Jack Bowsher

Jack Bowsher has always had a passion for history.  His grandfather did his National Service in the late 1940s driving Sexton self-propelled guns, under senior NCOs who were veterans of the Second World War.  He passed on the stories of these men, alongside war films, model kits, and visits to historical places.  Jack and his grandfather, inspired by A Bridge too Far, dragged the whole family to the Netherlands to drive Hell’s Highway from Eindhoven to Arnhem.

Now a teacher, Jack is inspiring another generation of historians as Head of History in a secondary school in Hertfordshire.  Alongside this, he recently completed a Military History Masters with Distinction, at the University of Wolverhampton.  His dissertation research meant he was selected for the fringe Arsenal Stage at the 2023 We Have Ways Festival Drei, where he gave a talk about the use of armour in Burma and India during the Second World War.

Jack’s book Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma will be published by Chiselbury on 1 July 2024 and is available for pre-order:

Forgotten Armour is a new appraisal of the role of tanks in India and Burma in the Second World War.  Often regarded primarily as an infantryman’s war in dense jungle and through monsoon conditions, Jack’s book will show that this is far from the whole story.  Using original research from places such as the National Archives, eyewitness testimony, and official histories, as well as more recent academic studies.

Beginning with the failure to fully mechanise the interwar Indian Army, and tracing the development of armoured training, logistics and tactics, Forgotten Armour tells the story of the Second World War in India and Burma from the cramped interior of tanks.   Jack will show that much of the effort of the war was built around getting armour to the front and keeping it there.  Once tanks arrived, and bunker busting methods were devised, armour proved decisive in their encounters against the Japanese, and saved countless Allied lives.  It is time to remember the forgotten army’s forgotten armour.