Absolutely fascinating talk - thank you so much for posting this. Lt Col Mike Tickner is amazing - he is a man who is on top of his subject, able to engage an audience and should be compulsory viewing for anyone who lectures to an audience.

My grandfather was in Burma as a soldier a group of Ugandans who were there as part of the Kings African Rifles! 😊

I dislike his declarative statements which are only arguable at best. His narrative is informative enough without such opinionated assertions.

Hello I am from Assam, India. The information and perspectives I have gleaned from these talks is second to none. As a WW 2 CBI theatre enthusiast, these these recordings will remain some of the most insightful work on topic. I had a query, How do i join these online seminars? How do we register?

Brilliant video! Just watched, having missed the live podcast (as I often have to) on Thursday. Good to see the mules and mortars, my father, Barry Nicholas, relied on mules to carry his mortars with the 82nd Nigeria Regiment of RWAFF. His first task on arriving in the Burma campaign was kicking supplies out of aircraft. He had a lifelong respect of USA logistics

Thouraly enjoyed the talk. It was nice to see two photographs of 387 Coy's (the company in which my grandfather served) DUKWs.

If she sees nagas now😅😅😅 esp ugs factions.

My father was in kohima,he spent his 21st birthday, 10th of may 1944,he never said a lot about it,not untill his later years ,and then not in any detail

Zeme traditional the one she is wearing

This may or may not have any bearing to a small & incidental point made by the narrator in this video here, but the 88th regiment of foot was originally attributed to the ‘Connaught Rangers’ until their disbanding in 1922, when at the specifically expressed behest of King George V, their colours along with the other then similarly disbanded South Irish regiments, due to partition & the then creation of the ‘Irish Free State’, were all finally laid up & consigned to remain in perpetual honour at the Warrior’s Chapel inside St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle! Therefore, during the Second World War, the former military appellation numbers of these former such, disbanded Irish regiments, which were originally under British Army service, would have been then available to be re-designated to other newly created or amalgamated units!

A. really great presentation = thank you.

I’ve just seemed to notice something here that the highest level awarded medal was the Military Medal (MM), the third highest level of award for valour or meritorious service. Why was this the apparently the norm then here with the East or West African units? Not that there is anything wrong with this medal, or its equivalent Awards, the Military Cross or the DSO, awarded respectively to senior NCOs or junior officer ranks upto the rank of captain, or else to senior officers of Staff Ranks from Major to General? But why were there no DCMs or VCs ever seemingly awarded in this campaign to such appropriately deserving troops in these units, because it seems to me that if some of the actions that have been described & depicted here, had then occurred in other circumstances, at least some of these valiant actions involving such troops, they would have likely then merited & would have been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) or even perhaps the George Cross or possibly even the Victoria Cross being awarded to them in many such instances?!! Something does not seem to right here??!!

Fantastic talk, thank you so much. What an amazing woman - truly humbling to hear her story.

Fascinating. Many thanks

This to to inform that when you came to kohima to employ a youth for looking after your project the person who passed the interview was left now without salary and is struggling with family to look after.please look to it

at 26:46, watching from Kenya i have strong mixed feelings im confused, frustrated, resentful, sad to hear what native african men and women went through first fought and lost to the british as the british were forming the kenya state to rule native africans, exploit resources then forced to go fight other native peoples within the kenya state, and in other nations many of them died, many injured, many i know forgotten it's happening again now with haiti i appreciate this video

Pleased to find this, my Grandad served in the 23rd Brigade, his name was Leslie Richard Parker, he came from London and started in the 1st battalion Essex regiment before gojng to India

Why are you celebrating a man who abused children?

Corporal Harry Softley was my grandfather. My mother was only two years old when he was killed by a Japanese sniper. Thank you for remembering him. 35:43

Respectfully, the war in Burma was a sideshow and the arguments here seem almost absurd. Wellington stopped Napoleon Bonaparte. Resurrecting the martial pride of a defeated and humiliated British imperial force fighting against an expeditionary Japanese army, while most of Japan's best soldiers were in China and the Pacific, was an achievement but nothing like greatness.

My father was in the Burma Rifles in those years. He left some unpublished memoirs including the period.

Kohima was not the first time the Japanese were defeated. This was at Milne Bay when they were defeated by Australian forces, a fact commented on by Slim

My favourite Slim story - in 1993 I rode on the roof of a bus in Burma until they pointlessly misdirected me and dropped me off in the dark in Meiktila, a town I had absolutely no clearance from the authorities to be in (the bus was supposed to take me to Mandalay). I passed a WW2 Comet tank on display, approached a monastery and asked to stay the night and make a donation. The head monk was very terse and unpleasant with me, and initially I feared that he might work for the regime. The windows were missing, with the window sills about four feet up from the ground, and he warned me to make sure I never put my head up that high. The reason soon became obvious : the Army was rampaging through the night with fixed bayonets, seizing people to be used as human shields in the several counterinsurgency wars the regime was always fighting, and there's no telling what could happen if the soldiers looked over the window sill and saw a white man who shouldn't be in Meiktila at all.... Whoa.... After a while the head monk came back to me with cigarillos and snacks, and was MUCH more pleasant, reminiscing about the great Field Marshall Slim, and the head monk's own service in the "Burma Navy", which was probably the Burma Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, fighting on the Allied side. He said that he had always wanted to know what eventually became of Slim. I told him the foudroyant revelation that Slim had gone on to become Governor-General of my own country, Australia. He beamed with contentment on learning that - and in the back-blocks of Burma thirty years ago, information about the outside world really was acquired by questioning a traveller...! A world that has gone and been buried in the internet now.

You had another successful British maneuver general in WW2 : Richard McCreery.

Australian win on the Kokoda Trail against overwhelming Jap odds is a much greater achievement. Had they not been stopped Australia was next looking at the soft underbelly of all Asia! One of its first losses and to a much smaller force, simply outfought by Aussies.

My uncle was in the china theater during the War.. even as an American, he said that kohima/imphal was the "stalingrad" of that theater..I have always been impressed by the little I could find out.. it's Great to see what the Internet can do in a positive way!

The British armies greatest ever General so said my uncle who served under him.

My father fought under Slim in Burma, he was in the 14th army in the royal artillery, 134 jungle field regiment 19th Indian division.

Bill Slim. Master of War.

Must have been the only General in history who didn’t want more resources

God bless all who served

Great presentation. I will have to read more about General Slim.

My dad fought with the 14th army in Burma. He taught me that racism is stupid and we are all the same. Now I live in the US, and while my white countrymen are only just post apartheid in thinking, I don't even notice different races..

Being such a great and yet humble man puts Slim above those who wanted the glory and fame

Brilliant lecture about a quite brilliant man,. Thank you Dr Lyman, a wonderful presentation.

U. S. Marine General Smedley Butler said something similar. “All war is a waste.”

While I fully endorse the admiration of FM Slim, ======================================== may I advance the memory of a Cornishman, ===================================== another Bill - Lt-Col. J.H. Williams OBE, known as 'Elephant Bill' ? The building of those 550 teak barges was made possible by Bill's skill with elephants, and with the Burmese that worked with them, derived from his pre-war work in the teak forests. What is also of note, is having sawmills brought in advance to Burma, ready for this very opportunity. This foresight was remarkable, and paid dividends. /

Such a valuable asset! The armour in the CBI just look what 14thARMY could do with it!! THX so much for this invaluable information!!

Hello, , it would be good to look at notes. My wife Grandad was there. but was asked to leave the British Army, joined the Idian Army. Was there during the battle, declared lost/ Walked out of the jungel with his Guka. We have his notes and drawings

General ,SL:IM, Britain's greatest General (UNCLE BILL) to all his troops where ever they originated from be it India China America Britain Australia or the Gurkas from Nepal he was always Uncle Bill they would fight for and follow to kingdom come.

I rather enjoy Dr Lyman’s delivery. A very warm and engaging manner.

India's too How about a little appreciation for their forebears from today's Indians

Not sure that beating an enemy with of the about same size, with zero logistics, in a defensive battle could be considered a great victory. It utterly pales in comparison the Australians battles of Kokoda Track, 2 years earlier. The Australians beat both a well supplied Japanese army at the height of its powers, and won despite MacArthur being in charge and at the height of his idiocy.

Turning point battle of the war, occurred before the war. Zhukov defeating the Japanese at Kahlkin Gol meant that unlike Hitler, Stalin only had to fight on one front making his task far easier!

Excellent lecture - thank you

His army required 58 different sets of ration packs. 58. No other army in history had that problem and Slim made it happen.

True, but (to me) he was far ahead of Monty, all those accolades occurred after he saved India. Maybe underexposed? Monty got all the exposure.

I would suggest that the battle fought by Smith-Dorrien at Le Cateau, which saved the BEF as it retreated from Mons, be considered because, while it did not end in a victory, it was a success in that it was the most difficult of military tasks - an orderly withdrawal against overwhelming superior forces. Smith-Dorrien acted calmly and correctly amid enormous and confused circumstances, leading me to believe that French and Haig's collusion in getting Smith-Dorrien sacked ensured that the butcher's bill for Britain in WW1 was far greater than it would have been had Smith-Dorrien had succeeded French as C-inC in 1915.

14th Army? Never heard of them nor of the front they fought on.

Field Marshal Slim wrote the foreword to 'Serve to Lead' the standard text given to all officer cadets who attended Sandhurst. That is until the text was 'revised' the text for the 2nd edition at the beginning of this century.