In the Far East, he fought at the 1944 Battle of Kohima as a staff captain with the British 5th Brigade,[2] which commanded the 7th Battalion of his regiment.
He served until 1946, with postings in Malaya, Burma, Assam and India[3] during World War II.
[1] In 1965, Swinson wrote a book about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre entitled Six Minutes to Sunset: The Story of General Dyer and the Amritsar Affair which aimed to justify Reginald Dyer's actions, claiming they were influenced by a fear of an invasion from Afghanistan and a desire to protect European women.
The book is a good adjunct to Slim's "Defeat into Victory" and Masters' "Road Past Mandalay."
Swinson was the author of Scotch on the Rocks (1963 and 2005), which told the true story of the wartime wreck of the SS Politician, on which Compton Mackenzie's novel Whisky Galore (1947) – and the Ealing Comedy of the same title – were based.