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(In approximate order of appearance)

Guy Millar: a tea planter. Early in the war, he had been engaged on secret ‘government work’, surveying the terrain of Upper Burma.

Goal Miri: an Assamese elephant tracker, and Millar’s servant.

John Leyden: a colonial administrator in Upper Burma; owner of a pregnant spaniel bitch called Misa.

Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith: Governor of Burma, the elegant product of Harrow, Cambridge, Sandhurst.

George Rodger: British photographer and correspondent for the American magazine, Life.

In ‘The Railway Party’ …

– Sir John Rowland: Chief Railway Commissioner of Burma (the top man on Burma Railways). In 1942, he was sixty years old, and working on ‘the Burma–China construction’, a projected railway between Burma and China. He was the leader of the ‘railway party’ of refugees, and he drove them on hard.

– Edward Lovell Manley: Chief Engineer of the Eastern Bengal Railway, he assisted Sir John on the Burma–China project. In the jungle, Sir John designated Manley his ‘number two’. He was fifty-six years old.

– Eric Ivan Milne: District Traffic Superintendent of Burma State Railways; keen amateur cricketer and committed Christian.

– C. L. Kendall: railway surveyor on the Burma–China project.

– Captain A. O. Whitehouse: officer of the Royal Engineers.

– N. Moses: enigmatic Dutch railway surveyor, sometime magician and ‘international boy scout’.

– E. Eadon: Anglo-Indian ‘anti-malarial inspector’ on the Burma–China project.

– Dr Burgess-Barnett: medical doctor and Superintendent of Rangoon Zoological Gardens. In the jungle, Sir John designated him ‘PMO’ (Principal Medical Officer).

In ‘Rossiter’s Party’ (sub-group of the above) …

– Edward Wrixon Rossiter: Colonial administrator of Upper Burma; member of the Anglo-Irish gentry, accomplished linguist and maverick.

– Nang Hmat: Rossiter’s pregnant Burmese wife.

– John Rossiter: six-month-old baby son of Edward Rossiter and Nang Hmat.

Ronald Jardine: white-bearded devout Catholic; senior employee of Lever Brothers, soap manufacturers.

Frank Kingdon-Ward: botanist, explorer and loner. (He bore the nickname ‘Old Kingdom Come’.)

Gyles Mackrell: fifty-three-year-old former fighter pilot, supervisor of tea plantations, elephant expert; the leader of the rescue.

Chaochali: Assamese; Mackrell’s chief ‘elephant man’.

‘The Commandos’ …

– Ritchie Gardiner: Scottish timber merchant and jungle wallah (a man adept at jungle-living). As one of the ‘last ditchers’ he had helped blow up the infrastructure of Rangoon to keep it from the Japanese.

– Lieutenant Eric McCrindle: timber merchant and jungle wallah.

– Captain Ernest Boyt: as above. Very gung-ho; willing to march through uncharted jungle with ‘just biscuits and cheese’.

– Second Lieutenant Bill Howe: rice trader (therefore not a jungle wallah); at thirty, he was the youngest of the Commandos, and the most ebullient.

A unit of the Special Operations network called The Oriental Mission, and a sub-group of the Commandos:

– Major Lindsay

– Captain Cumming

– Corporal Sawyer

Captain Fraser: escapee from Japanese captivity; he lost his glasses in the process.

Sergeant Pratt: escaped with the above, losing his boots in the process.

Captain Reg Wilson: tea planter, and officer in a special operations unit called V Force. A handsome, chain-smoking young Yorkshireman who ‘loved sport and loved action’, Wilson was dispatched by the British authorities to replace Mackrell as head of the rescue.

Dr Bardoloi: Wilson’s Principal Medical Officer.

Havildar Iman Sing: Gurkha sergeant and jungle wallah.

Wing Commander George Chater: RAF pilot, sometime dinner guest of Sir John Rowland.

Dispatched to attempt another rescue after Mackrell abandoned the Dapha camp:

– Mr Black: senior liaison officer with the Indian Tea Association relief effort.

– Captain Street: officer in the 2nd Rajputan Rifles.

– Webster: a policeman.

Havildar Dharramsing: Gurkha sergeant and jungle wallah; Mackrell’s principal assistant in the later stages of the mission.