The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  In retrospect the appointment of Stilwell created the classic situation of an accident waiting to happen. The person sent out should have been someone with deep sympathies for both Chiang and the British, someone prepared to use the dual sympathy to build bridges between these uncertain allies. But Stilwell detested both the people he was supposed to work with. A convinced ‘Pacific-firster’ who saw the war with Japan as a conflict representing the USA’s true interests, as opposed to the war in Europe, which was primarily of concern to the British, in the privacy of his journal Stilwell poured out all his bile against the hated ‘Limeys’. He despised Roosevelt for being (allegedly) Churchill’s dupe, and wrote witheringly about the President: ‘The Limeys have his ear, while we have his hind tit … the Limeys want us in with both feet … The Limeys want us in, committed. They don’t care what becomes of us afterwards because they will have shifted the load from their shoulders to ours … And by God the Limeys now say it is impossible for Great Britain to produce even the munitions she needs for herself, and we must keep up our offerings or else. I don’t know what ‘or else’ means, but I would like to ask them. And tell them what they can do.18 No one has ever satisfactorily explained why Stilwell was such an Anglophobe. Partly it was an idiom of the time, a relic of the very strong undercurrent of isolationism in the USA, and the conviction that Europe liked to use the Americans as a ‘cash cow’. Partly it was the widely held belief that ‘Europe first’ was a big mistake; this was the stance taken by another notable military Anglophobe, Admiral Ernest King.15 It has been suggested that in Stilwell’s case it may have had something to do with his deep resentment of his parents’ love of pomp, ritual and strict hierarchy, which he always associated with the ‘Limeys.’20 With Vinegar Joe, visceral distaste of a ‘fee-fi-fo-fum’ kind was linked with contempt for Britain’s military policies, and in his journal he liked to inveigh at some favourite targets. He claimed that a unified Allied command in the Far East was impossible because the Brits could not even agree among themselves, with high levels of inter-service rivalry and factionalism. ‘The “Senior Service” sits disdainfully aloof. No one can command them – it is not done. The arrogant RAF will have none of it’.21 Moreover, Wavell’s snubbing of Chiang and his subsequent forced recantation showed the calibre of Britain’s top brass. According to Stilwell, Wavell simply ‘didn’t want the dirty Chinese in Burma’.22

  But if he detested the British, Stilwell was no more enamoured of the Chinese. He spoke of their leaders as ‘oily politicians … treacherous quitters, selfish, conscienceless, unprincipled crooks’. Their generals had an ‘inherent distaste for offensive combat’ because of their tradition of winning campaigns by outlasting the enemy.23 Chiang Kai-shek was the past master of the doctrine of outlasting. Cynical about Chinese casualties, on the grounds that with her vast population China could always absorb them, Chiang had the fixed purpose of inveigling the West into his conflict with Japan so that they would do his fighting for him. He saw the Western powers as actuated by mirror-image motives. The Anglo-Saxons, in his view, wanted to deflect the full might of Japan against him, so that they would not have to fight to defend Singapore, Hong Kong and the rest of the British Empire in Asia. He noted that in the past, Britain and the United States had warned Japan off from Indochina, Siam, the Dutch East Indies and even Siberia, but never from China. To Chiang, ‘Europe first’ was simply a slogan masking the West’s desire that China should do all the fighting in the Far East. The Chiang military doctrine, then, if we can call it that, came down to three main propositions. One, attrition: China had the manpower to outlast Japan. Two, the long game: in the end, he and the Kuomintang would be bailed out by the West when it was forced into all-out war with Japan. Three, and this went to the heart of Chiang’s world view: his real enemy was the Chinese Communists, not Japan; it followed that he must soft-pedal in the fight against the Empire of the Rising Sun and conserve all his resources for the eventual reckoning with the Communists.24 That was why in January 1941, to Roosevelt’s consternation, he had attacked Mao Tsetung’s New 4th Army instead of fighting the Japanese.25 Whether at this stage Stilwell was aware of Chiang’s complete grand strategy is doubtful, but he had already met the man, taken his measure and formed a strong dislike for ‘the Peanut’, as he would ever afterwards refer to him. The first meeting between the two was in Chungking in December 1938. After a superficially cordial encounter, Stilwell wrote afterwards: ‘Chiang Kai-shek is directly responsible for much of the confusion that normally exists in his command … his first consideration is to maintain his control over the best troops and material so that his position cannot be threatened.’26 Chiang’s aim was to keep all his subordinates in the dark: if they know nothing, then by definition they cannot plot against him. For instance, he never gave top-class artillery to his divisions, so that its generals would not have the power to oppose him. Stilwell’s ‘take’ on Chiang was unerringly accurate, and he was to prove a true prophet. Chiang’s defenders then and since like to say that Stilwell ‘lacked real knowledge of Chinese culture, politics, the aspirations of the Chinese and the ability to evaluate them’.27 It seems more likely that what engendered his many critics was simply that he saw the reality of China under Chiang only too clearly.28

  Stilwell’s mood in the weeks before his departure was singular, and inappropriate for the role he had been assigned. He read everything he could lay his hands on, including confidential material Marshall made available to him, but it merely depressed him further. It now transpired that one of the reasons Wavell turned down Chiang’s offer of two Chinese divisions at Lashio was fear of upsetting the ethnic Burmans, who loathed the Chinese, if anything, even more than they hated the Indians. So, mused Stilwell, what confronts me is a hostile native population who detest both the British and the Chinese, the people who are supposed to win a war in Burma. ‘Archie [Wavell] now claims he never refused help. Said he’ll take two [Chinese divisions] and for the time being leave the other division where it was. Somebody is a liar. Archie misled Peanut at Lashio and now they are both sore, each thinking the other ducked out on him.’29 On 28 January he noted despondently: ‘The very uncertain nature of the job, the unknown conditions and situation, all go to make it a heavy mental load. Will the Chinese play ball? Or will they sit back and let us do it? Will the Limeys cooperate? Will we arrive to find Rangoon gone?’30 Sensing his mood, pessimistic about British ability to hold the line in Burma and privately agreeing with Stilwell that Rangoon would probably have fallen by the time he arrived, Marshall made a number of important concessions to his friend. First he extended his remit by making it a quadripartite affair: Stilwell was to be the commander-in-chief of US forces in the CBI (China/Burma/India) area; chief of staff to Chiang; supervisor of all Lend-Lease materiel and US representative on any Allied war council. Marshall seemed unconcerned that this would produce the anomaly that Stilwell could end up with inferior ranking to a British general while wearing one of his hats and superior to the very same person while wearing one of the others. In addition, although Marshall had previously promised Chiang that his personal favourite Claire Chennault would be ranking air commander in China, to please Stilwell he announced that the Americans would have their own independent air commander, Colonel Clayton L. Bissell, with whom Chennault was known to have an ancient feud. Finally, Marshall promised Stilwell that if Rangoon had fallen by the time he arrived in Burma, he would have the option of transferring to Australia.31

  Stilwell and his Washington-recruited staff flew to Miami on 11 February and left the USA three days later, at first on a Pan American seaplane. With a stopover in the Caribbean, he headed first to South America, then across the Atlantic to West Africa, thence to Cairo, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Delhi, the later stages flying in Douglas DC-3s. The first lap of the journey was enlivened by a friendship he struck up with the wealthy and powerful newspaper proprietor Clare Boothe Luce, who became an immediate fan.32 While he was in the air, Singapore fell and 80,000 British troops
were taken prisoner. On landing in India, Stilwell attended his first conference with his British allies, where he was appalled by their ignorance about Burmese geography and politics. Predictably he found General Alan Hartley, commander-in-chief of the Indian army, a figure of fun, and mocked his ‘far-back’ accent: ‘Miracles do happen in wah, don’t they. One does enjoy a cawktail, doesn’t one. It’s so seldom one gets the chawnce. In my own case, I hardly have time for a glass of bee-ah.’33 It has to be said that if Stilwell was an a priori Anglophobe, the British officer class certainly provided him with plenty of circumstantial ammunition. He then flew down to Calcutta to meet Wavell, who had just arrived from Java, and found him ‘a tired, depressed man, pretty well beaten down’.34 On the day of their meeting, Rangoon was being evacuated, but Stilwell did not take up Marshall’s contingent offer of a move to Australia. Then it was on to Lashio for a conference with Chiang (3 March). This involved a four-and-a-half-hour flight over the Brahmaputra delta and into Burma. The generalissimo did not reveal his true colours at first and was in relaxed mood after what he considered a triumphant visit to India the month before. As Stilwell noted: ‘The Limeys thought they were impressing their guests but the Chinese were laughing most of the time. Actually Chiang Kai-shek was much more impressed with Gandhi and Nehru than with the whole damn British Raj.’35 Stilwell was right about that, for Chiang’s visit, however much it pleased him personally, had turned into a public relations disaster. Officially encouraged by FDR to visit India and talk recalcitrant Congress leaders round to the Allied cause, Chiang had done no such thing but instead delighted in Gandhi’s anti-Western jibes. Gandhi pointed out that the fact that the Allies deliberately excluded Chiang from summit conferences hardly made a compelling case for India to back the West. Charmed by Gandhi, Chiang then went public with a plea for Churchill to make concessions to the Indian nationalists. Churchill, who had famously declared that he had not become prime minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire, predictably saw red.36 But Stilwell’s worst fears about Chiang were confirmed when he asked what the generalissimo’s plans for operations in Burma were; Chiang replied stony-faced that there were none. On 9 March Stilwell went for dinner with the Chiangs and was asked to stay behind afterwards for a private session that lasted two hours. Chiang reiterated his favourite line about the long view and defence in depth, making it clear he had no intention of sacrificing Chinese divisions for the defence of Mandalay.37

  Like all Western visitors, Stilwell was charmed and intrigued by Chiang’s beautiful wife, Soong Mei-ling, still something of a beauty though already in her forties. Brought up in comfort by a wealthy family and US-educated, she spoke perfect English with a Georgia accent, which helped her popularity with Americans. Married to Chiang since 1927, she was the original trophy wife, Chiang’s fourth. Rather than outright polygamy, Chiang favoured serial monogamy with a bevy of mistresses on the side, but he relied heavily on his wife’s ability to read American culture and attitudes. Her union with Chiang was not so much a marriage of convenience as a demonstration of the aphrodisiac of power. To amend a phrase about another famous couple, he gave her power and she gave him sex appeal. Destined to live to the age of 105, Soong Mei-ling was in her younger years a perfect example of what the psychologist C.G. Jung called a ‘power devil’.38 At her meetings with Stilwell, Madame Chiang liked to make caustic remarks about the British, which he relished. Less to his taste was her penchant and favouritism for Colonel Claire Lee Chennault, an adventurer overdrawn on his military bank account, so to speak. In 1937 Chennault, an amateur aviator, was living in pauperised retirement in Louisiana, having been invalided out of the US Army Air Corps for partial deafness. For a while he kept the wolf from the door and even gained a measure of short-term fame by running a flying circus known as ‘Three Men on a Flying Trapeze’.39 When Japan invaded China in 1937, Chennault had the ingenious idea of forming a band of aerial mercenaries that would fight for Chiang. Using undercover slush funds made available by the US government in its clandestine bid to halt Japanese ambitions, Chennault was able to offer his volunteer pilots between $600 and $750 a month plus a bonus of $500 for every Japanese plane shot down.40 The so-called 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) was formed and began taking on Japanese fighters in dogfights long before Pearl Harbor. The AVG were popularly known as the ‘Flying Tigers’, from a Chinese proverb – ‘Like tigers with wings, their strength is irresistible.’ Flying fighter planes painted over to resemble the toothed maw of a shark, dressed in leather jackets and Hawaiian shirts, they acted like playboys and buccaneers, but Madame Chiang adored them: ‘They were my angels,’ she said, ‘with or without wings.’41 As a high-placed member of the Kuomintang, she naturally had a very complaisant attitude to corruption, and the US aid given to the Tigers led to a plethora of scams and rackets, ranging from payroll padding to gasoline hoarding. Fortunes were made, by both US and Chinese ‘entrepreneurs’ on ‘enterprises’ that had very little to do with any conceivable war effort.42 Presiding over this cornucopia of corruption was Claire Lee Chennault. Although many of the individual fliers were brave and dedicated men, everything to do with Chennault was essentially false. His own claim to be a fighter ace was apocryphal; many of his recruited pilots lied about their previous experience in fighters; the ‘dive and zoom’ tactics he favoured were not his own original invention but filched from the Russians; and the tally he claimed of 297 Japanese planes downed by the AVG before July 1942 was bogus: the true figure was 115.43 Nevertheless, for the Chiangs Chennault could do no wrong, and he was held to have strategic insights far superior to those of General Stilwell.43

  It has been suggested that Stilwell and Chennault were destined not to get on, being the proverbial chalk and cheese. Stilwell was a Yankee and Chennault a southerner. Stilwell was an introvert and a West Pointer where Chennault was an extrovert and a military iconoclast. Most of all, Stilwell had a deep feeling for the ordinary Chinese people while Chennault loved his niche among the Chinese elite and joined in their corruption and peculation with avidity.44 One of Stilwell’s first tasks, then, was to put Chennault in his place and re-emphasise that he was subordinate to Bissell. A two-hour flight took him over the route of the Burma road to Kunming, where he had a long talk with Chennault, who at this stage appeared friendly and cooperative.45 Then he flew back to Chungking, this time in the kind of heavy turbulence that all travellers over the Hump so feared, and tried to settle in at the house once occupied by the well-known leftist Sinologist Owen Lattimore. Chungking, battered by years of Japanese bombing, overpopulated, crowded with refugees, insanitary and ill-provisioned, was certainly no Shangri-La, with humid heat in summer and rain and mud the rest of the year. Every night an army of rats appeared, and everywhere was filthy, feculent, noisome and stinking; it was said there were enough bad smells in the city to last anyone a lifetime.46 Hyperinflation, the black market and every form of corruption was rampant; at the apex of the triangle of graft, peculation and defalcation stood Chiang’s dreaded secret police force and its sinister chief, Tai-li.47 Stilwell’s intention was to put distance between himself and all the unsavoury manifestations of the Kuomintang by building his own enclave of staff and headquarters. Some say that he was more a Montgomery than a Slim by having a massive staff, but the difference was that in China he could not select cadres from officers in situ, as there were none. This is the explanation for the 400 technicians who gradually arrived in Chungking after passage from the USA by sea. Stilwell had brought with him by air a core staff of 35 officers and five enlisted men – the officers partly old China hands and partly hand-picked aides from 3rd Corps at Fort Ord.48 One of his instructions – which was why he needed the technicians to train the Chinese – had been imposed on him while he was flying to Asia after one of FDR’s hurriedly convened cabinet meetings. This was to build a ‘back country’ route between India and China. Fearing the loss of Burma, Chiang wanted a road from Ledo to Assam that would cut through the mountains, forests and r
ivers of northern Burma to link with the Burma road at Lungling on the Chinese side.49 One of the problems was that Chiang, so often ensconced in his own dream world, thought this could be built in five months. Stilwell’s own experts reckoned the road would take two and a half years to build; hence the need for so many technicians.