The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Notes

  Guide to abbreviations used in Notes:

  CAB.

  Cabinet Papers in the National Archives

  DIV.

  William Slim, Defeat into Victory (1956)

  MP.

  The Papers of George Caflett Marshall, ed. L. Bland & S.R.S. Stevens

  (Baltimore, 1991)

  SP.

  The Stilwell Papers, ed. T. White (1949)

  WO.

  War Office Papers in the National Archives

  Chapter One

  pp. 1–15

  • 1. In savage wars casualties are difficult to estimate exactly, and so the gruesome scholarly arguments about war dead continue; the fate of the Soviet Union in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ of 1941–45 is the best known case. Louis Allen, Burma. The Longest War 1941–45 (1984), p. 640, puts the Japanese dead at 185,149. For his general survey of casualties see ibid. pp. 637–45. For British casualties see Martin Brayley & Mike Chappel, The British Army 1939–45 (2002), p. 6; Jon Latimer, Burma. The Forgotten War (2004), p. 1. For the Burmese civilian casualties see Vadim Erlikman, Poder i narodon as el eniia V XX veke spravochnik (Moscow, 2004), pp. 74–5 and, more generally, R.J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide. Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (Charlottesville, Va., 1998). • 2. Walter La Feber, The Clash: US–Japanese Relations throughout History (1998). • 3. See Philip Payson O’Brien, ed., Britain and the End of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1902–1922 (2004). • 4. Erik Goldstein & John Maurer, eds., The Washington Conference, 1921–22. Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (1994). • 5. Elting E. Morrison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1954) pp. 829–30. See also H.R. Brands, TR. The Last Romantic (NY, 1997), p. 530. • 6. W. Elsbree, Japan’s Role in South East Asian Nationalist Movements 1940–1945 (Harvard, 1953), pp. 8–11; see also Michael A. Bamhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security 1919–1941 (Ithaca, NY, 1987). • 7. R. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–35 (Oxford, 1979). • 8. F. Dorn, Walkout. With Stilwell in Burma (NY, 1971), p. 20. For the Chinese factor more broadly see D. Borg & S. Okatmoto, Pearl Harbor. A History. Japanese-American Relations 1931–1941 (NY, 1973). • 9. These stories about the wives are told in Jonathan Fenby, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost (2003). For the hostage tale see D. Wilson, When Tigers Fight. The Story of the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945 (1982), pp. 9–10. The most recent, and in some quarters considered definitive, biography of Chiang is Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo. Chiang Kaishek and the Struggle for Modern China (2009), though to this reader it seems highly biased in favour of Chiang and prepared to give him the benefit of every doubt. • 10. Allen, Burma, op. cit., pp. 284–5. • 11. Even though some revisionist historians claim, unconvincingly, that war could have been avoided if FDR and Cordell Hull had been more flexible (see Keiichiro Komatsu, Origins of the Pacific War and the Importance of ‘Magic’ (NY, 1999). • 12. J.C. Hsiung & S.I. Levene, China’s Bitter Victory: The War with Japan 1937–1945 (NY, 1993). • 13. M. Collis, First and Last in Burma (1956), pp. 22–5. • 14. Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma (1968), pp. 61–2, 78, 114–15. • 15. D.J. Taylor, Orwell. The Life (2003); Bernard Crick, George Orwell. A Life (1980). For a modern ‘footsteps’ journey in Burma in search of Orwell see Emma Larkin, Secret Histories (2004). • 16. H.G. Wells, Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water (1939), pp. 84–8. • 17. M. Collis, The Outward Journey (1952), pp. 121–2. • 18. J.F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca, NY, 1958), pp. 156–63. • 19. Ibid., pp. 170–5. • 20. M. Collis, Trials in Burma (1945), p. 209; N.R. Chakravarti, The Indian Minority in Burma. The Rise and Decline of an Immigrant Community (Oxford, 1971). • 21. For this war see Anthony Stewart, The Pagoda War (1972); George Bruce, Burma Wars 1824–86 (1973). • 22. D.G. Hall, Burma (1950), p. 167; Godfrey Harvey, British Rule in Burma 1824–1942 (1942). • 23. For the Kachins and Shan (with some additional material on the Mon) see the classic study by E.R. Leach, The Political Systems of Highland Burma (1973). • 24. Frank Kingdon-Ward, Return to the Irrawaddy (1956), pp. 157–76; E.H.M. Cox, Farrer’s Last Journey (1926) pp. 219–42. • 25. Kingdon-Ward, Return, op. cit., pp. 67, 78. • 26. The classic work on ornithology is Bertram E. Smythies, Birds of Burma (1940), which still holds its place despite recent competition from the disappointing volume by Kyaw Nyunt Lwin & Khin Mama Twin, Birds of Myanmar (2005). • 27. Christopher Sykes, Orde Wingate (1959), p. 422. • 28. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 321. • 29. And hence, perhaps, the total absence of such mention in Mountbatten’s diaries, in contrast to the observations of Slim, Stilwell and Wingate. For the proposition in general, see Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 21. • 30. See e.g. Kingdon-Ward, Return, op. cit., p. 67. • 31. J.H. Williams, Elephant Bill (1950), pp. 84–5, 123. • 32. Sykes, Wingate, op. cit., p. 422. • 33. See U. Toke Gale, The Burmese Timber Elephant (1974). • 34. Williams, Elephant Bill, op. cit., p. 107; Larkin, Secret Histories, op. cit., p. 175. • 35. Williams, Elephant Bill, op. cit., pp. 94–9. • 36. Trevor Royle, Orde Wingate. Irregular Soldier (1995), p. 242. • 37. Williams, Elephant Bill, op. cit., p. 105. • 38. Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung (1996), pp. 146–7. • 39. E. Leviton et al., ‘The Dangerously Venomous Snakes of Myanmar’, Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 54 (2003), pp. 407–62. • 40. Henry Park Cochrane, Among the Burmans. A Record of Fifteen Years of Work (NY, 1904), p. 257. For more modern figures see S. Swaroop & B. Grab, ‘Snakebite Mortality in the World’, Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 10 (1954), pp. 35–75 (at pp. 64–5). • 41. Williams, Elephant Bill, op. cit., p. 106; Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 64. • 42. Leviton, op. cit., see also Herndon G. Dowling & Jannon U. Jenner, Snakes of Burma: Checklist of Reported Species and Bibliography (Washington DC, 1988). • 43. The great American expert on Burmese snakes, Joseph Slowinski, died in 2001 at the age of 38 from a bite from a many-banded krait: Jamies James, Snake Charmer. A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge (NY, 2008). • 44. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 322. • 45. William Slim, Defeat into Victory (1956), p. 417 (hereinafter DIV). • 46. T.H. White, ed., The Stilwell Papers (1949), p. 285 (hereinafter SP). • 47. It is extremely disappointing that the reputable and normally reliable military historian Jon Latimer accepts this story (Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 370). But it is reproduced straightfacedly and uncritically in a number of books. See Robert Farquharson, For Your Tomorrow. Canadians and the Burma Campaign 1941–1945 (2004), p. 131. • 48. See S.K. Kar and H.R. Bustard, ‘Saltwater crocodile attacks on man’, Biological Conservation 25 (1983), pp. 377–82. • 49. The identical account is reproduced in volume after volume but always without any reliable source being cited. It is put in context in A.C. Pooley, T. Hines & J. Shields, Crocodiles and Alligators (NY, 1989), pp. 172–86. • 50. The most telling critiques of the story known to me are: Steven G. Platt et al., ‘Maneating estuarine crocodiles: the Ramree Island Massacre revisited’, Herpetological Bulletin 75 (2001), pp. 15–18; and David Finkelstein, ‘Tigers in the Stream’, Audubon Magazine 86 (May 1984), pp. 98–111. • 51. For the official British account see London Gazette 23–26 April 1948. • 52. Peter Haining, The Banzai Hunters (2006), pp. 133–4. For W.O.G. ‘Bill’ Potts see the obituaries in The Times, 19 July 1997, and Independent, 12 July 1997. • 53. Of course one has no objection to a fiction being used as the launch pad for another fiction. The Ramree crocodile story has produced at least two novels incorporating the sensational story: Robert Appleton, Sunset on Ramree (2008), and Yasuyuki Kasai, Dragon of the Mangroves (2006). • 54. B. Towill, A Chindit’s Chronicle (Lincoln, Nebraska, 2000), p. 72. • 55. Allen, Burma, op. cit., p. 194. • 56. Quoted in Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 384.

  Chapter Two

  pp. 16–41

  • 1. For some aspects of Slim’s early life see his Unofficial History (1959). • 2. Ronald Lewin, Slim. The Standard Bearer (1976), pp. 35–6. • 3. Ibid, pp. 49–53. • 4. Robert Lyman, Slim, Master of War: Burma and the Birth of Modern War
fare (2004), pp. 265–8. • 5. Adrian Fort, Archibald Wavell. The Life and Times of an Imperial Servant (2009), p. 55. • 6. Victoria Schofield, Wavell. Soldier and Statesman (2006) pp. 113, 118, 122, 281. • 7. Richard Mead, Churchill’s Lions (2007), pp. 473–5. • 8. S.W. Kirby, ed., The War Against Japan (1960), i, p. 56; W.S. Churchill, The Second World War (1950), iii, pp. 161–72; J. Kennedy, The Business of War (1957), p. 108. • 9. P. Lowe, Great Britain and the Origins of the Pacific War (Oxford 1977), pp. 8–10, 134–5; F. Lin, A Military History of Modern China 1924–1949 (Princeton, 1956), pp. 175–6. • 10. Brian Connell, Wavell, Supreme Commander, 1941–1943 (1969), p. 29. • 11. B. Prasad, ed., The Retreat from Burma 1941–42 (Delhi, 1952), p. 31; T. Carew, The Longest Retreat. The Burma Campaign (1969), p. 11; J.F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca, 1958), pp. 412–19. • 12. Fort, Wavell, op. cit., p. 250. • 13. Churchill, Second World War, op. cit., iii, p. 564. • 14. Fort, Wavell, op. cit., p. 254. • 15. Connell, Wavell, op. cit., p. 62. • 16. Fort, Wavell, op. cit., pp. 256–7. • 17. Jonathan Fenby, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost (2003); Brian Crozier, The Man Who Lost China (1976). I find unconvincing the exhaustive attempt by Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Harvard, 2009), to rehabilitate Chiang. It skates over Chiang’s deficiencies and exhibits signs of ‘historical contrarianism’ – the desire to knock orthodox views simply because they are orthodox. • 18. Ronald Lewin, The Chief. Field Marshal Lord Wavell, Commander in Chief and Viceroy, 1939–1947 (1980), p. 159. • 19. Barbara Tuchman, Sand against the Wind. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 (1971), p. 234. • 20. For General George Marshall, one of the towering figures of the Second World War, see the four-volume biography by Forrest Pogue (1963–87), especially Volume 2, Ordeal and Hope 1939–1943 (1966), and Volume 3, Organizer of Victory 1943–1945 (1973). • 21. Alex Danchev & Daniel Todman, eds., The War Diaries of Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, 1939–1945 (2001), pp. 219, 223–4 (hereinafter Alanbrooke Diaries). • 22. Fort, Wavell, op. cit., pp. 259–61. • 23. Allen Warren, Singapore 1942. Britain’s Greatest Defeat (2003). • 24. Connell, Wavell, op. cit. • 25. Churchill certainly held Wavell responsible: Churchill, Second World War, op. cit., iv, p. 127. • 26. J.B. Haseman, The Thai Resistance Movement during the Second World War (De Kalb, Illinois, 1978), pp. 35–6; see also E.B. Reynolds, Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 1940–1945 (Basingstoke, 1994). • 27. J. Smyth, Milestones (1979), p. 169. • 28. Jon Latimer, Burma. The Forgotten War (2004), pp. 46–7. • 29. P.F. Geren, Burma Diary (1968), pp. 3–7. • 30. J. Lunt, Hell of a Licking. The Retreat from Burma 1941–42 (1986), pp. 95–100. • 31. See the extended treatment in Louis Allen, Burma. The Longest War 1941–45 (1984), pp. 26–34. • 32. Lunt, Hell of a Licking, op. cit., pp. 120–3; Connell, Wavell, op. cit., p. 133. • 33. Alanbrooke Diaries, p. 229. • 34. Kirby, War Against Japan, op. cit., iv, p. 88. • 35. John Connell, Auchinleck. A Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck (1959), p. 192. For the battle of Sittang see Allen, Burma, op. cit., pp. 36–44, where he sidetracks into a long digression on the blowing of the Sittang bridge. • 36. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., pp. 63–4. • 37. Connell, Wavell, op. cit., pp. 181, 190–200. • 38. Alex Nicholson, The Life of Field-Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis (1973). • 39. John Keegan, Churchill’s Generals (1991); Richard Mead, Churchill’s Lions (2007), pp. 41–46. • 40. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 68. • 41. T. Carew, The Longest Retreat (1969), pp. 155–7. • 42. Lunt, Hell of a Licking, op. cit., pp. 167–8. • 43. Allen, Burma, op. cit., pp. 44–57. • 44. Lewin, Slim, op. cit., p. 84. • 45. John Masters, The Road Past Mandalay (1961), p. 44. • 46. DIV, pp. 10–11, 28–30. • 47. Ibid., pp. 90–1. • 48. Connell, Wavell, op. cit. • 49. I. Lyall–Grant & K. Tamaya, Burma 1942: The Japanese Invasion – Both Sides Tell the Story of a Savage Jungle War (Chichester, 1999), p. 70; M. Caidin, Zero Fighter (1970), pp. 100–4. Slim’s estimate is at DIV, p. 7. • 50. Fort, Wavell, op. cit., p. 279. • 51. DIV, pp. 41–3. • 52. W. Elbree, Japan’s Role in South-East Asian Nationalist Movements (Harvard, 1953), pp. 32–4; G.R. Collis, The Eagle Soars (Bishop Auckland, 1998), p. 25. For a full study see Michael Tomlinson, Most Dangerous Moment (1979). • 53. G. Tyson, Forgotten Frontier (Calcutta, 1945), p. 35; M.C. Nickolson, Burma Interlude (Honolulu, 1989), p. 105; Lunt, Hell of a Licking, op. cit., p. 173. • 54. L. Stowe, They Shall Not Sleep (NY, 1945), p. 116. • 55. G. Evans & A. Brett-James, Imphal. A Flower on Lofty Heights (1962), pp. 42–3. • 56. Allen, Burma, op. cit., pp. 62–3. • 57. P. Carmichael, Mountain Battery (Bournemouth, 1983), pp. 75–7. • 58. Lunt, Hell of a Licking, op. cit., pp. 202–3; G. Fitzpatrick, No Mandalay, No Maymyo (Lewes, 2001), pp. 110–11; G.M.O. Davy, The Seventh and Three Enemies: the story of World War Two and the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars (Cambridge, 1952), p. 294; J.F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (NY, 1958), p. 440. • 59. For a general survey see Alan K. Lathrop, ‘The Employment of Chinese Nationalist Troops in the First Burma Campaign’, Journal of South-East Asian Studies 12 (1981), pp. 409–32. • 60. DIV, pp. 52, 64. • 61. Harold Alexander, The Alexander Memoirs (1962), p. 94. • 62. DIV, pp. 64, 87. • 63. Ibid., p. 72. • 64. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 93. • 65. Prasad, ed., Retreat from Burma, op. cit., p. 69. • 66. G. Rodger, Red Moon Rising (1943), p. 98. • 67. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 95. • 68. Quoted in ibid., p. 96. But better is A. Wagg, A Million Died. The Story of the War in the Far East (1943), pp. 84–98. • 69. DIV, pp. 60–62. • 70. P. Carmichael, Mountain Battery (Bournemouth, 1983), pp. 167–8; M. Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. Far East Theatre 1939–1945 (2002), pp. 98–100; E.W.C. Sandes, From Pyramid to Pagoda (1952), pp. 29–31. • 71. DIV, p. 67. • 72. Lunt, Hell of a Licking, op. cit., pp. 212–13. • 73. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., pp. 98–9. • 74. DIV, p. 69. • 75. Ibid., pp. 74–5. • 76. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 101. • 77. DIV, pp. 80–1, 86. • 78. Mike Calvert, Fighting Mad (Shrewsbury, 1996), p. 77. • 79. DIV, pp. 83, 87–8. • 80. Lunt, Hell of a Licking, op. cit., pp. 241–3; DIV, pp. 92–5. • 81. DIV, pp. 95–9. • 82. Ibid., pp. 102–7. • 83. Carew, Longest Retreat, op. cit., p. 255. • 84. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 110. • 85. DIV, p. 108. • 86. Ibid., p. 109. • 87. Hugh Tinker, ‘The Indian Exodus from Burma 1942’, Journal of South-East Asian Studies 6 (1975), pp. 1–14. • 88. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., pp. 120, 461; DIV, p. 114. • 89. Latimer, Burma, op. cit., p. 116. • 90. DIV, pp. 115–20. • 91. Cady, History of Modern Burma, op. cit., p. 440. See also WO 203/5716. • 92. DIV, pp. 120–1. • 93. Geoffrey Evans, Slim as Military Commander, (1969) p. 84; Lewin, Slim, op. cit., pp. 98, 102–3. • 94. Alexander, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 92–5. Alanbrooke’s assessment of Alexander is more than just interesting: ‘It is too depressing to see how Alex’s deficiency of brain allows him to be dominated by others! He must have someone else to lean on! He has no personality of his own and lets anyone else climb into his skin! In Africa, Sicily and South Italy he was carried by Montgomery. In central Italy by Oliver Leese and Harding and failed badly, and now he has selected MacMillan as his mount.’ That was written on 18 January 1945. Later Alanbrooke added the following: ‘I think that in my criticism of Alex, I was certainly wrong in saying that “he has no personality of his own”. He most certainly had a definite personality of exceptional charm, of outward calm which engendered confidence, of exceptional bravery and of great attractiveness. One could not help being fond of Alex and of enjoying being with him. I think, however, that it was just on account of all these outward qualities that on knowing him one realized the deficiency of brains and character. I have often described him as being a beautiful Chippendale mirror, with the most attractive and pleasant frame, but when you look into the mirror you always find the reflection of some other person who temporarily dominates him, be it a Monty, an Oliver Leese or a MacMillan.’ (Alanbrooke Diaries, pp. 646–7.) • 95. DIV, p. 118. • 96. John Kennedy, The Business of War (1957), p. 210. • 97. Alexander to Wavell, 10 March 1942, WO
259/62. • 98. Fort, Wavell, op. cit., p. 295.