... The story of the first expedition was inked onto paper by General Sir Archibald Wavell, the Commander-in Chief of India. At the start of 1942, as Burma brewed up in a maelstrom of war and relentless Japanese invasion, it was decided to bring in a Middle East expert to train Chang Kai-Shek’s Chinese army for guerrilla warfare. That Middle East expert was Major Charles Orde Wingate — a junior colleague well known to Wavell from his pre-war Palestine days and from wartime Ethiopia.

Following a long stopover in Cairo, Wingate finally arrived in India by B-24 Liberator, meeting Wavell on March 19. By this time, the Burmese capital, Rangoon, had already fallen and Wavell conceived a new role for his subordinate – to carry out a guerrilla war against the Japanese using British army resources. By this time four unique entities of irregulars were already conducting special operations against the enemy including the British Special Orders Executive (SOE), the American OSS (forerunners of the CIA), V-Force, run by Anglo-Burmese and Anglo-Indians with intelligence and guerrilla teams embedded in deep cover within Burma and lastly, the Bush Warfare School at Maymo busy training guerrilla soldiers under the supervision of the school commander, Major Michael Calvert....