CHAPTER 28
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 We counted over 190,000 Japanese corpses and God knows how many more were mutilated and wounded and withdrawn.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.*73
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.
CAPTAIN HOGAN
The Japanese were animals but great soldiers; their battle drill was fantastic. You couldn't help but admire them. If they were ambushed they were at you in twenty to thirty seconds. Then pounding you with their mortars and in frontal attacks – nobody could beat them, I think, they would just come on and on and on.
PRIVATE HOWARD
Fighting the Japanese was totally committed war. There was no question of heroics or chivalry in the sense that one read about prior to the war in the Biggies books. We were totally committed to killing as many Japanese as possible, prompted by the fact that we knew from experience that there had been atrocities and we were always fearful of that fact and didn't want to take, or be taken, prisoner. And so we were fully committed to war, probably more so than in any other theatre.
PRIVATE HAMMERS LEY
Many a time we've seen the remains of a tortured prisoner and it wasn't a very nice sight to be seen. They used to torture them so much. They used to pull their fingernails out, they'd castrate them, things like that. We had an English nurse, I should say she must have been raped five or six times before they let her go and she was dead when we found her. They'd torture you until you gave them the position of your own troops. We could hear the prisoners screaming. Whether that was done for our benefit I couldn't say but you could hear the prisoners of war screaming.
MAJOR CALVERT
The first Wingate operation took place in 1943. It was initially to accompany a general advance into Burma but the general advance was cancelled. However, Wavell wanted the expedition to go forward so it was rather like a testing operation. We went in seven columns across the Chindwin and we averaged 1,500 miles march. My own column of Gurkhas plus British commandos – a few of them – we got on to the main Japanese line of communication, their railway, and we blew the bridges in five places and I blew the rail in about seventy different places. We got back fairly intact but many of the other columns got caught and about one third of the force was lost. This was a raid and its tactical-strategical effect was not great. Its main effect was on the morale of the British and Indian troops. Our forces were not picked men, they were ordinary British and Gurkha battalions and the rest of the Army said, 'By God, if these people can do it, we can.'
CAPTAIN HOGAN
Even if you went downhill you knew you had to go uphill again and we were carrying sixty to seventy pounds on our backs, especially after an air-supply drop, five days' rations plus arms and ammunition. It was – really I cannot explain – you think would it ever end? It just went on and on and on and the rain and of course the fear that you would be ambushed or attacked, and hungry – I was young then and I was always hungry. The thought that you would get wounded and have to be left behind was always in our minds. I saw chaps having to be left behind with a hand grenade, pistol, flask of water and rations, just propped up against a tree. It was a terrible thing to have to leave somebody but many came back after the war who had been left behind. The villagers looked after them, the Naga tribesmen, absolutely marvellous. Took them in and looked after them. I know of chaps who were left in the first Wingate expedition; we picked them up in the second.
PRIVATE HAMMERSLEY
We were in the jungle all the time. We had this Naga man, who knew the jungle better than we did, as a guide and they can take you through the jungle and you wouldn't know where you were going and the Jap wouldn't even know you were there because the Naga, they were born in the jungle, grew everything in the jungle and lived up in the hills. They knew the jungle just like reading a book and the Japanese wouldn't know we were in the jungle because the Naga would be out in front of us and he could spot the Jap before we'd ever know he was there. The Japanese took Naha hill men as prisoners because you see there's two clans, the Nagas and the Chins, and the Chins were for the Japs and the Naga were for the British.
MAJOR CALVERT
I had wounded crossing the Chindwin. I left them at a village and I wrote a note to the Japanese commander saying these were men who have fought for their king and country just as you are fighting. They have done well and I know with your great sense of honour you will look after them. Those men I've met again and they were looked after by the Japanese, who respected them.
PRIVATE DENIS GUDGEON
Captured, at Chindit
I was taken down to a camp in Rangoon and there I was interrogated. They threatened to give me the 'water cure', that is pouring buckets of water into you. They obviously already knew quite a bit about Wingate and they respected him very much. In fact I remember the day in 1944 when the Japanese guards came rushing in saying, 'Wingate chinto, Wingate chinto,' which meant Wingate was dead. And it could have been General MacArthur himself or Viscount Slim had been killed – they obviously held him in very great regard.
LIEUTENANT OWENS
As a Staff Officer I didn't have full practical experience of jungle fighting at close quarters very often, but one was very conscious that there's no front line in jungle warfare, that in fact the enemy can and do get behind your lines, particularly at night. So you are never quite sure whether the sounds you heard were your own patrols coming back or someone else's coming in. From time to time small units of signallers a quarter of a mile away from you would be scuppered in the middle of the night and eight or ten chaps would just disappear completely.
COLONEL SUGITA
We went through Singapore to Burma: it was 20th April 1944 when we left Japan and we arrived at Singapore about 25th April. At that time the headquarters was optimistic about the operation, the headquarters of Burma also optimistic. But I found it was a very pessimistic future because they told us the operation would be a success but I told them we had not air superiority, we had a hard supply and already the operation was carried out about forty days. In the past we had Malaya in operations sixty-five days. If we had a hard experience and we unable to succeed in forty or fifty days, if we are unable to achieve that result, I told them that the operation would be unsuccessful. I went to middle of Burma and I found out that it was very hard for Japanese to get success in operations. At that time the soldiers and officers I met spoke of adverse conditions especially due to short supply on the spot and they believed that they are unable to succeed.
PRIVATE LEONARD BROWN
The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment
The siege of Kohima was a battle that I don't think could ever be fought in any other conditions throughout the world. The terrain there was mountains on three-quarters of the area of Kohima and one road running through Imphal to Dimapur; this was the main road to India and we were told by our colonel, Danny Laverty, that this was our objective and this was where the Kents was going to stay. We got in some trenches and before we knew where we were, the Japanese was there. They had big guns, they had everything; we had machine guns, rifles and a couple of old 1914–18 war guns. They attacked us at the tennis court and it was just like playing tennis – the area from one side of the tennis court to the other was the positions between the Japanese and the platoon I was with. The fighting I saw was literally hundreds at a time coming towards us. Their manpower strength just pushed us back from one trench to another, which was roughly ten feet behind us. They kept over-running us due to their manpower and the lads I was with, we gradually pulled back until we were in one small perimeter, I would say less than half a mile, and in this perimeter we stopped the Japanese Army. After the first seven or eight days the ammunition and the food was running out and the water was almost nonexistent. Every day Danny Laverty said, 'Hang on, if you let go India's falling.' Eventually, I believe on the thirteenth day, we were told the 2nd British Division was on the outskirts of the perimeter and on the fifteenth day they broke through to get us out.
CAPTAIN TERUO OKADA
Intelligence Officer, Japanese Army in Burma
Imphal being such an important junction spot we thought it would be very difficult, but Kohima was something we never expected. The British and their allies put up a very strong fight there. I think that surprised everyone. In Burma we were fighting various people. The Chinese don't count much, you know, if it's five to one it's a fair fight, less than five to one they always run away. The Burmese levies in the British Army were not much use, I think, but of course it was the Fourteenth Army we were fighting all the time and although they put up some good battles in the initial stages we were pushing all the time. Kohima being a small place we did not expect the resistance they put up. We just hoped to cut them off but the resistance was such that we could never completely isolate them. The main thing that stuck out was they had better supply, supply drops, which we had not imagined in the beginning.
PRIVATE HAMMERS LEY
Sometimes the Japs would be about five or six yards in front of us and it would be hand grenades and rifles, but sometimes they used to come – they could speak English as well as we could – and they'd call out, 'Over here, Taffy,' or, 'Over here, Bill'. You'd get up and bang, the Japs had you.
LIEUTENANT OWENS
The Japanese were very tough, devoted fighters and they were beaten, I think, not because of lack of courage, of which they had plenty, but they didn't have the same ability that we did for regrouping after they were defeated. If they lost their officers and had no instructions they were really lost, whereas the good old British sergeant or the Indian havildar was deemed quite capable of carrying on and doing something, even if there were great losses and he'd lost all his officers, and seemed quite capable of getting back to base on many occasions. The Japanese were very tough indeed, in fact when we first made contact with them near Kohima our soldiers turned round and said to us, 'What the hell did you tell us about these little bastards,' because in fact these Japs were over six feet high. This was because we met the Japanese Guards Division first of all. It was about six months before we could take a prisoner, and during that time of course we picked up a number of Japanese who'd been badly shot up and it was quite necessary in our little field hospitals to tie their hands down, because if you didn't do that they tore at their bandages, opened their wounds and literally tried to commit suicide that way.
PRIVATE BROWN
I hated the Japanese then and I do now. As soldiers I think they are very good but to torture prisoners – that's not soldiering, that's butchery. There was a clean fight that we fought at Imphal against the Imperial Guards of Japan. I've known stories, and I know they're true, that when the white flag went up from our side the Imperial Guards let the boys go and pick the wounded up, and in return when the Imperial Guards put the flag up then their boys went out. After that there was no give on either side – they didn't give us a chance and we didn't give them a chance.
LIEUTENANT UKIKURO HONDA
Japanese Army in Burma
The Fifteenth Army had three divisions: the 334th Division, known as the Umi Division, was to attack Imphal from the south first, the 31st division was to take Kohima and the Matuli, or 15th Division, was to attack Imphal from the east. The Umi and Matuli divisions were to surround Imphal and cause its fall. Our unit was the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment of the Matuli Division, with two companies, three antitank guns and machine guns. Our role was to cut off the Imphal–Kohima road, used by the Indo-British Army as a transport route, at Mishan. When we arrived at Mishan we took them by surprise. With the death of only one soldier we destroyed two strongholds. After that we were ordered to join the attack on Imphal and advanced to Kanglatongbi. The Indo-British forces were greatly reinforced from the air and there was a great increase in enemy tanks and infantry to our front. Our battalion was told to hold Kanglatongbi at all costs and we clashed almost daily with enemy tanks. Thanks to the bravery of my men, the anti-tank guns and the topographical advantage we were able to hold off the Indo-British forces and we destroyed close to twenty tanks.*74
ADMIRAL MOUNTBATTEN
It was about the fiercest fighting of the war. I sent the 2nd British Division down to support the fighting at Kohima, and they went into Kohima. The front line was on either side of the District Commissioner's tennis court. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Where they were lulled, they were buried. Out of three British infantry brigades, two brigadiers killed, two of the brigadier replacements seriously wounded. That's what the fighting was like in Kohima. My Chief of Staff, Sir Henry Pownall, asked me one day, 'Supremo, are you sleeping all right?' I said, 'Yes, very well, aren't you?' He said, 'No, I can't sleep.' I said 'Why not?' 'Do you realise we've got an entire Army Corps cut off, every exit in the Imphal plain – we've got a Japanese division on all three exits. We're running out of munitions, we're running out of supplies, we can only put in a certain amount by air – if we can't open communications by the end of June, they'll have to surrender. It'll be the greatest disgrace to British arms.' I said, 'Who's responsible, you or me?' He said, 'You are.' 'Have we done everything that we possibly can?' He said, 'Yes, we have.' I said, 'Then let me do the worrying and you do the sleeping.'
LIEUTENANT HONDA
The Japanese Army's target date for taking Imphal was 29th April, the Emperor's birthday, but when 29th April came there was still no decision on the battlefield. I think it was around 10th May that I began to become pessimistic. We received orders to retreat towards Bukuru when the Imphal road was lost. It was raining very hard, we had many sick and injured men, we were out of food too. The roads and the passes that could be used leading to Bukuru were mostly occupied by Indo-British forces, therefore going by the map we marched along river and valleys. We ate tree buds and searched for rice, for food. After a week or ten days we finally arrived at Bukuru. It took about another month to the Chindwin river, therefore from Mishan to the banks of the Chindwin river I think it must have taken about forty-five days. There were six hundred and fifty in my battalion when we started the retreat – two hundred and forty had died in battle. About two hundred and fifty died of sickness and wounds between Mishan and the Chindwin river, about a hundred who crossed the river also died. I came down with a very severe case of malaria. I was unconscious for about ten days and had no appetite for about fifteen days. All my hair fell off too.
PRIVATE HAMMERSLEY
The troops really thought they were forgotten because any time we got an English newspaper there was never any mention of the Fourteenth Army. And mail from home, we got a letter around every four months and we just thought that people had forgotten that we were there. We had nothing from home such as recreational equipment or anything that was any use to us and the troops thought they had really been forgotten – that was not just my division, it was right through the Army.
VERA LYNN
Popular singer known as 'The Forces' Sweetheart'
My songs spoke of a better time ahead and I think also reminded them of home. It brought them a little bit nearer and linked them with the loved ones that they left behind, and I think the accumulation of the feel of the songs at that particular time built up to a strong feeling that they've never forgotten and always remember. Once I'd been there – and the boys were talking to me wherever I went – it came out that they were the Forgotten Fourteenth. They were short of everything, they said, and the entertainment was very small and they never even seemed to get their cigarettes. Because this was a very important point, when I got home I was to see that they had more cigarettes sent out to them. They really thought they were the Forgotten Army and I think they probably were.