The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  When news of the Chiang–Wavell contretemps reached Washington, there was predictable consternation. President Franklin Roosevelt had a genuine ‘complex’ about China: he regarded it both as part of the US sphere of influence and as an indispensable means of promoting American hegemony in the Far East, despite a wealth of evidence that Chiang was both unable and unwilling to deliver these particular goods. In vain did General George Brett, the US commander in Chungking, who shared Wavell’s low opinion of Chinese capability, point out that Wavell had in the end accepted the offer of one Chinese division, provided that all supply and commisariat were done from China. In vain did the British argue that Chiang’s Chinese were mere dogs-in-the-manger: they had an inexhaustible hunger for Lend-Lease materiel but never used it effectively. Meanwhile in Burma, matters were becoming explosive. Chinese supply officers there refused to hand over the Lend-Lease supplies to the British and were threatened with confiscation in return. A furious Chiang, in what he thought was a studied insult but which probably passed Wavell by, offered the British 20 machine guns from his store in Rangoon. In Chungking he refused to see the British ambassador and threatened total non-cooperation with the British Empire. At a deeper level, Chiang was alarmed at the rapid reverses suffered by the Anglo-Saxons in the first month of war with Japan, and even more so by Roosevelt’s adoption of a ‘Europe First’ grand strategy, which appeared to sideline Asia.19 Roosevelt’s military chief of staff, General George C. Marshall, became seriously concerned. He shared the President’s view that Chiang might pull out of the war, and that if China collapsed all Asia would defect to the Japanese. Roosevelt considered that humouring Chiang was the number one priority in the Pacific war, for a Chinese defeat might well lead to the Japanese conquest of India, and then would follow the nightmare scenario of a German–Japanese link-up somewhere in the Middle East, cutting off the Soviet Union completely.20 Quite unfairly, both Marshall and Roosevelt saw Wavell as a blinkered blimp and determined to bring him to heel by studied Machiavellianism. The first step was to lean on Churchill to get him to agree to force Wavell into a kind of fusion with Chiang. To the considerable anger of the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke (later Viscount Alanbrooke), Churchill agreed to the establishment of a new command, to be known as ABDACOM (American, British, Dutch, Australian and Chinese Command).21 At first it was proposed to ‘sweeten’ Chiang by offering him command of the entire body, but Roosevelt soon had second thoughts. Knowing Chiang’s relish for grandiose titles, he appointed him Supreme Allied Commander of the Chinese Theatre (which he effectively was anyway) and made Wavell Supreme Commander of ABDACOM.

  There was little Wavell could do once Churchill had agreed to the American proposal, but he must have seen that he was being offered a genuine mission impossible. After all, Japanese triumph in this precise area was all but complete. Burma was included in the new command, which stretched 5,000 miles in a crescent to New Guinea – a line three times as long as the Russian front. ABDACOM was divided into three sectors: Burma and Malaya; the archipelago of the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia); and the south-eastern islands extending down to Australasia. Only in Burma was there a realistic chance of defence even on paper. ABDACOM was formally set up on 15 January 1942 and from its inception suffered from predictable problems: the Dutch were peeved about not having been consulted; the Australians, becoming increasingly anti-British, were worried about the possible invasion of their homeland and having their forces deployed so far from home; while the US naval commander in South-East Asia, Admiral Thomas Hart, resented having to take orders from a ‘Limey’.22 Yet Wavell did all that could reasonably be expected of him. He replaced the overcomplacent commander in Burma, General Donald Kenneth McLeod, with General Thomas Hutton, but this was a poor appointment, as Hutton was no fighting general. Much of January was taken up with a futile attempt to shore up the fighting spirits of senior personnel in Singapore. None of the troika there was impressive. The commanding officer, General Arthur Percival, was out of his depth (he was said to be so ‘wet’ you could shoot snipe off him), as were the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, and the colonial secretary, Stanley Jones.23 Wavell should have had the determination to sack all three and impose martial law, but he let matters drift. As is well known, the British defence of Singapore was conducted on the assumption that any attack must come from the sea, for the landward route through jungle was ‘impenetrable’. Wavell was too busy in January 1942 to challenge this absurd assumption, for he spent much of the time in a plane, flying between Java, Malaya, Singapore and Calcutta, almost as if mere energy might make up for military planning.24

  The British defeat in Singapore on 15 February 1942 and the loss of this jewel of the British Empire in the East, together with the surrender of 100,000 able-bodied British troops, does not form any part of our story, but it clearly demonstrated that supreme command of ABDACOM was a poisoned chalice. Wavell duly informed the American Pacific commander General MacArthur that it would fall to him henceforth to keep open the supply link to Australia while he concentrated on Burma. After handing over Java to the Dutch on 25 February, Wavell returned to India. ABDACOM was wound up, military responsibility for Burma reverted to India and Wavell took the blame for failure in South-East Asia even though halting the Japanese there, with exiguous airpower, was beyond Allied capability.25 In any case Wavell had his hands full elsewhere, for despite the sanguine forecasts he and others had made, the Japanese launched their attack on Burma in mid-January, far earlier than anyone expected. The rotten apple in this barrel was Siam (Thailand). After initial resistance when a Japanese invasion force landed, the Thais signed a treaty with Japan, agreeing to become her ally.26 This allowed Japanese forces to mass on the Siam/Burma border. General Shojiro Iida had clear-cut aims: first seize Rangoon and Mandalay, then the oilfields at Yenangyaung. Wavell was wrong-footed by the speed of the Japanese advance and in any case had guessed wrongly at their strategy. He had expected that any Japanese thrust into Burma would come in the centre of the country via the Shan states and had put his main line of defence there. He ordered General Hutton to place his fighting formations well forward so that all possible approaches could be pre-empted.27 But when the attack came in the south, Wavell was seriously alarmed. He flew to Rangoon, recalled the 7th Armoured Brigade from Singapore and advised the commander of the Rangoon garrison, Major General Sir John Smyth, who commanded 7,000 men of 17th Division. Unfortunately these were raw and unreliable troops, with one half of the division having been trained for desert warfare and the other half not trained or equipped at all. Facing them now were 18,000 crack Japanese troops.28

  The Japanese began their campaign against Rangoon with a series of ‘softening-up’ air raids on the Burmese capital. The first one, on 23 December 1941, killed 1,250 souls (and a further 600 subsequently died of their wounds), largely because there was no civil defence or air-raid precautions. By the time of the third raid, the casualties were down to 60 killed and 40 wounded, mainly because large numbers of the population had already fled.29 When the invasion proper began in mid-January, the first Japanese target was Moulmein, a town with a population of 50,000 on the western bank of the Salween river. Wavell was reasonably confident of halting the enemy on the approaches to Rangoon, since the way was barred by three rivers, the Salween, the Bilin and the Sittang. Smyth and his troops were well dug in and there was much wild talk about making Moulmein a second Tobruk, although the civilian population deserted in droves, not willing to await the outcome.30 But the omens were scarcely propitious: the British wildly understimated their foe; Hutton and Smyth did not get on; and Wavell was rarely available to advise and conciliate his warring commanders, since at this stage he was still shuttling around South-East Asia as commander of the ill-fated ABDACOM. The Japanese began by outwitting their opponents, infiltrating the jungle with small parties. Displaying astonishing mobility, they used bicycles or animals for transport, going lightly equipped with small arms, dressed in trainers (sneakers), s
hirts and gym shorts and carrying iron rations (four days’ supply in a single pack). The British by contrast moved around in trucks, with full equipment and large weapons, and were kitted out with helmets, gas masks, heavy boots, tinned food, etc, etc. Some observers later remarked that they made the very same mistakes the redcoats had made against the American colonists in the war of 1775–83.

  The fighting around Moulmein was bitter but one-sided.31 To Wavell’s disgust, the Japanese rolled up their opponents with surprising ease, and by 30 January the defenders had been driven out in humiliating circumstances. Wavell stormed down to the front and raged at the commanders of the luckless 2nd Burma Brigade who had just lost Moulmein. ‘Take back all you have lost,’ he thundered.32 Hutton promised him he would hold Martaban to the west of the Salween. On 10–11 February the Japanese, reinforced by two new divisions of 18,000 men, crossed the Salween in force and quickly outflanked Martaban. In danger of being encircled, Smyth asked Hutton for permisson to retreat again, which was reluctantly granted. In London, Alanbrooke fulminated at the endless stories of British defeat. Such a lack of fighting spirit was, he declared, incomprehensible, but if it continued, the British would deserve to lose their empire.33 The second river, the Bilin, proved no obstacle at all, since it was at low water and easily fordable. Smyth retreated all the way to the Sittang and pleaded with Hutton for reinforcements. Hutton, though, at this juncture came close to mental collapse. In desperation he signalled that his position was impossible, that he was overstretched and that he desperately needed two things: a corps commander to conduct operations and a liaison team to deal with the intractable Chinese. Incredibly, he received no answer to the signal, for its recipient, Wavell, had just sustained one of those bizarre accidents in which the careers of Allied commanders in Burma abounded. On 11 February, he got out of his car on the wrong side and toppled over a barbed-wire sea wall, sustaining serious injuries. He was in hospital for four days in Java, incommunicado.34

  By the time he was on his feet again, more terrible news had come in. Smyth had suffered a devastating defeat on the banks of the Sittang, in a bloody battle that seemed to confirm the military superiority of the Japanese at all levels. In despair, Wavell signalled Churchill: ‘We have got to fight REPEAT fight these Japs sometime somewhere. Burma is not ideal geographically but represents almost our last chance to show the Japs and the world that we do mean to fight.’35 The disaster at Sittang made Rangoon’s evacuation inevitable, and the British carried it out in stages. By 24 February the capital was a ghost town, as the Burmese vanished en masse and the Indian police abandoned their posts. Everywhere there were scenes of chaos as law and order broke down. Criminals and lunatics, released from their cells, roamed the streets, looting and raping.36 Wavell, returning from convalescence, took a swift revenge on Hutton and Smyth, both of whom he held responsible for the recent disasters. Smyth was replaced by Major General David Cowan on 1 March, while Hutton suffered an even greater humiliation. It was announced that he was to be replaced but that until further notice he would be the new man’s chief of staff. Churchill had never had full confidence in Wavell ever since the Iraq affair in 1941, and now he suspected him of not being on top of the situation in Burma. He announced that the new corps commander in charge of operations, under Wavell, would be his favourite general Harold Alexander. Maybe in response to the implied rebuke, Wavell’s normal urbanity deserted him and he lost his temper in public at a reception, accusing all and sundry of incompetence.37

  ‘Alex’, as he was generally known, arrived in Burma on 4 March. A child of privilege, educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, he was commissioned in the Irish Guards and wounded four times during the 1914–18 war on the Western Front. A great favourite with the men, he held a trench against sustained machine-gun fire and was awarded the Military Cross and the DSO. In 1919–20 he commanded Latvians successfully against a threatened Bolshevik takeover and then served in Turkey and Gibraltar before being appointed to the staff college at Camberley in 1926. Gaining rapid promotion, he attended the Imperial War College in 1930–31 and saw action on the North-West Frontier in 1934–36, as a result of which he was made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India and mentioned in dispatches. In October 1937, after a brief spell as ADC to King George VI, he was posted back to India and became the youngest general in the British army. In 1940 he took part in the retreat to Dunkirk and was again mentioned in dispatches. After a tour as Officer Commanding in Chief, responsible for the defence of south-west England, he was picked by Churchill as the ideal person to pull imperial chestnuts out of the fire in Burma.38

  Whether ‘Alex’ was the right man for the job must be debatable. Although incontestably brave and a keen sportsman, he was not, in majority opinion, very bright.39 He had certain attributes, however, that endeared him to most observers. Even more than Wavell, he was imperturbable and unflappable, the quintessence of that ‘cool’ so admired in officers of the Second World War. As soon as he arrived he cancelled Hutton’s orders for a withdrawal and ordered an advance on Rangoon with all the heavy armour he could muster. The luckless Hutton lingered on until April, when at his own request he was transferred to India. He was not given another command. Wavell meanwhile advised Alexander that he must fight hard for Rangoon but not sacrifice his men needlessly; if, after they had given all they could give, Alex still thought the situation was impossible, he should pull back. Alexander accordingly ordered the advance. As his troops approached Rangoon there was an eerie silence, with vultures wheeling in the sky overhead.40 His men entered the city and began destroying anything that could be of conceivable use or value to the enemy. On 7 March the sky was lit up as £11 million worth of installations belonging to the Burmah Oil Company was blown up – an action that would lead to 20 years of high court litigation after the war.41 The fall of Rangoon was also a disaster for Lend-Lease stores, with 972 unassembled trucks and 5,000 tyres being put to the torch. The squabble between Chiang and the British about the destination of 900 trucks and jeeps and 1,000 machine guns was thus rendered academic. Next day Alexander came under Japanese counterattack and was close to being surrounded and his entire command wiped out; escaping just in time, he then found that the enemy had cut off the route north to Prome with a roadblock. A massive tailback of marching columns and vehicles built up and catastrophe seemed imminent when the Japanese suddenly took the cork out of the bottle and opened the road north.42 Why they removed their roadblock is still disputed. Some say they did not realise the extent of the victory they could have won simply by standing pat; in a word, their intelligence was faulty. Others say that General Sakurai Shozo, the Japanese field commander, was determined above all to take Rangoon and did not want to be sidetracked; bitter resistance was expected from the encircled British army and he preferred to consolidate his gains rather than be sucked into a slugging match that was irrelevant to the capture of Rangoon. Whichever interpretation is correct, ‘Alex’ had had a lucky escape. By rights he should either have been taken prisoner or killed in the fighting. The Japanese meanwhile entered Rangoon on 9 March to find it completely deserted.43

  Such was the lamentable state of affairs when Slim arrived on 19 March to take up his corps command.

  He made an impression immediately. He was one of those people so quietly confident of his own abilities that he saw no need to make a splash or throw his weight around. Unlike so many other generals, he did not bring with him to the new appointment an entire cadre of favourite staff officers. ‘I don’t travel with a circus,’ he said – a palpable hint at the prima donna antics of ‘Monty’ (Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was famous for the gallery touch).44 Slim had a look of bulldog tenacity and was squarely built, with a heavy, slightly undershot jaw and short greying hair.45 With his famed lucidity – doubtless honed in his secondary occupation of writing adventure stories – he made a brilliant multicausal analysis of why British forces had performed so disastrously hitherto. Undoubtedly the root cause was that British commanders in South
-East Asia had had no real guidance from London. The complacent assumption had been that Singapore was impregnable and therefore the scenario of a Japanese invasion of Burma was chimerical and need not be addressed. It followed from this that all the second-order ‘on the ground’ factors militated against British success in the event of an actual invasion. British intelligence was extremely bad, particularly about the situation in Siam and its possible knock-on effects; British troops were ill-trained and ill-equipped for jungle warfare; the combat units were below strength in men and materiel and had been deployed ineptly; morale was low.46 The British administration of Burma was atrocious at every level. Burma had been neglected and shunted from one governing body to another – to India until 1937, to the British chiefs of staff from 1937 to 1940, to Far Eastern Command in 1940, and finally to Wavell’s ill-starred ABDACOM in 1941–42; in 16 months there were five separate headquarters responsible for the country’s defence. As for civilian administration, what could be of poorer quality than the Burmese civil service? As soon as the Japanese invaded, there was mass desertion of personnel in the police, local government and utility companies. The so-called administrative class of civil servants was no better. Later in the 1942 campaign a delegation of top Burmese bureaucrats approached Slim and asked him not to fight in the exclusive residential district of the Sagaing Hills (in the bend of the Irrawaddy opposite Mandalay). Slim replied crisply that he would oblige provided the Japanese did likewise. Privately he shook his head in stupefaction, wondering what planet these Burmese mandarins were on.47