The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  The next day, 8 August, was a critical day for Mountbatten. A full conference was held on the entire British strategy in South-East Asia and the Far East, attended not just by Alanbrooke and the chiefs of staff plus Mountbatten and Wedemeyer, but also by Churchill himself, Attlee, Eden and Oliver Lyttelton. The meeting was exhausting, not just because of its seven-hour length but because it had to be scheduled to fit in with Churchill’s peculiar and eccentric timetable. It began at 11 a.m. and went on until 1.30 p.m., when it was adjourned to accommodate the Prime Minister’s habitual bibulous lunch and post-prandial nap. It resumed at 6 p.m., went on until 8.30 p.m., was adjourned again for dinner and then resumed at 10.30 p.m. for another two hours.16 Mountbatten found himself under fire from two directions: from Churchill, who was still adamant that he wanted an invasion of Sumatra; and from the service chiefs, who wanted all resources to be concentrated on a purely Pacific strategy. His only real ally was Eden, who championed the attack on Rangoon as the best chance for a quick end to the war in Burma, but his idea that the Australians might be willing to take part in this was quickly rebutted by a negative cable from Canberra. Nonetheless, Eden recorded that Mountbatten, who had begun the day very unhappy, finished it very content, confident that DRACULA was making progress.17 Although he supported Mountbatten on this issue, Alanbrooke had found the day a severe ordeal.

  Just back from our evening conference with the PM. It was if anything worse than any of the conferences of the day. I believe he has lost the power of giving a decision. He finds every possible excuse to avoid giving one. His arguments are becoming puerile, for instance he upheld this evening that an attack on the tip of Sumatra would force a withdrawal of Japanese forces in northern Burma and would liquidate our commitment in this area. We have conferred for seven hours !!! with him today to settle absolutely nothing. Nor has he produced a single argument during the whole of that period that was worth listening to. I am at my wits’ end and can’t go on much longer!’18

  Although Alanbrooke supported DRACULA, he found the opposition of Churchill and the military planners in the War Office hard to overcome, while feeling his customary disillusionment about the Supreme Commander himself. On 11 August he reported a busy day, ‘culminating with quite hopeless letters from Dickie Mountbatten to Marshall, which he sent me to look at!! I had to tell him that he could not send any of them and should attend COS on Monday with Wedemeyer and we could tell the latter what he should say to Marshall.’19 From Alanbrooke’s tone, one can infer that at least part of Mountbatten’s rejected correspondence had to do with Stilwell, for Brooke knew from his own bruising encounter with Marshall in June what his American counterpart’s reaction would be to any criticism of his protégé. On 17 August he noted in his diary the obstructionism of the War Office over the Rangoon project. The planners flatly declared impossible the date of March 1945 for an assault on Rangoon, but in a two-hour meeting Alanbrooke adequately refuted their claims. However, he was disillusioned about having to browbeat the people who were supposed to be on his side, in addition to his violent conflicts with Churchill. ‘There are moments when I would give anything just to get in a car and drive home, saying I was fed up with the whole show and they could look for someone else to fill my job!’20 His final meeting with Mountbatten laid down the parameters for DRACULA. On the assumption that the European war would be over by the end of 1944, he would begin transferring troops to Burma on 1 October: ‘It is a gamble, but I believe one worth taking.’21 While Mountbatten flew back to Ceylon, Alanbrooke departed in the Queen Mary with Churchill for the second Quebec conference. This was to doom DRACULA. The Americans were lukewarm about the project from the start, but grudgingly said they would go along with it provided northern Burma was not starved of resources as a result. Half-promises were made about withdrawing six divisions from the Italian campaign, but Pownall presciently warned Mountbatten not to get his hopes up.22 He was right. The go-ahead for DRACULA had always been predicated on the assumption that Germany would be defeated by the end of 1944, but by the latter stages of the year, with Allied setbacks at Arnhem and later in the Battle of the Bulge, such a prediction looked increasingly chimerical. At a cabinet meeting on 2 October, Churchill announced that no forces could be diverted for the Rangoon venture and that it would have to be postponed until after the 1945 monsoon. Alanbrooke, however, knowing Churchill’s pathological fondness for peripheral operations, suspected that the Prime Minister would backslide and attempt to do something for his protégé Mountbatten.23

  While Mountbatten was in London, Stilwell flew down from Myitkyina to Ceylon to exercise his prerogative as deputy supreme commander and take the chair while the Supreme Commander was away. The decision surprised everyone, as Myitkyina still held out, but by now Stilwell was convinced its fall was imminent. At first there was some apprehension, as ‘the announcement that he actually intended to do so aroused in Kandy the emotions of Rome awaiting Alaric the Hun [sic]’.24 Stilwell was full of confidence, knowing that Myitkyina was on the brink of surrender, with the defenders on a quarter of a bowl of rice a day, and unfazed by Mountbatten’s hostility (by this time he knew his SEAC boss was intriguing to have him removed). He wrote blithely: ‘At one time or another all the best people have attempted to get the can attached, but have somehow slipped up on it – up to now anyway.’25 He showed exactly what he thought of Mountbatten when he was met at the airport in Ceylon by a showy official limousine (a black Cadillac). Demonstrating enormous contempt, he barked: ‘Get me a jeep.’ He then drove up the mountain to Kandy in the jeep with the Cadillac behind with all his luggage, playing the gallery touch, ‘with his leg hanging over the side in what seemed to some a petty and unnecessary show of disdain’.26 He joined Mountbatten for an uneasy farewell lunch in the King’s Pavilion (the Supremo’s official residence), and remarked afterwards: ‘I’ve got to quit eating with Louis. I actually like those rum cocktails.’ The next three weeks were something of an idyll after the stress of Chungking and the hardships of Myitkyina. The Japanese duly surrendered there on 3 August, and a few days later came official confirmation of Stilwell’s promotion to four-star general. The congratulations poured in. One NCAC regiment, presumably changing its tune now that victory had been achieved, sent a message to say that nothing like Myitkyina had been achieved in military annals since the Iliad. Stimson sent him a message of congratulation, saying: ‘I never signed a commission which has given me greater satisfaction.’ Stilwell told his wife that Ceylon was a paradise, like Hawaii, and something akin to Shangri-La after the rigours of northern Burma.27

  Stilwell made a point of underlining the contrast between himself and Mountbatten. He abolished the daily conferences and excoriated the rare planning meetings in his diary as ‘dumb’, ‘sad’, ‘zero’, ‘make-believe acts’ and ‘crappier than usual’.28 According to his account, as the days of laid-back dolce far niente continued, Mountbatten’s staff started to dread their boss’s return: ‘I have let them do their own work and cancelled most of their belly-ache meetings. Now they realise they must again face the daily blast of wind and paper, and they don’t relish the idea. We almost had it on a commonsense basis.’29 In a letter to his wife he was exultant about the fall of Myitkyina: ‘We finally got Mitch. It was a bitch of a fight and with the raw troops we had, full of anxiety, but we are sitting pretty now. What a bitter dose that was for the Limeys. They said it was impossible so often and so vehemently that they just couldn’t believe it was true.’ He also told her of Mountbatten’s arrival from London at Ceylon on 24 August: ‘I went down to Colombo to welcome Mountbatten on his return. I went to the zoo first to look at the monkeys just to get in the mood. He was not at ease with me, which is not surprising because his trip had to do with an operation on his deputy’s throat. Maybe the fourth star threw a monkey wrench into the machinery.’30 In glaring and blatant contrast to Stilwell’s account of his time at Kandy and his joyous reception by the SEAC staff, Mountbatten had this to say: ‘All my senior staff, British a
nd American, reported to me on my return that he had been quite incapable of taking charge or giving any useful directions at theatre level.’31 When historical accounts clash as violently as this, it is worth asking whether either version expresses the truth. As so often, both were right and both were wrong, depending on their premises. It was an open secret that Stilwell was bored by logistics, administration and committee meetings, and it may well be believed that all the staff at Kandy except the very highest echelons welcomed the holiday from paperwork. It was the top brass, with their status diminished by Stilwell’s reforms, who complained to Mountbatten. His liking for daily conferences and committees is at first sight puzzling in so impatient a man, for such characters usually like to speed through meetings in half an hour, ruthlessly using their own chairman’s guillotine. In Mountbatten’s case, the lust for speed and ‘cutting through’ was at war with an equal and opposite relish for micromanagement, which only the daily conference could satisfy.

  With the Supreme Commander back, Stilwell did not tarry long, and on 30 August left Ceylon for Delhi and thence, a week later, Chungking. By this time Mountbatten’s suspicion and paranoia about his deputy was such that when he was out of touch, en route for Chungking, he at first imagined Stilwell had secretly stolen off to the second Quebec conference. He got his own back by finally visiting Myitkyina and seeing the Irrawaddy from the air for the first time.32 But soon he had more serious matters to attend to. Following the Cabinet decision on 2 October, the bad news about DRACULA was conveyed to him, and at first he was prostrated with shock, scarcely able to believe what he was being told. He wrote to Edwina in something like terminal despair, and then indited a long letter to his ally Eden, explaining why the Rangoon operation was so crucial. It was clear, he wrote, that DRACULA could not now take place before January 1946 at the earliest, which was not only a betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of British troops in the India-Burma theatre but an abandonment of the British Empire. If Britain failed to reconquer at least one former colony by the end of the war, its prestige would be rock bottom and irremediable. The jealousy of the United States was the main culprit, along with their absurd concentration on China, which was now irrelevant to the outcome of the war in the Pacific anyway.33 Feeling that he could not just sit idly by while epoch-shaking decisions were being made by world leaders, Mountbatten decided he would have to attend a conference in Cairo in mid-October, which, in a bizarre replay of 1943, immediately followed a conference at Quebec. The so-called second Cairo conference, however, turned out to be no more than a 24-hour stopover for Churchill, Alanbrooke and the rest of the prime-ministerial party. For Alanbrooke indeed it was of even shorter duration, as he told his wife on 8 October: ‘It is hard to believe that I dined comfortably in England yesterday, had breakfast in Naples today and may have my dinner in Cairo, and possibly breakfast in Crimea tomorrow with lunch in Moscow!!’34 By the time Mountbatten reached Cairo, Churchill and the others were in Moscow. Mountbatten sought official permission to follow them there but was warned off by Churchill in no uncertain terms. Since Stalin was not at war with Japan, the presence there of the SEAC commander would flout all the protocols of international diplomacy.35 A despondent Mountbattten moped about Cairo for a while, feeling himself to be in a time warp, since in 1943 Churchill had also flown on for a conference with Stalin, leaving him behind (on that occasion the conference was in Tehran). To make matters worse, Mountbatten was informed by his friends in Churchill’s inner circle that the cancellation of DRACULA was going to be used as a pretext to get him to cut his staff at Kandy, and there was going to be enormous pressure on him to move to Calcutta. The only consolation was Churchill’s remark to Eden, which he passed on: ‘I give Dickie full marks. We gave him a lousy job but he has performed it splendidly.’36 The Supremo had to take what pleasure he could from a meeting with King Farouk. He reminded the portly monarch that they had met in London in 1937 at the screening of a Ginger Rogers film. ‘He informed me that he had met her in person since then, and had been very thrilled. I was able to counter that I had also met her in person since then, and had not been very thrilled.’37

  While Mountbatten was thus occupied, Slim was pressing ahead with detailed planning for CAPITAL. The first stage was completing the rout of the enemy, and the second was detailed planning for what would happen once 14th Army was across the Chindwin. As his field commander in the pursuit he used Stopford. With 4 Corps resting at Imphal, 33 Corps would advance along the Tiddim road, with 5 Indian Division in the van, to destroy the remnants of Japanese 33 Division. Meanwhile 11 East African Division would advance along the Tamu road to destroy the vestiges of Japanese 15 and 31 Division. The two Anglo-Indian divisions would then converge at Kalemyo, at which point the Tiddim road would be abandoned as a supply route in favour of the Kabaw valley and airdrops. At the beginning of August 11 East African Division entered Tamu, to find it a chaos of corpses, the dying and the diseased.38 The pursuit along the Tiddim road was led by 5 Indian Division, with the enemy fighting delaying actions all the way and the road resembling a gigantic rubbish dump as the fleeing Japanese jettisoned a variety of impedimenta: postcards and letters from home, souvenirs, family photographs and curious cartoons exhibiting everyday life in a Japanese home.39 The regular troops were immensely assisted in this sweeping operation by Slim’s own hand-picked force of irregulars – the Lushai Brigade, consisting of Indian soldiers, Chin levies and British officers, Slim’s version of LRP and in his view far superior to the Chindits. The brigade operated with great success in the wild country south of the Tiddim road, acting as a gadfly on the enemy flanks and cutting the Japanese communications.40 The Japanese evacuated Tiddim on 6 October, but there was hard fighting in this sector all the way to the Chindwin, where 5 Indian Division was to make for Kalewa, with another Victoria Cross being earned. The pathetic remnants of Japanese 15 and 31 Divisions managed to struggle across the Chindwin with their foes in hot pursuit. More and more prisoners were falling into Allied hands by now, mainly those too weak and starved to go on; the British tended to be sympathetic to these scarecrow starvelings but the Indians went in for atrocities in revenge for previous wrongs.41 Next Slim sent units across the Chindwin to test enemy strength on the other side, preparatory to building bridgeheads for a general crossing. First across were the East Africans of the King’s African Rifles, marching east from Tamu to Sittang, aiming for the Kabaw valley and Kalewa, but they immediately ran into much stiffer resistance, especially from elite units among the retreating Japanese, who felt new confidence once over the river.42 Resistance also stiffened on the Tiddim–Kalemyo road when the strongpoint of Kennedy Peak, 8,800 feet high, was reached. Kalemyo was occupied on 14 November, at which point Slim ordered 4 Corps to cross the Chindwin and capture Pinlebu, while Scoones sent 19 Indian Division across at Sittang. A ferocious three-week struggle for Pinwe ensued, with the Japanese losing large numbers of their precious tanks; in this battle they had four main enemies to contend with: heavy artillery, devastating airpower from the RAF and USAAF, disease, and the monsoon itself. Finally the key position of Kalewa was captured on 28 November, again after heavy fighting.43

  What sounds like a smooth and streamlined operation on paper was not accomplished without terrific losses and significant setbacks. Slim was lucky that DRACULA was knocked on the head, as Mountbatten had intended to order 14th Army back to Imphal so that the men could be rested preparatory to the amphibious attack on Rangoon, and had issued contingency orders to this effect. Determined to present him with a fait accompli, Stilwell, Giffard and Slim all opposed this idea, and as acting supreme commander Stilwell had the clout to implement their wishes.44 Yet most of the obstacles were more mundane, many of them the effects of the monsoon, which was due to last until mid-November. Traversing the Manipur river was itself an ordeal, even though there were no Japanese to contest the crossing. One hundred yards wide, the river boasted a raging torrent, swollen by the monsoon floods, which ran at 12 knots, sweeping away the firs
t flimsy ferries and drowning their occupants. Stouter ferries were built to defy the Manipur in spate, and the crossing was finally effected on 16–19 September.45 As the troops advanced, pioneers and engineers built supply roads behind them, often cantilevering sections of the track from cliff faces. Casualties, too, were not insignificant. Half of 33 Corps’s total strength of 88,500 men were engaged in the post-Imphal pursuit of July–November 1944, and they sustained about 80 per cent losses, while 5 Indian Division counted 88 killed, 293 wounded and 22 missing during their progress from Imphal to Kalemyo, but killed 1,316 of the enemy and took 53 prisoners.46 Total casualties in both 4 and 33 Corps amounted to 50,300, but at least 47,000 of these succumbed to serious tropical diseases, including 20,000 malaria cases.47 The malaria rate in 14th Army at this stage was 84 per cent, but a dramatic turn-round was at hand in the shape of new drugs, new treatments and new preventive measures, so that by March–April 1945, the sickness rate from malaria had come down to an almost incredible one in a thousand.48 All that, however, lay in the future. By late November 1944, Slim could congratulate himself on a superbly efficient advance conducted in the teeth of the monsoon, and in the face of mud, torrential rain, bridgeless streams and the inroads of disease. As has been well said: ‘It was an achievement that would have been unimaginable two years or perhaps even one year previously – the achievement of an army whose commander inspired it to feel at home with the impossible.’49