With Flip in Burma

BACK TO MANDALAY (320 pp.] -- Lowell Thomas -- Greystone ($3.50).

What licked the Japs in North Burma? The British like to think that in great part it was the jungle work of His Majesty's guerrilla genius, Major General Orde C. Wingate, who did such a good job of mauling supply lines that the Japanese later died on the vine. In Back to Mandalay, Lowell Thomas concedes that Wingate was a genius, but he strongly implies that it was the U.S. Army Air Forces which showed Wingate how to do his job. Back to Mandalay is Thomas' story of how a crack team of U.S. airmen, in effect, put wings on Wingate's raiders, made his final campaign in North Burma "an air show" and stole the show from the British.

The U.S. air team was headed by Colonel Philip Cochran, better known as the prototype of Flip Corkin in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates.* When Cochran reached India in 1943, Wingate's expedition had been called off for lack of transport planes. Cochran calmly announced that this was no problem ; gliders would do the trick. Through and sometimes over Wingate's persistent doubts, Cochran reconstructed the tactics of the campaign.

Author Thomas tells a good story, especially when he is describing with veteran skill the wild night in March 1944 when the glider-borne attackers landed behind the Jap lines. The pity is that, after giving the Americans their due, he had relatively little room left to tell the story of the British and Empire troops -- whose bitter work began when the gliders rolled to a stop.

* And who is currently busy, as a civilian, preparing training films for the Air Force.

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