STALEMATE IN BURMA

WINGATE, THE CHINDITS, AND THE BURMA ROAD

An earlier chapter has described, as a part of the story of Japan's whirlwind conquest of South East Asia, the series of events that culminated in the Japanese occupation of Burma, and the Allies' departure to India. As a prelude to subsequent events in this theatre of the war, it is worth taking a look at the reasons why Japan bothered to capture Burma in the first place, and at why she did not then go on to attack India.

The events of 1942 to 1945 in Burma had their origins in Japan's struggle with China, which had begun with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 following a faked bomb outrage against Japanese possessions, and their creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo. The League of Nations, to which China had protested, had ineffectually urged Japan to desist from her occupation of Chinese territory, and had been totally ignored. Since, as was always the case, no member of the League was prepared to do more than express displeasure, however grave the crime, it seemed that there was no country prepared to stand up to Japan.

The United States, a neutral and an isolationist power, was not a member of the League of Nations, had a close relationship with China, and was disturbed that another major Pacific power was acting aggressively, so warned Japan that their sovereignty over territory seized by force would not be recognised. Although this achieved little at the time, the gesture strengthened the ties between the USA and China, and created permanent US distrust of Japanese intentions. By 1937, when Japan invaded the Chinese mainland in force, Japan had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Hitler, had made her belief in the destiny of Japan to rule South East Asia clear to those who would listen, and was becoming a formidable military power. By 1939, after a protracted and bloody war, the North and the Eastern coastal strip of China were largely occupied by Japan, but the West and South-West were held by Chinese troops under General Chiang Kai-shek, who continued to fight bravely and well and to contain further Japanese advances. But Chiang Kai-shek had an enemy within as well as the enemy without. Mao Tse-Tung and his Communist revolution sought to dislodge Chiang's hold on China for other reasons, and the USSR, then as now, had every reason to support the revolution that might enable a Communist government to seize power.

Thus a complex situation existed in which the Russians were concerned lest the Japanese should capture China, inhibit Mao's revolution and knock at the Eastern door of the Soviet Union; the USA was worried lest the Japanese should over-run their Chinese friends, and the British were concerned that a Japanese victory would position an aggressive Japan just North and East of British possessions. The key to the exercise, Britain and America agreed, rested in maintaining supplies to Chiang Kai-shek via the Burma Road, which ran through the mountains from Lashio, in northern Burma to Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek's capital, and along which vital supplies of arms, fuel and food could be convoyed through incredibly rugged terrain.

When France fell to Germany in June 1940, and Britain was hard-pressed at home, the Japanese applied pressure to Britain to close the road, implying that not to do so would result in severe Japanese reprisals. In the circumstances Britain could do little else but accept the situation, and cut off supplies to Chiang. So, in October 1940, Chiang asked the USA for a fleet of aircraft and pilots to fly his supplies over what became known as the "hump" - the Eastern Himalayas - from Assam to China. Roosevelt agreed, and in November 1941 the American Volunteer Group was formed with 100 aircraft and pilots under Colonel Claire Chennault, a former US Army Air Force officer. US Lend Lease was now supplying war materials to the Allies in considerable quantities, so far larger supplies of arms began to be flown to Chiang Kai-shek than had been envisaged originally - and there was always the nagging doubt in American minds that Chiang was using the arms more to hold back Mao's Chinese communists than to fight the Japanese. Therefore, Roosevelt sent General Stilwell to act as Chiang's military adviser, and mastermind the training of the Chinese to give the Japanese a hard time.

By April 1942 the Japanese had taken Burma, primarily to close the Burma Road and remove the possibility of Chiang being supplied by road. Because the existing Burma Road started so far to the North-East, at Lashio, Stilwell and Britain's General Wavell, now Commander in Chief in India following his replacement in the Middle East, decided they would set as their objective the recapture of central Burma and the building of a new road, from Ledo to Kunming. Stilwell therefore began the task of training and re-equipping as many Chinese divisions as he could, and Wavell seized upon a brilliant idea originally conceived by the highly individualistic, academically inclined and even slightly eccentric Brigadier-General Orde Wingate. The idea was the formation of a long-range penetration group, to prove Wingate's belief that victory in South-East Asia could be achieved only by an army prepared to fight in the jungle, away from the confines of the few vulnerable roads and rivers, and willing to accept the hazards of being supplied from the air when necessary. His group became known as the Chindits.

The Chindits were a small force of highly-trained, immensely fit, lightly equipped guerilla marauders who were dropped from the air far behind Japanese lines to harass and disorientate the Japanese troops in the jungle. They were supplied entirely from the air, and their support team was equipped with a remarkable American short take-off and landing aircraft known as the L1, which enabled them to get Chindit wounded out to base hospitals from relatively small clearings and narrow river banks. The attitude of the Chindits was summarised by Wingate's famous telegram - "The impossible we do in a day. Miracles take a little longer."

In February 1943, 3,000 Chindits embarked on their first operation, a four-month excursion into Burma to attack the Japanese from behind. In several senses, the operation was a success. It proved conclusively that Wingate's basic contention, backed by General Wavell, was correct. A small, highly mobile forcecould survive for months in the jungle, doing a great deal of a damage to its enemy, while being totally dependent on radio communication and supply from the air. The operation showed that well-trained guerilla troops could cross the heavily defended River Chindwin, despite the all-conquering Japanese presence. It demonstrated to the Japanese that they could not expect the land war to go their way for ever.

Nonetheless, the first Chindit operation cost many lives. Of the 3,000 men who went in by glider and on foot, only 2,200 returned to be the nucleus of the second and far more ambitious Chindit raid. This did not take place until the beginning of 1944, when, over five days from March 5th, a considerable fleet of Allied aircraft transported 9,000 of the Long Range Penetration Group to air strips that had been prepared earlier by smaller Chindit groups, 161 kilometres behind the Japanese lines at Indaw. Later that same month, Orde Wingate, now a Major-General, was killed at the age of 41 in an air crash in Burma. His loss was a sad blow to the Allies.

During the long period from mid 1942, when the Japanese were consolidating their hold on Burma, to the winter of 1943/44, the Burma front was almost entirely stalemated. The Japanese, having cut the Burma Road, seemed disinclined to devote more effort to the capture of territory in the Indian sub-continent, and the Allies lacked the resources to do more than contain the Japanese in their current positions. General Wavell's attempt in the Spring of 1943 to recapture Akyab, on the west coast of the Arakan peninsula, failed for lack of amphibious support from the sea - the landing craft had been appropriated for operations against the Vichy French in Madagascar - and achieved little. But during the 1943/44 winter, both sides began to brew some action for early 1944. The Japanese had recognised that, although the Burma Road was not available for Chiang Kai-shek's supply line, the US Air Force was achieving significant successes with their airlift of supplies over the "hump", and resolved to close the air route. To do this, they decided to attack and cut the Bengal-Assam railway, which connected the port of Calcutta with the India railhead used for Chiang's supplies.

The Allies meanwhile, by now under the command of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten with Stilwell as his deputy, had resolved to launch attacks by General Stilwell's by now well-trained Chinese forces towards Myitkyina, by the British 14th Army towards Indaw, and by Chiang Kai-shek's army westward across the Salween River from China. The 14th Army was also to take Akyab.

In the event, the Japanese offensive began first, and in the early stages made strong progress through the Arakan hills to outflank the forward units of the 14th Army. But the commander of the 14th Army was one of the truly remarkable Generals of the Second World War - General (later Field Marshal) Sir William Slim. Keeping cool, and assessing that the principal strength of the Japanese lay in their skill in jungle warfare, and that their main weakness was in open battle, Slim withdrew to two highly defensible positions at Imphal and Kohima. There he made his stand, and wrought a defeat that was the beginning of the end for the Japanese in Burma.