PREFACE
In January 1945, I reached New Delhi, India, to begin my duties as themedical historian for the India-Burma Theater. For the next 18 months,I ransacked files, corresponded with officers in the field, wrote annualreports on the Theater medical service, edited a medical journal, collectedphotographs, and nagged specialists until they wrote final accounts ofwartime experience in surgery, neuropsychiatry, internal medicine, preventivemedicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and nursing. My own writing concernedthe operational aspects of military medicine: planning and administration,supply, the deployment of medical forces, and the ways in which the MedicalDepartment in India and Burma failed and succeeded in its mission of keepingthe fighting forces in action. Subsequently, the results of these studieswere turned over to the Historical Unit of the U.S. Army Medical Department.
The thousands of documents in the Headquarters files served me as factualfragments of the recent past. The periodic reports of medical unit commandersand of administrative headquarters provided general outlines of the waythe fragments once fitted together. By sorting and analyzing the fragmentswith the help of the outlines, I could construct one species of historicalnarrative, the kind in which events are described as the interaction ofvarious organized groups, or of individuals playing official, rather thanpersonal, roles--"D Company," the "Supply Depot," the"Base Surgeon." By accepting a familiar and useful convention,one imagined that each of these stood for from one to several thousandsof men and women. Insofar as these people existed, it was as their individualexperiences were represented in the ultimate achievements of the organizationwith which they served.
Of course, the more immersed in the subject one became the more he humanizedit. He drew inferences about the probable living conditions, duties, andcapacities of the participants. His face-to-face encounters with a fewof them produced a sense of reality which critical techniques might subdueor correct, but which they could not eradicate. And occasionally he woulddiscover a document which not only filled out a factual mosaic, but glowedwith the vitality of a personal encounter with experience.
Sometimes a phrase, a sentence, or a page in an official report wouldbe sufficiently concrete and vivid to arrest the reader's eye. Sometimesa letter or a sequence of exchanges, written in hot blood, would burn throughthe official mold. In the rarest of instances, there would appear an extended,thoroughly composed, and personalized document. Even when these materialsadded little to the formal, institutional view of events, they remediedthe defect of that view: abstractness. They told the reader what men werelike--how they thought, felt, saw, and heard in the world of war into whichchance had thrust them.
The documents which are here presented are of this kind. They do notprovide a comprehensive view of the medical service in India and Burma,nor is their clinical significance very great. Each one, however, putsordinary men before us, in the situations and scenes typical of war ingeneral and of service in the Orient in particular. Two--originating duringthe Second Campaign in Burma--go well behind the defense lines of officialwriting and show how catastrophic that eventually successful engagementmight have been. All are records of trial and tedium, tolerance and anger:records humanistic.
North Tirap Log was originally recovered by Dr. (then Captain)Floyd T. Romberger, Jr., in 1945. He had it typed, wrote an introduction,revised the style in numerous minor instances, and added explanatory notesbefore sending it to the Theater Surgeon. The text presented here, however,follows the manuscript possessed by its principal author, Mr. (then Sergeant)Robert M. Fromant, of Rocky River, Ohio. While using Dr. Romberger's notesextensively, I have written a new introduction, divided the Log intochapters, and inserted subtitles. Dr. Romberger, who is presently in practicein Indianapolis, Ind., not only rescued North Tirap Log from probableoblivion, but he also composed an outstanding report on the amazing airevacuation system in Burma for which he was operationally responsible duringthe Second Burma Campaign. It was the prototype of the system of medicalsupport in the South Vietnamese forests and paddies, without which Americanforces could not long survive.
Dr. (then Major) Walter S. Jones, of Providence, R.I., wrote ChineseLiaison Detail in 1945 as a memorial not only of his experience butof the early struggle to build the Ledo Road. He sent it to the TheaterSurgeon in virtually the form in which it now appears. I have taken theliberty of making some modifications in mechanical organization, chieflyto present his numerous short chapters as subdivisions of larger units(for which I have supplied titles). Occasionally, I have added to or rearrangedhis footnotes. It has not been possible to reprint his many photographicillustrations and map-sketches, and certain of his appendixes have beendeleted when their substance appears in the text itself.
The Tamraz Diary is the office journal which the late Dr. (thenColonel) John M. Tamraz kept while he was the Services of Supply Surgeonof the China-Burma-India Theater. He wrote almost every day in a largeledger, and he left his journal in the Theater Surgeon's office when hereturned to the United States. I have reduced its length by editorial excisions,but I have otherwise followed the original manuscript. From my own studiesin 1945-46 of the India-Burma medical service I have derived the contentof explanatory notes and connecting passages.
The document entitled With Wingate's Chindits is the only onenot of American origin. Maj. Gen. W. J. Officer, former Director of MedicalServices, Headquarters Far East Land Forces, Singapore, now retired, wroteit in 1945 as his final report on the medical arrangements for the BritishSpecial Force which fought behind enemy lines in North Burma in 1944. Acopy of it went to the India-Burma Surgeon as a military intelligence report.There seems to be no indication that it has been utilized in publishedaccounts of the Chindits. General Officer has stated that it was kept outof normal administrative channels for a year after he sub-
mitted it. In presenting it here, I have followed the original in allthe quoted passages, but I have deleted or summarized certain portionswhich now seem to have lost most of their technical significance, and Ihave modified slightly the arrangement of the original text.
Finally, the reports on Merrill's Marauders by two of its medical officers,James E. T. Hopkins and Henry G. Stelling, illuminate one of the most controversialepisodes of World War II. Unfortunately, there is no single, comprehensivemedical report on the Marauders, such as General Officer wrote about theChindits. Hence, I have drawn upon my own research as India-Burma MedicalHistorian to annotate the Hopkins and Stelling papers. My notes also indicatethe minor editorial adjustments which seemed desirable for the presentation.
Except for Dr. Tamraz, who is no longer living, each of the authorshas encouraged me in the preparation of this collection of documents. Inthe case of the Tamraz journal, I have consulted the executors and heirsof the Tamraz estate, including his nephew, Dr. H. H. Serunian, of Worcester,Mass. Copies of the documents were made available by the Historical Unit,U.S. Army Medical Department, except for the Stelling Report, which I waspermitted to copy from the Stilwell papers, Hoover Institution on War,Revolution, and Peace, at Stanford University. Permission to use the reportof General Officer came from him and from the Director-General, Army MedicalServices, The War Office, London. Quotations from published works are includedwith the permission of the publishers cited in my notes. Three U.S. Armyoffices reviewed the completed manuscript: The Detailed Morbidity and PrevalenceStudies Section, Office of The Surgeon General (which called attentionto several minor statistical errors); the Historical Unit, U.S. Army MedicalDepartment; and the Office for the Freedom of Information, Office of theSecretary of the Army.
It is pleasant to acknowledge the encouragement and assistance of Lt.Col. Charles J. Simpson, Lt. Col. Frederick Bell, Jr., and Mr. RoderickM. Engert, of the Historical Unit; Col. Grainger Reid, O.B.E., formerlyof the British Embassy, Washington, D.C.; Capt. L. C. W. Baker, RAMC, ofthe Ministry of Defence (AMD 2), The War Office, London; and a number ofmilitary and governmental agencies, including the Technical Liaison Office,Office of The Surgeon General; the Office of The Adjutant General, Departmentof the Army; the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence,Department of the Army; the Veterans' Administration central and branchoffices; Sixth U.S. Army Headquarters and the Sixth U.S. Army ReferenceLibrary, Presidio of San Francisco; the Military Personnel Records Center,St. Louis, Mo.; and the staff of the documents branch of the Hoover Institutionon War, Revolution, and Peace. Financial assistance for typing the manuscriptcame from faculty research and student employment funds of San FranciscoState College. Mrs. Martha R. Stephens, Editor, of the Editorial Branchof the Historical Unit, performed the final publications editing of thevolume, and Miss Jean A. Saffran, Cartographic Technician, Special ProjectsBranch of the same unit, prepared the map.
JAMES H. STONE
Palo Alto, Calif.,
1 August 1968.
