Back to Mandalay
by .Greystone Press, $3.50.
Mr. Thomas tells one of the great adventure stories of the Second World War — General Orde Wingate’s second expedition into Burma, in which Phil Cochran’s U.S. Air Commandos played a spectacular role. The glider-borne landing of Wingate’s spearhead is an utterly fabulous episode: several hundred troops, plus heavy equipment, mules, and even a bulldozer, were lowed at night across lofty mountains and deposited, with little loss of life, on a strip of elephant grass far behind the Japanese lines. The leading figures in the story are a picturesque, daredevil bunch; and at the center of everything is the extraordinary personality of Wingate, the “Lawrence” of Burma.