Battle Honours
SIR,—Abler pens than mine will undoubtedly be put to paper on Strix's paragraph in your issue of July 10th, headed " Battle Honours." In the Fourteenth Army we grew accustomed to the title of the Forgotten Army " but, all these years later, to have our efforts described as a " relatively small contribution " to the overthrow of Japan by a journal of the standing of the Spectator which is edited (if my deductions are correct) by a T.A. officer is rather galling. Can it be that Strix has never heard of Kohima or the Chindits ? Or maybe he is an Errol Flynn fan. If so, " Burma Victory " is a more accurate film and I suggest he sees it.—Yours faithfully,
22 Cornwall Gardens, S.W.7.
N. E. MARRYAT.
[Strix writes: I am sorry I annoyed Mr. Marryat, but I think a fair- minded person must recognise the fact that of the forces deployed against Japan the vast majority were American, and that it was the Americans, and in particular the United States Navy, who won the really decisive victories. Mr. Marryat's deduction that the Editor of the Spectator holds a commission in the Territorial Army is not, as it happens, correct; nor is he right in supposing me wholly ignorant of conditions in Burma, in various parts of which I served—with, among other forces, the Chindits—between 1942 and 1945.]
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