The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  While 33 Corps was performing such heroic ‘back-room’ tasks, 4 Corps began the dash south for Rangoon at the beginning of April, aware that to beat Mountbatten’s DRACULA assault to the capital they would have to cover the 338 miles from Meiktila to Rangoon in 35 days. The units involved in the great push were 17 Division, 5 Division, 19 Division and 255 Tank Brigade. Slim aimed to smash through fast before the enemy could dig in at strongpoints. This worked well at Thazi, but around Pyabwe, 4 Corps ran into its first major obstacle. General Honda had built an impressive defensive line around Pyabwe and the surrounding villages, making them both mutually supportive and self-supporting from arms dumps within the villages. The road south of Pyabwe was cut by 255 Tank Brigade and on 10 April, Messervy’s men attacked. The first assault failed against a heavily bunkered position around the waterworks, and a second took 12 hours of desperate close fighting to make any headway. Finally, in some of the most vicious and sanguinary hand-to-hand combat yet seen, 48 Brigade took the heavily defended railway station and railway embankment areas.110 By dawn on 11 April, Pyabwe was in British hands, and 2,000 Japanese dead were counted in the town and surrounding villages. Slim noted grimly: ‘For its size, Pyabwe was one of the most decisive battles of the Burma war. It shattered Honda’s army, but it did more, it settled the fate of Rangoon.’111 Further to the north, 99 and 48 Brigades became bogged down around Yindaw where, on 7 April, the Japanese had a 1,000-strong garrison dug in behind a lake, protected by water channels and earthen banks, and defences bristling with mines, barbed wire and anti-tank guns. For three days the British could make no impression, so finally Slim ordered the two brigades to break off the engagement and bypass it, leaving the next attack to 5 Division coming up behind them. It became clear that the enemy was determined to contest every mile of the route to Rangoon, for 5 Division had no sooner reached Yamethin, a short distance to the south of Pyabwe, than they were hit by a 400-strong suicide squad, which infiltrated the town at night and then dug in for a kind of terrestrial kamikaze. Once again the delay was effective, and it took a further three days to wipe the defenders out.112

  Anxious about the relatively slow progress being made, Slim urged 5 Division on at record speed to Shwemyo, which they entered on 16 April, moving so fast that they caught the next would-be suicide squads only just starting to dig in. By nightfall on 16 April, 4 Corps’ vanguard was only 240 miles from Rangoon. Finding the next town on the railway line, Pyinmana, strongly defended, the armoured group bypassed it and seized the airfield at Lewe, 10 miles farther south, so that 5 Division could be resupplied by air. The next task was to dash for Toungoo, to get there before the Japanese could concentrate and dig in, and to seize the airfield that would bring Rangoon within range.114 Moreover, in a worrying communication, Slim was informed that DRACULA was now definitely scheduled for 2 May because of bad weather forecast thereafter; this left 4 Corps just 11 days to cover over 200 miles – about 20 miles a day – and the previously confidently quoted odds of 3–1 on for the corps to beat 15 Corps to Rangoon were now lengthened. Realising that he would have to take multiple short cuts now, and that in normal circumstances the Japanese could be expected to beat his men at Toungoo, Slim launched the Karen guerrillas on them, with predictable consequences: ‘The Japanese, driving hard through the night down jungle roads to Toungoo, ran into ambush after ambush; bridges were blown ahead of them, their foraging parties massacred, their sentries stalked, their staff cars shot up.’115 Hammered by the Karens and assailed from the air by fresh RAF attacks, the Japanese lost the race for Toungoo. On 22 April, 5 Division, in the van of 4 Corps, entered Toungoo having covered 50 miles in three days and delighted with their swift and easy victory. Now there were just 160 miles to cover, but only eight days left before DRACULA. On 23 April, at Pyu, 30 miles south of Toungoo, they received the lame surrender of the 1st Division of Bose’s Indian National Army, together with 150 officers and 3,000 men. The INA, always an object of derision for their countrymen in the Indian army, had taken a leaf out of Aung San’s book and decided that further resistance was hopeless.116

  On 24 April, 5 Division clocked up another 20 miles to Penwegu; they were 140 miles from Rangoon with seven days to go but utterly exhausted. They handed over the baton next day to 17 Division, who took it up and roared on to Daiku by the evening of 26 April, now just 80 miles from Rangoon with five days to go. But now came Kimura’s last hurrah. Deciding that the defence of Rangoon was impossible, he assembled every last man for a determined defence at Pegu, hoping to hold on there until the monsoon broke.117 On 27 April 17 Division got a whiff of things to come when they had to clear minefields and then tangle with suicide squads before they could proceed, but not before they had counted another 500 enemy dead on the line of march. Most of the next day they battled against stiff enemy resistance north of Pegu, until they arrived at nightfall to find Pegu a veritable fortress. Just 47 miles north of Rangoon, it was an ideal defensive position, as the town stood on both banks of the winding Pegu river with bridges conveying road and rail links to Rangoon. The Japanese had demolished both railway bridges and used the folds of the river to build a cunningly entrenched redoubt within the town.118 A two-pronged assault by 17 Division on 29 April was easily beaten off. Next day the British gained a precarious foothold on the west bank of the river, but the Japanese still dominated the intact road bridge and even audaciously tried to sever the road link to Toungoo in the rear of the attackers. Frustrated, Slim once again flew to the front and found morale encouragingly high. When the Japanese counterattack was finally beaten off, he spoke to one of the British gunners. ‘I’m sorry you’ve got to do all this on half rations,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about that, sir,’ came the answer. ‘Put us on quarter rations, but give us the ammo and we’ll get you into Rangoon!’119 There was now no more than 24 hours to get to Rangoon before the paratroops landed, but as the British tentatively advanced through the ruins of Pegu, they found the place honeycombed with mines and booby traps, causing further delays. Finally ready to advance on 2 May, they were overwhelmed by the torrential rains of an early-breaking monsoon (two weeks earlier than expected). Even as they sat down in the rain, word came in that, as Slim’s biographer rather glibly put it: ‘DRACULA had beaten EXTENDED CAPITAL by a short head.’120 Slim was stoical: ‘On the evening of the 2nd, when news of the successful landing south of Rangoon and the Japanese evacuation had been received, the 17th Division was halted in drenching rain 41 miles by road from its goal.’121 Kimura had lost at Pegu but he caused a delay that led 14th Army to lose as well. The 17th Division had to take what comfort it could from statistics. Since crossing the Irrawaddy, it had lost 719 men killed, 2,767 wounded and 71 missing, but had killed over 10,000 of the enemy, taking only 167 prisoners.122

  Operation DRACULA had been a marked success. Setting out from Akyab and Ramree island, six convoys sailed between 27 and 30 April. An immense flotilla accompanied them: four aircraft carriers, two battleships (one British, one French), two British and Dutch cruisers, two escort carriers, six destroyers (joining them from Trincomalee in Ceylon), 12 bomber squadrons and a screen of fighters. After a bombing blitz on 1 May, a battalion of Gurkhas was dropped, followed by fighters from the 50 Indian Parachute Brigade, in what some observers described as the last echo of the vanishing Raj, the last exploit of the once glorious Indian army.123 Meanwhile a pilot flying over the city saw written in large letters on the roof of the gaol: ‘JAPS GONE. EXDIGITATE’ (arch RAF cod-Latin for ‘Get your fingers out!’).124 Accordingly on 2 May, in worsening weather, a brigade of 26 Division landed on each bank of the river. The brigade from the east bank entered the city on 3 May to find the Japanese indeed gone; after the usual divided counsels in the Japanese high command, the realists had prevailed over the last-ditchers.125 Yet the first attacker into Rangoon was probably the pilot from 14th Army’s 221 Group who landed at Rangoon airfield on his own initiative during the limbo period and found the enemy gone. Slim always took comfort from the thought t
hat the first ‘liberator’ into Rangoon had come from 14th Army. In his desire to beat 15 Corps to the punch, he himself acted irresponsibly and flew ahead of proper air cover with Messervy and an American pilot, Captain Robert Fullerton, plus a couple of staff officers, on 1 May. The plane came under anti-aircraft fire and Fullerton was hit in the leg. He landed the plane at Pegu, but the wound proved serious and the leg had to be amputated. Slim was remorseful: ‘I felt – and still feel – very guilty about this. I had no business as Army Commander to go where I did, and, if I was so stupid as to go, I had no excuse for taking Messervy or the others with me.’126 Messervy, however, was phlegmatic and speculated that they could conceivably have landed at Rangoon airfield and found the Japanese gone. That would have put Slim’s experience on a par with that of MacArthur in the Philippines. As Messervy drily remarked: ‘Bill Slim could have occupied Rangoon.’127

  The campaign to reconquer Burma had come to a triumphant conclusion, but about 60–70,000 Japanese troops still remained at large in the country. There followed three months of hard fighting while 14th Army dealt with the enemy rearguards and residues, of which the most formidable formations were in the Karen hills and along the Sittang river towards Siam. Stopford and 33 Corps did a good job of clearing the remaining Japanese units out of the Irrawaddy valley, but all operations between May and August 1945 were hampered by the monsoon, which made flying, land transport, communications and supply all very difficult. Slim concentrated on preventing any enemy build-up in the Moulmein area and sealing off the eastern bank of the Sittang.128 The first objective was secured only after further sanguinary battles, principally those at Allanmyo from 11 to 15 May and Kama near Prome, where the remains of Yamamoto’s forces were destroyed in a running fight from 21 to 30 May; after the battle, 1,400 Japanese corpses were counted. The killing continued in June and July, with a further 11,500 Japanese dead, while just 96 Anglo-Indians died.129 The only vestige of pride the Japanese were able to salvage was in their heroic breakout from the densely wooded Pegu Yomas, an area running along the Sittang for 75 miles north–south and 30 miles west–east. Here on 28 July, 27,000 men of the Japanese 28th Army began the long march to Siam. Aiming to intercept them between the Yomas and the Sittang and between the Sittang and the Salween, the British doled out fearful punishment, killing another 12,000 enemy and taking 740 prisoners (by this time the despondent Japanese were more prepared to be taken captive) for the loss of just 95 killed and 322 wounded on their own side. Nevertheless, the Japanese survivors did get to Siam by late August, only to discover that their divine emperor had surrendered.130 The Pegu Yomas engagement took place while Slim was already on leave and before the full extent of his military genius was realised in Britain. In time his calibre was appreciated and his importance in the theory of war, for he had demonstrated the credibility of the ‘indirect approach’ – aiming primarily not at the physical destruction of the enemy so much as breaking his will to fight. Slim had proved himself a true master of war, always concentrating on enemy weaknesses, always coordinating land, sea and airpower. Only the very rare captain has all the virtues – the total mastery of logistics, superb imagination and creativity, the ability to use deception, spring surprises, take calculated risks and remain permanently flexible, all the time pursuing single-minded objectives and inspiring the ordinary soldier to great feats with an avuncular, sangfroid leadership. William Slim had all these qualities.131

  Epilogue

  While these final operations were going on, Slim in Rangoon tried to set up a civilian administration. It helped that many Burmese bureaucrats and officials, unwilling to serve the Ba Maw puppet government under the Japanese, had gone into hiding and now emerged to report for duty. What did not help was that Mountbatten had identified yet another man in his long list of personal bêtes noires – this time the civilian governor of Burma, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith.1 As a soldier, Slim was mainly concerned with how to integrate Aung San and the previously pro-Japanese Burmese National Army. He met Aung San at Meiktila on 16 May and found him a man he could do business with, both a genuine patriot and a realist.2 Since it was clear that Aung San had been bitterly anti-British in 1942, had ambushed Anglo-Indian forces, committed atrocities and was now collaborating only because the British were clearly the winning side, not all Slim’s staff, to say nothing of his political superiors, took his sanguine view of the future of this man in Burmese politics. There was some bitterness that he was being rewarded essentially for no good reason, while the steadfastly loyal British allies, particularly the Karens and the Kachins, were being offered no guarantees for the future when Burma might become independent.3 Aung San was, however, only one side in Slim’s polygon of concerns. He had to ponder the political implications of the new mood of brimming confidence among his own Indian soldiers. After their great martial prowess and stirring victories, was it at all plausible that such men would return meekly to be ruled by the British Raj? Was not one implication of the victory in Burma that Indian independence now became something that could not be delayed? There was a curious sense in which Churchill had been right to distrust the Indian army.4 Besides, Slim had to plan for the forthcoming invasion of Malaya. The idea was that Operation ZIPPER, codeword for the Malayan campaign, would be the province of 14th Army, while the smaller 12th Army took over mopping-up operations and the final pacification of Burma. This idea in turn was seriously jeopardised when yet another of Mountbatten’s most vociferous critics took a hand. P.J. Grigg, Secretary of State for War, although beloved by Alanbrooke,5 loathed Mountbatten with a rare detestation. It particularly galled him that Mountbatten – and indeed Alanbrooke and Churchill – had played no part in the conception of EXTENDED CAPITAL, and had opposed it almost to the end, but were now taking credit for it as if the whole operation had been planned in London. Casting around for a way to cut Mountbatten down to size, he announced that the period soldiers had to serve abroad before exercising a right of repatriation should be reduced from three years and eight months to three years and four months. This meant that tens of thousands of 14th Army veterans qualified for immediate home leave, with the further implication that ZIPPER could not get off the ground because of manpower shortages.6

  Yet Slim soon had more immediately pressing and personal problems to settle. One would have thought that a man who had just brought off one of the great military achievements of the ages would have been feted, lionised and lauded to the skies. That is not what happened. His immediate boss, Oliver Leese, finally reached snapping point with the Slim–Mountbatten axis, nutmegged as he was between a military genius and a showman who specialised in taking the credit for anything extraordinary or praiseworthy that happened. His exasperation seems finally to have boiled over. On 3 May, the very day Slim entered Rangoon in triumph, Leese came to Kandy to see Mountbatten, who was then recovering from a bad attack of amoebic dystentery, and put it to the Supreme Commander that Slim had been working at white heat for more than a year now, ever since the beginning of Kohima-Imphal, was tired and should therefore be relieved by a fresher man for Operation ZIPPER; he suggested Christison as his replacement.7 Self-contradictorily, he added that Slim was the right man to stay on and oversee the peacetime administration of Burma – a job at least as onerous as planning ZIPPER. Mountbatten said he was not keen on the idea but raised no objection to sounding Slim out about the proposal. It was quite clear that he did not express clearly enough his opposition to the idea of replacing Slim, and the obvious question arises: why not?8 Three different answers have been given. Mountbatten supporters claim that he was ill and did not fully realise what was on Leese’s mind. This explanation has not found favour with more cynical historians, who suggest that Mountbatten was actuated by one of two considerations. It was well known that he disliked Leese and wanted rid of him, and he saw this as a bed of nails on which the blundering Leese would impale himself. Others say that he was by now wildly jealous of Slim and realised that the full truth about the Burma campaign would come out; this
would show that the Supreme Commander, far from being an all-wise, all-seeing generalissimo, had consistently backed the wrong horse (amphibious warfare) and then at the eleventh hour disingenuously tried to take credit for EXTENDED CAPITAL. The disgrace of Slim would muddy the waters and enable him to continue his mythical pose as ‘king of Burma’; the real king would have been deposed.9 Of course it was possible that Mountbatten, who possessed all the peasant cunning of a true machiavellian, could see advantages to him however the Slim–Leese clash turned out; whoever lost the struggle, it would mean one fewer thorn in the Supremo’s side.