Tank Tracks to Rangoon

by Bryan Perrett

  The purpose of this book is to study but one aspect of this great congregation—the armoured troops, who, during their operations, proved that the tank could still be a weapon of decision in the unlikeliest of landscapes and in circumstances which did not prevail in any other theatre of war; for, whilst the campaign in Burma was primarily fought by infantry, and there were infantrymen who never clapped eyes on a tank, there were also other infantrymen who spent all their fighting lives alongside them, and, at the end, it was a brilliantly handled combination of both which resulted in the worst military defeat ever suffered by the Empire of Japan.

  The origins of XIVth Army’s armoured regiments were as diverse as that of the Army itself. First came two British regular cavalry regiments and one battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment. Between the wars there had been an antipathy between the cavalry and the RTR, who each regarded the other’s modus vivendi et operandi as respectively approximating to that of the Cavaliers and Roundheads of the English Civil War. After two and a half years of war, this feeling had been eroded by common experience and replaced by mutual respect, without either side giving ground on its traditions and methods. Today the quarrel, provoked by suspicions that each constituted a threat to the continued existence of the other, is but a memory.

  A third cavalry regiment was raised in India from British personnel, and four infantry battalions, three from Yorkshire and one from the Highlands, were converted to armour. Given numbers the latter obstinately maintained the identity of their parent regiments, but in spite of this, I have throughout my text, save where the meaning is obvious, used their numerical designation as Royal Armoured Corps regiments, since the parent regiments had other battalions fighting in the theatre, and confusion might ensue were I to do otherwise.

  Whilst three British cavalry regiments fought in Burma, this number was exceeded threefold by the Indian cavalry regiments present. There were regiments which could trace their roots back to the days of the Honourable East India Company, regiments which had been raised to deal with the Great Mutiny, and regiments founded in the Golden Years of the Raj, and their battle honours covered an area from the Taku Forts in China to Palestine and beyond.

  The reader will already have gathered from the extract of John Masters’ book that I have quoted, that Indian life is a richly woven tapestry in which the threads of caste, race and religion intertwine inextricably. Since the Great Mutiny each sabre squadron in an Indian cavalry regiment was recruited from a particular race, although the Headquarters Squadron would contain elements of all three. For example, whilst Probyn’s Horse contained one squadron each of Punjabi Mussulmen, Sikhs and Dogras, the squadrons of the Royal Deccan Horse were composed respectively of Punjabi Mussulmen, Sikhs and Jats, and so on.

  It might be imagined that with such diverse elements present in any one regiment, that the potential risk of internal friction was high, but the reality was that within the Army, these differences meant a lot less than outside, where they could be exploited by religious and political characters on the make. As a senior Indian officer recently remarked to me, What did such differences mean to us when we were commanded by heathen Christians anyway!’

  At this point it is necessary to explain that the command structure within an Indian cavalry regiment differed radically from that of a British regiment. On leaving Sandhurst, the young British officer destined for the Indian Army would be posted for one year to a British regiment serving in India. During that year he would make a start at learning the Indian Army’s lingua franca, Urdu, and possibly take the language examination. He would also visit the Indian regiment he hoped to join and stay for a few days, giving the officers a chance to decide whether he was acceptable or not. In many regiments, all the officers from the colonel to the junior subaltern had an equal say in this assessment of a candidate, which was most important since the total strength of British officers in a regiment would seldom exceed a dozen, of whom not more than eight would be present at any one time, and this could drop to four during the hot weather, when leave was taken and training courses attended. Obviously, in such a close community, anyone who could not fit in would become a menace.

  Even if he was accepted, the young officer still had to pass the Urdu examination within a set period. If he could not, he was out, since until he knew the language he was no use at all, since all orders were given, and administrative matters attended to in this language. The Indian soldiers themselves also had to learn Urdu, and although many words could be found in their own dialects, it was nevertheless, a language in its own right.

  Below the British officers came the Viceroy’s commissioned officers (VCOs), who were a vital link in the chain of command, for which there is no exact parallel in the British Army. The VCOs were men who had served all their lives in the regiment, and received their commissions after, say, eighteen years’ service. They had their own mess, and knew everything that happened within the regiment. The senior VCO, the Risaldar-Major, wore a crown on his epaulettes, and was the colonel’s adviser in all things relating to the internal welfare of the regiment, having joined at much the same time as the colonel. Below came the risaldars, who wore two pips, and the jemadars who wore one. The VCOs were saluted by Indian, but not British, troops.

  In the Indian Army the cavalry was recruited only from the martial areas of the sub-continent, and the men loved soldiering. Their families may have served in the regiment for several generations, and whole villages depended on the pay they sent home and the pensions of retired soldiers. In such a community, the retired VCO was an extremely important man.

  The young British officer on joining his regiment, would be ‘fathered’ by the VCOs of his squadron. One or more would come round in the evening to his quarters and talk to him, helping him learn the language and telling him about their customs, village life, and so on. This was essential, and taught the officer to respect his men’s religion and to take the greatest care not to offend against their customs. Off duty, the officer spent a great deal of time in the company of his men, joining in their sports and attending their festivals and feasts. The ultimate relationship was a close and happy one, but it must be remembered that British officers of the Indian Army earned the respect of their men by dedication and ability, and in spite of, rather than because of, the fact that they were white and British.

  As a result of the small number of British officers in an Indian cavalry regiment, an officer could command a squadron very early in his career, and would have much more responsibility than his counterpart in the British Army.

  After the outbreak of war, many of the regiment’s officers were called to other duties, and replaced by officers serving for the duration, who underwent an accelerated version of the process described above. With the prospect of Independence, young Indian officers began to receive the King’s Commission as well, and many senior officers serving today in the armies of India and Pakistan saw action as subalterns in Burma, although the VCO system has also been retained.*

  Four types of tank were used against the Japanese in Burma. First on the list comes the Stuart, which was used throughout the campaign. This was an American light tank carrying a 37-mm gun and two Browning machine guns (sometimes three if the turret AA mounting was used) whose major virtues were its high speed (36 mph maximum) and mechanical reliability. On the debit side, the Stuart often found difficulty crossing the bunds between paddy fields, and was thinly armoured.

  The British Valentine, a tank designed specifically for infantry support, was, on the other hand, slow, having a maximum speed of only 15 mph, although the armour was better arranged. Like the Stuart, the Valentine was a reliable machine mechanically, and in Burma carried a similar gun, the 2-pdr. Only a handful of Valentine gun-tanks were used during the campaign, although the scissors bridge-layer conversion was widely employed.

  A tank which could have been specifically designed for use in Burma was the Lee/Grant series, conceived by the United States Army as an infantry support weapon. This vehicle
possessed a 75-mm main armament mounted in a sponson on the right side of the hull, and also mounted a turret containing a 37-mm and a co-axially mounted machine gun. The advantage of such a layout in the Burmese jungle was that the 75-mm could always be used on the target ahead, whilst the top turret could be traversed to sweep the surrounding trees clear of snipers; on a one-tank frontage the limited traverse of the 75-mm was not a liability. The Lees were respectably armoured, travelled at a maximum speed of 26 mph, possessed mechanical stamina, and performed some of the worst hill-climbs in the history of armoured warfare. They carried a crew of six.

  Last to appear in Burma was the ubiquitous Sherman, a general purpose American design incorporating a turret-mounted 75-mm gun with co-axial machine gun, and a hull mounted bow machine gun. Speed and protection factors were similar to those of the Lee, but the crew was reduced to five.

  Towards the end of the campaign some artillery units were equipped with self-propelled 105-mm guns based on the Sherman chassis, known as Priests. Armoured cars also came into their own in the last months, Humbers carrying a variety of armaments being in the majority, reinforced by some Daimlers mounting a 2-pdr.

  Further technical information on all these vehicles can be found in Appendix B.

  Now that we have discussed briefly the contending parties in this campaign, it is necessary to look at the country itself. All that need be remembered is that Burma is a north-south country. The frontier with India follows this line, as do the river valleys of the Irrawaddy, its tributary the Chindwin, and the Sittang. The principal means of communication, by road or rail, follow these valleys, which contain the major centres of population. In the north, the country is mountainous, and covered in thick jungle, but becomes progressively less so the further south one goes. The climate is tropical, and the country has one of the heaviest rainfalls in the world, some areas recording several hundred inches. Campaigns have to be fought before the onset of the monsoon months, when the rainfall and its product, mud, bring a movement to a standstill. To high temperatures and humidity Nature has added a variety of endemic tropical diseases, and all manner of creatures great and small that fly, wriggle and crawl with little purpose but to bite and sting.

  The Burmese were not fond of the British, and many, Buddhist priests particularly, actively aided the Japanese when they invaded. On the other hand, the hill people of Burma, the Karens, Kachins, Shans and Chins, did not care much for the Burmese, and helped the British. After a couple of years of enforced Japanese Co-Prosperity, the Burmese decided that the British were not so bad after all, and welcomed them back; not very sincerely, I feel, since a year or so later they left the Commonwealth voluntarily and at tremendous speed.

  * A table of approximately equivalent ranks can be found in Appendix C.

  2

  The Armies which Passed in the Night

  ‘You’re going the wrong way!’

  In the high days of the British Empire this had been the derisory greeting whenever two troopships passed within hailing distance of each other. In this instance the motley collection of rear personnel and RAF ground crew, outward bound to safety and comfortable billets, received very little change from the passengers aboard SS Ascanias, pushing up the wide estuary on an opposite course, bound for the port of Rangoon. Whether anyone aboard Ascanias replied to the ragtag and bobtail across the water is not recorded; since they were travelling to fight, and since they came from the opposite end of the military spectrum, they seem to have dismissed the yelling mob as being exactly that.

  For on board Ascanias was the most experienced and battle-hardened formation in the British Army, the 7th Armoured Brigade, the original Desert Rats, victors of Sidi Barrani and Beda Fomm, who had counted their prisoners by the acre at Buq Buq and who had fought the Afrika Korps to a standstill in the bitter battles around Sidi Rezegh.

  Originally destined for Malaya, they had been diverted upon receiving the news that Singapore had fallen, and were now heading towards the rapidly deteriorating situation in Burma. Only two of the brigade’s three regiments, 7th Queen’s Own Hussars, commanded by Lt-Colonel F. R. C. Fosdick, and 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, commanded by Lt-Colonel R. F. Chute, were present, the remaining regiment, 6th Royal Tank Regiment, having remained in the Middle East.

  Already irritated by the glib remarks of the evacuees, the brigade’s officers were somewhat depressed by the comments of the civilian river pilot, who told them that for some reason he did not think they would be permitted to land, and that if permission was granted, no one would escape since the Japanese were getting close to Rangoon.

  As if to emphasize the point, whilst the Ascanias and the SS Birch Bank, which carried the brigade’s vehicles, were manoeuvring to take up their berths, the town’s air-raid sirens began to wail dismally, although no air attack developed.

  However, one crumb of comfort was provided by the Brigade Commander, Brigadier J. Anstice, who had flown in ahead, and was now waiting for his men on the dockside, apparently unaffected by the depressing atmosphere. Anstice was able to tell his senior officers that the Japanese did not possess an adequate anti-tank gun, and if their tanks could be got to show themselves, they were easy meat.

  Rangoon was in a state of chaos. The civilian population, including the dock workers, had been evacuated, and, possibly for their own protection, someone had liberated not only the town’s criminal element, but also its lunatics as well, and this unholy alliance was well and truly on the rampage. Nor did this orgy of liberation end there, as Captain the Rev N. S. Metcalfe, 7th Hussars’ chaplain, discovered, on arrival at Rangoon Zoo with the transport officer for the purpose of supplementing the regiment’s meagre transport resources with RAF vehicles abandoned there.

  ‘Fortified by the report that all the animals of a dangerous nature had been destroyed, we made our entry only to discover that some were very much alive, and outside their cages! There was a tense moment when it was discovered that a “tree trunk ” was really a crocodile, and a “rope ” hanging from a tree was a full size boa constrictor!’ There was also an orang-utan loose in the town itself, handing out a nice line in assault and battery to anyone who crossed its path.

  Very few facilities were available to assist the brigade’s arrival, and the philosophy of self-help ensured that after both regiments had unloaded their vehicles, everyone was able to stock up with cigarettes and spirits from the bonded warehouses along the docks, which were lying open to all comers. As vehicles were unloaded, they were driven to a rubber plantation at Mingaladon, about fifteen miles north of Rangoon, which became the brigade’s leaguer area for the next few days.

  Here, the general situation was explained to them. The Japanese invasion had begun on 15th January, and had made steady progress. Opposing the enemy was 17th Indian Division, a young inexperienced division which had already suffered severe casualties, and 1st Burmese Division composed of newly raised Burmese battalions with a stiffening of Indian regiments, which was short of artillery. An approach had been made to the Australian Government for an infantry division with which to hold Rangoon, but the Australians wisely declined the request, having sacrificed more than enough men to lost causes in Singapore. The sky was largely the property of the Imperial Japanese Air Force, and although the few British and American aircraft fought hard, the odds were too great for them, especially after the early warning system had collapsed.

  The British had been steadily pressed back until their line came to rest on the Sittang River, approximately 25 miles to the east. The Sittang line was not expected to hold, and the first task of the 7th Armoured Brigade was to supply a squadron to form a line about five miles west of the Sittang, through which 17th Indian Division could retire and reorganize at Pegu. The position for the stop line was chosen in the area of Waw, and B Squadron 2 RTR were despatched there on 23rd February, having reported themselves complete within twenty-four hours of landing.

  Arriving at Waw, Major J. Bonham-Carter, commanding B Squadron, found a typical Bur
mese village, consisting of lightly constructed buildings made from highly combustible materials, each with its own compound and separated from its neighbours by earthen banks topped by a cactus hedge. A canal ran from north to south through the village, and was spanned by a flimsy bridge which would not take the weight of the Stuart tanks. A company of Cameronians was placed under his command, and orders received that the bridge was to be held as long as possible, and not allowed to fall intact into enemy hands.

  In the meantime, a disaster of the first magnitude had overtaken Major-General Smyth’s 17th Indian Division. So fast had been the Japanese advance that it seemed that they would capture the decked railway bridge over the Sittang, which would have left the door to Rangoon wide open. The situation was considered to be so desperate that the bridge was blown whilst two of the division’s three brigades were on the far bank. Many of the men swam across, and others built rafts, but the net result was that the fighting strength of the Division was reduced to only 3,400 men, of whom only 1,500 were armed. However, the Japanese were themselves exhausted by their efforts and before they moved again, 17th Division had been reorganized and re-equipped at Pegu.

  On 25th February B Squadron were relieved at Waw by Major M. F. S. Rudkin’s C Squadron. Finding the field of fire inhibited by buildings in the area of the bridge, Major Rudkin burned the deserted village, placed several drums of petrol on the wooden bridge, and had the uprights wired for demolition. During the hours of darkness, the Squadron leaguered 800 yards to the west, leaving the infantry to watch the canal.

  During his second night at Waw, Rudkin was on the bridge with the infantry company commander, the sapper officer, and a covering bren party.

  ‘About 2300 hours a figure was seen moving at the far end of the bridge. We held our fire as it slowly crossed the bridge. As it came closer it was seen to be a man in Burmese dress. When he was threequarters of the way across the infantry company commander challenged him in Burmese. He replied in English and we told him to approach, covering him with rifles, suspecting a trap. To our surprise, however, he turned out to be a sergeant of KOYLIs who had just come through the Japanese lines disguised as a Burmese. He had been cut off some days previously on the Sittang. He told us that the Japanese were advancing in two forces, one passing two or three miles north of the village, and one to the south, and he considered that if we stayed where we were, we would be completely outflanked. After this we continued our vigil on the bridge with some degree of tenseness.