As the Japanese swept across Asia in the early years of World War II, the retreating Allies looked for ways to keep up the fight. In Malaya and Burma, agents had been left behind to stir resistance behind enemy lines, building up anti-Japanese operations from the safety of the jungle. In China, the American Office of Strategic Services helped both Nationalists and Communists in resisting the Japanese.

In Malaya and Burma, the British "left behind" teams that often worked in small groups, using bombs, grenades, and guns to ambush Japanese supply trucks traveling through the jungle at night. An attack might last less than a minute, a sudden burst of violence meant as much to intimidate the Japanese as to do material harm, breed paranoia, and force them to behave more cautiously. The teams spent far more time trekking through the jungle to their targets than attacking them, but when they did strike, the shock value was impressive.

As Britain scrambled to rebuild its forces and morale to hold back the Japanese, one British officer, Orde Wingate, with considerable experience with irregular operations in the Middle East, formed a radical plan to disrupt the Japanese forces now at the gates of India. He advocated taking the fight to the enemy by using a relatively small group of highly trained soldiers to attack the vulnerable Japanese supply lines that extended precariously through the Burmese jungle.

The “Chindits” came about as a result of Wingate’s idea. They were a British-trained force of British, Indian, and Gurkha soldiers designed to be employed on long-range offensive operations behind the lines of the Japanese. They were launched on two major campaigns, one in 1943 and one in 1944, and they fought in some of the most brutal and grueling terrain and climatic environments on the planet.