"In November 1944, in the aftermath of the crushing defeat he had inflicted on the Japanese at Imphal in India, Lt. Gen. Sir William Slim, commander of Britain's XIV Army, revisited the site on the east bank of the Chindwin River where, as he retreated from Burma in 1942, he had destroyed his remaining tanks, motor vehicles and field artillery pieces which could not be gotten across. "Some of what we owed we had repaid," he wrote of that moment, "now we were going pay back the rest, with interest." This is the story of that payback: the retaking of Burma. Behind this dramatic story is another. The end of the British Raj in India was brought about by many factors, but not the least of them was the "Indianization" of the British Indian Army's officer corps (whereas before, officers had been British and white). This was a sign that the curtain was coming down on the Raj. India achieved its independence in 1947"--