CHAPTER 16

The Empire in Crisis – Australia, India and Burma

US TROOPS ADVANCE ACROSS A BAMBOO FOOTBRIDGE DURING THE ALLIED PUSH INTO BURMA, WHICH, ALONG WITH INDIA AND AUSTRALIA, WAS UNDER THREAT FROM THE JAPANESE SINCE THE FALL OF SINGAPORE IN 1942. THE FIGHT-BACK ON ALL FRONTS WOULD EVENTUALLY LEAD TO THE SURRENDER OF THE JAPANESE IN AUGUST 1945. THEREAFTER, HOWEVER, THE BRITISH EMPIRE – ALONG WITH THOSE OF THE FRENCH AND THE DUTCH – WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME.

In early 1942, as Japanese troops were marching through the British South-East Asian colonies of Burma and Malaya, a major diplomatic row erupted between Britain and Australia. Outraged at the British decision to evacuate the Malayan capital Singapore – a huge British outpost considered vital to the defence of the region – the Australian Prime Minister John Curtin ordered that a troopship full of Australian soldiers who were bound for the defence of the Burmese capital Rangoon should turn round and return home. As far as Curtin was concerned, Australia would now have to defend itself from a Japanese invasion, and could no longer spare men to prop up what he saw as British imperial interests elsewhere.

TRIUMPHANT JAPANESE SOLDIERS CELEBRATE THE FALL OF SINGAPORE IN FEBRUARY 1942. BURMA, INDIA AND AUSTRALIA WERE NOW ALL UNDER THREAT.

SCENES OF WRECKAGE IN DARWIN AFTER THE JAPANESE AIR RAIDS, FEBRUARY 1942. AUSTRALIA HAD NEVER BEFORE BEEN ATTACKED ON HOME SOIL. IT LED TO WIDESPREAD RIOTING AND PANIC AS AUSTRALIA CAME TO FEAR INVASION AND THE LOSS OF HER OVERSEAS SUPPLY LINES.

Curtin’s actions directly contravened the orders of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had already made it clear that he regarded ‘keeping the Burma road open as more important than the retention of Singapore’. Not only did the Japanese advances in Burma threaten Allied supply lines to China, they also raised questions about the security of another neighbouring British possession – India. Curtin, however, saw Churchill’s refusal to hold on to Singapore – and so too the corridor between the advancing Japanese and the Australian mainland – as an ‘inexcusable’ betrayal. As his predecessor Robert Menzies had put it: ‘what Britain calls the Far East is to us the Near North’. Australia was in grave danger, and Britain, it seemed, was neither willing nor able to help, despite the fact that since 1941 some of Australia’s best troops had been fighting to defend British interests in North Africa.

The fact was that Britain was by now almost exhausted by nearly three years of war with Germany. She had precious few resources to spare for defending any of her overseas territories, despite the fact that colonial supply lines and troops had been so important in keeping the British war effort alive. For Australia these were desperate times. On 19 February 1942, Darwin – the main supply base of the Australian Navy – was bombed by Japanese aircraft for the first time, and the following month it was announced that Japanese troops had invaded New Guinea, less than an hour’s flight from the Australian mainland. The Australian government had no choice now but to look to the USA, the only other significant power in the Pacific, for its defence, rather than to Britain.

As a territory of the British Empire, Australia was committed to the war against Germany from the outset, but it was not until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that ordinary Australians began to feel the effects of war directly. With their overseas supply lines threatened and the realisation that their country might be invaded, the Australian people were forced to adapt – much as the British had – to life under siege. For the first time, civilian conscription was introduced. So was rationing of food, clothing and fuel. The production of beer and spirits was cut by over a third, and consumption of tea was restricted to less than two ounces per person per week. As in Britain a Women’s Land Army was created, putting 2000 women to work in the countryside, while thousands of others were called up for civil and coastal defence duties. Even Italian prisoners of war were put to work, many of them on farms. The Japanese bombing of Darwin in February 1942 had a huge psychological impact on the Australians, who had never before been attacked on their own soil by a foreign power, and led to widespread panic and rioting. It was followed by the ‘invasion’ of Australia by thousands of US troops under the command of General MacArthur, as the Allied fight back in the Pacific began. This caused another kind of upheaval: more than 10,000 Australian women eventually emigrated to the USA with their new-found American husbands.

Some of the ‘fathers and sons’ of the Australian Imperial Force were veterans of the First World War, while others were untrained, but as far as they were concerned, they were fighting for nothing less than the ‘front line defence of Australia’

In April 1942, US troops began to arrive in Australia in great numbers and a US South-West Pacific Area general headquarters was installed at Brisbane. An Australian Imperial Force was set up and later fought alongside US troops, first in the liberation of New Guinea, where, despite being initially demoralised by disease and the terrible jungle conditions, they performed heroically, and then throughout the US ‘island-hopping’ campaign across the Pacific. Some of the ‘fathers and sons’ of the Australian Imperial Force were veterans of the First World War, while others were untrained, but as far as they were concerned, they were fighting for nothing less than the ‘front line defence of Australia’. They played a major – though not always recognised – part in that defence. A total of over 17,000 Australian servicemen eventually lost their lives in the fight against Japan.

MEN OF THE AUSTRALIAN IMPERIAL FORCE PREPARE TO LEAVE SYDNEY. AS WELL AS FIGHTING IN NEW GUINEA AND BORNEO, AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND TROOPS PLAYED A MAJOR PART IN THE ALLIED CAMPAIGNS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND NORTH AFRICA.

Led by former stunt pilot General Claire Chennault, the ‘American First Volunteer Group’ was a small band of US pilots recruited in 1941 to aid Chinese nationalist forces who were fighting to free China from the Japanese. They soon became famous, both for their distinctively painted Warhawk fighter planes and for the daring and skill they showed in battles with Japanese planes in the skies over China. Chenault reportedly encouraged them by offering a bounty of $500 for every Japanese aircraft shot down. As more and more of the original Flying Tigers were themselves shot down, their places were eventually taken by more conventional Liberator bombers, which were used to fly missions over Tokyo and to attack Japanese shipping.

While Australian troops battled the Japanese to the south, the situation in Burma was growing worse. Japan’s strategic aims for the invasion of Burma were ambitious. As well as removing the British from South-East Asia, the Japanese military command intended to close the Burma road by which the USA had been supplying China with Lend Lease aid since 1941. Both Britain and the USA had been supporting the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek in his struggle against Japan ever since the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. In 1940 US President Roosevelt had lent Chiang almost 100 planes and their pilots – the famous ‘ Flying Tigers’ – to fight alongside his own air force. By closing the only land route into China, the Japanese sought to cut off this flow of aid and starve the Chinese forces into submission. Japan would then be free to help itself to China’s vast resources.

As in other British colonies in Asia, the troops defending Burma were completely unprepared for the speed and ferocity of the Japanese advance. Instead of waiting for roads to be cut for tanks, the enemy exploited the vast jungle that covered most of the country, moving forward on foot or bicycle and repeatedly outflanking and ‘hooking’ the British defences from behind. By comparison, the troops of the 1st Burma and 17th Indian divisions were unskilled in the art of jungle warfare and were defending a country that for the most part did not seem to want them there. Burma had been gradually taken over by Britain in the 19th century, and made a province of India in 1886, since which time there had been an active and vigorous resistance to British rule.

On 9 March 1942, Rangoon, the Burmese capital, fell to the Japanese advance. The enemy had been stalled long enough for the retreating British to destroy most of the port’s facilities before they fell into enemy hands but the cost had been high. The destruction of the Sittang bridge cut off the only escape route for an entire Indian division who were facing the Japanese, forcing them to attempt to swim across the river. Three thousand of them made it, but almost all the Gurkha brigade – who were brave fighters but had never learned to swim – drowned during the crossing. By this time General Sir Harold Alexander had arrived to co-ordinate troop movements in Burma, but there was little he could do other than to authorise a slow withdrawal along the Irawaddy river. On 21 April ‘the longest retreat in British military history’ had begun, as 30,000 troops set out to try to fight their way through the 600 miles of dense jungle and dangerous mountain passes that stood between them and the relative safety of India. Surviving on starvation rations and battling constant monsoon rains, it took them nine weeks and cost 4,000 lives. Meanwhile, the US-led Chinese 5th and 6th Armies who had crossed into Burma to engage Japanese troops in the north of the country were also being pushed back into China. On 30 April, the Burma road was closed and, by the end of May, Burma had fallen.

AS SMOKE RISES FROM BURNING OIL WELLS, A BRITISH SOLDIER DESTROYS MACHINERY AT YENANYUANG ON THE IRAWADDY RIVER TO PREVENT IT FALLING INTO ADVANCING JAPANESE HANDS.

ABOVE: WORK BEGINS ON A RAILWAY BRIDGE IN NORTHERN BURMA, SABOTAGED BY ALLIED TROOPS.

BELOW: JAPANESE GUNNERS PREPARE TO OPEN FIRE ON CHINESE NATIONALIST TROOPS.

For the next year, as British and US forces regrouped in India and China, the Japanese attempted to consolidate their position in Burma. Although in private the Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, envisaged a ‘New Order’ in which Japan would control the entire Asian region, publicly he spoke of creating a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ of sovereign nations free from European imperial interference. In this ambition Japan was supported by the leaders of nationalist movements in all the former Dutch, French and British colonies that had been ‘liberated’ by Japanese troops. In December 1943 the Tokyo ‘Greater East Asian Conference’ was attended by representatives from Manchuria, the Philippines, Thailand and Burma – where a Japanese puppet government and National Army had been set up under Prime Minister U Ba Maw. Unfortunately, Maw’s tacit endorsement of Japanese rule did not prevent Japanese troops from using Burmese civilians alongside British POWs as slave labour on a number of military projects.

The most infamous of these was the building of the Burma railway, over which the Japanese planned to move troop reinforcements between Thailand and Rangoon. Between October 1942 and November 1943 tens of thousands of British and Australian POWs were put to work trying to cut the railway through almost impossible jungle terrain. Although using POWs in this manner was outlawed by the Hague Convention, the Japanese simply declared that those who did not work would not be fed. Conditions for the workers were terrible, and the combination of malaria and the brutal treatment meted out by the Japanese guards eventually led to the loss of over 100,000 lives. It has been calculated that 400 men lost their lives for every mile of track laid.

British and Australian POWs were put to work trying to cut the railway through almost impossible jungle terrain. Although using POWs in this manner was outlawed by the Hague Convention… It has been calculated that 400 men lost their lives for every mile of track laid

The men of General Slim’s 14th Army fought their campaign against the Japanese in some of the most hostile conditions that British soldiers faced in the Second World War. Permanently undermanned and undersupplied and often having to survive on little more than starvation rations, they were also frequently prey to malaria, dysentery, typhus, blood-sucking leeches, poisonous insects, deadly snakes and everything else the Burmese jungle could throw at them. Under these circumstances, their resounding success was remarkable, especially when most of the men felt they were receiving little recognition or support back home for their efforts. Ingenuity and adaptability played a large part in their victories, and they learned fast how to make the most of their surroundings. Improvements were made in medical treatment for men on the front line. An entire network of roads was built through the dense, muddy jungle, using little more than fallen trees. Troops were trained to hold their positions against an enemy that they often could not see through the thick forest. Patrols learned how to bypass enemy lines without being spotted themselves. Most of all, it was the extreme bravery, comradeship and discipline of the 14th’s united Commonwealth troops that ensured their survival.

Also present at the Greater East Asian Conference was the Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, who arrived by German U-boat. Civil unrest in India at the British refusal to grant the colony its own government had been growing throughout the war. Around the world Indian soldiers were fighting and dying in defence of the British Empire, and Indian supplies were proving essential to the survival of Britain itself, yet the British Government would offer only to ‘consider’ the issue of self-rule for the Indian people once the war was over. The Indian nationalist cause, officially led by Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi, was exploited by Bose throughout the war in a series of anti-British propaganda broadcasts made from Japan. He was also responsible – with permission from the Japanese military – for raising the ‘Indian National Army’, which was made up of Indian POWs captured by the Japanese in Malaya. Bose saw himself as a future leader of an independent India, and between 1942 and 1944, he repeatedly called on Japan to ‘march on Delhi’ and kick the British out.

A JAPANESE LEAFLET DROPPED ON BURMA URGES INDIANS TO JOIN THE NATIONAL ARMY AND KICK THE BRITISH OUT OF THE SUBCONTINENT.

ABOVE: MEMBERS OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY TRAIN IN BURMA, 1944.

BELOW: INDIAN TROOPS USE MULES TO CARRY BURMESE GUNS AT A MOUNTAIN BATTERY ON THE INDIA–BURMA BORDER.

In India, during this time, a new fighting force was being built from the survivors of the Indian 17th and Burmese 1st divisions. Commanded by General William Slim – ‘Uncle Bill’ to his troops – the 14th Army was made up of British, Indian, Gurkha and African troops who spent months training in jungle warfare in preparation for their eventual return to Burma. Slim had been appointed in the final days of the retreat from Burma and was aiming to hit back at the Japanese by ‘going in where he took a licking coming out’. He would be aided in his campaign by the controversial and passionately religious Brigadier Orde Wingate, an expert on guerrilla warfare who had played a part in masterminding the 1941 defeat of Italian forces in Ethiopia. Wingate had convinced Prime Minister Churchill to let him start what amounted to a private war deep behind Japanese lines in Burma, destroying enemy bridges, railway lines and communications with his crack band of ‘Chindit’ troops. Taking their name from the stone lions said to guard Burmese tombs, the Chindits soon became experts at ‘long-range penetration’ and led Churchill to praise Wingate’s ‘genius and audacity’. However, the Chindits frequently paid a high price for their limited successes, and in March 1943 suffered heavy losses after pushing too deep into enemy territory. The scattered survivors were forced to trek back 1000 miles through the jungle, living off plants and what animals they could trap..

LEFT: CHINDIT TROOPS PREPARE TO DESTROY A RAILWAY BRIDGE.

RIGHT: A MEMBER OF THE 1ST PUNJAB REGIMENT OF THE BRITISH 14TH ARMY KEEPS LOOKOUT ON THE ARAKAN FRONT, WHERE THE 7TH INDIAN DIVISION HELD A 1000-YARD-SQUARE ‘BOX’ OF TERRITORY AGAINST A MASSIVE JAPANESE ATTACK.

A CHINDIT MULE IS LOADED, SOMEWHAT UNWILLINGLY, ONTO A DAKOTA TRANSPORT PLANE BOUND FOR THE BURMESE FRONT LINE. AIR SUPPORT PLAYED A HUGE PART IN THE ALLIED OPERATION TO RETAKE BURMA.

The first objective of the Allied South-East Asia Command, set up in August 1943 to co-ordinate the efforts of both the Chindits and the 14th Army, was to reopen the land route to China. Since the capture of the Burma road, US pilots based in India had been flying non-stop missions over the Himalayas to supply the joint US and Chinese forces with everything from men to mules. Working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, they pushed themselves and their ageing Dakota and Commando aircraft to the limit to get over the Himalayan mountain range – average height 20,000ft – more commonly known as ‘the Hump’. The Allied plan was to advance into northern Burma and seize the airfields at Myitkyina, cutting out the need to fly supplies over the Hump and securing a base for the long-range bombing of Japan. At the same time, a second force was to capture the southern Arakan region in preparation for an eventual seaborne invasion of Rangoon.

The US–Chinese Army was led by US General Joseph Stilwell, who had been appointed Chiang Kai-Shek’s Chief of Staff in 1942. A great leader to his men but a poor diplomat, Stilwell’s abrasive style had earned him the nickname ‘Vinegar Joe’, and he made no secret of his distrust of both Chiang – whom he called ‘the Peanut’ – and the British themselves. Serving under Stilwell were Colonel Frank D. Merrill’s 5307th division, better known as ‘Merrill’s Marauders’, a band of 3000 US fighting men who had volunteered for ‘hazardous’ service in China and who supported Stilwell’s ‘New Chinese First Army’ as they pushed into northern Burma. Like the Chin-dits, the Marauders were accustomed to guerrilla warfare, and, also like the Chindits, they endured huge losses in their trek through the hazardous Kumon Pass in monsoon conditions to reach Myitkyina. At one point, Merrill suffered a heart attack, but discharged himself from hospital to rejoin his men.

The British thrust towards Arakan suffered its own setbacks in the shape of a determined Japanese counter-attack, but the real crunch for Slim’s forces came when three divisions of Japanese troops crossed the Chindwin river and invaded India in the third week of March 1944. Their intention was to capture the US airfields and sever Stilwell’s lifeline, but it seemed obvious that a full-scale invasion of the subcontinent was going to follow. At the tiny outpost of Kohima in the Assam mountains, 500 men of the West Kent Rifle Brigade had to hold out for almost a month against a massive Japanese onslaught before 2000 Indian reinforcements arrived. Even then they were still hugely outnumbered. Five thousand feet up in the mountains, surrounded by thick jungle that reduced visibility to less than 50 feet and shelled from above by day and night, they survived for three months – supported entirely by supplies from the air – before the siege was lifted. By the end, no man’s land was only as wide as the tennis court that had once belonged to the region’s district commissioner. The dead and wounded were lying in shallow trenches out in the open.

THE CHINDITS CAMPAIGN

MEN OF THE US 5307TH DIVISION – ‘MERRILL’S MARAUDERS’ – TAKE A WELL-EARNED REST FROM THE FIGHTING IN BURMA.

BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANK D. MERRILL.

The bravery and discipline shown at Kohima was reflected at Imphal, where air support once again allowed Slim’s troops to dig in and hold out against the Japanese. The Japanese lost over 50,000 men before starting to retreat. By contrast, the 14th Army had suffered slightly more than 16,000 casualties and now went onto the offensive, pursuing the retreating Japanese back into Burma, despite the monsoon rains. For the rest of 1944, they fought a bitter war of attrition with the retreating Japanese troops, and slowly advanced towards the Irawaddy river. Slim’s leadership and training had transformed the men who had been forced out of Burma two years previously – and who were now as adept as the Japanese at waging jungle warfare. When, in December 1944, they crossed the Irawaddy at several locations on improvised rafts, they showed they had learned the lessons of the Japanese bicycle advance.

One of the unique features of the campaign in Burma was the extent to which the troops relied on air support. An estimated 96 per cent of all the 14th Indian Army’s supplies were flown in, most of it landing at scratch airstrips that the troops had carved out of the jungle. Over 300,000 reinforcements from India reached the front line in planes flown over the Himalayas by US pilots, and almost as many casualties were flown out over the same route. During the Japanese attacks on Kohima and Imphal in 1944 the entire 5th Indian division was airlifted 500 miles north to support the British lines in a spectacular operation.

There were setbacks. On 24 March 1944 Wingate was killed in a plane crash, and a series of disastrous glider operations resulted in the loss of a large number of men. Stilwell’s US and Chinese troops took Myitkyina in early August 1944, but Stilwell himself was recalled to the US in October of the same year at Chiang’s request. Nevertheless, Mandalay fell to the 14th Army on 20 March 1945, and was quickly followed by the vital communications centre of Meiktila. The Japanese, now exhausted and demoralised by US successes in the Pacific, tried to retreat en masse once more, but fell prey to repeated ambushes by Indian Keren guerrillas. On 3 May 1945, Rangoon was back in British hands.

The fact that Britain granted Burma its independence in 1948 led many in the 14th Army to complain that they had fought for nothing. In fact, they had fought to deliver not just the Burmese but British, Indian and Australian prisoners of war from brutal Japanese rule, and had probably saved India from a full-scale invasion in the process. The bravery of Indian troops themselves had also once again pressed the case for Indian independence from Britain, and that would soon be accepted. Their efforts also ensured that China stayed in the war, which in turn meant that Japan was never able to concentrate all its military strength in battles elsewhere with Britain, Australia and the USA.

NEPALESE GURKHA TROOPS OF THE 14TH ARMY CLEAR A JAPANESE FOXHOLE AFTER A SUCCESSFUL ADVANCE.

ABOVE: BRITISH SOLDIERS REACH THE OUTSKIRTS OF MANDALAY IN MARCH 1945.

BELOW: ALLIED SHIPS UNLOAD SUPPLIES AT RANGOON DOCKS AFTER THE BRITISH ARRIVAL.

WATCHED BY SOLDIERS OF THE 5TH INDIA DIVISION, JAPANESE TROOPS LEAVE BURMA THE WAY THEY CAME IN – BY BICYCLE. THE JAPANESE SURRENDER WAS SIGNED ON 28 AUGUST 1945.