Brigadier James Michael Calvert, DSO & Bar (6 March 1913 – 26 November 1998) was a British Army officer who was involved in special operations in Burma during the Second World War.

He frequently led attacks from the front, a practice that earned him the nickname amongst the men under his command of "Mad Mike."

Calvert and others from the school raided Henzada by riverboat after the fall of Rangoon as a deception operation to convince the Japanese that Australian reinforcements had reached Burma.

(The Allied Commander in Chief, General Archibald Wavell apparently hoped that Calvert would use his initiative and demolish it, in spite of orders from the civil government to keep it intact.

)[3] After retreating from the viaduct, Calvert participated in a deception operation involving the loss of a set of false papers to the Japanese.

His column achieved the greatest amount of demolition of the Japanese lines of communication, and reached India intact with the fewest casualties of those in the force.

The general opinion was that the Japs had realized the possibilities of Piccadilly as a landing area and had deliberately blocked it, though some time later we discovered that the explanation was much simpler: Burmese woodmen had laid out their trees to dry in the clearing.

The danger of executing a potentially compromised operation were substantial, but any delay threatened to push back the window of opportunity by at least a month.

"[7] Calvert later wrote, "We had taken into account that [third landing site] Chowringhee was to the east of the Irrawaddy while Broadway was west of the river.

[10]Calvert transmitted the prearranged signal "Soya Link", the most despised of ration items, to stop all flying, but at 6:30am on 6 March he radioed the code words "Pork Sausage" to resume flights into Broadway.

[11] On 17 March Calvert led a bayonet charge against Japanese positions shielded by a sunken road and a steep hill crowned with a pagoda.

A pause in the fighting turned into a stalemate, complete with shouting – according to Calvert "[t]he Japs were yelling at us in English, 'You dirty hairy bastards,' etc.

[14] Afterward, "the hill was a horrid sight, littered with Jap dead, and already the ones who had been killed there earlier in the day were black with flies.

"[15] Shortly after this action a lieutenant in the South Staffordshire Regiment, Norman Durant, wrote a compelling description of Calvert in a letter to his parents: His hair flops over his forehead, and he has a disconcerting habit of staring at you when you speak to him and yet not appearing to hear a word.

His lectures were always painfully slow and hesitant and during training he gave the impression of taking a long time to make up his mind; in action things were very different.

He knows all the officers in the brigade and many of the senior NCOs, and his manner and attitude are always the same if he is talking to a CO, a subaltern or a private…[16]Calvert's dedication to the troops under his command was one of his most visible attributes.

Calvert "saw that Mawlu [the location of the block] was the crucial point for road and rail traffic and determined to build up a defensive box there.

Calvert recalled that the terrain combined with meticulous attention to detail in constructing the positions provided shelter, and that casualties were low.

[21] The only effective weapon the Japanese possessed was a 6-inch mortar, an old coastal defence piece they had laboriously dragged through the jungle to bombard the block.

Japanese infantry attacked after dark, invariably running into stiff resistance from emplaced machine guns, mines, barbed wire, booby traps, artillery, and sustained rifle fire.

Confident in the block's ability to withstand any attack, Calvert's only concern was his rapidly dwindling supply of ammunition.

He learned that Major Ian MacPherson, commander of the headquarters company of the 77th Brigade had been killed, his body left in the Japanese positions.

On 27 May, Major-General Walter Lentaigne (who had taken command of the Chindits after Wingate was killed in an air crash in late March) ordered Calvert's brigade to capture the town of Mogaung.

[27] As Calvert's brigade tried to advance over flooded flat ground, they suffered severely from shortage of rations, exhaustion and disease.

Finally, Calvert was reinforced by a Chinese battalion and put in an all-out assault on 24 June which captured almost all of the town.

"[28] When he received orders to move to Myitkyina, where another Japanese garrison was holding out, Calvert closed down his brigade's radio sets and marched to Stilwell's headquarters in Kamaing instead.

In the field Calvert was "clearly the most successful and aggressive Chindit commander," and a font of "positive leadership" throughout the campaign.

While there in 1952 he was accused of an act of sexual indecency with German civilian youths, court-martialled, found guilty and dismissed from the British Army.

[30] After the military Calvert tried several times tried to build a career as an engineer, including a spell making a new start in Australia, but his life in this period was plagued by alcoholism, and he resorted to hand-to-mouth manual itinerant work, and for a while he was a vagrant there.

He also appeared on film in the 2001 documentary series Gladiators of World War II episode 11, entitled "The Chindits".