Chapter 24
In This Chapter
● Campaigning in Malaya and the fall of Singapore
● Retreating from Burma, 1942
● Holding New Guinea, 1942
● The Arakan, Kohima, and Imphal, 1943-1944
● Destroying the Japanese Burma Area Army, 1945
In 1940 the British, American, and Dutch governments banned the export of strategic materials to Japan and froze Japanese assets, due to the savagery of Japan’s war with China, which had started in 1937. Japan, unable to trade for the supplies of rubber, tin, and oil needed to continue its war, decided to take these necessities by force. In Japanese eyes the attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, followed by the invasion of British, Dutch, and American territories, were not treacherous acts by a neutral country but courageous pre-emptive strikes. For more on Pearl Harbour and the outbreak of hostilities in the Far East, see Keith D. Dickson’s World War II For Dummies (published by Wiley).
The war in the Far East relied heavily on infantrymen and artillery, but wherever tanks could be used they proved frequently to be a battle winner. The tanks most commonly used by the British in Burma were the reliable American-designed Stuart and Lee; Sherman tanks entered service later in the campaign. Burma also saw the British use of special forces in the jungle (see the sidebar ‘The Chindits’).
The Chindits
One man who did not believe that the Japanese were jungle supermen was Major General Orde Wingate. He believed that specially trained units, supplied by air, were capable of operating for long periods behind Japanese lines and causing damage quite disproportionate to the number of troops employed. He received permission to raise a brigade-size force, which became known as the Chindits from its distinctive arm badge, a Chinthe or stone lion that guarded the entrance to Burmese temples. In February 1943 the Chindits, organised into seven columns each of 400 men and 100 mules, crossed the Chindwin river into Burma. They fought several successful actions and wrecked the Mandalay-Myitkyina railway in several places. Wingate created the uproar he intended, for the Japanese hated having their communications interfered with as much as they loved interfering with other people's. By the time his Chindits returned to India in April, they had marched through 2400 kilometres (1500 miles) of nominally held enemy territory. It was a gruelling ordeal, and of the 2182 survivors, only 600 were fit enough for further active service, although many of them formed the nucleus of the division-size Chindit force that took the field in 1944.
The quality of the Japanese armed forces soon made itself felt. The British Royal Navy had initially trained Japan’s Imperial Navy, which maintained high standards. It also possessed an extremely efficient naval air arm, operating from numerous aircraft carriers. In the air, the Zero fighter was faster and more manoeuvrable than anything the Allies had immediately available. Japanese soldiers favoured the German storm troop tactics of 1918 (see Chapter 18). They were highly disciplined, hardy, indifferent to all but crippling wounds, and willing to fight to the death for their Emperor, whom they considered to be a divine presence on earth. The idea of surrender was incomprehensible to the Japanese, and they regarded those who did surrender as men without honour.
Losing the Empire in the Far East (For the Time Being)
On 8 December 1941 the Japanese 38th Division invaded the mainland territories of the British colony of Hong Kong. The British garrison, which included a small Canadian brigade, withdrew to Hong Kong Island and rejected a demand to surrender. Japanese artillery, aircraft, and warships began to pound the defences. On 18 December the enemy succeeded in getting ashore. The garrison put up a stiff fight, but surrendered on Christmas Day. This was a sign of things to come, as the Japanese eyed up Malaya.
The Malayan Debacle, December 1941-February 1942
The General Officer Commanding Land Forces Malaya was Lieutenant General Arthur Percival. He was a man of courage and perception, whose warning that the jungle did not present an impenetrable obstacle to an invasion from the north the British government quietly brushed aside as being at odds with current thinking. He also asked for two armoured regiments, plus additional anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, which he did not receive. Unfortunately, Percival lacked the drive, ruthlessness, and charisma needed to deal with the desperate situation that was about to arise. He was, tragically, the wrong general in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Percival had too few troops at his disposal and, worse still, most of his units were inadequately trained. His Indian battalions were newly raised and contained a high proportion of recently commissioned British officers who had yet to master Urdu, the Indian Army’s common language, and were therefore unable to communicate with their men. The only armoured vehicles present were some tracked weapons carriers and a few armoured cars armed with machine guns. Perhaps worst of all was dangerous tendency to despise the Japanese.
Early on 8 December 1941 Japanese air attacks on Royal Air Force bases destroyed over half the available aircraft on the ground. Those that survived were no match for the enemy’s Zeros. Simultaneously, Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s Twenty-Fifth Army landed on the Kra Isthmus, just over the Thai border, and at Khota Baru. The battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse sailed north from Singapore to destroy the Japanese invasion fleet. By now the ships had no air cover and on 10 December Japanese bombers and torpedo aircraft sent them to the bottom. In two days the invaders had achieved complete air and naval superiority.
On 11 December the Japanese 5th Division, having advanced south across the border with a spearhead of tanks, overran a screen of ten 2-pounder anti-tank guns, lined up across the road. No fighting occurred, because the gunners were all sheltering from the rain under nearby rubber trees. Roaring on, the tanks ploughed into the marching column of a retreating Indian brigade. Only 200 of the Indians succeeded in reaching their own lines. The rest, cut off, had to surrender. This incident set the pattern for the whole campaign. To deny his opponents time to consolidate new positions and maintain the momentum of his advance, Yamashita ordered his men to commandeer thousands of bicycles that they rode or pushed along any sort of track that provided reasonable going, or carried them when it did not. They fed so well on captured supplies that their own meagre marching rations went untouched. This enabled their supply services to concentrate on the delivery of ammunition.
The British defence of Malaya was road based. When the Japanese encountered opposition, they left about one third of their strength to conduct a holding attack. The remainder executed a wide loop through the jungle and rubber plantations to rejoin the road some kilometres to the defenders’ rear, where they established roadblocks. The local British commander, engaged in holding off a frontal attack possibly supported by tanks, then faced the alternatives of either asking friendly troops beyond the block to clear the road, or fighting his own way out. Usually, he was left to his own resources. If he was unable to break the block, this meant abandoning all his artillery, anti-tank guns, motor transport, and stores. Such, too, was the pace of the Japanese advance that the British lost yet more equipment when jittery engineers blew bridges prematurely.
‘Can’t have you digging trenches on the golf course’
The sickly smell of defeat hung over Percival’s troops, yet higher authority denied them sensible defensive measures to halt the enemy because they may give an impression of defeatism. For its part, some of the British civilian population in Malaya were in a state of complete denial. They lived a very comfortable lifestyle and were not going to allow the army to interfere with it. ‘Can’t have you digging trenches on the golf course, old boy - the Committee would never stand for it!’ was a typical reaction, completely divorced from reality.
By the end of January the British decided to abandon the mainland and withdraw to Singapore Island. General Wavell, who had recently been appointed Supreme Commander Allied Forces South East Asia, felt that the Japanese would land on the island’s northwest coast, but Percival thought that they would deliver the assault further east, a belief that Yamashita encouraged with ostentatious troop movements. British command decisions continued to be made in a grotesque climate of fantasy. Percival had not formed a central reserve, intending to defeat the landing at the water’s edge. In fact, his men had done little or no work to construct defences on the vulnerable northern coast, the excuse being that it would seriously affect civilian morale while fighting was still taking place on the mainland. This overlooked the fact that massive demolitions were already taking place in the naval dockyard. In fact, many of the troops returning from the mainland already regarded themselves as beaten and were in no mood to sacrifice their lives in a futile last stand. Drunkenness, desertion, and indiscipline began to spread.
Yamashita chose the northwestern coast for his assault landing, as Wavell predicted. On the night of 8/9 February the Japanese 5th and 18th Divisions crossed the Straits of Johore in the wake of a heavy bombardment, swamping the Australian 22nd Brigade with sheer weight of numbers. Once again, reality seems to have taken a back seat. The Australians had been forbidden to use their searchlights without the permission of higher authority. No doubt that authority would have given permission, but shellfire had cut the allimportant field telephone cables. It also beggars belief that the radios on which the Australians relied to control their artillery support had been withdrawn for servicing! The following night the Japanese Imperial Guard
Division secured a further beachhead in the area of 22nd Brigade’s eastern neighbour, the Australian 27th Brigade. During the next few days the Japanese got their tanks ashore and made steady progress towards Singapore city. By 15 February they controlled the city’s water reservoirs.
Surrendering Singapore
Percival considered that if the Japanese had to storm the city they would massacre the Chinese element of the population, just as they had done at Shanghai and Hong Kong. He asked Yamashita for terms, little knowing that the Japanese had only sufficient ammunition in hand for three days’ serious fighting. Yamashita bluffed, promising only to safeguard the lives of soldiers and civilians. With that Percival had to be satisfied.
The surrender of Singapore was the greatest military defeat that the British Empire ever sustained. Some 130,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen were now prisoners of war, including the entire British 18th Division, which reached Singapore from the United Kingdom only days before the general surrender. The consequences were far reaching. Australia and New Zealand turned to the United States for their defence, and British prestige throughout the Far East was so severely damaged that it never fully recovered.
Retreating from Burma, 1942
The British garrison of Burma was much smaller than that of Malaya and consisted of two untrained divisions, 17th Indian and 1st Burma. On 15 January 1942 the Japanese Fifteenth Army invaded Lower Burma from Thailand. The 17th Indian Division had to retreat across several rivers to avoid the Japanese outflanking them using jungle trails, just as they had in Malaya. Early on 23 February, the defenders of the only road bridge across the Sittang river came under such pressure that they blew it prematurely, leaving most of the division and its artillery and transport on the far bank. About 4000 men managed to cross elsewhere, most of them without their weapons.
Fortunately, the Japanese were exhausted and a pause ensued while their supplies caught up with them. During this an event occurred that ensured that the story of Malaya would not repeat itself in Burma. Brigadier Anstice’s 7th Armoured Brigade had been bound for Singapore when news of Percival’s surrender led to its being diverted to Rangoon. Its first task was to provide cover for the 17th Indian Division while it reformed. One squadron was located at Waw when the Japanese resumed their advance on 23 February. The British Stuart tanks’ close-quarter fire cut great swathes through the Japanese infantry. When five of the enemy’s light tanks tried to intervene, their crews were evidently clueless about fighting other tanks. The British destroyed four of their number and the crew of the fifth got out and ran off. After this, Japanese tankmen avoided contact with the Stuarts whenever possible.
The British retreat towards Rangoon continued. General Wavell wanted to hold the port, but Burmese commander Lieutenant General Alexander saw that its loss was inevitable and would simply present the enemy with a triumph similar to Singapore. The British decided to abandon the city and embark on an extremely long overland retreat to India.
On 7 March they encountered a roadblock at Taukkyon, 38 kilometres (24 miles) north of Rangoon. Attacks from north and south failed to clear it. They planned a major attack for dawn next day, but by then the Japanese had inexplicably vanished. The enemy had crossed the road earlier, leaving a flank guard to man the roadblock. When the last of the division had passed, the flank guard followed on, little realising that it had trapped almost all of Alexander’s army, including the general himself. At Prome, Alexander handed over command to Lieutenant General William Slim on 19 March. The army was also redesignated Burcorps. Two Chinese armies, siding with the Allies, entered Burma in the hope of keeping open their vital supply artery, the Burma Road. On 22 March the remnant of the Allied air force, which had fought hard and inflicted heavy losses, was destroyed on Magwe airfield. For some reason, Lieutenant General Shojiro Iida, in command of the Japanese, considered the Chinese to be the more dangerous opponents. Concentrating three of his divisions, he routed the Chinese and cut the Burma Road at Lashio on 29 April. The remnant of the Chinese fled towards their own country, with the exception of one good-quality division that had been attached to Burcorps.
The British retreat continued with the Stuart tanks being constantly involved in numerous local actions and acting as rearguard. They made such a nuisance of themselves that on one occasion the Japanese attacked them with frangible (breakable) glass grenades containing liquid hydrogen cyanide.
On 30 April, Slim’s rearguard passed through Mandalay, crossed the Irrawaddy river, and blew the Ava bridge. At Shwegin on the Chindwin the troops boarded river steamers that transported them upstream to Kalewa and safety. Before the evacuation was complete the Japanese appeared on bluffs overlooking the embarkation area. Counter-attacks failed to shift them, but during the evening the Allied artillery fired off its remaining ammunition in a whirlwind bombardment, the intensity of which seemed to stun the enemy. The Allied weapons were then thoroughly wrecked, as were all but one of 7th Armoured Brigade’s Stuarts. The men marched up river to Kaing and crossed to Kalewa. The arrival of the monsoon prevented any pursuit by the Japanese and Burcorps retired unmolested to Imphal in Manipur.
So ended the longest retreat ever made by a British army. Burcorps had withdrawn 1600 kilometres (1000 miles) and, while defeated, had retained its cohesion to the end. It casualties included 4000 killed and wounded, and although 9000 men were listed as missing, many of them were Burmese soldiers who had simply gone home. Japanese losses in killed and wounded during the campaign came to 4597.
Ending the Myth of Jungle Supermen
By May 1942, Japan had overrun Malaya, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines. These easy victories seems to have warped the judgement of its rulers, for Japan continued to occupy territories across the South Pacific, ignoring the fact that it could not hope to defend all its gains at once. The drawn Battle of the Coral Sea on 7/8 May dented the myth of Japanese naval invincibility and the Battle of Midway on 4/6 June completely shattered it (both battles were fought between the Japanese and American navies). Afterwards, Japan still had some local successes, but its rising sun was now past its zenith. Nowhere was this clearer than in Papua and New Guinea (both administered by Australia), where the Japanese, deprived of air superiority and unable to feed from captured supplies, lost their reputation as jungle supermen.
Defending New Guinea
The Japanese objective was Port Moresby on the south coast in Papua, from which they could menace northern Australia. They wanted to take the port by amphibious landing, but they postponed the operation as a result of the Battle of the Coral Sea. Instead, the Japanese decided to capture Port Moresby by converging thrusts from Milne Bay on the eastern tip of the island, and from Buna on the north coast across the Owen Stanley mountain range.
Two Australian brigades held Milne Bay, with Major General Cyril Clowes in command. An American engineer regiment was constructing three airstrips in the area. On 25 August, Kittyhawk fighter bombers flying off the airstrips pounced on seven Japanese landing barges off the north coast of New Guinea, driving them ashore on Goodenough Island and setting them ablaze. The 350 infantrymen aboard were left stranded. However, a much larger Japanese invasion fleet did succeed in landing a regimental-sized group and several light tanks at Ahioma on the eastern shore of the bay during the following night.
The Japanese began advancing at once, but found that dense jungle restricted their movements to a narrow strip of land between the sea and the mountains. They preferred to attack at night, led by tanks that used their headlights and subjected the ground ahead to continuous machine-gun fire. The Australians had to give ground because their anti-tank guns could not be manhandled forward through the mud. Nevertheless, someone produced a Boys anti-tank rifle, a huge weapon with a kick like a mule. The Australians used this to knock out two tanks at point-blank range. More tanks became uselessly bogged down. On 31 August the Japanese, reinforced with 800 naval infantry, reached the nearest airstrip, which they attempted to capture in a series of charges. Clowes’s brigade counter-attacked and shot the Japanese to pieces. During the next few days the Australians steadily pushed the enemy back. On the night of 5/6 September the Japanese left the island.
The Allies had won their first clear-cut victory over the Japanese, and killed over 600 of them. For the first time, the enemy had had to endure sustained artillery fire supplemented by continuous air attack in daylight hours, and was not able to develop his usual flanking tactics against the Australian positions. Australian losses amounted to 161 killed and missing and about the same number wounded.
In the meantime, the second and more important thrust at Port Moresby had already begun. On 21 July a 13,000-strong force known as the South Seas Detachment landed at Buna on the north coast. Major General Tomitoro Horii commanded this force, consisting of veterans from China, Malaya, and the Philippines. The Australian strategy was to inflict maximum casualties and delay on the enemy. On the narrow front both were possible, and air attacks inflicted further casualties on the Japanese. The first clash took place on 23 July at Awala, held by units of the Australian 30th Brigade. The Australians fell steadily back, being reinforced by the 21st Brigade at the end of August, and then by the 25th.
Chasing out the Japanese
By 17 September 1942 the Japanese had lost 1000 men killed and 1500 wounded, over three times the Australian losses. Their supply system had broken down, and they were riddled with disease, starving, and exhausted.
At Imita Ridge, 48 kilometres (30 miles) from Port Moresby, a formidable defensive position confronted them. Luckily, Horii was spared the need to mount an attack, which would surely have ended in bloody failure, by a signal from Tokyo ordering him to withdraw from the Owen Stanley range. It seemed that Imperial General Headquarters was depressed by the failure of the Milne Bay landing and recent American successes on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. If Tokyo was seeking to avoid another defeat, it was disappointed.
The Australians followed up the Japanese retreat towards the north coast, being supplied by parachute drop. The starving enemy were eating anything, including grass and wood, to fill their bellies. Beside the track lay skeletons of those killed during the earlier fighting, picked sparkling white by ants. Horii himself did not survive the retreat. He drowned trying to cross the Kumasi river by raft. The Japanese rushed reinforcements to Buna, which they had turned into a fortress. It now became the Allies’ primary objective. The Australians and Americans closed in, but in November a general assault on the defences failed. However, on 9 December the Australians captured Gona on the northern flank of the enemy’s perimeter. Reinforcements arrived from Milne Bay, including Stuart light tanks. The Allies gnawed their way through the defences until Buna itself fell on 2 January 1943. About 7000 Japanese died there. Some 1200 sick and wounded were evacuated by sea and 1000 escaped into the jungle.
The threat to Australia was lifted. For Japan, New Guinea became a lost cause claiming 100,000 lives. For the next 18 months the Allies made a series of landings along the north coast of the island, destroying one enemy garrison after another, isolating the battered and disorganised Japanese Eighteenth Army for the rest of the war.
Fighting Back into Burma, 1943-1944
For the British in Burma, success against the Japanese took longer to achieve than for the Australians in New Guinea (see the preceding section). In December 1942 the Allies decided to mount a limited offensive with the object of restoring morale. The area selected was the Arakan coast of Burma, an area of mangrove swamps, twisting tidal chaungs or shallow river beds, steep-sided ridges, and river valleys clothed in almost impenetrable jungle. Dry and dusty for much of the year, between May and September no fewer than 500 centimetres (200 inches) of rain can fall, washing out primitive tracks in a day. Some described the Arakan as not being fit to fight in, but for the Japanese it was an area of great strategic importance because it provided a route into the vulnerable regions of central Burma.
The Allied offensive involved Major General Lloyd’s 14th Indian Division and its object was to secure the Mayu Peninsula. For a while, all went well then, in March 1943, the Japanese worked their way round Lloyd’s flank and threatened to isolate him. He had to make a difficult withdrawal and by 12 May was back where he had started in December. Far from raising morale, the offensive actually lowered it, suggesting as it did that the Japanese were still the masters of jungle warfare.
The Admin Box, 6-25 February 1944
The Allies planned a fresh offensive in the Arakan for early in 1944. Three important factors differentiated this offensive from its predecessor:
British and Indian troops were now fully familiar with Japanese methods and were trained to defeat them.
The offensive included the 25th Dragoons, an armoured regiment equipped with Lee tanks.
From December 1943, newly arrived Spitfire aircraft had chased the enemy’s Zero fighters out of the Arakan skies, so even if British formations found themselves surrounded, they could still be supplied by air until relief arrived.
The enemy’s response matched the scale of the new offensive. The Japanese quickly cut the communications of the 5th and 7th Indian Divisions, but to the surprise of senior Japanese officers, instead of embarking on the expected disorderly retreat, they seemed quite happy staying put and fighting things out. This meant that the Japanese troops could not feed themselves from captured Allied rations, as they had in the past. Indeed, once their meagre marching rations were consumed, they went very hungry indeed.
On 6 February the Japanese overran the 7th Indian Division’s headquarters. The divisional commander, Major General F.W. Messervy, and most of his staff managed to reach the defensive box held by the division’s administrative troops at Sinzewa. This ‘Admin Box’ measured 1370 metres (1500 yards) by 685 metres (750 yards) and a feature known as Artillery Hill divided it into two areas. Into this space crammed tanks, guns, transport, supply dumps, a field hospital, and headquarters. Low hills overlooked the interior from every direction. While Messervy continued to run his division by radio, the defence of the box was the responsibility of Brigadier G.C. Evans, a no-nonsense soldier who told his garrison that they could either fight hard enough to keep the Japanese out or risk captivity with the chance of being butchered.
By 7 February the Admin Box was completely isolated. It became the focus of fighting in the Arakan. Every day the Japanese shelled its packed interior, while their frenzied attacks were repelled by the defenders and the point-blank fire of the Lees. At night, when the tanks were less effective, the enemy was able to approach much closer before launching assaults. The result was vicious hand-to-hand fighting before the surviving Japanese faded into the darkness. To encourage his men, Evans started a daily competition, the winners of which were those defending the sector on which the highest total of fresh enemy bodies was found.
The night of 7 February witnessed one of the worst atrocities of the war. A mixed party of Japanese and Jifs (Japanese Indian Forces - Indian prisoners fighting against British rule) broke into the main dressing or first-aid station and slaughtered doctors, orderlies, and patients without mercy. They then dug in amid the shambles until a West Yorkshire company and a troop of Lees ejected them two nights later. The Allies killed some 50 of the Japanese, including an officer in possession of a complete set of orders for the enemy’s counter-offensive. Until now, British and Indian troops had regarded the Japanese with a degree of respect, but after the dressing station massacre they saw the enemy as no more than dangerous animals to kill on sight.
As the fighting reached its climax, the Japanese found themselves not only under pressure from different directions but also fighting on the defensive. The 5th Indian Division detached a brigade, supported by tanks, to relieve the Admin Box. This involved crossing the Mayu Range by means of the Ngakyedauk Pass, known as the Okedoke Pass to British troops unable to master the jaw-cracking local pronunciation. At the summit a huge bunker complex confronted them, which even the Lees’ guns were unable to subdue. However, some 20 medium howitzer shells methodically reduced the bunkers to smoking craters and the advance continued.
On 25 February the Admin Box was relieved. Its interior stank of death and cordite and was covered with smashed equipment and burned-out vehicles, while the new dressing station contained 500 wounded men. Despite this, everyone knew that the Japanese had taken a real beating. The Allies sustained 3500 casualties, but went on to take all their objectives. The Japanese 55th Division lost 5600 in killed alone and most of its emaciated survivors were unfit for duty. The 54th Division, rushed into the area to retrieve the situation, also suffered severely until the monsoon rains put an end to the fighting.
Kohima and Imphal
The Japanese planned an offensive aimed at establishing an impregnable defence line along the crest of the Naga Hills, on the border between Burma and India. They wanted to destroy any hopes the British may have had of reconquering Burma from the north. The plan, codenamed U-Go, was for three divisions to cross the Chindwin on a broad front: The 31st Division would then sever the British lines of communication by cutting the road at Kohima; simultaneously, the 15th Division would attack the Imphal Plain from the north and east, pressing Lieutenant General G.A.P. Scoones’s IV Corps back against the 33rd Division, which would be closing in from the south and west. All this looked very fine on paper, but in practical terms the difficult nature of the country prevented the three divisions from cooperating with each other. As usual, Japanese rations consisted of little more than a picnic.
A factor that the Japanese did not know was that in northern Burma a Chinese/American army commanded by Lieutenant General ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell was about to start driving south with a view to reopening the Burma Road supply route to China. Stilwell, a prickly old Anglophobe, didn’t like anyone much, but curiously he got on quite well with General Sir William Slim, commanding the British Fourteenth Army. Slim agreed to mount the second Chindit expedition to support Stilwell. Slim’s plans also included an advance by Scoones’s IV Corps to the Chindwin, but when he learned of the Japanese advance he cancelled this and ordered Scoones to concentrate his divisions on the Imphal Plain.
The Battle of Kohima, 5-20 April 1944
The Japanese isolated the little hill town of Kohima on 5 April. The fight for Kohima possessed a savagery that has rarely been equalled. For 13 days the little garrison, with Colonel Hugh Richards in command, beat off frenzied attacks by an enemy many times their number. Hand-to-hand fighting took place both above and below ground as the Japanese tried to tunnel their way in and were met by counter-mines. One by one important features were lost, but somehow the garrison held on, supported by the mountain guns at Jotsoma, a defensive box 3 kilometres (2 miles) away.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Montagu Stopford’s XXXIII Corps had assembled at Dimapur and was coming into action. It relieved Jotsoma on 14 April. On the night of 17 April, fearing that they were about to be frustrated, the Japanese launched mass attacks on the Kohima defences, overrunning what remained of the position, except for Garrison Hill. With the coming of daylight Richards believed that his exhausted men would never see another dawn, but at 8 a.m. the Allied artillery began hammering the Japanese as a prelude to the advance of 1/1st Punjabis, spearheaded by Lee tanks. By 20 April the relief was complete.
The Battle of Imphal, 10 April-22 June 1944
Down at Imphal, the battle began with a crisis on 10 April when the Japanese captured the detached Nunshigum ridge. This towered 300 metres (1000 feet) above the plain and dominated several airstrips on which IV Corps relied for its survival. A counter-attack failed the next day, but a larger attack was planned for 13 April.
Nunshigum ridge is 6400 metres (7000 yards) long, and its slopes presented a hard scramble even for infantry, but Brigadier Reginald Scoones (the Corps Commander’s brother) had trained his tank crews in hill climbing and was confident that the Lees were capable of reaching the crest. At approximately 11.30 a.m. the tanks, manned by the 3rd Carabiniers’ B Squadron, were proceeding along the knife-edge crest when their artillery and air support ceased. The enemy immediately counter-attacked on both flanks. The Allies beat them off with difficulty, but by then all of the Carabinier officers were dead, as were the commanders of two supporting 1/17th Dogra infantry companies. The success of the attack hung by a thread. Squadron Sergeant Major Craddock and two surviving Indian VCOs worked out a plan to continue the advance. Craddock would carry on the attack with the remainder of the tanks, beating in the bunker slits with gunfire, and the Dogras would go in with the bayonet. They tried this, and failed. They tried again, and the plan worked. By the time the fighting was all over, no Japanese were left alive on the hill. The enemy tried to recapture the feature that evening, without success.
After their failure at Nunshigum, the Japanese were thrown on to the defensive and routed out of their positions in a series of actions around the edge of the Imphal Plain. Whatever hopes they may have retained for the success of the U-Go offensive were shattered when the leading elements of XXXIII Corps, driving south from Kohima, reached IV Corps’ perimeter on 22 June. The Japanese lines of retreat to the Chindwin were littered with countless bodies, abandoned tanks, guns, and equipment of every kind. In their deserted field hospitals, the wounded were shot to spare them the dishonour of falling alive into Allied hands. The Japanese army had sustained the loss of 53,000 dead, of whom perhaps half were battle casualties while the rest stemmed from starvation and disease. British and Indian casualties at Kohima and Imphal amounted to 17,000, but because of the medical services’ efficiency many of the wounded returned to duty later in the campaign.
Destroying the Japanese Burma Area Army
Inevitably, the monsoon months of 1944 slowed down the advance of the Fourteenth Army following its victories at Kohima and Imphal (see the previous section). Nevertheless, Slim soon realised that the enemy had withdrawn beyond the Irrawaddy and intended to fight a decisive battle in the Mandalay area. Once he had established this, he was able to plan the master stroke of the entire campaign.
Supplies for the Japanese armies holding the line of the Irrawaddy had to pass through the road and rail communications centre of Meiktila. As Slim pointed out, Meiktila was the wrist through which the lifeblood flowed into the Japanese fist clenched around Mandalay. Slash the wrist, and the nerveless fingers would open of their own accord. He decided, therefore, that XXXIII Corps would close up to the river as the enemy clearly expected, while a dummy IV Corps radio network, operating from the Schwebo Plain, transmitted signals indicating that the corps was moving into the line beside it. In reality, while XXXIII was holding the enemy’s attention, IV Corps was moving south in great secrecy along the Kabaw and Gangaw valleys towards Pakoku, where it crossed the Irrawaddy and established a bridgehead
On 9 January 1945, XXXIII Corps further attracted Japanese attention when 19th Indian Division secured a bridgehead 95 kilometres (60 miles) north of Mandalay. On 12 February, 20th Indian Division established a second bridgehead 65 kilometres (40 miles) west of the city. A week later Major General Cameron Nicholson’s 2nd British Division landed several kilometres east of 20th Division. In each case, the Japanese reacted with frenzied counterattacks that simply piled up bodies around the bridgeheads’ perimeters. By degrees, the British and Indians went over to the offensive, taking nearby villages and forcing the enemy to expend yet more of its manpower.
On 21 February, 17th Indian Division and 255 Tank Brigade broke out of IV Corps’ bridgehead at Pakkoku and headed for Meiktila. This part of Burma consisted of semi-desert and was good tank country. What followed was a classic application of the blitzkrieg technique: Armoured cars of 16th Light Cavalry (the first Indian regiment to be officered entirely by Indians) probed ahead, accompanied by the Royal Air Force’s forward air controllers. Overhead flew Messervy in a light aircraft, sometimes landing beside the leading tank squadrons to spur them on.
The capture of Meiktila, 28 February-4 March 1945
On 24 February, Messervy’s columns captured Thabukton airfield and promptly flew reinforcements in. The enemy knew that Meiktila was in real danger and they turned every house into a fortress. The Allies isolated the town on 28 February. During the next three days its 3000-strong garrison fought to the death amid the blazing ruins. The few survivors waded into a lake and shot themselves.
In the acrimonious aftermath of U-Go’s disastrous failure (see the section ‘Kohima and Imphal’, earlier in this chapter), more Japanese generals’ heads rolled than balls in a bowling alley. The new commander of the Burma Area Army, General Hayotoro Kimura, was not the cleverest man in Asia, but even he was horrified by the implications of losing Meiktila. Recapturing the town became a matter of the utmost urgency, but from where could he draw the necessary troops? Not from the Arakan, where General Christison’s XV Corps was mounting a series of amphibious operations along the coast. And not from the Mandalay area, where his Fifteenth Army was losing its grip on XXXIII Corps’ bridgeheads. He had to abandon northern Burma, from which the Japanese 18th and 49th Divisions were ordered to converge on Meiktila with all speed; he also ordered the 14th Tank Regiment, the only Japanese armoured unit in Burma, to do the same. Allied air attacks pounded the tanks into scrap iron by air attack when its commander rashly decided to make his approach march in daylight. Only seven Japanese tanks reached their destination.
The ‘siege’ of Meiktila was a non-event. Cowan’s division received all the supplies it needed by air and its few casualties were evacuated. Daily sorties by columns of tanks, armoured cars, guns, and lorried infantry inflicted heavy casualties and prevented the enemy concentrating for an attack. Meanwhile, as Slim had predicted, the enemy’s Fifteenth Army, starved of reinforcements, ammunition, and food, had suddenly collapsed. Stopford’s divisions were bursting out of their bridgeheads and armoured columns were ranging across areas the Japanese had previously considered to be safe. The Allies took Mandalay on 20 March.
Driving to Rangoon
As Slim had intended, Kimura’s army group had been smashed. The next task was to deny the Japanese any chance of recovery. That meant a dash to Rangoon, 480 kilometres (300 miles) to the south, and with the monsoon approaching the risk was finely balanced. There was no time to develop elaborate attacks. Opposition had to be by-passed, even if it meant leaving large bodies of the enemy behind.
By 11 April 1945, the Allies had outflanked and broken a hastily formed Japanese line at Pyawbwe. In the ensuing race IV Corps was the favourite and reached Hlegu on 3 May, having covered 480 kilometres (300 miles) in three weeks. On the more difficult Irrawaddy route, XXXIII Corps reached Prome. In fact, neither of them won. On 1 May the 26th Indian Division from XV Corps made an amphibious landing at the mouth of the Rangoon river. The following day air reconnaissance revealed that the Japanese had abandoned the city, so the 26th Division promptly occupied it.
Plenty of Japanese were still running loose, but they were starving, disorganised, and thought only of reaching the safety of Thailand. In effect, the campaign in Burma was over. The campaign was the last to be fought by the old Indian army, and from the manner in which its final stages were conducted it was more of a grand finale than a last hurrah. The war in the Far East ended on 15 August 1945, the Japanese conceding defeat after American bombers dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.