Tank Tracks to Rangoon (2 page)

Early in March the armour really came into its own. On the left 33 Corps had crossed the Irrawaddy both sides of Mandalay, while 4 Corps had seized Meiktila. Both Corps were using strong columns of armour and infantry to throw the enemy into confusion. Soon the Japanese had lost almost all their armour, most of their guns, and much of their transport. The columns were very boldly handled, and operated in reasonably open country. By the end of the month, with the monsoon five weeks away, the Japanese had lost their cohesion and it seemed possible to reach Rangoon.

Early in April, after some re-grouping, one of the greatest pursuits in the history of British arms was started. 4 Corps, with 255 Brigade in the lead, took the axis of the road and railway by way of Toungoo, while 33 Corps with 254 Brigade took the line of the Irrawaddy. By 1st May 4 Corps had reached Pegu, only forty miles from Rangoon, where they were held up by extensive demolition and the start of the monsoon, and 33 Corps had reached Magwe. On 3rd May Rangoon fell to a combined operation organized by 15 Corps from the Arakan.

*
Through Mud and Blood
published by Robert Hale.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, Major-General Ralph Younger, CB, CBE, DSO, MC, DL, is the only officer of the Royal Armoured Corps to have served throughout the campaign in Burma. Landing at Rangoon as second-in-command of 7th Queen’s Own Hussars, he took part in the long retreat to India, went on to command the 3rd Carabiniers during the vital Imphal battle, and was second-in-command of 255 Tank Brigade, which carried out the decisive thrust at Meiktila and led the spectacular dash to Rangoon in 1945. I am greatly honoured that he has written the Foreword to this book, and most grateful for the many hours of work that he has given to the project, for his invaluable advice and his most generous assistance in innumerable ways.

I should also like to express my appreciation to the following for their advice and time spent on my behalf: General Sir Philip Christison, GBE, CB, DSO, MC, DL; General J. N. Chaudhuri, OBE; Lt-General K. K. Singh; Major-General Sir Reginald Scoones, KBE, CB, DSO; Major-General C. E. Pert, CB, DSO; Major-General A. S. Vaidya, MVC, AVSM; Major-General Virendra Singh; Major-General Rajender Singh Sparrow, MVC; Brigadier J. H. P. Woodroffe; Brigadier H. M. Ley, CBE, DL; Brigadier Sheodan Singh, AVSM, MC; Brigadier S. M. Vohra, SM, Military Adviser to Indian High Commission, London; Brigadier M. Hussein, Military Attaché, Embassy of Pakistan, London; to Colonel J. M. Ashton, Major the Baron Dimsdale, MC, Major V. Pashley and ORQMS Knowles, late of 3rd Carabiniers; to Colonel C. T. Llewellen Palmer, MC, Colonel Marcus Fox, MC; Colonel J. F. Astley-Rushton, Colonel the Rev. N. S. Metcalfe, DSO, QHC, CF, Lt-Colonel G. S. B. Palmer, MC, Lt-Colonel J. Congreve, DSO, OBE, Captain M. J. E. Patteson, MC, MA, M.M. Stanley-Evans, Esq, MC, of 7th Queen’s Own Hussars; to Lt-Colonel Keith Ecclestone, 2nd Royal Tank Regiment,
for permitting access to the Regiment’s papers; to Lt-Colonel J. Blackater and Major F. J. R. Moir, MC of 116 Regiment RAC (The Gordon Highlanders); to Lt-Colonel F. W. B. Good, RTR, formerly commanding officer of 149 Regiment RAC (KOYLI); Colonel D. H. Mudie, (Royal Deccan Horse); Major O. H. M. Herford, Captain P. H. Rising, JP, Captain H. Travis and Mrs Edith Barlow, 7th Light Cavalry; Lt-Colonel F. H. Joyner, MC, TD, Major F. B. Boyd and Captain G. H. Brown, 11th (Prince Albert Victor’s Own) Light Cavalry; Colonel G. H. Critchley, Lt-Colonel E. R. McM. Wright, OBE, MC, and Major A. B. Merriam, 19th (King George V’s Own) Lancers.

I am also grateful to Colonel Peter Hordern of the RAC Tank Museum for his kind advice on the Imperial Japanese Armoured Corps and its vehicles; to Messrs Michael Joseph Ltd for permission to quote from John Master’s book,
The Road Past Mandalay
; to Messrs Rupert Hart-Davis for permission to use extracts from Lt-Colonel Miles Smeeton’s
A Change of Jungles
; to the Editor of
The Tank
magazine for the use of the poem included in
Chapter Three
; and to many others, who have helped me along the way.

Once, within my father’s lifetime, the streets of Yokohama were bright with Union Jacks, and across the world the peoples of the British Empire toasted, with equal enthusiasm if differing motives, ‘the plucky little Jap’ who had defeated his clumsy but formidable Russian opponent both on land and at sea.

The Japanese, emerging from centuries of isolation, had brought their medieval country into the twentieth century with frightening speed, and had shown an amazing capacity to adapt, choosing their instructors from the best the world had to offer, basing their army on that of Imperial Germany, and their navy upon the British Royal Navy.

During their 1905 war with Russia they had enjoyed the initiative, and the moral support of Great Britain, from the outset. Never particularly enthusiastic about the Russians, the British had been quite ready to wade in on Japan’s side when the Tsar’s Baltic Fleet, suffering a bad attack of jitters in the North Sea, had engaged and sunk a number of their fishing boats. In the months that passed, the Japanese had enjoyed the Tsar’s humiliating public apology and substantial indemnity almost as much as the British had revelled in the news that Admiral Togo had sent the same fleet to the bottom of the Tsushima Straits.

The ‘Trafalgar of the East’ placed Japan firmly amongst the World Powers, and completed the process she had begun several years earlier in sending a contingent to join the international force combating the Boxers in China. When war broke out in August 1914, her naval treaty with Great Britain was honoured punctiliously, her warships providing escorts for British convoys and assisting in the search for von Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron, whilst her army captured Germany’s only colony on the Chinese mainland, the port of Tsingtao; to further the allied cause, she even handed back to Russia several elderly relics which had preferred
surrender to sinking at Tsushima.

With the end of the Great War came the first signs of deterioration in the hitherto happy Anglo-Japanese relationship. The United States, pursuing a well intentioned policy of international disarmament, succeeded not only in limiting the number of capital ships available to each major power, but also in achieving the abandonment of the mutually beneficial understanding on spheres of naval influence which had bound Great Britain and Japan together. The Japanese delegation left the Washington Naval Conference feeling that their nation had lost ‘face’, a most important Oriental concept which in essence means that in any confrontation one should emerge with the honours at least even, and they blamed the British for not standing up to American pressures. From now on, Japan would be more circumspect in her dealings with the West.

However, other factors were at work as well. The curse of industrialization had by now taken root in Japan, and the British found themselves competing in once traditionally safe markets against a flow of low priced goods, a situation which in turn did little to endear their former allies to them.

Inside Japan, industrialization inevitably led to a steeply rising birthrate in an already crowded environment, and this in turn provided the driving force for outward expansions in the search for what the Germans called
lebensraum.
A political hierarchy dominated by military caste, and a long list of foreign ventures brought to a successful conclusion by force of arms, showed how this objective would be attained, and it was therefore no surprise to the world when the Manchurian imbroglio turned into full scale war on China, provoked on the flimsiest of excuses.

Pious finger-wagging by the toothless League of Nations led simply to a derisive rejection of that organization by Japan. On the other hand, to pursue a mechanized war she needed resources of oil, rubber and other vital commodities which she did not possess, and which she could only trade for, and the application of economic sanctions by the United States proved to be a serious embarrassment which prevented her from giving China the
coup de grâce.

The war in China showed the western public some rather nasty sides of the Japanese character. The bombing and machine-gunning of civilians could perhaps be written off as accidental, but no such excuse could be found for the numberless decapitations, especially when the heads were photographed showing the
late owner’s genitals sewn into the mouth. For a brief moment, the western ostrich pulled its head out of the sand, blinked in surprise, and having told its neighbours that the Japanese were after all only funny little men with pointed helmets, oversized false teeth and pebble glasses, went back to sleep. Never was there a graver understatement.

The bite of economic sanctions, and the apparently impotent state of Great Britain, France and Holland after Germany’s
blitzkrieg
victories of 1940, impelled the Japanese to take by force the resources they could not trade for. In Japanese eyes, the attack on Pearl Harbour was not a treacherous act, but simply a pre-emptive strike in what was intended to be a short war which would leave Japan in a strong negotiating position at the end—in fact, a repeat performance of the surprise attack on Port Arthur which had begun her war with Russia. The truth, which was fully appreciated by the Japanese, was that their country could not afford a long mechanized war.

The offensive phase of their war was brilliantly executed. Within a matter of weeks the United States Pacific Fleet had almost ceased to exist, and all Allied warships east of Ceylon had been sent to the bottom. French Indo-China was occupied without a shot being fired, and the Dutch East Indies fell after what could only have been a token resistance. The garrison of Hong Kong went down after a gallant struggle, whilst in Malaya the road-bound British troops were consistently outflanked or bypassed until they were forced to evacuate the mainland for the supposed security of the island fortress of Singapore. The surrender of this hollow refuge set the seal on the greatest military disaster ever sustained by the British Empire. The conquest of Burma followed quickly, so that by mid-1942 the Allies felt that they were dealing with an unstoppable military machine controlled by men of ferocious genius and natural aptitude for war. In fact, those most deeply concerned with these events saw them from a rather different viewpoint, and knew that their defeat was the result of overwhelming naval and air superiority at the point of contact, and to a refusal of the enemy to stick to rigid tactical concepts of mechanized war which had their roots firmly implanted in a European landscape; to which, of course must be added the years of political ineptitude which had ensured that the Great Powers’ Far Eastern possessions could never be adequately defended with the forces made available for the task.

So, in a little over twenty-five years, the world had given three
images to the Japanese soldier; first, the plucky little Jap, then the sadistic moron who took his pleasure in torture and mutilation, and finally, the military superman, the little man with the long bayonet against whom none could stand.

There are thousands of men alive today who will never have any other feeling for the Japanese than pure hatred, but there are very few of them who will deny that the Japanese soldier was the bravest man he ever met. In the attack he would come on and on over the bodies of his comrades until he was himself killed, and then he would expect more like him to run over his body in turn. In defence he had to be exterminated before the position was taken.

The word fanatical is most often used to describe this approach to war, but it is not quite the right word. Certainly he believed in his Emperor, his Country and his Cause, and his belief was unshakable, but he was no more immune to fear than any soldier of any other army, whereas the fanatic is anaesthetized by the very power of whatever drives him. What, then, kept him running forward in the hopeless attack, and why did he stay in his bunker knowing that he would be burned alive?

The answers lie in a complex amalgam of iron discipline, national tradition, religion and philosophy, all of which were utterly alien to Western thought. The discipline of the Imperial Japanese Army could not have been borne by any other army in the world, and the intention of that discipline was to reduce the individual to an automaton who would obey his orders absolutely and to the letter. It was a discipline in which physical violence featured prominently, and this violence could be administered for the most minor infringement and on the spot. Sometimes, mere hard repeated slapping across the face would suffice, but fists, boots, clubs and the flats of the officers’ swords were quite commonplace instruments for emphasizing a point of view. Such punishments could be administered by anyone to another soldier provided he was junior in rank, but even these faded into triviality in comparison with the expert treatment handed out by the military police to those who crossed their path.

However, discipline alone did not make the Japanese soldier the formidable opponent he was. His tremendous devotion to duty came from deep within himself, and had been implanted there since boyhood. During her long centuries of isolation, Japan’s history had been one long brawl between war-lords, and
in this troubled story the dominant figure in Japanese life was the
Samurai
, the professional fighting caste which lived by a code known as
bushido
, a concept similar to Chivalry in that the primary virtues were bravery, loyalty, benevolence, good manners, and the unimportance of the individual in relation to the cause. The code demanded that failure in any martial undertaking could have but one ending, and that was death, either in combat or through the revolting ritualistic suicide known as
hara kiri
, in which the principal, after due spiritual preparation, slashed open his own belly with a horizontal stroke, ending with an upward slice. Either form of death was considered honourable and carried much face, and in the latter case the victim was even permitted to shorten his agony by blowing his own brains out. To fall alive into an enemy’s hands was utterly disgraceful, but to surrender voluntarily was literally unthinkable, since the dishonour would not only taint one in the afterworld, where eternal abhorrence would be shown by the prisoner’s ancestors, but would also involve his family in this world in such loss of face that if they were high
bushido
, atonement would have to be made by at least one member committing
hara kiri.