The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Naturally Slim was secretly pleased that DRACULA had been knocked on the head, as it competed for scarce resources with CAPITAL. In this regard the signal sent from the Quebec conference on 16 September was crucial: ‘Your object is the recapture of all Burma at the earliest possible date.’ This final paragraph of the Quebec directive was the historical covenant, so to speak, that enabled Slim to realise his aspirations. But it must be stressed that Slim, unlike Wingate, was always prepared to put his ambition on hold for the greater good; he never forfeited his integrity. As his biographer has commented: ‘Slim was no Patton, seeking personal glory. If a viable DRACULA could have been mounted, promising genuine success, he was too good a soldier and too dedicated to his country’s interests not to have welcomed it.’50 Mountbatten, though sometimes ambivalent about Slim, was on this occasion gracious in defeat, and on his return from Egypt, he relieved him of responsibilities in the Arakan sector so that he could concentrate on CAPITAL. Mountbatten did of course have an ulterior motive, for if he was to be denied amphibious glory at Rangoon, he could use combined operations to secure a minor victory at Arakan. Accordingly, on 8 November, he ordered an attack on the Japanese positions there by the end of January at the latest, and assigned the task to 25 Indian and 2 West African Divisions.51 Slim was glad to be relieved of overseeing Arakan, as throughout September and November he faced the massive job of retraining and restructuring his army. Fighting around the Irrawaddy would be very different from that at Kohima-Imphal, and not just because it would be an offensive campaign of movement as against the defensive, First-World-War-style attrition waged in March–June. Predominantly hill and jungle warfare would give way to fighting in the open country, where Slim hoped to use his tanks decisively. The rethinking and retraining was rigorous, but was never imposed in an authoritarian way from above. Not only were Slim’s ‘cabinet meetings’ of his senior officers very democratic, with everyone being allowed a full say, but Slim was a good delegator. He always allowed his generals to show initiative in the field, and never breathed down their necks – an indispensable attribute in an army commander directing a campaign over such vast distances; a micromanager would have been a disaster. As a result of his laid-back attitude, great trust was established between Slim and his corps and divisional commanders.52

  By this time Slim had built up the organisation of 14th Army to the point where every cog in the overall mechanism worked in a streamlined way. Scoones was expecting to direct 4 Corps (the battle-hardened 7 Indian Division and the ‘virgin’ 19 Indian Division) in the Chindwin crossing, but Slim thought him too slow and ponderous for the campaign of movement to come, and kicked him upstairs as Commander-in-Chief, Central Command, India. He replaced him with a personal favourite, Frank Messervy, and ensured that he had a similar hard-driving deputy in Peter Rees to head the greenhorn 19 Indian Division. Slim had an uncanny ability to read men’s strengths and weaknesses, and realised that Messervy, despite his Patton-like qualities as a fighting general, was not stable and balanced enough in judgements calling for nuance and discrimination. He therefore appointed Brigadier Eddie Cobb as his chief of staff. Messervy read the runes correctly and construed this as a veiled criticism, with Cobb functioning as a brake to curb his excesses. He protested to Slim that he knew nothing of Cobb, that Cobb did not fit his requirements as a chief of staff. Slim’s curt response to this was Attlee-like. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘no Cobb, no Corps.’ Messervy accepted defeat. To sugar the pill, Slim told him that he was allowed to take risks in the campaign, as the enemy was demoralised.53 Yet Slim did not just concentrate on his field commanders. He also had a wonderful hand-picked support team, among whom Colonel Alf Snelling (chief quartermaster), Brigadier ‘Tubby’ Lethbridge (chief of staff) and Major General W.F. Hasted (chief engineer) featured prominently. Like all great commanders, Slim was a master of logistics, and he understood perfectly the constraints he would be operating under once in Burma. Staff studies showed that the maximum force supportable beyond the Chindwin – 400 miles from the Dimapur railhead and 200 miles from the nearest air-supply base – was four divisions.54 Slim had to balance the realities of airpower against the numbers he needed to penetrate Burma, while also bearing in mind that the numbers themselves might be difficult to attain, for 14th Army was being crippled by malaria, battalions were falling in numbers, and reinforcements were not coming through fast enough.55

  Slim also had to appraise the balance of power, both his own strengths and weaknesses and those of the enemy. After Imphal, the Japanese had implemented a major personnel change, against all tenets of their military culture and almost unprecedented at such a high level; such was the trauma of their defeat on the plains of Manipur. Both Mutaguchi and Kawabe were transferred to staff jobs in Tokyo. Heading their army in Burma now was General Kimura Kyotaro, a shrewd, tactically skilful and flexible commander; Lieutenant General Tanaka Shinichi was transferred from 18 Japanese Division in north Burma to be his chief of staff.56 By the end of October 1944, the Japanese were on the run in all theatres and had just sustained a catastrophic naval defeat at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. Their new conception was to have Siam (Thailand) and Malaya as the outer periphery of a fortress zone, even though it was cut off from Japan by aggressive and highly successful US submarine warfare against the sea lanes to the homeland. The combination of Kohima-Imphal with Mogaung and Myitkyina mean that by autumn 1944, Kimura’s role was reduced to defending southern Burma as the northern flank of their new ‘South-East Asia defence zone’. With few reinforcements or supplies to look forward to, Kimura had grim prospects. On paper he had ten divisions (2, 15, 18, 31, 33, 49, 53, 54, 55, 56), though this was really seven, since little remained of the three divisions that had been devastated at Kohima-Imphal. He also had the dubious support of Bose’s INA and Aung San’s seven-battalion Burma National Army, but the civilian population was increasingly going over to the side of the likely winners.57 Unexpectedly, Kimura received 30,000 fresh troops in the period June–October, but his problem was more commissariat than raw numbers, since he was rapidly running out of supplies. Even those he had – 45,000 tons of food, 500 lorries and 2,000 pack animals – were difficult to get to the front, and Kimura was painfully aware that the situation could only get worse. The South-East Asia zone was slowly being throttled by the Allied naval blockade, all approaches to Rangoon were mined, and in 1944 total Japanese shipping losses amounted to 2. 3 million tons. Even those ships that ran the blockade would proceed no farther than Penang in Malaya.58

  On some indices, Japan had already reached the stage of total desperation, for the number of boys aged 12–14 pressed into military service in Tokyo rose from 700,000 in October 1944 to one and a quarter million by February 1945.59 Nonetheless, Slim had some difficult calculations to make. By stretching airpower to the limit and beyond, he reckoned that he could put four and two thirds divisions across the Chindwin, plus two tank brigades. This was where the Arakan operation would be vital. The maximum range of the Dakotas was 250 miles, but if the Anglo-Indian forces were able to seize the islands off the Arakan coast – Akyab, Cheduba, Ramree – they would acquire air bases that would bring southern Burma within range.60 Even though 15, 31 and 33 Japanese Divisions had ceased to exist, and Kimura had to keep some troops back to deal with Stilwell in the north (and later the incursion in the Arakan), the enemy should be able to put five and one third divisions and one tank regiment in the field. Would this be enough to secure victory? Once again airpower would be crucial and decisive, and the extent to which the Allies dominated the skies in South-East Asia was almost laughable in its crushing superiority. They had more than 1,300 planes, while the Japanese had just 64. The RAF had 627 aircraft in Burma in December 1944 and the USAAF 691. By March 1945 these figures had increased to 772 and 748 respectively.61 As always, war had engendered some quantum leaps in technology, so that the picture of aerial warfare was changing rapidly. By installing extra fuel tanks and cruise controls, USAAF Liberators were now capable of a b
omb load of 8,000 pounds over a maximum range of 1,100 miles.62 The RAF Beaufighters meanwhile proved an ideal aircraft for attacking railway locomotives and rolling stock, as their rockets could penetrate railway sheds and hangars. Strategic Air Force Operations to destroy Japanese transport systems and infrastructure would seriously reduce their military power.63 And in December, with the end of the rains, the well-known perils of the monsoon for fliers would no longer manifest themselves; the worst were the terrifying thunderstorms in cumulonimbus clouds that no plane could climb above and which were capable of tearing apart even a huge aircraft like the Liberator.

  Until December 1944 Slim had a clear-cut strategy. Having established bridgeheads at Sittang, Mawlaik and Kalewa, he intended to cross the Chindwin and engage Kimura between there and the Irrawaddy. His guess was that the Japanese would dig in along the formidable jungle-clad mountains of the Zibyutaungdan range (2–2, 500 feet high), 25 miles east of the Chindwin and running parallel to it for 120 miles. Slim intended to prise them out by piercing this defence in two places, with Messervy’s 4 Corps (7 and 19 Indian Divisions, plus 255 Tank Brigade) on the left and Stopford’s 33 Corps (2 British Division, 20 Indian Division and 254 Tank Brigade) on the right. Messervy’s 4 Corps would break out of the Sittang bridgehead, strike east through the mountains, take Pinlebu and then come in on the Shwebo plain from the north, while 33 Corps would advance from Kalewa, following the course of the Chindwin south-east to Yeu and Monywa – all of them places well known to 14th Army from their ignominious retreat nearly three years earlier. Once the Japanese were winkled out on to the open plain, Slim’s vast superiority in planes and tanks would enable him to annihilate them.64 He was relying on the usual Japanese psychology, the reluctance to admit defeat, the desire to go down fighting and, most of all, the almost certain refusal to give up Mandalay without a fight. But Kimura was a wily bird and quickly divined Slim’s intentions. Why should he fight on the Shwebo plain, where Slim had a clear comparative advantage; was that not the sort of madness that had dragged Mutaguchi down to disaster at Kohima-Imphal? To Slim’s intense disappointment, it soon became clear that Kimura had no intention of being gulled so easily.65 From the ease with which his troops penetrated the Zibyutaungdan range, it soon became clear that Kimura would not be fighting on the Shwebo plain. Instead he left small forces to delay the British and withdrew across the Irrawaddy, intending to counterattack when the British crossed that river. Basically his intention was to pull off an Imphal in reverse, exhausting the Anglo-Indians by attrition and then destroying them as they retreated in the monsoon of May 1945. He ordered his men to dig in at two points, leaving himself free to manoeuvre, both at the curve of the Irrawaddy at Sagaing, opposite Mandalay, and downstream from Mandalay; both positions gave him the option of a further defence in the triangle of the Irrawaddy delta. Slim would now have to make the difficult traverse of the Irrawaddy and then defeat the Japanese – a much tougher proposition than his original estimate.66 So far Kimura, having been dealt a very bad hand, was performing brilliantly. What would Slim do next?

  The first weeks of December were anxious ones for him. It did not help that the entire senior personnel of SEAC were in a state of flux, largely because of Mountbatten’s megalomania. October was a key month for ‘Dickie’, as he saw the back not only of Stilwell (against whom he had intrigued assiduously) but the three chiefs of staff who had ‘defied’ him. All the problems basically arose from the fact that the creation of the post of Supreme Commander, South-East Asia, was a nonsense that had never been properly thought out and was simply one of Churchill’s ‘bright ideas’.67 Mountbatten, with his vaulting ambition, always wanted to be a generalissimo, not a mere committee chairman, in which case, as the chiefs of staff ruefully concluded, what was the point of them and what was their role supposed to be? Either they or the supreme commander were an unnecessary layer in the military hierarchy. In land warfare the complex system would work only if the supreme commander, the army commander and the general actually directing the campaign were all of one mind. Mountbatten and Slim meshed perfectly, and Slim and Giffard collaborated well because Giffard always gave his subordinate his head. But Mountbatten and Giffard was an impossible mixture.68 Temperamentally poles apart, they seemed to differ at every conceivable level. For Giffard fighting during the monsoon was dangerously irresponsible, personal visits to buck up the men’s morale were mere grandstanding, and Mountbatten’s entire style was personally and aesthetically repugnant. Detesting Stilwell as he did, Giffard thought that both Slim and the Supreme Commander deferred to him too much. Resenting the entire system that had made him Mountbatten’s underling, and disliking the man personally, Giffard habitually sided with the other commanders, Peirse and Somerville, who both felt exactly as he did.69 Whatever Mountbatten proposed, the trio opposed as if by reflex action. Sacked in May, Giffard was still in post in October because of the difficulty of finding someone to replace him; a general had to be found who was both competent and could put up with Mountbatten, and this was never going to be easy. The obvious solution was for Slim to take over Giffard’s role, but the Supreme Commander opposed this, ostensibly because Slim was too valuable where he was. This argument might have worked in March–June 1944 during Kohima-Imphal, and again after December when Slim was engaged in CAPITAL, but had no validity whatever in the intervening period. The suspicion arises that, consciously or unconsciously, Mountbatten was jealous of Slim. Already in the habit of taking credit for the other man’s achievements, Mountbatten may have felt that this would be impossible if Slim was at the very nerve centre of power. The suspicion is enhanced by Mountbatten’s refusal to have Slim in either Giffard’s job or that of Pownall, as his chief of staff, when Pownall retired in the autumn.70

  The reason Giffard was not replaced more rapidly can be laid at the door of Mountbatten’s prima-donna antics. Both the replacements for Giffard and Pownall became snarled up in wrangles about who should get the jobs. For the Pownall post Generals Swayne, Nye and Lushington were all proposed and rejected by one side or the other. To supplant Giffard, Pownall had very early identified Oliver Leese as the likely candidate, but he was heavily involved in operations in Italy and could not be switched immediately. Leese was a Montgomery protégé who had commanded 30 Corps at Alamein and then the 8th Army in Italy.71 The obvious unsuitability of a man with a background in European and desert warfare for the very different campaigns in Burma seems to have troubled no one in London, though Churchill, for reasons of his own, did not confirm the appointment until 14 September; there was then another six-week hiatus before the Prime Minister officially informed Leese of his promotion. Giffard returned to London, where he put his side of the story to Alanbrooke; having heard both his and Mountbatten’s version of events, the CIGS was in no doubt that Giffard had had ‘a very raw deal. I blame Henry Pownall for a great deal of it, for he should certainly have been able to control Dickie better than he did. In any case I feel certain that most of the credit for the Burma success is due to Giffard.’72 Having removed one of the incubuses who so tasked him, Mountbatten used the excuse of Peirse’s adultery with Lady Auchinleck to get rid of him.73 It seemed that adultery was a heinous crime when committed by Peirse but not by Mountbatten or Edwina. Peirse was replaced by Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, but he was killed almost at once and replaced by the unknown New Zealander Keith Park.74 The most persistent thorn in Mountbatten’s side, possibly because he was the most intelligent of the three chiefs of staff, Admiral James Somerville, also moved on, and was replaced by Bruce Fraser. The Supreme Commander was mightily relieved to see depart the sea dog of the old school who had always regarded him as an upstart, overpromoted pup, but Fraser was a stopgap appointment, and was transferred almost immediately to command the new British Pacific fleet. Mountbatten wrote on 15 November: ‘I shall miss Bruce Fraser so much; he has been such a wonderful change after James Somerville and has produced an entirely new atmosphere throughout the whole of the Eastern Fleet st
aff.’75 Fraser in turn was replaced by Admiral Arthur Power. Although he had merely the ships left behind by Fraser to form the so-called East Indies Fleet, his force was far better integrated into SEAC than the Royal Navy ever had been before. Churchill had made it a point of understanding with the Admiralty that whoever was appointed this time had to defer to Mountbatten. Superficially pleased, Mountbatten suspected that the new dispositions were a mere sop to him while the Admiralty transferred its real affections to the new Pacific fleet.76 At least he could now visit the fleet, whereas under Somerville all his attempts to do so had been sabotaged.77

  Mountbatten’s precious behaviour continued to grate on Alanbrooke, and the London–Kandy correspondence quickly became acidulous, the CIGS taking the Supreme Commander to task for seeming to imply that the Burma war was the only one being waged. The tedious negotiations for Pownall’s replacement finally bore fruit when Lieutenant General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, veteran of the Arnhem campaign, was appointed. Pownall hardly helped matters by advising Mountbatten that Browning was not really up to the job, but Browning himself regarded the posting as a bed of nails. Alanbrooke noted that he was not exactly overjoyed by the assignment: ‘he took it well, but I doubt whether in his heart of hearts he was thrilled.’78 Always conscious of his age, and the lack of gravitas this conferred, Mountbatten consoled himself with the thought that Browning was only three years older than he was; in fact he later turned out to be one of the Supremo’s favourite officers.79 If he had been lucky so far with the replacements, Mountbatten fell spectacularly at the final hurdle. He had allowed his personal exasperation with Giffard and his wounded amour-propre to override the consideration that the really important military relationship, that between Giffard and Slim, had worked smoothly and effectively. Two out of three of the core relationships had been successful. Now he had engineered a situation where only one of the three elements, the Slim–Mountbatten nexus, was functional. The new army commander-in-chief, Oliver Leese, got on neither with Mountbatten nor with Slim. He seems to have been appointed almost entirely on the good word of Pownall and because of Mountbatten’s irritation with Giffard, not on any real merits. Alanbrooke, who was always very shrewd about British officers, while being hopelessly at sea in his judgement of Americans (because he did not understand them), had long had doubts about Leese and thought he would not get on with Mountbatten. ‘He is certainly not anything outstanding as a commander,’ he wrote in August.80