.

Godfrey’s Naval Intelligence Department was an eclectic and unconventional body. In addition to Ian Fleming, his personal assistant, Godfrey employed “two stockbrokers, a schoolmaster, a journalist, a collector of books on original thought, an Oxford classical don, a barrister’s clerk, an insurance agent, two regular naval officers and several women assistants and typists.” This heterogeneous crew was crammed into Room 39, the Admiralty, which was permanently wreathed in tobacco smoke and frequently echoed with the sounds of Admiral Godfrey shouting and swearing. Fleming awarded Godfrey the heavily ironic nickname “Uncle John,” for seldom has there been a less avuncular boss. “The permanent inhabitants who finally settled in this cave,” he wrote, “were people of very different temperaments, ambitions, social status and home life, all with their particular irritabilities, hopes, fears, anguishes, loves, hates, animosities and blank spots.” Any and every item of intelligence relevant to the war at sea passed through Room 39, and though the atmosphere inside was often tense, Godfrey’s team “worked like ants, and their combined output was prodigious.” The ants under Godfrey were responsible not merely for gathering and disseminating secret intelligence but for running agents and double agents, as well as developing deception and counterespionage operations.

Godfrey had identified Montagu as a natural for this sort for work, and he was swiftly promoted. Soon, he not only represented the Naval Intelligence Department on most of the important intelligence bodies, including the Twenty Committee, but ran his own subsection of the department: the top secret Section 17M (for Montagu). Housed in Room 13, a low-ceilinged cavern twenty feet square, Section 17M was responsible for dealing with all “special intelligence” relating to naval matters, principally the “Ultra” intercepts, the enemy communications deciphered by the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park following the breaking of the German cipher machine Enigma. In the early days of 17M, the Ultra signals came in dribbles, but gradually the volume of secret information swelled to a torrent, with more than two hundred messages arriving every day, some a few words long but others covering pages. The work of understanding, collating, and disseminating this huge volume of information was like “learning a new language,” according to Montagu, whose task it was to decide which items of intelligence should pass to other intelligence agencies and which merited inclusion in the Special Intelligence Summaries, “the cream of all intelligence,” while coordinating with MI5, Bletchley Park, the intelligence departments of the other services, and the prime minister. Montagu became fluent at reading this traffic, which, even after decoding, could be impossibly opaque. “The Germans have a passion for cross-references and for abbreviations, and they have an even greater passion (only equalled by their ineptitude in practice) for the use of code-names.”

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by | 7 February 2026 · 4:18 am

Displaced Poles in World War 2

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes an article by Juliette Bretan on Polish refugees abroad during World War 2. Here are some excerpts.

Britain proved an early home for thousands of Poles following the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces in September 1939. Polish civilians, and those in the armed forces, fled over the Carpathian mountains to Romania and Hungary, with around 90,000 military personnel known to have escaped by the end of September. Many of those in the armed forces reached France via then Yugoslavia and Italy, where new divisions were organised.

After France fell, thousands of Poles in the armed forces, and the Polish government-in-exile, transferred to London. In August 1940, an Anglo-Polish agreement allowed for the Polish land sea and air forces to be organised and employed under British command. Polish fighter and bomber squadrons were created, with Polish pilots destroying nearly 1000 enemy aircraft and dropping nearly 15,000 bombs and mines during the course of the war.

Persia

Following the Nazi invasion of Russia 1941, a treaty – the Sikorski-Mayski agreement – was signed between Poland and the Soviet Union, which included an ‘amnesty’ allowing for the release of many of the Poles who had been deported east. However, many Poles in labour camps were unaware of the development, and even those who were had only limited assistance from the Soviet authorities. Thousands of Poles, however, did manage to move south, joining Władysław Anders’s army as they moved through Russia and central Asia. In 1942, General Sikorski received permission to evacuate Poles into Persia (now Iran), across the Caspian Sea.

Africa

As Zdzisława Wójcik notes, more than half of the 37,000 Polish civilians who left the USSR with the Polish army found new homes in Africa, in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. Some arrived by sea between 1942-43, and were housed in former POW camps or new settlements, whilst others were transported from refugee camps across the world:

The settlements […] operated their own businesses: farms, canteens, butcher shops, bakeries, and fabric–weaving, sewing and shoemaking shops […] the population in the Polish settlements had a specific demographic profile: about 47 percent were women, over 41.5 percent were teenagers and children, and only 11.5 percent were men. (Wójcik, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

According to Wójcik, the Catholic Church played a prominent role in structuring Polish communities in Africa, although the number of priests varied by settlement. Support for the refugees was also provided by the Polish Red Cross and bureaus in Nairobi, with schools and orphanages established for children. However, the food available in these orphanages often left much to be desired, as Vala Lewicki – who was based in Uganda – remembers:

Meals were never elaborate affairs. The quick breakfast varied only between a plate of baked beans and a slice of bread with tea and coffee one day, and two slices of sparingly-buttered bread with cocoa or tea the next day. Occasionally we had powdered eggs which tasted like…powder. We had sandwiches for lunch, while dinner consisted of bean soup, a slice of meat and baked beans. Always baked beans! (Vala Lewicki, in The Polish Deportees of World War II)

New Zealand & Mexico

Just under 1000 Poles – 733 children and 105 adults – also found a new home in New Zealand during the war, after Prime Minister of the country accepted the refugees.

Arriving in Wellington in 1944, the refugees were settled in a Polish Children’s Camp in the town of Pahiatua, where Catholic services and Polish schooling and scouting trips were provided. Many of the Polish refugees also chose to settle in New Zealand after the war, finding ample opportunities for work as mining and logging industries expanded.

Meanwhile, a community of 1400 Poles also settled in Santa Rosa in Mexico, where they were welcomed by an orchestra playing the Polish national anthem. The settlement in Santa Rosa included living quarters and a school, where a Polish curriculum was used, as well as gardens and playing areas.

India

It is estimated that around 5000 Poles also found safe haven in India, after the wife of the Polish Consul General to Bombay, Kira Banasińska, petitioned the Maharaja of Nawanagar. The Maharaja had longstanding links to Poland – his father had been friends with pianist Ignacy Paderewski – and said that he was ‘trying to do whatever [he] can to save the children.’

Refugees settled in several camps in and around Bombay, as well as in a settlement built at the Maharaja’s summer palace. Polish culture remained an integral part of life, with Catholic teaching organised, Polish books provided, and the children also encouraged to give performances featuring traditional Polish dances and music. Sport was also encouraged: following the arrival of pre-war Lvovian footballer Antoni Maniak, a stadium and running track was built, and regular training sessions established to improve the children’s health and wellbeing. The Maharaja donated money to purchase sporting equipment – and the children proved themselves worthy foes against local teams.

The refugees dubbed the settlement camps ‘Little Poland’.

The Polish Red Cross supported the orphans who were being settled in India, although Ordonówna accompanied the first transport of children out of the Middle East, despite battling the symptoms of tuberculosis, which would later kill her.

Post-war resettlement

At the end of the war, many Poles were unable to return to their homeland. The British government recognised the contribution of Poles in the Allied forces, and established the Polish Resettlement Act, the first mass immigration legislation, in 1947, which offered British citizenship and support for hundreds of thousands of Poles. Following the act, transports were provided to enable their relatives to also reach the UK. Four thousand Poles arrived in overland transports from Italy by rail, whilst several ships carrying hundreds of displaced Poles arrived in ports in Southampton, Liverpool, Hull, London and Glasgow in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This included a transport of 66 Poles from Santa Rosa in Mexico, who travelled aboard the Empire Windrush in its historic passage to London in 1948; around 400 Poles – including many orphans – from Kilindini Mombasa in Kenya on the SS Scythia, which docked in Liverpool; and 600 displaced women, children and elderly Poles from Cape Town on the RMS Arundel Castle, which arrived in Southampton.

On board one transport from Lebanon in 1950, on the SS Oxfordshire, were also several unexpected passengers – two hives of bees, brought by one man in his 60s. The man was allowed to keep the bees, which he took to Haydon Park resettlement camp. By the early 1950s, over 100,000 Poles were registered in Great Britain. Among them were pre-war cultural figures, including Polish poet and songwriter Marian Hemar, and singers Adam Aston, Zofia Terné and Włada Majewska; as well as artists, including the Themersons and Stanisław Frenkiel. Many of these figures played a significant role in forming Polish communities in the UK post-war.

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Filed under Britain, France, Germany, India, Iran, Kenya, Mediterranean, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, South Africa, USSR, war

by | 4 February 2026 · 8:15 am

Parajutes in Burma, 1944

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 329-330:

Watching the ground operations at the airfields, [Gen. William] Slim was surprised by the range and flexibility of Snelling’s air supply. Rations, fuel and ammunition were, for obvious reasons, the priority, as well as mail, grain for animals and a host of other supplies. ‘The emergency and fancy demands made,’ he noted, ‘were also met with the promptitude and exactness of the postal order department of a first-class departmental store.’ These included blood plasma, instruments, drugs, spare parts for guns and other weapons, boots, clothing, the daily issue of SEAC (the new troops’ newspaper), typewriter ribbons, cooking pots and even replacement spectacles. The sheer range and logistical effort was mind-boggling.

From 2.30pm that afternoon, the first of a number of Dakotas and Commandos dropped supplies over the Admin Box. The multicoloured parachutes had been another bit of clever forward-thinking. Snelling had been unable to get enough parachutes supplied from India and there was no hope of acquiring the number needed from back home in Britain; SEAC was still bottom of the priority list for parachutes, as for everything. The answer was to make them of paper or jute instead – there were a great many paper mills in Calcutta and Bengal was the jute capital of the world. Paper parachutes, it turned out, would not work, but jute ones would. Slim now contacted the leaders of the British jute industry in Calcutta, asking for their help. He told them that to save time they were to deal with him and Snelling direct and warned them that he had no idea when exactly they would be paid. Despite this, within ten days they were experimenting with various types of ‘parajutes’, as they called them. By trial and error they soon arrived at the most efficient shape and weight of cloth, and within a month they had parajutes that were 85 per cent as reliable as normal silk parachutes. It was agreed they would be colour-coded – red, green, yellow, black, blue and orange, each denoting a different type of load. The cost of producing a parachute was around £20 at that time; the cost of a parajute was £5.

Despite this, Slim was rebuked for not going through the proper channels in securing these essential additions to the air-supply operation – not that he was bothered; some things were more important, and in South-East Asia they all had to use their initiative and think outside the box, no matter what some desk-wallahs thought. The entire war there was becoming an exercise in lateral thinking.

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Filed under Britain, Burma, economics, industry, Japan, military, South Asia, war

by | 2 February 2026 · 8:39 pm

Indian Electrical Mechanical Engineers

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 167-169:

Ascham’s small band of brothers was one of the echelon units attached to any infantry brigade. The fighting heart of a brigade was its three 900-man-strong infantry battalions – one British, one Indian and one Gurkha – but there were also support troops, from artillery to mules to engineers and signals to Ascham’s Indian Electrical Mechanical Engineers, who were there directly in support of the brigade’s motor transport – MT – in the field. Ascham’s team were, in essence, a mobile workshop, and here in the jungle they were absolutely essential. In this treacherous fighting terrain, Slim and others had recognized that, as far as was humanly possible, fighting units had to be as self-sufficient at the front as they could be. It was no good a number of Jeeps and trucks slogging their way down Slim’s new brick roads from Bengal, across the newly hewn Ngakyedauk Pass and down into the Kalapanzin Valley only to suffer a collapsed axle or need a new gasket and discover there was no means of rectifying the problem. This, then, was where Ascham’s seventy-five Indian Electrical Mechanical Engineers came in. Their task was to maintain the fighting capacity of the brigade’s MT.

The single most important piece in their armoury was their large, 3-ton, four-wheel-drive workshop lorry. It had a powerful winch at the front and a canvas roof over a mobile workshop behind. This was kitted out with an impressive array of equipment: there was a lathe, a vertical drilling machine, a workbench with vices, racks for heavy tools, oxy-acetylene welding equipment, battery-charging gear, a vat of sulphuric acid, hydraulic jacks, hoisting equipment to lift engines, transmission blocks and other heavy items, as well as awnings, which could be slung from the sides of the truck or between trees. This meant they could, in theory, repair pretty much anything right there, in the field. They also had five further 3-ton lorries, a large-capacity water tank, three Jeeps with trailers and a BSA motorcycle, which helped them little, but to which Ascham had become quite attached. One of the Jeep trailers had been made into a generator from the engine of a wrecked Jeep they had discovered and they used this to power their welding equipment or to provide lighting. A second trailer was used to store spare parts, while the unit also had office equipment, tents, tables, benches, cooking gear, and weapons, including rifles, a machine gun and grenades.

Ascham’s engineers were a disparate bunch of young men, drawn from all corners of India’s vast reach and including Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Although some twenty-two different languages were used throughout the country, they had all learned to speak just one, Urdu, and were bound by a different type of language: mechanical and electrical engineering. As their officer, Ascham had made sure he learned Urdu, and fluently too, which understandably gave him a closer bond with his men. They all looked much the same too, after long months working out in the heat and sun; while trousers and shirt sleeves were religiously worn during the evenings, no one bothered much about wearing shirts during the day and so all were tanned the colour of coffee and, of course, everyone wore the same uniforms of olive-drab khaki drill, black boots and – the few Sikhs excepted – black berets.

The hierarchy was easily absorbed: Ascham was the boss, but the Indian NCOs were also held in very high esteem. A jemadar was the equivalent of a warrant officer, a havildar of a sergeant and a naik the same as a corporal, and yet Indian NCOs were accorded a level of respect and status that was higher than their British Army counterparts. ‘You were taught to look up to them,’ noted Ascham. ‘In a way, they were the Indian Army. It could not possibly have functioned without them. They advised, discreetly. They handled awkward incidents, privately. Their personal loyalty to you and the unit was essential.’ It was a system that Ascham certainly believed worked brilliantly well, and he was both proud and fond of his men, who, despite their differences of background, culture, religion and language, were all bound by what he felt was a palpable sense of honour, loyalty and, almost above all, good humour. They would undoubtedly need it in the weeks to come.

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by | 1 February 2026 · 9:46 am

Bengal Famine, 1943

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 112-114:

Most Bengalis lived an extremely precarious existence. Some ten million were utterly dependent on agriculture, but of these more than half held less than 2 acres of land and many none at all. There was charity and relief but no social welfare; they had to fend for themselves. Through the first half of 1943 food prices had increased dramatically. … This was due in part to the shortages in Bengal but also to increased demand for the feeding of troops in India, as well as demand from around the world. It was artisans who suffered first, because as poverty increased so the money available for goods dried up. Then the shortages hit the wider Bengali population, many of whom left the country for the cities. By the time Tom Grounds was on leave in Calcutta, the city was bursting with the influx of impoverished families searching for food.

Yet while the cost of food was certainly a factor, the biggest problem now facing the authorities was how to get food to Bengal and urgently. The state had already been an importer of food for over a decade and most of it had come from Burma, now closed to India. The loss of Burma had been disastrous for Bengal’s fragile economy and the subsequent cyclone had made it catastrophic. Where else could it be sourced? North America and South America were the obvious places, but the amount needed was enormous and would have required a major diversion of shipping at a time when the demands on such seaborne transport had never been greater.

That August, Churchill was not prepared suddenly to release shipping to take food to Bengal; however draconian that may seem, far away in Britain the problems of the Bengalis seemed less pressing than the urgent need to maintain supplies at a crucial moment in the war. Britain and America were fighting in Sicily – an island that could be supplied effectively only by ship; they were about to invade mainland Italy, which also required an amphibious operation and supply; they were preparing for the invasion of north-west Europe; and they were fighting the Japanese throughout the Pacific. Was Churchill really expected to interrupt the war effort, and current operations, with millions of lives at stake in theatres of war around the world? Who was to say what effect such a diversion of shipping would have on the eventual length of the war, with its implications for further loss of life? In any case, ships could not be diverted from the far side of the Atlantic, for example, at the drop of a hat. Churchill was not to blame.

Not all India was facing famine – only Bengal and the north-east. One problem was that in 1935 the government had ceded considerable central power to the provinces, where the regional governments were all democratically elected. The previous year, 1942, these had all agreed to introduce trade barriers between one another. The central government of India now announced there should be free trade in grain, but plans to send relief to Bengal had been obstructed by local government officers, police and other officials who feared their own provinces risked suffering a similar fate to that of Bengal. Wavell, in one of his first acts as Viceroy-Designate, had forced the issue by threatening legal and even military action, and by August substantial amounts of grain had finally begun to arrive in Bengal. It was, however, too little too late to bring a swift end to the humanitarian disaster rising horrifically throughout the region. Relief kitchens hastily set up in Calcutta and elsewhere were simply not enough. With malnutrition came disease; those not dying of starvation were just as likely to succumb to typhus, malaria or cholera, and there were not enough hospitals or medical care to cope.

The famine had certainly been exacerbated by the war and by the fact that the Indian government had prioritized combatting the Japanese above all other matters. Yet the authorities, although slow to react, were certainly not immune to the horrors unfolding and, of course, while the tragedy of human suffering was truly appalling, the famine was yet another massive problem for the Allied command to overcome. It stretched already overstretched lines of supply, pushed the limited medical services to breaking point, affected food supplies to the troops, further sapped the morale of those who witnessed the starving, dying and dead throughout Bengal, and damaged the reputation of the British even more, and all at a time when there was a new Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief.

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Filed under Bangladesh, Britain, Burma, disease, food, Italy, Japan, migration, military, Pacific, U.S., war

by | 31 January 2026 · 11:31 pm

V Force Intelligence in Burma

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 86-89:

There were code-breakers too, and radio listening, but possibly the most important of all – especially to those now heading to the front – was V Force.

This extraordinary group of native Burmese under British command operated all along the front and were purely intelligence gatherers and reconnaissance – but they were mightily effective. The commanders had detailed knowledge of the local language, culture and conditions. One of them, based further to the north-east in the Naga Hills, was indicative of the unorthodox approach taken by V Force: Ursula Graham Bower was an anthropologist who had befriended the Naga head-hunters before the war, and, as her Christian name suggested, was a woman.

Another was Captain Anthony Irwin, who was operating in the Arakan, and running his own team under the overall charge of one of the V Force originals, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Donald.

…

V Force were the eyes and ears of the British effort in the Arakan. While Irwin was dependent on his local recruits to collect intelligence, his task was to be the brains behind the operation. An inadequate brain, it seemed to him to begin with, but he learned quickly enough. On parting, Donald had told him: ‘Trust [your] men with everything you’ve got, and they will never let you down.’ Nearly a year on, Irwin knew those had been wise words indeed.

‘These men’ were Mussulmen – local Muslims who had settled in the area some two hundred years earlier. There was now an ethnic split in the Arakan between Muslim and Maugh, who were Hindu, which had led to civil war in the area as recently as 1941; like any civil conflict, it had been brutal, with entire villages decimated by the opposing factions. The result had been that the southern half of the Arakan was now predominantly Maugh, while the north was almost entirely Muslim. This local tragedy rather played into the hands of the British, however, because the Arakan had been conveniently split into two distinct spheres of influence, something they were able to exploit. Muslims hated Maughs and, because the Maughs were helping the Japanese, they hated the Japanese too. Conversely, the Maughs were willing to work for the Japanese against the Mussulmen and, by association, the British. There were two factors, however, that made this a better deal for the British than for the Japanese. The first was that most of the fighting so far had been in the north of the Arakan, where there were fewer Maughs. The second was that because the Japanese held dear the cult of racial superiority, they treated all conquered people with violent contempt, including the Maughs. Furthermore, because Japanese forces were generally so badly supplied – especially with food – they tended to loot what they could from the Burmese without paying any kind of compensation. This was not conducive to winning trust.

Irwin very quickly became an ardent Burmese Mussulman-ophile. They were tenacious, courageous and had an uncanny knack for remembering data. Details of enemy columns were recalled with accuracy; they could tell Japanese planes from Allied long before Irwin himself could ever distinguish them. They would remember with precision exactly where enemy dispositions were and be able to mark them on a map. ‘If they see a British soldier lying wounded and lost in the jungle, they will get him in somehow,’ noted Irwin. Barney Barnett of 136 Squadron, had first-hand experience of this: ‘If they see a Jap body, they will cut off the head and proudly bring it to me, demanding baksheesh’, he noted.

Once, Irwin was sent a map, beautifully drawn and with Japanese positions clearly marked. Also written on the map was a note. ‘Many Japs are looting the publics,’ had been neatly scrawled in pidgin English. ‘Please tell the bombing mans and bomb nicely. Please tell the bombing mans that there are many good publics near and only to kill the Japanese.’

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by | 29 January 2026 · 7:39 am

Fighting Malaria in Burma, 1944

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 54-55:

[A] pragmatic mindset was most definitely needed in the battle against endemic sickness. Slim recognized, just as the new Supreme Commander recognized, that prevention was better than cure. Mountbatten had made bringing new medical advances and research to the theatre a priority – something that was far beyond Slim’s own influence; but he could improve medical practice and discipline at the front and he was determined to do so as a major priority. Up until the autumn of 1943, if a soldier contracted malaria, for example, he was then transported, while his disease was at its height, hundreds of miles by road, rail and even sea to a hospital in India. This, on average, took him out of the line for around five months. All too often he might then be re-employed in India and never return to Burma. To get around this problem, new Malaria Forward Treatment Units – MFTUs – were now set up. These were, to all intents and purposes, tented hospitals just a few miles behind the front lines. A man with malaria would reach these within twenty-four hours and remain there for three weeks or so until he was cured. When fit, he was sent straight back to his unit.

Mepacrine anti-malaria tablets were also issued to the men, but their introduction was met with the rumour that they caused impotence. This was entirely without foundation, and Slim rigidly insisted that regimental officers make sure the men were taking their Mepacrine. He even introduced spot visits where every man was checked; if the result was less than 95 per cent positive, he summarily sacked the commanding officer. He only ever had to sack three; the message got around quickly and, equally swiftly, that autumn cases of malaria began to fall.

The regimental officers were also told to maintain strict medical discipline in other areas. Trousers were to be worn, not shorts; and shirts were to be worn with the sleeves down before sunset when insects were at their worst; minor abrasions were to be treated immediately and before, not after, they turned septic. The fight against sickness, Slim insisted, had to be a united effort: discipline, sound practice and common sense were key. And already, as the year drew to a close, the health of Fourteenth Army was showing signs of improving – not massively so just yet, but on the chart that hung on Slim’s wall in his office at Comilla the curve indicating hospital admissions was beginning to sink.

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Filed under malaria, military, war, Britain, drugs, Burma, disease

by | 28 January 2026 · 9:54 pm

How to Feed British Indian Troops

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 50-52:

These 500,000 men had to be fed three meals every single day and, because of the castes, religions, tribes and nationalities involved, an added complication was the thirty different ration scales needed to feed the army. Fresh meat was difficult both to source and to transport, and refrigeration was limited to say the least, so for those who could eat meat the only solution was to provide them with tinned corned beef, or bully beef as it was called, although this was monotonous and lacked the nutrients of fresh meat. Hindus and Muslims, however, could not eat tinned meat, so they had to go without altogether. The trouble was, acceptable substitutes, milk and ghi – clarified butter – were not available in the right quantities either. Much of the tinned milk sent from Britain and America simply did not survive the long journey. The result was a severe shortage of food supplies. At the Assam front, [Gen. William] Slim discovered that instead of the 65,000 tons that should have been stored at the base depot in Dimapur, there were just 47,000 tons, a deficiency of nearly 30 per cent, and much of the shortfall worked against the Indian troops. ‘The supply situation was indeed so serious,’ wrote Slim, ‘that it threatened the possibility of any offensive.’

Part of the problem was bad management at Delhi, and Slim and Snelling were appalled to discover that the system of peacetime financial control was still in place when it came to procurement. Incredibly, if large quantities of dehydrated food were ordered from Indian contractors, demands for tinned supplies from Britain were then cancelled. On the face of it, that was fair enough, but it had been decreed that dehydrated vegetables were, in terms of scale of issue, a quarter that of tinned goods. In other words, for every 100 tons of dehydrated goods ordered in India, 400 tons of tinned veg orders from Britain were cancelled. This was bad enough, but made worse because there was always a massive discrepancy between the quantities ordered in India and those that were ever actually delivered. Consequently, shortages had been allowed to escalate quickly.

To try to solve this, Slim and Snelling had gone to see Auchinleck in person, who vowed to deal with the supply issues as a matter of urgency. By cutting red tape and tightening the administration of food supply, Auchinleck’s staff at Delhi were able steadily to increase the flow of rations. In fact, just acknowledging earlier shortcomings was a marked step in the right direction.

Despite this improvement, both Slim and Snelling realized they needed to adopt a very hands-on approach themselves; it was no good depending on Delhi to sort out their supply issues. As a result, other sources of meat, such as sheep and goats, were reared locally where possible. They also hired some Chinese to set up duck-rearing farms for both meat and eggs, while along the Imphal front 18,000 acres of vegetables were cultivated.

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Filed under Britain, food, military, nationalism, religion, South Asia, U.S., war

by | 28 January 2026 · 10:29 am

Driving Tanks into Burma, 1944

From Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned World War II in the East, by James Holland (Grove Atlantic, 2024), Kindle pp. 10-12:

Before taking over 7th Indian Division, Messervy had been Director of Armoured Fighting Vehicles in New Delhi and had been a vociferous advocate of more tanks in theatre. It had taken much beating of drums, but eventually he had managed to prove to his superiors that medium tanks such as US-built Lees and Shermans could operate in South-East Asia. The 25th Dragoons had been the first to equip with these 30-ton machines, and it had been planned some days earlier that during the night of 4/5 February the regiment would cross over the Ngakyedauk Pass and report for duty with 7th Division to the east of the Mayu Range, ready to take part in Messervy’s planned assault on Buthidaung.

Later that night, C Squadron also crossed the pass. Among them was twenty-year-old Trooper Norman Bowdler from Dunchurch in the English Midlands. Just a week before, Bowdler had been the loader in his five-man crew, but when the driver had got sick he had taken over and now was responsible for getting their mighty Lee up and over this treacherous pass – and in the dark. He found it a terrifying experience. Above them, Allied aircraft were flying over in order to disguise the sound of the tanks, which would have easily carried to the Japanese positions in the still night air. ‘It was a bit dodgy,’ Bowdler admitted. ‘I mean, getting a thirty-ton tank round these S-bends – well, some of the bends were so severe that you had to go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards to negotiate them.’ He was keenly aware that for all the feat of engineering the creation of the pass undoubtedly was, it was little more than a widened mule track and certainly a long way from being a proper road. In some places, parts of it were bridged by laid tree trunks and Bowdler was worried that at any moment stretches of it would simply crumble away and they would tumble down one of the sheer precipices to the ravine floor 200 feet below. ‘It was so narrow,’ he said, ‘and the tank so heavy – we were fully loaded with ammo, fuel and everything.’ At times, one of the tank’s tracks was actually overhanging the edge of the road as he slewed the beast around a corner. At best there was little more than a yard or so either side of the Lee, and the margins were especially tight around corners that offered very, very little room for manoeuvre.

As a result, it took them much of the night to cross. Bowdler found it more difficult going down the reverse side without the natural braking effect of the climb. Low gears helped, but he was very mindful that this huge weight, crunching over a road that would not pass muster in most people’s book, and being hurried by gravitational pull, could all too easily slip out of his control. The levels of concentration needed were immense, but at long last the road began to level out and in bright moonlight they emerged into an area of paddy, criss-crossed with bunds – the paddy walls – and then eventually leaguered up in an area of elephant grass. Not so very far to the south, Bowdler could hear small arms firing and even the occasional shout. He’d already been in battle before, but here, in the milky darkness of the 7th Division Administrative Area, there was a distinct air of menace.

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Filed under Britain, Burma, Japan, military, South Asia, U.S., war

by | 17 January 2026 · 8:46 am

Polish Diaspora in France

My latest compilation from Culture.pl has an article on the Polish diaspora in France. Here are some excerpts:

When we think of the Polish diaspora, France is rarely the first place that comes to mind – often overshadowed by the UK, the US or Germany. Yet the Polish presence in France is older, more complex and more deeply woven into the country’s cultural fabric than most realise.

Through interviews with contemporary Polish migrants and archival research into historical communities, a layered story emerges – one as much about shared histories as it is about work, struggle and identity. Beginning with 19th-century exile, expanding through interwar labour migration, and continuing into today’s cosmopolitan realities, Poles have long helped shape the life of their adopted country. And France, in turn, has shaped them.

The earliest sustained Polish presence in France took shape in the 19th century, following the failed November Uprising of 1830-1831. Thousands of officers, intellectuals and activists fled the Russian-controlled partition and sought refuge in France, launching what became known as the ‘Great Emigration’. This wave of political exiles – over 5,000 by 1833 – formed one of the most enduring diasporic communities of the era. Unlike other groups who returned after political amnesties, most remained as long as Poland’s partitioned status endured.

One bold but ultimately unsuccessful plan – to form a Polish legion to fight in Portugal’s Liberal Wars in 1833 – was led by General Józef Bem and reflected the enduring ideal of transnational solidarity. It gave lasting currency to the phrase ‘For our freedom and yours’ (‘Za wolność naszą i waszą’), which became a defining expression of Poland’s internationalist military ethos throughout the 19th century.

Polish émigrés built schools, charitable institutions and political societies. Some were initially settled in places like Belle-Île-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany, while growing numbers made their way to Paris, which would soon become a central hub of Polish cultural and political life in exile.

…

Building on these early foundations, Paris evolved into what some would later call ‘Poland’s second capital’. Throughout the 19th century, the city became a vibrant centre where Polish political elites, artists and intellectuals gathered, united by a commitment to preserving national identity in exile.

Nowhere was this more visible than at the prestigious Collège de France, where Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz was appointed the first Chair of Slavic Literature in Western Europe in 1840. His lectures, a blend of cultural commentary and political advocacy, attracted wide audiences – including figures like George Sand – and reflected diasporic longing for unity and liberation. Though ultimately dismissed for the political intensity of his teachings, Mickiewicz remained an emblematic figure in Franco-Polish cultural relations.

That same spirit of cultural continuity shaped another enduring institution: the Polish School in Paris, founded in 1842 by General Józef Dwernicki and fellow émigrés. The school aimed to raise children in Polish language and tradition, even as they grew up on foreign soil. With Mickiewicz himself serving as vice-president of its council, the institution embodied how deeply intertwined education, culture and politics were in émigré life – a place where Polish identity could be preserved and transmitted across generations born in exile.

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Filed under economics, education, France, language, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, Portugal, Russia