The Moonlight War – Terence O’Brien (1987) (1st ed)

S$35.00

The Moonlight War – Terence O’Brien (1987) (1st ed)

S$35.00

Title: The Moonlight War

Author: Terence O’Brien

Publisher: Collines, 1987. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Ex-library book with library markings, with slight tanning, foxing and soiling. 363pp., app 9″ by 6″.

From jacket flap:

This thrilling and controversial war memoir is a first-hand account of the clandestine operations which took place against the Japanese in South-east Asia in 1944-5. Terence O’Brien was in command of a Dakota flight based at Jessore, from which missions were flown all over Burma, Siam, Indo-China and northern Malaya. Through a wealth of brilliantly told stories of what happened in the air and on the ground, he reveals that these operations were, in the main, a deeply scandalous waste of life and resources.

Plans were so commonly shrouded in the darkness of top security that they tended also to be competitive, exclusive and reckless. There were many instances of unnecessary duplication of long and perilous flights occasioned by the jealousy and isolation of different secret outfits. The difficulties of making contact with SOE and M16 groups in enemy-occupied territory were compounded by the terrain and bad weather.

The Moonlight War – as judicious as it is authentic – is the first formal records of a subject which has hitherto remained virtually untreated; even rather ostentatiously hushed up.