Description
Object description
Ts transcript (115pp) of a memoir, written in 1947, covering his appointment, based in Hong Kong up to August 1939 and then in Singapore, as the Army member of the Far Eastern Combined Intelligence Bureau (FECB), January 1939 - December 1941, and then in Chungking as Military Attaché and GOC, British Military Mission in China, January 1942 - 1945, with a mass of valuable detail and analysis about Allied intelligence agencies operating in the Far East and the difficulties which FECB experienced in coordinating their activities and persuading the authorities to act on the information that they garnered, the grave under-estimation of the quality of the Japanese armed forces, the viability of defending Hong Kong, the shortcomings of the civil government and the scale of complacency and defeatism in Malaya and Singapore before December 1941, the operation of the British high command in the Far East, the principal factors explaining the overwhelming Allied defeat in the Malayan campaign, the strengths and weaknesses of China and in particular its army and military commanders, the reasons for the extremely modest British military and air effort in China from 1942 - 1945, the success of the British Army Aid Group, and the choice of priorities in Allied strategy in China between training a Chinese army for operations in Burma and using the USAAF to force a Japanese withdrawal from South China; and also including interesting accounts of visits by him to French Indo China, Burma, Thailand and various regions of China.
Content description
Ts transcript (115pp) of a memoir, written in 1947, covering his appointment, based in Hong Kong up to August 1939 and then in Singapore, as the Army member of the Far Eastern Combined Intelligence Bureau (FECB), January 1939 - December 1941, and then in Chungking as Military Attaché and GOC, British Military Mission in China, January 1942 - 1945, with a mass of valuable detail and analysis about Allied intelligence agencies operating in the Far East and the difficulties which FECB experienced in coordinating their activities and persuading the authorities to act on the information that they garnered, the grave under-estimation of the quality of the Japanese armed forces, the viability of defending Hong Kong, the shortcomings of the civil government and the scale of complacency and defeatism in Malaya and Singapore before December 1941, the operation of the British high command in the Far East, the principal factors explaining the overwhelming Allied defeat in the Malayan campaign, the strengths and weaknesses of China and in particular its army and military commanders, the reasons for the extremely modest British military and air effort in China from 1942 - 1945, the success of the British Army Aid Group, and the choice of priorities in Allied strategy in China between training a Chinese army for operations in Burma and using the USAAF to force a Japanese withdrawal from South China; and also including interesting accounts of visits by him to French Indo China, Burma, Thailand and various regions of China.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 1998-09