Reader: Donovan Webster

The extraordinary story of the
China-Burma-Indiatheater of operations during World War II

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 -- which would be called the Burma Road -- from the southeast Chinese city of Kunming to Lashio, Burma. But with the fall of Burma in early 1942, the road was severed, and it became the task of American General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell to reopen it, while keeping China supplied by air-lift from India and simultaneously driving the Japanese out of Burma as the first step of the Allied offensive toward Japan.

In gripping prose, Donovan Webster follows the adventures of the American "Hump" pilots who flew hair-raising missions to make food-drops in China; tells the true story that inspired the famous film The Bridge on the River Kwai; and recounts the grueling jungle operations of Merrill's Marauders and the British Chindit Brigades. Interspersed with portraits of the American General Stilwell, the exceedingly eccentric British General Orde Wingate, and the mercurial Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, The Burma Road vividly recreates the sprawling, sometimes hilarious, often harrowing, and still largely unknown stories of one of the greatest chapters of World War II.

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Donovan Webster The Burma Road 4 cassettes (abridged)