The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Whatever emphasis we finally put on the deep and even unconscious dynamic between Slim and Wingate, there is no doubt that background, context, policies and personalities all made for the most difficult of working relationships. There was another meeting at Ranchi on 19 January but it seems to have been another dialogue of the deaf, with Slim reiterating that he had the final say and the power of veto and Wingate somehow imagining that he had been given carte blanche over the four battalions.57 But at a further meeting at Comilla on 26 January, crisis point was reached when Slim said that because of the developing situation in the Arakan, only one battalion was now available as back-up for the strongholds. Slim had always made it clear that the offer of four battalions was contingent on the overall picture in the Burma theatre and was a provisional offer; Wingate was adamant that he had been made an unconditional offer and angrily accused Slim of changing his mind and breaking his word. Slim replied that changed circumstances meant that the four battalions could be provided only if 14th Army had begun a general offensive. Wingate was not interested in an offensive by 14th Army as he thought Special Force the only thing that mattered. Slim, on the other hand, knew that the British had to win the battle in Arakan to raise morale and lay the bogey of Japanese invincibility. In a word, he had to be cautious, and here he was preaching caution to the high priest of audacity and even foolhardy recklessness.58 The two men agreed to sleep on it, but on the 27th, Slim announced that after further reflection he could afford no battalions for Wingate. He suggested that Wingate get the men he wanted from the West African Brigade. Wingate confessed that he thought he was going mad, that he now found himself right back at the start, and in a worse situation even than when he emerged from his convalescence at the beginning of December. He composed an angry memo, bitterly critical of Slim, gave one copy to Slim and sent the other to Mountbatten, along with a passionate letter suggesting that Mountbatten cancel Chindit 2 and relieve him of his post.59

  Mountbatten found himself in exactly the position he had long tried to avoid, caught in the crossfire between Slim and Wingate. Although he had initially been very enthusiastic about Wingate, he gradually came to accept Slim’s viewpoint that Special Force was more trouble than it was worth. But he knew he had to tread carefully, for Churchill had expressly appointed him to SEAC so that he could advance Wingate’s plans. Pownall agreed with him that Wingate’s prerogative of right of appeal to the Prime Minister was a danger to all of them, with the doomsday scenario being that Churchill would replace Slim with Wingate as commander of 14th Army. ‘This will bring the PM straight down on Giffard and Slim, for he has already expressed his doubts as to the quality of the military advice that Mountbatten has been receiving. He will jump at the chance of breaking another general or two and will then push very hard, and maybe successfully, to get Wingate installed in command of 14th Army – which would be a most dangerous affair. Wingate may (or may not) be all right as a specialist but he simply hasn’t the knowledge or balance to be in high command.’60 Mountbatten, trying to distance himself from the conflict, ordered Giffard to find a solution. Seeking a compromise, Giffard agreed to supply all the heavy artillery Wingate had been requesting for his strongholds and to release a Gurkha battalion to aid 77 Brigade in garrison work; the rest of the four battalions would be found from the 3rd West Indian Brigade. Initially reluctant – he was known to have peculiar views about the racial composition of the Chindits, accepting Gurkhas and Burmese alongside the British but no Indians on the ground that they were ‘second-rate troops’61 – Wingate grudgingly agreed. The 81st West African Division had arrived in India in August and would be followed in May 1944 by the 82nd. Wingate was less than impressed by the Africans. On arrival in India they had caused a sensation, with the locals convinced they were cannibals. They caused hilarity by mistaking blood plasma for jam and spreading it on their biscuits.62 These divisions from Nigeria, the grandiloquently named Royal West Africa Frontier Force, had originally been requested because it was thought that as Africans they would be natural jungle fighters. The reality was that most of them came from the desert areas of northern Nigeria, loathed the jungle and the monsoon and had a particular fear of river crossings. Nevertheless, blooded in the Arakan battles of January–February 1944, they soon proved their merit; eventually the Japanese would come to regard them as the best jungle fighters they ever opposed.63

  Mountbatten found himself inveigled more and more into the Slim–Wingate conflict when Operation THURSDAY began in earnest in February. The original plan had been an extended version of the first Chindit raid but in two waves, with three brigades making long marches across the Chindwin and into enemy territory; then, two or three months later, the second wave would go in to reinforce the first. But when he learned of the increased availability of transport planes, Wingate became keener on the idea of flying brigades in. One of his first ideas was to fly one brigade to Paoshan in China and then enter Burma from the east across the Salween river. Slim, however, cautioned that all river crossings on the Salween were heavily guarded; he recommended flying the Chindits in directly, saving them the fatigue of getting to the target areas and providing more time for effective operations.64 Once it was calculated that it would be possible to fly two brigades in at the beginning of March and two more later, Wingate decided that each wave would consist of one brigade marching in and two being flown directly to the target. He then went on a tour of the training areas to exhort the first three brigades that would see action (77, 111, 16). To general surprise, instead of briefing them on the forthcoming operation, he offered a lecture on Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar in 1648 and an analysis of Stonewall Jackson’s use of troops in the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War.65 Whether this was an unconscious admission of the truth of Slim’s observation that the Chindits could never be more than ‘strategic cavalry’, or mere Wingate eccentricity, his supporters predictably claimed that the men were enthused and invigorated by such a novel approach.

  There is continuing evidence of Wingate’s mental instability at this time, for it was at this very juncture that he began pushing hard in memo after memo for acceptance of his grandiose plans for an advance to Hanoi, which on his own admission would entail the use of 25 brigades or 100,000 men. Alarmed and alienated, Mountbatten wrote back witheringly that the overall Allied plan for the defeat of Japan would not necessarily permit Wingate to march the width of Indochina. Nothing daunted, Wingate raised his new strategic vision at a plenary session of the chiefs of staff; he told them that he was not interested merely in assisting Stilwell or even 14th Army but had wider ambitions and wanted clarification of this put to the chiefs of staff in London. Mountbatten responded with what one writer has called ‘a dignified rebuke’: ‘I am sure you had no intention of “putting me on the spot” last night but the fact remains that you suggested your LRPG operations should not go on unless the present ideas of world strategy were changed by the Chiefs of Staff!’66 Ever the master of the ‘non-apology apology’, Wingate replied that of course he was prepared to implement Operation THURSDAY as it stood. But he followed this letter up with an eight-page sequel on 11 February stressing that his Indochina ambitions were still intact and that he hoped eventually to link up with US forces in the Pacific. Having apparently accepted Mountbatten’s reproof at the front door, he attempted to re-enter by the back, asking for extra aircraft to be assigned to him. It was behaviour like this that made it very difficult for Mountbatten to defend Wingate against his many critics. Some Wingate observers claim that the stress of planning Operation THURSDAY was too great for a man not properly recovered from a major illness. Others, more cynically, claim that his essential madness was finally manifesting itself clearly.67 After further angry exchanges between Wingate and Mountbatten in February, Pownall wrote despairingly: ‘Wingate replied with a long-winded diatribe, accusing almost everyone of stupidity, ignorance, obstruction and much else besides … I shouldn’t be at all surprised if within the next three months it is proved th
at Wingate is bogus; at any rate he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work.’68

  So obsessed with his new quixotic plans was he that Wingate did not even see that the future of Special Force had suddenly become secure, since the campaign in Arakan fulfilled the necessary conditions for Chindit activity that both Mountbatten and Auchinleck had agreed on. His mind was elsewhere, dreaming of the temples and pagodas of Indochina. Yet reality soon impinged. Under huge pressure from Mountbatten, Giffard and Slim, he eventually had to accept that the objectives of THURSDAY were more limited than he wanted; Giffard told him that increased numbers were predicable on success alone, that if he wanted more brigades he would have to show significant gains. As a Parthian shot, or to save face, Wingate then demanded more planes. Slim explained that he could not spare aircraft from the Arakan operation, then reaching its climax, while neither Stilwell nor Chiang would agree to diverting aircraft from the Hump; not even Mountbatten had the power to order that. At first Wingate dug his heels in and refused to accept his orders as drafted at a private meeting with Slim, but next morning Slim got Giffard into the office and faced the Chindit leader down. Realising the game was up, Wingate accepted his signed orders with what Slim described as a ‘slightly wry smile’.69 The official aims of THURSDAY were described as: assisting Stilwell’s advance; creating favourable conditions for Y-force to cross the Salween; inflicting maximum damage on the Japanese in north Burma. The principal targets would be the Shwebo–Myitkyina railway and the Myitkyina–Bhamo–Indaw road. There would be four strongholds, to be designated Piccadilly, Chowringhee, Broadway and Templecombe (later renamed Aberdeen). The US 900th Airborne Engineer Company would clear strips suitable for Dakotas to land on. As usual, Wingate kept his cards close to his chest. Even to his closest confidants he was secretive and disingenuous. He told Fergusson that something he merely hoped for – that success at Indaw would see Chindit numbers automatically doubled – was actual policy endorsed by Giffard and Mountbatten. He divulged none of his intentions in THURSDAY to potential helpers in SOE, OSS or Force 126 on the grounds that there was too much empire-building, jealousy and amour-propre in these organisations (rich, coming from Wingate).70 Finally, on 4 February he and Stratemeyer issued the essential guidelines for Chindit 2, stressing that this time the wounded would be flown out from the strongholds rather than abandoned, as on the first expedition. Tired of his myriad bosses, Stratemeyer finally exerted himself and decided on support bombing of the stronghold areas prior to their establishment, rather than the deception bombing on Rangoon, Mandalay and Bangkok that Wingate had pressed for.71

  At last there was action rather than words, as Fergusson’s brigade commenced its long march from Ledo, looking more like a mule train than a commando force. Although Special Force was distinguished by its use of animals (apart from elephants it had 250 bullocks, 547 horses and 3,134 mules on its strength), this was the first time on THURSDAY that the efficacy of the mules was tested in operational conditions. Fergusson’s brigade, 4,000 strong, took 500 of the mules, fully laden, along with them.72 The brigade was suitably fussed over before its departure, with Mountbatten, Auchinleck and Giffard all making goodwill visits. All except the muleteers were taken the length of the Ledo road in huge lorries, noting the American blacks still labouring on the road as they passed. The road journey itself gave them an idea of what was up ahead, as it was like a scar cut through the jungle, with ascents up to 5,000 feet, hairpin bends, and half-built bridges taking them over raging torrents. Wingate himself joined Fergusson and his men for the start of the gruelling ascent up the Paktai, wading through mud slides, with the roar of the Ledo road traffic beneath them and deep blue smoke rising from the damp fires of the Chinese labour camps.73 The brigade had to cross cliffs, hills and ravines, often climbing thousands of feet on one-in-two gradients, then descending as sharply. The heavy loads they carried were made heavier by the torrential rain, rations were short and progress slow, varying between nine and 35 miles a day depending on the condition of the treacherous, slippery hills. Sometimes they reached an altitude of 5,000 feet through varying terrain, jungle or bamboo and teak forests.74 It could take all day to climb a mountain, and loaded mules often fell headlong to a gory death thousands of feet below. The sappers sometimes tried to ease the uphill climbs by cutting zigzag paths, but the steps usually crumbled before half the column had passed. Sometimes the ascents were so steep that the mules had to be unloaded and their burdens passed upwards by relays of hands. Every day was a living hell, with exhausted men flopping into an instant sleep at night.75

  It took them all of February to reach the Chindwin, but even then they were still about 200 miles from their target at Indaw. From what he had seen on the first few days before he returned to base, Wingate was secretly cast down, but he put a brave face on it and pretended not to be daunted. At the end of the three-week trek he flew in to observe the crossing of the Chindwin. Although Fergusson had been severely critical of his leader in January and even described him as a liar, he continued to be a true believer and said of Wingate: ‘He was sometimes wrong in small things but never in big.’76 At the time, though, Fergusson was exasperated about the small things. When Wingate touched down on an improvised airstrip on the far side of the Chindwin, Fergusson expected that he would be bringing with him 16 Brigade’s second in command and its signals officer. Instead he disembarked with four war correspondents and explained to a furious Fergusson that it was essential to publicise the Chindits’ activities.77 Wingate in turn was infuriated when Fergusson told him that 16 Brigade could not possibly reach Indaw earlier than 20 March, not the date of 5 March Wingate had originally scheduled. The generally sour atmosphere was not improved by Wingate’s ardent propagandising for a new fad, turtles’ eggs, which he declared provided singular nourishment. Like so many of Wingate’s eccentric ideas, this one did not win general approval: turtles’ eggs were found to be no more appetising than those of any other reptile, and in fact many of the Chindits experienced stomach pains and other digestive problems after eating them. One positive development was that No. 1 Air Commando successfully dropped rubber boats to supplement the rafts built by the troops on the ground, and it was this that made the crossing of the Chindwin go so smoothly. Otherwise, Fergusson’s men were not in good condition, but Wingate ordered them to attack Lonkin, 20 miles west of Kamaing, before proceeding to Indaw; this would be a diversion to help Stilwell.78 The demoralised and exhausted troops of 16 Brigade accordingly started to veer off towards Lonkin. Matters did not improve. The as-the-crow-flies distance from the Chindwin to Indaw was 150 miles, but the reality was that the Chindits would have to march 300–400 miles up and down razorback ridges, going from tropical storms and mud landslides in the valley to freezing cold but nonetheless flyblown conditions on the heights. Two sentries were found asleep at their posts and punished with a flogging from a massive sergeant major known to the Chindits as ‘Captain Bligh’.79 This was part of the brutal routine of draconian punishment that Wingate, with no legal sanction whatever, had ordained for the Chindit columns, and would lead to court-martial proceedings after the war. Eventually Fergusson decided to detach two columns only for the assault on Lonkin and to proceed towards his objective with the other six. This turned out to be a good decision, for Lonkin was found to be virtually empty of enemy troops.

  Back in the world of military politics and intrigue, Wingate continued to exhaust the patience of his nominal superiors, Slim, Giffard and Mountbatten. Both the theory and practice of LRP and Special Force were irreconcilable with the wider aims of Slim and Mountbatten, since Slim wanted to defeat the Japanese at Imphal before proceeding to campaigns in Burma, while Mountbatten still hankered after amphibious operations in southern Burma. Beyond this, ephemeral and contingent factors continued to complicate the triangular relationship – triangular because, in terms of deep dynamic, Giffard was largely a cipher. Having already lost the battle over the four battalions he wanted from Slim’s reserve in 26 Indian Division – he had
had to make do with 3 West Indian Brigade instead – Wingate was determined to win the second confrontation, over the units in the Chindits’ second wave. By mid-March Slim was involved in the massive battle for Imphal and it would have made no sense to leave 14 and 23 Brigades idle and on standby when every last man counted in this mother of battles.80 Slim proposed to use the two brigades in the defence of Imphal but Wingate, outraged, protested that they were his battalions. What was sauce for the goose … If Slim could deny him the use of the reserve in 26 Indian Division, then Wingate was entitled to deny Slim the brigades from the second wave. On 9 March he learned that Slim had actually ordered the two brigades into action and flew to Comilla to protest. Patiently Slim explained that Wingate’s attitude was dog-in-the-mangerism. It had never been the intention to use the reserve brigades in Burma until two to three months after the fly-in of the first wave, so use of the second-wave brigades in the battle of Kohima did not affect Wingate’s plans one iota.81 To appease the intemperate Wingate, however, Slim agreed to release 14 Brigade to him as soon as the crisis at Kohima eased and the battle stabilised; he was as good as his word. In this confrontation Wingate was being obtuse twice over. It was surely clear that in the dramatically changed circumstances of a major Japanese attack on Assam, it made more sense for the Chindits to be assisting Slim, and to be attempting to cut Mutaguchi’s communications rather than helping Stilwell.82 Moreover, if the Japanese won at Kohima, the British position in Burma would anyway be lost and the Chindit brigades cut adrift, left to wander aimlessly, starve, surrender or stage suicide attacks. Apart from anything else, Japanese victory at Kohima would mean that the Chindits could no longer be supplied from the air, which meant sudden death. Slim later confessed that he had been too soft with Wingate: he should really have cancelled the entire Operation THURSDAY and concentrated on the struggle for Kohima.83