The Daring Dozen

by Gavin Mortimer

  Apart from the odd light skirmish, it was not until the first week of March that the Chindits engaged the Japanese in any great force. On the night of 2 March the enemy ambushed one of the two southern forces and two days later one of the northern columns was attacked. In the first attack several Gurkhas panicked and fled, as did the supply mules taking with them precious rations and equipment, while the second incident was marred by poor decision-making by the column commander. No. 1 Column, lost contact with the rest of the Chindits after blowing up a railway bridge at Kyaikthin. Though the column did return to India several weeks later it was with a much depleted force after several fierce contacts with the Japanese. As a result of all these setbacks Wingate was left with four of his seven columns with which to continue the operation.

  Fortunately Calvert was intent on causing mayhem, which he did with a well-coordinated attack on the village of Nankan. Having arranged with the RAF for an air strike on a Japanese camp ten miles south of Nankan, Calvert launched his attack against the railway station and two bridges on the morning of 6 March – his 30th birthday. It was, he recalled, ‘an unpleasant day’ for the Japanese with the two bridges destroyed, the railway line cut in 70 places and a large number of their soldiers killed – with no Chindit casualties in return. Calvert was awarded a DSO for this action.

  Further north, Major Bernard Fergusson and his No. 5 Column blew up a bridge and then dynamited Bonchaung gorge, causing a massive landslide that completely blocked the vital railway line. Fergusson recalled that he woke the next morning with a feeling of ‘exhilarated guilt’ at what they had accomplished at Bonchaung. His elation soon turned to concern when he received a message from Wingate:

  Owing no news received from No.1 Group for ten days crossing of Irrawaddy possibly hazardous … no news Four Column … leave it your own discretion whether you continue movement or make safe bivouac in Gangaw Hills to harass reconstruction railway.20

  Fergusson was running desperately low on supplies and he estimated that the next suitable spot to receive a resupply by air was in a village 20 miles east on the other side of the Irrawaddy. They were running low on rations, though even the rations were poor; a day’s ration pack weighing 2lb consisted of 12 Shakapura biscuits, 2oz of cheese, some nuts and raisins, some dates, 20 cigarettes, tea, sugar and milk. There was also some chocolate, or a packet of acid drops, depending on the whim of the ration packer.

  Wearily Fergusson’s column set off for the resupply drop on the other side of the Irrawaddy, hacking their way through elephant grass, just as Calvert’s column was doing too. Once on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy Calvert and Fergusson were tasked by Wingate with blowing up the Gokteik viaduct, but before the sabotage could be carried out Wingate decided to withdraw his brigade. They were almost out of RAF supply range and Wingate was also concerned that if they pressed east the brigade might be encircled by the Japanese, now hot on their trail. Wingate issued instructions for the columns to make their way back west over the Chindwin. ‘The task now in front of us was a tough one,’ recalled Calvert. ‘We had to travel that 150 miles through some of the worst country in the world, and every inch of the way we had to keep a careful watch out for the Japs. They were becoming more and more determined to get rid of the cocky Britishers who had calmly walked into the middle of a country occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army. And they were out to teach these white men a lesson – if only they could find them.’21

  On one occasion during the withdrawal Calvert found the Japanese first, leading his column in a devastating ambush on a force of pursuing Japanese, which left 100 of the enemy dead. Calvert’s column crossed the Chindwin to safety on 15 April – exactly two months since they had traversed it in the other direction, having survived by eating snakes, lizards and any other living creature they could find. The rest of the brigade crossed in the days and weeks that followed, with Fergusson’s column, ravaged by hunger, exhaustion, dehydration, lice and mosquitoes, reaching safety six days after Calvert. Fergusson had lost three of his 12 stone in weight during the operation and, when he wrote his account of Operation Longcloth in 1945, Fergusson turned to Shakespeare to describe the experience.

  ‘… Perseverance, dear my Lord,

  Keeps honour bright; to have done is to hang

  Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail

  In monumental mockery.’22

  Wingate followed Fergusson across the Chindwin four days later, having swum the river in broad daylight with the Japanese swarming up behind. Nothing was heard from No. 7 Column until June, when they reached China, while other Chindits continued to turn up in ones, twos and small groups until as late as July.

  In all, of the 3,000 Chindits who had crossed the Chindwin heading east in February 1943, 2,182 returned from the Long Range Penetration. Nearly 500 had been killed in action with the remainder having died of disease or been captured. Many of those who had survived the mission never recovered fully from the experience (one of Fergusson’s men died from cerebral malaria a few days later) and only 600 returned to active service.

  Dismayed though he was by the losses, Wingate was equally concerned with the fact that for all his soldiers’ suffering, nothing great had been achieved. An estimated 200 Japanese soldiers had been killed (the majority by Calvert’s column) and a few bridges and railway lines cut during the two months of Operation Longcloth. However, that didn’t take into account the psychological results of the penetration. Calvert subsequently compared it to the Allied commando raid on Dieppe in August 1942 which, while ultimately a costly failure, proved invaluable in planning for Operation Torch, the invasions of north-west Africa in November 1942, and the Normandy landings in June 1944. Calvert wrote:

  The operation can be compared with the Dieppe operation in its successes and failures in that it paved the way both technically and in the hearts of men for the final offensive and overthrow of the enemy. Its greatest achievement was the final proof that air power in the form of air supply could … give back to the ground forces mobility and freedom of manoeuvre without being tactically tied to ground communications.23

  Calvert added that Wingate had learned much during the two months behind Japanese lines about equipment, medical treatment, signals and the calibre of the enemy. In addition, said Calvert, the experience had shed a light on the quality of the average Anglo-Saxon soldier who, since the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore, had been considered inferior to his Japanese foe. ‘This first operation proved that the European soldier as of old can shake off the shackles of his civilized neuroses and inhibitions and live and fight as hard as any Asiatic,’ wrote Calvert. ‘And due to his intrinsic sounder constitution and basic health due to good feeding, better the Asiatic in overcoming hard conditions. Most Europeans do not know what their bodies can stand, and it is the mind and willpower which so often gives way first. Most soldiers never realized that they could do the things they did and hardly believe it now. One advantage of exceptionally hard training is that it proves to a man what he can do and suffer. If you have marched 30 miles in a day, 25 miles you can take in your stride.’24

  This last point was the one seized on by the Allies, who during the Chindits’ mission had been defeated by the Japanese at Akyab. Suddenly the Chindits were acclaimed as heroes and on their return to India in May were greeted by Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India. In radio broadcasts the BBC hailed their exploits, as did the newspapers, with the Daily Mail describing Wingate as ‘the Clive of Burma’.25

  Despite the blaze of publicity, Wingate locked himself away for three weeks in India and wrote a 61-page report on Operation Longcloth, which in his inimitable style criticized several senior officers for their perceived lack of help and general ignorance in the formation and preparation of the brigade. He was also honest in his appraisal of his force, saying that some of the soldiers had been found wanting. He concluded his report with five findings:

  1. Long range penetration is an offensive weapon and should be employed as a vital part of the majo
r plan of conquest.

  2. The men should be suitably equipped and trained: Training is more important than physical hardiness. On this point more thought had to be given to basic jungle fighting including ambushes and close quarter combat.

  3. RAF liaison officers must work in tandem with column commanders to coordinate supply drops and air strikes.

  4. There was room for improvement in wireless operations.

  5. Columns need better training in river crossing, otherwise the operation easily becomes a shemozzle.26

  The report eventually landed on the desk of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who read it with unbridled glee. After one defeat after another in the Far East, the British appeared to have finally found a man willing to take the fight to the Japanese, something that Churchill had been exhorting his commanders to do for months. Churchill was also a staunch supporter of irregular warfare, ever since he had witnessed the Boer commandos cause the British so many problems in the South African war of 1899–1902. His own son, Randolph, had served for a short spell in the SAS in 1942, and Churchill had been the driving force behind the formation of the British commandos in 1940.

  Churchill had already replaced Wavell with General Sir Claude Auchinleck as Commander-in-Chief in India and on 24 July he waved a copy of Wingate’s report at his chiefs of staff and told them that ‘he is a man of genius and audacity, and has rightly been discerned by all eyes as a figure quite above the ordinary level. The expression “the Clive of Burma” has already gained currency. There is no doubt that in the welter of inefficiency and lassitude which has characterized our operations, this man, his force and his achievements stand out.’27

  In August Wingate was summoned back to London to meet Churchill and the Prime Minister found the Chindit commander to be as promising in the flesh as he had been in his report. The next day Wingate found himself accompanying Churchill across the Atlantic to attend the Quebec Conference, where the British were expecting a frosty reception from their American allies.

  President Roosevelt and his chief of staff were pressing not just for an invasion of France but for some forceful aggressive action in the Far East. Wingate had been brought to Quebec to impress the Americans and he did just that with his vision for the ‘conquest of Burma north of the 23rd Parallel’. This would be done, he explained to the conference delegates, because:

  Long range penetration affords greater opportunity of mystifying and misleading the enemy than any other form of warfare. It provides the ideal opportunity for the use of Airborne and Parachutist troops without risking their loss. This calls for the use of best troops available. RAF Sections operating with columns are in a position to direct our aircraft with great accuracy on targets visible and undetectable from the air. Such is the description of the vast majority of enemy targets in south east Asia. To sum up long range groups should be used as an essential part of the plan of conquest to create a situation leading to the advance of our main forces.28

  Wingate asked for his force to be expanded to six brigades, totalling 26,500 officers and men, and he also requested no interference from staff officers in GHQ India. Permission was granted, the Americans delighted that the British had a commander altogether more pugnacious that his predecessors. In addition, the Americans put in place plans of their own to form a special air unit to support the Chindits and it was also agreed to establish an Allied Operational South-East Asia Command (distinct from Auchinleck’s Indian military command) with Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as its supreme commander.

  Auchinleck reacted with dismay when he heard the news. The formation of the new, six-brigade-strong Special Force would necessitate Wingate (promoted to temporary major-general) having carte blanche to break up many of his divisions, which were already stretched in the war against the Japanese. He was not the only senior officer to take umbrage at Wingate’s rise to the point where he now had the ear of both the Prime Minister and President Roosevelt.

  Back in London after the Quebec Conference, Wingate began gathering the very best equipment for his expanded force, including flamethrowers, wireless receivers, anti-tank grenade launchers, river-crossing boats and the vastly superior American K rations. He returned to India in September and wasted little time in preparing Special Force for another operation in Burma. At times, recalled one of his fellow (and supportive) officers, Wingate was ‘astonishingly and wonderfully rude’ in ensuring his plans were not hampered by uncooperative staff officers. Yet his uncompromising stance achieved results and the six brigades were raised and trained within five months.

  Wingate, who fell ill with typhoid in late 1943, relied more than ever on the expertise of Mike Calvert in preparing the second Chindit operation. The brigades would be split into eight mobile columns each one consisting of about 400 men; their mission would be to range far and wide throughout Burma attacking targets in coordinated raids, although Wingate also insisted that they have the capability to reform as one force to launch a major offensive against one objective if need be. As a result Calvert was preoccupied in training the men for the forthcoming operation. ‘One of the most important lessons rammed home in our guerrilla training was to be adaptable and unpredictable,’ he wrote, ‘deceiving the enemy with a feint here while attacking there, or better still a double feint while hitting a third target with everything available. Constant vigilance and deception, bluff and counter-bluff, were necessary for success in the sort of free-style fighting we went in for.’29

  When Wingate had fully recovered his health he turned his attention to the exact nature of the forthcoming operation, already codenamed Thursday. There were problems with gaining Chinese approval for any major operation in Burma while the Americans – despite the general agreement at the Quebec Conference – were wary that the British war aims in south-east Asia were motivated primarily by imperial ambitions. Meanwhile General Joseph Stilwell, Mountbatten’s deputy and an Anglophobe who viewed the average British soldier as an out-and-out coward, was finalizing plans to push south from the north-east and seize Myitkyina from the Japanese with his composite force of Chinese and Americans, including a new American Special Forces unit, officially named the 5307th Composite Unit, and eventually better known as Merrill’s Marauders.

  It wasn’t until February 1944, therefore, that Wingate agreed on the exact aims of his force for Operation Thursday. They were threefold – namely to assist Stilwell’s advance south as he endeavoured to link up with the Burma Road and re-establish an overland supply route to China by attacking the Japanese 18th Division’s lines of supply and communications; to help the Yunnan Chinese offensive enter Burma; and lastly to ‘inflict maximum confusion, damage and loss on the enemy forces in North Burma’.

  It was agreed to insert the Chindits by air on a landing zone east of the river Irrawaddy. Mike Calvert led his men, and moved off to form a strongpoint which he called ‘White City’, stopping twice en route to indulge his love for blowing enemy railway bridges. These strongpoints were an idea of Wingate’s to enable each brigade to remain isolated in the jungle for greater periods of time, similar to the US cavalry forts in the Indian plains 150 years earlier. Each strongpoint was well garrisoned with field artillery, anti-aircraft guns, light aircraft and a landing strip.

  Once Calvert was established at ‘White City’, Wingate flew in to inspect the strongpoint and inform Calvert that the Japanese Fifteenth Army had launched an offensive that was now threatening Imphal and Kohima. One of the soldiers at White City was Harold Shippey from Hull, who had joined the Chindits from the Royal Scots Fusiliers. ‘Wingate was a marvellous man,’ he recalled in an interview many years later:

  It needed a man of his ideas to produce the men for that sort of warfare. We’re not jungle people but he taught us how to live and survive in the jungle. Because it was a case of not only fighting in the jungle but you had to [live] with it and realize it was not only an enemy but also a friend. He pushed us on these marches, his idea was that when you think you’ve had enough you only think you�
�ve had enough. If need be you can get up and do another ½ mile or 2 miles, which later on we found we had to. When you thought you’d come to the end of your tether you really haven’t. This is the sort of thing that it needed, that sort of man and which he got through to us all in the finish – that if you want to survive you really had to go to the limit.30

  Later, in the early evening of 24 March, Wingate returned to Imphal in an American B-25 Mitchell bomber flown by First Lieutenant Brian Hodges. After a brief consultation with an RAF air commodore, Wingate reboarded the plane for a short flight to Lalaghat. The aircraft never arrived at its destination and the next day a search began in an area where another American pilot reported having seen a plane come down. The wreckage was eventually found by a three-man search team in the jungle-covered hills west of Imphal. They found a crafter 20ft wide and 8ft deep, and counted 11 bodies. Though the ‘bodies were badly burned through’, the search team reported that they were sure the 41-year-old Wingate was among the dead ‘as his peculiar shaped topee* was found’.31

  The death of Wingate stunned everyone at GHQ India, not least because of its mundane nature – simple engine failure on a routine flight – after everything he had experienced and survived. Mike Calvert was distraught when told the news a week later, recalling that: ‘Even the men in Special Force who had seen him only once or twice at a distance felt the shock of his loss as it reverberated down the line of command. The Chindits would fight on, but they would never be quite the same again without the man who created and inspired them.’32

  At the top of the line of command was Churchill, who received a letter from Lord Louis Mountbatten in which the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in South-East Asia wrote: ‘No one but Wingate could possibly have invented such a bold scheme, devised such an unorthodox technique, or trained and inspired his force to an almost fanatical degree of enthusiasm.’33