History of the Second World War (63 page)

Yet the logistical problem had been vastly multiplied by the decision that India was to be built up as a base, to hold thirty-four divisions and 100 air squadrons. Over a million men were employed in building the 220 new airfields, thus greatly reducing the labour force available for other projects — of which road-building was the primary need. Moreover the supply problem was increased by the need to feed 400,000 civilian refugees from Burma.

Although the Indian Command now comprised a large number of divisions, most of them were newly formed ones produced by the wartime expansion of the Indian Army; they lacked equipment and training, as well as experienced officers and N.C.O.s. The few that had some battle experience were exhausted and depleted not only by the Burma campaign but by the ravages of malaria, while they had lost most of their equipment in the retreat. Only three of some fifteen divisions nominally available were in any respect fit for operations in the near future.

Administrative problems were accentuated by Command problems, especially with the Chinese forces which had withdrawn into India, with the 10th U.S. Army Air Force, and with the prickly General Stilwell.

Another crucial factor was the need for air superiority — to protect India itself, to ensure continual supplies to China, and to provide the air cover essential for the success of any attempt to reconquer Burma. Fortunately, as soon as the monsoon had come, in May 1942, the Japanese had sent a large number of their aircraft to help the South-west Pacific campaigns, and had given the remainder a period of rest. That enabled the Allies to build up their own air strength in comparative peace. By September, 1942 there were thirty-one British and Indian squadrons in India. Of these, however, six were unfit for operations, nine were kept for the defence of Ceylon, and five were employed for transport and reconnaissance duties — leaving only seven fighter and four bomber squadrons for operations in north-east India. But the flow of aircraft, from both Britain and the U.S.A., was increasing monthly, and by February 1943 there would be fifty-two squadrons. Moreover the aircraft themselves were being replaced by newer types — Mitchells, Hurricanes, Liberators, Beaufighters. Most of them could go straight to the new airfields in Assam and Bengal, as the possibility of a seaborne invasion of India had become slight after the naval battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.

In April 1942 Wavell had reorganised the India Command. The Central Command H.Q., now at Agra, was responsible for training and supply, while there were three regional Army Commands: the North-western, the Southern, and the Eastern, which was the operational one.

Planning for the reconquest of Burma entailed co-operation with the Chinese armies, both those now in Assam and those in the Yunnan province of China. The Chinese plan, of October 1942, was for a converging advance on Burma by fifteen Chinese divisions, so-called, from Yunnan and three from Assam, together with some ten British or Indian divisions. The role of the latter, in the Chinese plan, was not only to invade northern Burma but to launch a seaborne attack on Rangoon. Wavell agreed to the plan in principle, although dubious whether what he considered the two essential requirements were obtainable — sufficiently powerful air forces to dominate the sky over Burma; and a strong British fleet, with four or five carriers, to dominate the Indian Ocean and cover the Rangoon attack. The second requirement was, in fact, impossible — in view of naval commitments elsewhere. Chiang Kai-Shek — regarding these essential conditions as Wavell’s quibbles and as a sign that the British were not going to make a serious effort, angrily abandoned his part in the operation, at the end of 1942.

THE ARAKAN OFFENSIVE, DECEMBER 1942-MAY 1943

Wavell nevertheless decided to carry out a limited offensive to recover the Arakan coastal region by a hundred-mile advance down the Mayu Peninsula, combined with a seaborne invasion of Akyab island, at the tip of the next peninsula, to recapture the airfields there — from which Japanese squadrons could attack most of north-east India. If the Allied squadrons could be re-established there they could cover all of north and central Burma. This important part of the plan, however, was dropped because of the lack of landing craft.

Even so, Wavell persisted with the overland advance into Arakan rather than do nothing. The 14th Indian Division started to advance in December 1942, but moved so slowly that the commander of the Japanese 15th Army, General Iida, was able to send reinforcements thither and halt the British advance by the end of January — while he sent still more in February. Yet Wavell insisted that the advance must be continued, despite the arguments and protests of General Noel Irwin, the Commander of the Eastern Army, who warned him that the troops were badly depleted, and their morale affected, by malaria. Thus the Japanese were able to strike against the 14th Division’s rear, and reached Htizwe on the Mayu River by March 18, thereby uncovering its flank and causing it to retreat. The 14th Indian Division was now replaced by the 26th, but the Japanese counterstroke continued, over the Mayu, reaching the coast at Indin early in April. The Japanese then pushed on northward, with the aim of capturing the line Maungdaw-Buthidaung by May, when the monsoon season was due, and thus dislocate any British plans for a renewed advance into Burma during the next dry season — from November 1943 to May 1944.

On April 14 Lieutenant-General W. J. Slim, 15th Indian Corps, took over command of the forces in Arakan, and was appalled to find how badly their physical and moral state had suffered from the ravages of malaria and the battle-losses due to frontal attacks on Japanese positions. While hoping to hold the Maungdaw-Buthidaung line, between the sea and the Mayu River, he planned to withdraw farther if necessary to a line running inland from Cox’s Bazar, a further fifty miles northward and just over the frontier. Here the country was comparatively open, and thus more suited to the British advantage in artillery and tanks than the jungles and swamps of the Mayu Peninsula, while the Japanese communications up the coast would be more stretched and thus more vulnerable.

But neither plan came into effect. For the Japanese drove the British to abandon Buthidaung after dark on May 6, and that flanking threat led to the abandonment of Maungdaw, on the coast. And the Japanese then decided to stop on the newly captured line, as the monsoon was due. In sum, the British attempt to recapture Akyab and its airfields — by an overland advance and without seaborne aid — had proved a complete, and dismal, failure. The Japanese had shown their skill in flanking moves and infiltrations through the jungle, while the British had damped the spirit of their troops by costly frontal attacks and blundering disregard for the indirect approach. By May 1943 they were back on the line they had held the previous autumn.

THE CHINDITS

The only glimmer of light in this darkly clouded phase of the war came, at the northern end of the Burmese theatre, from the first ‘Chindit’ operation — a name taken by its initiator, Orde Wingate, from a mythical beast, the Chinthe, half lion and half eagle, of which statues are numerous in Burmese pagodas. His imagination was caught by the way this griffin-like beast symbolised the close ground-and-air co-operation needed in such operations and by such forces. The fact that the first operations were carried out across and beyond the Chindwin River, in northern Burma, may have helped to engrave the name on the minds of the public.

In the autumn of 1938 Orde Wingate, then a captain on leave from Palestine, had met, and made a strong impression on, a number of influential people — as he had earlier that year on General Wavell, then the Commander in Palestine, and Brigadier John Evetts, who was in charge of the northern area.* But on returning to Palestine in December he found that his political activities in Zionist circles had made him such an object of suspicion in British official quarters that Wavell’s successor, General Haining — who had originally approved the ‘S.N.S.’ organisation — had decided to remove him from control of it and appoint him to an innocuous job at his own headquarters. Then, in May 1938, he was sent home at Haining’s request, and given a minor staff post in Anti-Aircraft Command.

* He came to see me several times to discuss the training of the ‘S.N.S.’ — ‘Special Night Squads’ — that he had been allowed to organise in the spring, from young and picked members of the ‘underground’ Jewish defence force, the Hagana, to tackle the Arab armed bands which had been causing much trouble in Palestine. He told me how he had been applying my tactical ideas in such guerrilla-type operations, and gave me a set of his papers on the subject. He also emphasised with evident pride, at that time, that he was a distant cousin of T. E. Lawrence — although he later tended to disparage Lawrence when he himself became famous. At Wingate’s request I wrote to Winston Churchill about him, to effect an introduction.

But in the autumn of 1940 he was rescued from this backwater and sent to organise a guerrilla campaign in Ethiopia against the Italian control of East Africa. The appointment, suggested by Leo Amery, who had joined the Cabinet, was clinched by Wavell’s prompt acceptance of the proposal. The successful conclusion of this East African Campaign in May 1941 was followed by another slump in Wingate’s personal fortunes, and to a state of depression that caused him to attempt suicide during a bout of malaria. But when convalescing at home he was rescued by a call to fresh opportunity, this time arising from the British disasters in the Far East. The opportunity was once again provided by Wavell, who had himself been removed from the Middle East Command in June, after the failure of the summer offensive there, and sent to India. At the end of the year Wavell found himself caught up in a greater crisis when the Japanese invaded Malaya and Burma successively. In February 1942, when the situation even in Burma was looking bleak, Wavell asked for Wingate to be sent to him with a view to developing guerrilla operations there.

After his arrival Wingate urged the creation of what were called ‘Long Range Penetration Groups’ trained to operate in the Burmese jungle and strike at the Japanese communications as well as against the Japanese outposts. He argued that the force must be sufficiently large to strike with strong effect, while small enough to evade the enemy. Brigade size was considered suitable, and the 77th Indian Brigade was reorganised for the purpose. These ‘Chindits’ must be better jungle fighters than the Japanese, and they needed to comprise experts in such kinds of fighting, particularly experts in demolition and radio communication. They must also develop ground-and-air co-operation, as they would be dependent on supply by air; for that reason a small R.A.F. section was attached to each column. Within the column, pack-animals would provide the transport.

Wingate pressed for an early operation, both to restore British morale by demonstrating their power to upset the enemy’s morale, and as a test of the working of such Long-Range Penetration Groups. Wavell preferred that they should be used immediately before, and during, a British general offensive, but decided in response to Wingate’s desire that an earlier experiment was worth risking because of the experience and the information that could be gained.

The Brigade comprised seven columns, and for the planned operation was divided into two groups — a Northern Group of five columns, totalling 2,200 men with 850 mules, and a Southern Group of two columns, totalling 1,000 men with 250 mules. The two groups crossed the Chindwin River on the night of February 14, 1943, assisted by diverting actions on the part of the regular forces. Moving on eastward, the groups split up into their pre-arranged columns, and then carried out a series of attacks on Japanese outposts, as well as to cut railway lines, blow up bridges and create ambushes on the roads. In mid-March the columns crossed the Irrawaddy, a hundred miles east of the Chindwin. By then, however, the Japanese had awoken to the threat and deployed a large part of two divisions, of their five in Burma, to counter it. Under the counter-pressure and other difficulties the columns were forced to withdraw, and by mid-April were back in India, having lost one-third of their strength and left behind most of their equipment.

The operation had little strategic effect, and Japanese casualties had been slight, but it did show that British and Indian troops could operate in the jungle, and it had provided useful experience in air supply, as well as the need for air superiority.

It also led General Mutagachi, Commander of the Japanese 15th Army, to recognise that he could not regard the Chindwin as a secure barrier, and that to forestall a British counteroffensive he would have to continue his own advance. Thereby it led to the Japanese advance across the Indian frontier in 1944, and the crucial battle of Imphal.

FUTURE PLANNING

A serious British offensive in the dry season of 1942-43 had been annulled by the combination of administrative difficulties and lack of resources. The main plan for the next dry season, of 1943-44, as decided at the Casablanca conference of January 1943, was intended to be a seaborne assault on Rangoon, called ‘Operation Anakim’, following British and Chinese offensives in the north of Burma and the capture of key points on the coast. Those aims meant that air superiority had to be gained, and a strong naval force assembled, with ample landing craft — as well as the solution of the administrative and overland transport problems.

The difficulties of meeting all these requirements were, clearly, so great that in the spring of 1943 Wavell was inclined to turn away from Burma, and to favour a move against Sumatra as an indirect way of approach to the defeat of the Japanese. His talks with Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff on a visit to London in April convinced them that ‘Operation Anakim’ must be deferred or discarded, and in its place the Sumatra move was chosen — a move code-named ‘Culverin’, This indirect move became attractive to Churchill, but it had to be abandoned in its turn for the same reasons that ‘Anakim’ had been given up, and also because of American insistence on the importance of reopening the land route of supply to China as soon as possible. Hence southern operations were shelved, although planning for them continued. If anything at all was to be done in this theatre of war, it would have to be in the north of Burma.