The World at War (71 page)

Japan's principal strategic purpose in Burma was to cut American supplies to China along the Burma Road, built in 1938 by Chinese labourers from Lashio in northern Burma to Kunming in Yunnan Province. Supplies continued to flow by air from the huge air-base complex at Dinjan in Assam, and the objective of the last Japanese offensive in the theatre, stopped at Kohima and Imphal by the Anglo-Indian Fourteenth Army in 1944, was to cut this supply line while they simultaneously conquered the Chinese coastal areas from which the Americans had hoped to bomb Japanese cities. Allied strategy was to keep China in the war at any cost because, poor though its performance in the field might be, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army tied down half the Japanese Army. During the dry season 1942–43 the British attempted a counter-attack in Arakan that was driven back to the Indian border. Early in 1943 Brigadier Orde Wingate's concept of a long-range jungle penetration supported from the air was tested in the first Chindit expedition, with mixed results. The appointment of Mountbatten as Supreme Commander South-East Asia in August 1943 finally gave General Slim's Fourteenth Army the support it needed and in the dry season of 1943–44 another offensive in Arakan met with greater success. A second, much larger, Chindit expedition was conducted in support of a drive from the north by Chinese forces under the American General Stilwell to open the way for a road from Ledo in Assam through Myitkyina to connect with the Burma Road. Following the Japanese defeat at Kohima–Imphal the Fourteenth Army swept forward, operating through the monsoon, outmanoeuvring the Japanese at Meiktila and Mandalay and finally capturing Rangoon on 3 May 1945. Considering the
political, logistical, topographical and climatological conditions under which it was fought, Slim's Burma campaign deserves to be considered among the greatest achievements by any British general in history.

ADMIRAL LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN

Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia

Accidentally, we were forced to try and re-conquer Burma the wrong way round from the north, which had absolutely no access at all, through mountainous jungle. We invested air supply on a big enough scale to enable them to go on fighting in the centre of Burma. In fact it was the greatest military land victory of the war against the Japanese. We counted over 190,000 Japanese corpses and God knows how many more were mutilated and wounded and withdrawn. That was the single biggest victory against the Japanese anywhere and really showed what British military might was like.

COLONEL ICHII SUGITA

Japanese Army in Burma

At the beginning of the war the British used horizontal attack, but in the later operations they used vertical tactics and surprise and they had a lot of time to prepare for the attack. The British Army had air superiority so it is far easier for them to use air power and change the tactics.

BRIGADIER JOHN SMYTH, VC

Major General Commanding 17th Indian Division during the retreat from Burma, retired in November 1942 in his permanent rank of Brigadier
As regards their training and their worth as soldiers, there's no doubt that the British troops and Indian troops that Bill Slim had in 1944 were every bit the equal of the Japanese because they'd been properly trained and properly equipped and were supported with a far superior Air Force, with ability to transport troops. The
jungle was a great enemy to untrained troops and a great friend to the trained troops. And the Japanese made every use of it; they were adept at using the jungle to their advantage. As regards the monsoon, that really came into Bill Slim's part of the campaign, the second campaign in 1944, when we decided to use the
monsoon and to go on operating through the monsoon, which came as a very great surprise to the Japanese and was a great factor in our victory.

PRIVATE JOE HAMMERSLEY

Fourteenth Army

I had
malaria seventeen times. The last time they thought I had spinal malaria and I was put in isolation for ten days then taken out and put with the rest of the troops that had malaria. When they thought I had spinal malaria I couldn't walk and I couldn't even move my arms and I was getting inoculations all day and every day, three times a day for ten days. I had a lumbar puncture, which I wouldn't advise anyone to have, and I was in hospital exactly twenty-one days and then came out and went back into action. I'd been in action again for about five weeks and I was taken out with dysentery. I was in hospital for four weeks with dysentery and went back into action again and I was in action until the war finished at Rangoon.

LIEUTENANT J K OWENS

Staff Officer, Fourteenth Army

We operated in country in which there were a lot of mosquitoes and there was always the danger of malaria, and we ran into patches of
scrub typhus, which was very difficult and something for which we soon learned you had to nurse people on the spot. Even if you carried them back and got them on to those little L-planes and flew them out they usually died on the way. I must say that when we did have big troubles with scrub typhus in the Kebaw valley a number of nurses, British and Indian, volunteered to come forward, right forward, to nurse the troops there and then on the spot, which saved a great many lives.
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PRIVATE BERT REEVES

Fourteenth Army

I would say that the monsoon not only affected people physically but also morally. Because of the constant rain if you went to strike a match to light a cigarette you'd find that your box of matches had disintegrated and so also had your cigarettes. In this, and in many other ways, it is really a moral disintegrator to a human being as well as the physical aspect of it, which is sloshing through mud, living in mud, lying in mud and sleeping in mud, drinking in mud and eating in mud. That was the monsoon in Burma as I recollect it – just a nightmare.

PRIVATE HAMMERSLEY

The dampness of the jungle used to bring the leeches out. They used to go up through your gaiters on to your body and they'd go all over your body and they'd blow themselves up with blood and then fall off. But if you caught them before they fell off you had to burn them underneath, so they went up and pulled the black spot from your body, the sting, otherwise they would leave black spots all over your body.

PRIVATE JOHN HOWARD

Fourteenth Army

Bully beef, or corned beef as it's better known, tended to go very greasy in the warm sun. It would melt into a mass like porridge but cook did marvellous exercises with it, presenting it in different guises. He would cook it in some flapjacks, cook it almost like hamburgers, he would put batter around it; he would present it in many guises of stew so that we could in fact absorb the stuff. But it still became intolerable.

LIEUTENANT OWENS

The British troops, you could hand out their ration of [the anti-malarial drug]
Mepacrin and they took it. They knew they would go yellow and didn't like it awfully much – nor did I – but the Indian troops firmly believed this rumour about becoming impotent if they took Mepacrin and it was necessary to hold parades in which the Indian sergeant majors used to march up and down the ranks and the troops had to stick their tongues out.

MAJOR MIKE CALVERT

Pioneer British jungle-warfare expert

I first met [Brigadier Orde]
Wingate on my return from the Henzada raid. I came into my office and there was a short, squat officer sitting in my chair. I said, 'Who are you?' and he said, 'I'm Wingate,' and I said, 'Well, I'm Calvert and that's my chair and I'm commandant here.' He said, 'I'm very sorry,' and he got up and I gave him another chair. I didn't know who he was, I didn't know the name Wingate. Then he started to talk and he asked me about Henzada and drew information from me, and then he took me for a walk and I started to listen. I was training guerrillas and I had tried to learn as much as I could about guerrilla warfare from books and from other men who had fought as such. And then I came across Wingate. I found he was miles ahead of anybody I'd ever heard of or spoken to. One must remember that at the time, at the beginning of 1942, apart from Tobruk in the Middle East, British forces had never held a position under attack for more than three weeks. Morale was low and we were confused and we were trying to take on the world. Then there came Wingate with set ideas, determination and optimism. He had a tremendous belief in the British soldier, not quite such a belief in the British officer because he reckoned that often they'd been trained wrong. And he believed that with proper training and with his own zest and conviction the British soldier could beat anyone in the world.

BRIGADIER SMYTH

The dilemma that constantly confronted our troops, both in Malaya and Burma, was with regard to these
enveloping movements of the Japanese, which was their stock in trade. And the dilemma simply was, should we stay put and be cut off from our supplies and ammunition, or should we at once withdraw. That dilemma faced the British and Indian troops all through both those campaigns and it was obviated by Bill Slim, as he told me he was going to do, in the 1944 campaign, by being able to
air-drop supplies and rations on the troops when they got cut off, and so that didn't matter.

PRIVATE WALLY NEW

Fourteenth Army

In the Arakan the Japanese were well dug in, in these strongpoints. I think they had sort of near hospitals and everything in there, women and all I should think. Really, they was well dug in, I mean we used to get practically on top of their bunkers and they would fire from there but our fire had no effect on them at all, and we had no air support at that time. My battalion, that's the 1st Battalion the Royal Berkshire Regiment, brigaded as well with the Durham Light Infantry and the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and I can remember we went into the attack just before dawn and the Japanese sort of allowed us to get right on top of their wire, concealed wire they had, even on top of their bunkers, and as soon as we got there they opened up through the slits of their strongpoint with machine guns and mortars. They had these seventy-five-millimetre guns, which were sort of a whizz-bang effect, not like the big, old shells you could hear coming over and duck for cover. No sooner you heard the report they were upon you and many of our lads got killed or wounded in this attack and we could just make no progress at all. The attack was called off and we had to go back to our original positions. When we got back the next day the Japanese, who were real jungle veterans, had encircled us there and we had to pull back further, where we relieved, I think it was the Lincolnshire Regiment, and of course digging in again in this hilly jungle. The same old thing happened again, patrols went out and many of our chaps got bayoneted and the Japs suffered casualties as well but it wasn't a major great big battle like it was in Europe, more close fighting on these patrols. Well, eventually, they encircled us, got on top of us again and we had to withdraw back to the coastline where our brigade headquarters was.

CAPTAIN NEVILLE HOGAN

Burma Rifles

I was in the first Burma campaign on the retreat and I went back with the first Wingate expedition [February 1943] and in the second [March 1944] and later with 77th Brigade and their Brigadier Calvert, 'Mad Mike' Calvert, as he doesn't like to be known. I was a townsman and the jungle for me was absolute hell, especially in the first Wingate expedition when the jungle was a friend to the Japanese but our enemy. In the second expedition we made the jungle our friend – in other words we used the jungle and its cover and for ambushing, etc. We used the jungle in many ways but in the first expedition, and in the first Burma campaign, we were scared of the jungle.

PRIVATE HOWARD

I wouldn't like to say that we were frightened of the Japanese so much as we were not so well trained at the beginning. They had the advantage of ten years of war in China prior to coming to Burma whereas we started from scratch. But we learned very quickly. We probably felt no purpose in the early days so there was a sense of not being folly confident – this changed in early 1944, probably with the advent of Lord Mountbatten and Bill Slim, when for the first time it was decided to stand firm at the Chindwin [river] and we then felt that there was a sense of purpose, that we were going on, we weren't going forward a few yards and moving back a few yards, we were going forward with a sense of purpose and we were going to win. I think that was the time we decided that we were as good as the Japanese, if not better.

MAJOR CALVERT

People have often asked me about the type of man required. I found the
British soldier has the staying power – he may not be the best attacking troop in the world, he's not terribly good at pursuit and he doesn't like hitting a man when he's down. But for staying power he is, I think, one of the best in the world and for this operation you needed both the physical and mental staying power which would win in the end and which was kindled by the jokes of the British troops which kept one going again and again.

PRIVATE BUCKTHORPE

Fourteenth Army

I thought the
Japanese was one of the best fighters in the world. They would fight to the end and they wouldn't give in – in fact we used to find them strapped to trees so that they wouldn't drop and they could fight to the last.

PRIVATE NEW

When we were in the jungle at night, I mean you were probably in your foxhole. There used to be two of us in a foxhole at a time, and it might be quiet for some time and then all of a sudden you'd hear a heck of a noise going on, you know, banging of cans and shouting, 'Where are you, Johnnie, where are you, Johnnie?' and that sort of thing. And you used to think well this is it, there's going to be an attack coming in. But we had been previously warned not to take much notice of this and nothing would probably come of it. It was a bit nerve-wracking, though.