China-Burma-India WWII

A SWINDON-based Second World War veteran and author has published his 25th book.

The Battle For Burma is the latest, exhaustively-researched non-fiction work by Roy Conyers Nesbit, 88, who lives in central Swindon.

All of his books have been well reviewed, and his Amazon listings feature a swathe of five and four-star ratings.
His new book tells the story of the Burma Campaign, in which the Allies fought bitterly in disease-ridden jungle terrain to prevent Japan from overrunning India and dominating the Far East and Asia.

Mr Nesbit chose the subject because he feels it isn’t given the prominence it deserves.

He said: “I think events in Burma were almost of equal importance to events in Europe.

“There were more people involved in the battle for Burma than were involved in the battle for Europe.

“The Japanese achieved an equivalent amount of success to the Germans until we learned how to deal with them.”
Essex-born Mr Nesbit is himself a veteran of the Second World War, having joined the RAF at about noon on September 3, 1939, an hour or so after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on the radio that Britain was at war with Hitler’s Germany.

He said: “After war was declared the sirens went off, but we knew it was just a test.
“I rang up a friend and we met and volunteered for the RAF.

“At the time I was working for Lloyds Bank and my father was with the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street.
“I didn’t like my bank studies – I wanted some adventure. I also didn’t like the Germans, so I volunteered!”

Mr Nesbit initially trained as a pilot, only to discover that there was a glut of pilots but not of certain other crew positions.

That was how, at the age of 19, he found himself in the role of navigator and bomb aimer in Bristol Beaufort aircraft targeting German U-boats in low-level attacks on their heavily-defended pens on the French coast.

After 50 hazardous missions he became an instructor in navigation and related skills, eventually seeing service in Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and later throughout the Far East.

He left the RAF as a 24-year-old Flight Lieutenant in 1946 and studied at the London School Of Economics before working as a director of various manufacturing and retail firms in London until he retired at 63.

He then moved to Swindon, where a number of his friends lived.

Mr Nesbit’s writing career began in the early 1970s when political strife led to three-day weeks, which in turn left him with time on his hands, although he had previously had an article published in the magazine Aeroplane.

He said: “I was sitting there, wondering what to do. With tongue in cheek, I wrote a personal account of my experiences in the RAF.”

That book, entitled Woe To The Unwary after the motto of his old squadron, was published in 1981 and opened the floodgates for publishers’ requests for more.

Since then he has written not just another two dozen books – three more are in preparation – but also more than 100 articles, and has made numerous radio appearances and several on TV