The Jungle is Neutral, F. Spencer Chapman
The Jungle is Neutral, F. Spencer Chapman
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
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The Jungle is Neutral
The Epic True Story of One Man's War Behind Enemy Lines

Author: F. Spencer Chapman

Narrator: Leighton Pugh

Unabridged: 16 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/27/2022


Synopsis

The Jungle is Neutral makes The Bridge Over the River Kwai look like a tussle in a schoolyard.

F. Spencer Chapman, the book's unflappable author, writes with typical British aplomb an amazing tale of four years spent as a guerrilla in the jungle, haranguing the Japanese in occupied Malaysia.

Traveling sometimes by bicycle and motorcycle, rarely by truck, and mainly in dugouts, on foot, and often on his belly through the jungle muck, Chapman recruits sympathetic Chinese, Malays, Tamils, and Sakai tribesman into an irregular corps of jungle fighters. Their mission: to harass the Japanese in any way possible. In riveting scenes, they blow up bridges, cut communication lines, and affix plasticine to troop-filled trucks idling by the road. They build mines by stuffing bamboo with gelignite. They throw grenades and disappear into the jungle, their faces darkened with carbon, their tommy guns wrapped in tape so as not to reflect the moonlight.

And when he is not battling the Japanese, or escaping their prisons, he is fighting the jungle's incessant rain, wild tigers, unfriendly tribesmen, leeches, and undergrowth so thick it can take four hours to walk a mile.

It is a war story without rival.

About F. Spencer Chapman

F. Spencer Chapman is author of The Jungle is Neutral. With typical British aplomb, he recounts an amazing tale of four years spent as a guerrilla in the jungle, haranguing the Japanese in occupied Malaysia during WWII.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve on November 24, 2011

As ripping yarns go this ones a doozy, its also got the reputation for being some kind of jungle warfare manual, I think quite unfairly..... Its all about stay behind parties in the deepest jungles, tricky enough in peacetime but when as googolplex of japanese over run the islands well they didn't c......more

Goodreads review by Zayn on March 29, 2013

The Jungle is Neutral: The memoir of a British lieutenant in WWII Malaya who conducts guerilla warfare against the Japanese. It’s not a very gripping story. All the successful guerrilla work takes place in the first quarter of the book, and from there on it is one long anticlimax of malaria, dysente......more

Goodreads review by Gwen on May 30, 2022

Not a good war memoir, more like a hyper and indiscriminately detailed personal journal about living in the jungle, which is exactly what I needed, so that much was helpful.......more

Goodreads review by Andy on March 01, 2023

Re-read this one. I first read a biography of the redoubtable Freddie Spencer Chapman, polar explorer then commando and guerrilla fighter in WWII Malaya. Then found and read a second-hand copy of this, his own memoirs. I passed my copy to a friend who’d also read the biography and who is now sadly n......more

Goodreads review by Nick on November 16, 2013

Hard work at times, but F.Spencer Chapman is one helluva bloke ! Read it to find out, if nothing else, what spirit lies in this man !......more