A book to bracket with Jack Belden's Retreat With Stilwell -- the two together giving an amazingly well rounded picture of those fearful weeks of defeat and retreat as the Japanese hordes fanned out over Burma and Malaya. Burma Surgeon is more than a war story, however, more than a graphic picture of one phase of the war. It is a personal record of a medical missionary, whose life work lay along strange paths, as he established hospitals and jungle stations throughout the very section of southeastern Asia now in Japanese hands. Supplies and assistance were at a premium, but he trained native girls as nurses, he improvised, and broke with the canons of his profession, and won the confidence and loyalty and devotion not only of his fellow workers, but of the reluctant patients, whom at first he had to cajole from the highways and byways. It is an absorbing story, relieved by touches of humor, of pathos, highlighted with human interest. - Kirkus Review. Seagrave's account of living and working as a doctor in Myanmar during the '30s and '40s, through the Japanese occupation.

"First edition." "This book is produced in conformity with government regulations for conserving paper and other essential materials."--Title page verso.

Prologue -- Part one : Burma mission. We arrive -- Our nurses -- Wastebasket surgery -- We build a hospital -- Part two : Burma Road. Mudholes and precipices -- We build a nurses' home -- Journey to Kunming -- The plague -- Malaria and airplanes -- Medical officer on the Burma Road -- Part three : Battle of Burma. The beginning -- Lend-lease trucks -- Under General Stilwell -- Hospitals under fire -- Medical major -- Helping the A.V.G. -- First retreat -- Pulling out -- On foot -- Floating down the Uru -- Over the mountains -- Through to Imphal -- Bill's story -- Assignment in Assam.