Defeat Into Victory
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His animosity toward the Japanese is even more evident. From the time he arrives in Burma, in the best tradition of Sun Tzu, he makes it his business to know his enemy. He praises their fighting qualities and what seems to him to be an almost innate aptitude for night fighting, a skill that comes harder for his white troops from urban backgrounds. But he also finds the Japanese, particularly their leaders, to be predictable and inflexible, at a loss when their initial plans do not work. From a Chinese officer, Slim gains the insight that if one can only hold against the initial Japanese onslaught, waiting until they exhaust their meager supplies, one can eventually counterattack, a lesson Slim used to good advantage at Imphal. One senses, in his view of the Japanese, not only a personal antipathy but also a lack of comprehension, arising not just from the atrocities that the enemy perpetrated against his troops but also their fanatical discipline and seeming penchant for suicide missions. Even when complimenting the Japanese fighting man, Slim views him as essentially subhuman, as in his description of the individual Japanese soldier as “the most formidable fighting insect in history.” Contrary to MacArthur’s wishes, he forces his Japanese counterparts at war’s end to give up their swords, thereby driving home the realization of defeat.
It took Slim years to receive the recognition he deserved. Even Imphal, though it earned him a knighthood, did not spare him criticism for cautious, unimaginative tactics. In the ensuing drive into Burma during 1944 and 1945, including his brilliant crossing of the Irrawaddy and thrust to Meiktila, he displayed plenty of imagination, even genius. Still, after Slim returned home following the surrender, he received a lukewarm reception. Montgomery and Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander were the heroes of the hour. Even Churchill gave more credit for the Burma victory to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten and Alexander than he did to Slim. In 1947, Slim retired to become deputy chairman of British Railways, but he received a measure of recognition when—over the objections of his predecessor Montgomery—he returned to active duty in 1948 as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Five years later, he became Governor General of Australia. While he was serving in that post, in 1956, Cassell and Company published his Defeat into Victory. The work became an immediate sensation, selling out the first edition of 20,000 within a few days. Slim became a military hero, and his memoir won applause as the classic account of the Burma campaign.
Although Slim has returned to near anonymity among the general public, Defeat into Victory has retained its luster over the years, as generations of military historians who have read it can attest. It stands as a monument to a great soldier and a better man. Cooper Square Press is to be applauded for making available once more this timeless account, which reminds the reader once more that human beings fight wars and, moreover, that “nice guys” can finish first.
DAVID W. HOGAN, JR.
Washington, D.C.
June 1999
PREFACE
A GENERAL who has taken part in a campaign is by no means best fitted to write its history. That, if it is to be complete and unbiased, should be the work of someone less personally involved. Yet such a general might write something of value. He might, as honestly as he could, tell of the problems he faced, why he took the decisions he did, what helped, what hindered, the luck he had, and the mistakes he made. He might, by showing how one man attempted the art of command, be of use to those who later may themselves have to exercise it. He might even give, to those who have not experienced it, some impression of what it feels like to shoulder a commander’s responsibilities in war. These things I have tried to do in this book.
It is a personal narrative, written from the standpoint of a corps or army commander in the field, whose outlook was often limited by his own surroundings. It is based on a short account I wrote at the time, a skeleton diary, some contemporary papers, and my recollection. For any inaccuracies and, of course, for its opinions and judgments I only am responsible.
If in places I have noticed by name individuals, units, and formations, that is usually because I happened to be near them at a particular time and they caught my eye. I am very conscious that for every one I mention, there were a hundred others whose doings were just as worthy of record. Named or unnamed, I shall always be proud to have served with them. Victory in Burma came, not from the work of any one man, or even of a few men, but from the sum of many men’s efforts. We all, even those among us who may have seemed to fail, did our best. Luckily, that combined best proved good enough.
W. J. SLIM
F.-M.
Canberra,
1st December 1955
CONTENTS
BOOK I
Defeat
I
INTO BURMA
II
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
III
A CHAPTER OF MISFORTUNES
IV
DISASTER
V
EVACUATION
VI
AFTERMATH
BOOK II
Forging the Weapon
VII
THE THREE V’S
VIII
THE FIRST ARAKAN CAMPAIGN
IX
THE FOUNDATIONS
BOOK III
The Weapon is Tested
X
THE BEST-LAID PLANS
XI
PATTERN FOR VICTORY
XII
THE NORTHERN FRONT
BOOK IV
The Tide Turns
XIII
HOW IT WAS PLANNED
XIV
HOW IT HAPPENED
XV
ATTRITION
XVI
PURSUIT
BOOK V
The Decisive Battle
XVII
APPROACH TO THE IRRAWADDY
XVIII
CROSSING THE IRRAWADDY
XIX
THE VITAL THRUST
XX
THE BATTLE OF THE IRRAWADDY SHORE
BOOK VI
Victory
XXI
THE RACE TO RANGOON
XXII
THE LAST BATTLE
XXIII
AFTERTHOUGHTS
INDEX
MAPS
BOOK I
Burma and Neighbouring Countries
Southern Burma
Central Burma
Japanese Invasion Routes, Burma 1942
Northern Burma
BOOK II
Eastern India
North Arakan
Lines of Communication to the Burma Fronts, 1943-44
BOOK III
South-East Asia Operations Planned for 1944
The Battle of Ngakyedauk
Northern Front
BOOK IV
Japanese Invasion Routes, Burma 1944
Kohima
Imphal Area
Advance to the Chindwin
BOOK V
The Battle of Meiktila
Advance in Arakan
Northern Front, August 1944-March 1945
The Battle of Central Burma
BOOK VI
Advance to Rangoon
Japanese Breakout
BOOK I
Defeat
CHAPTER I
INTO BURMA
IT was good fun commanding a division in the Iraq desert. It is good fun commanding a division anywhere. It is one of the four best commands in the Service—a platoon, a battalion, a division, and an army. A platoon, because it is your first command, because you are young, and because, if you are any good, you know the men in it better than their mothers do and love them as much. A battalion, because it is a unit with a life of its own; whether it is good or bad depends on you alone; you have at last a real command. A division, because it is the smallest formation that is a complete orchestra of war and the largest in which every man can know you. An army, because the creation of its spirit and its leadership in battle give you the greatest unity of emotional and intellectual experience that can befall a man.
It was espe
cially good to be commanding the 10th Indian Division. We had, as a division, found ourselves. We had scrambled through the skirmishes of the Iraq rebellion, been blooded, but not too deeply, against the French in Syria, and enjoyed unrestrainedly the opéra bouffe of the invasion of Persia. We had bought our beer in Haifa and drunk it on the shores of the Caspian. We could move, we could fight, and we had begun to build up that most valuable of all assets, a tradition of success. We had a good soldierly conceit of ourselves. Now, in March 1942, in spite of dust storms, equipment shortages, obsolete armament, and an overdose of digging strong-points, it was stimulating to be at what we all felt was a critical spot, waiting for the threatened German invasion of Turkey. If it came and the Panzer divisions rumbled over the pearl-tinted horizon, we should be the soft-skinned orange flung in front of the steamroller, but meanwhile it was exhilarating to go bucketing about the desert, a hundred miles a day, sweeping our field-glasses round a great circle of bare sand. The desert suits the British, and so does fighting in it. You can see your man.
So, when I was called to the telephone at my headquarters in the wrecked flying-boat station at Lake Habbaniyeh, to speak to the Army Commander in Baghdad, and was told to fly to India within the next three days, my heart slumped.
‘Am I sacked?’ I asked.
‘No, you’ve got another job.’
‘But I don’t want another job. I want to stay with my division.’
‘A good soldier goes where he’s sent and does what he’s told!’
And the telephone rang off in my ear.
Constant sandstorms held up my departure for a few days and prolonged the unhappiness of saying good-bye, but at last I was chuffing out into Habbaniyeh Lake to the flying-boat. Through the sand, still blowing and stinging my face, I watched the half-dozen figures of my divisional staff who had come to see me off fade quickly into the haze, and I felt as forlorn as they looked, hunched against the driving sand. The flying-boat loomed up; I scrambled on board, bumped my head in the low entrance, as I nearly always do, and heard the crew discussing whether it was too thick to take off. However, the pilot decided it was not and up we roared. I cheered myself with the thought of the cable I had sent telling my wife to meet me at Delhi, but I was feeling glum enough at leaving my division.
We came down next day on the shrinking lake outside Gwalior and, after a tedious train journey, I met my wife at Delhi station. Next morning at General Headquarters, India, no one seemed able, or at any rate willing, to tell me what my job was to be. The only thing that was definite was that I was to fly to Burma almost at once with Lieut.-General Morris, the Chief of the General Staff in India, who was visiting the front to get a firsthand view of a not too bright situation. Why I should go in addition I did not know, but this time I was a good soldier, went where I was sent, did what I was told, and asked no questions.
We left early, spent the night in Calcutta, and then flew on to Akyab, a little port on the Arakan coast of Burma. It seemed a very pleasant, peaceful seaside town, much cleaner and better kept than similar places in India—as indeed were all Burmese towns and villages. We sat up late discussing the situation with Air Vice-Marshal Stevenson, the Air Officer Commanding in Burma. Rangoon had fallen on the 9th of March, a few days before, and the British force had extricated itself with difficulty, but was now clear and reorganizing. The position, both on the ground and in the air, was an anxious one.
In the air, we had, in the face of great enemy superiority in numbers, been undoubtedly more successful than we had been on land. The importance of air power in any theatre is obvious, but in Burma it was from the very start a dominating factor. In plans for the defence of Burma, made before the Japanese attack, great reliance had been placed on the ability of air forces to stop, or at least greatly delay, the advance of enemy columns. In effect, too much was expected, for, as both we and the Japanese discovered over the next three years, air attack alone never succeeded in stopping the movement of either side. Even if it could, the British-American air forces in Burma were, in 1942, never on a scale seriously to attempt it. Burma was last on the priority list for aircraft, as for everything else, and in December 1941 the air forces in Burma were almost negligible. They consisted of only one R.A.F. squadron equipped with Buffaloes, a flight of the Indian Air Force with a few obsolete machines, and the Third Squadron of the American Volunteer Group with P40 Tomahawks. There should also have been an R.A.F. bomber squadron, but the aircraft had been kept in Malaya and only the men reached Burma.
The American Volunteer Group, under the dynamic command of Colonel Chennault, had the task of protecting the Burma–China road. Its base was Kunming in China, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, impressed with the importance of Rangoon as the only door opening on that road, had sent the Third Squadron there for its defence. These A.V.G. airmen were hand-picked from the American Air Force, had had considerable experience against the Japanese before the United States entered the war, and were as good a collection of fighter pilots as could be found anywhere. With our own R.A.F. pilots, they had gained a personal ascendancy over their Japanese opponents that was very marked. But the Anglo-American Forces were contending against great odds.
It had been estimated that fourteen fighter squadrons, apart from bombers, would be required to meet the Japanese over Burma. Yet, when the Japanese attack began, there were only two fighter, one bomber, and two army co-operation squadrons in the country. Later, three squadrons of Hurricanes, mostly worn-out Mark f s, and a Blenheim bomber squadron arrived. The shortage of spares was acute. Against this small force the enemy, working from Siamese airfields, produced one hundred and fifty operational aircraft.
Speaking generally, all the Japanese fighters were inferior in performance to the Hurricane and the P40, with the exception of the Navy 0, which was approximately equal to them. The Navy 0 was, however, more vulnerable as neither it nor the Japanese bombers had self-sealing tanks or armour for the pilot. The Japanese, however, had a considerable advantage in range, which was of great service to them in a country where distances were vast. The Navy 0, for example, had a radius of two hundred and fifty miles, or five hundred with jettisonable tanks, compared with the one hundred and thirty-five miles of the Hurricane II. We were thus denied the power of retaliating with fighters against the enemy machines on their airfields.
Nor were the superior numbers and range of the Japanese aircraft the only handicaps from which we suffered. With the odds against us, an efficient warning system, which would enable us to defend our own airfields, was essential if our machines were to escape destruction on the ground. Yet the layout of the Burma airfields made this impossible. They had almost all been sited in a long north-south line facing the Siamese frontier, and running from Victoria Point in the extreme south, through Mergui, Moulmein, Rangoon, Toungoo, Heho, and Namsang to Lashio. These main airfields, unless our troops advanced far into Siam, which was never contemplated, did not allow of any adequate warning. They should, of course, have been sited in the Irrawaddy Valley, where instead we had only the subsidiary airstrips at Magwe, Meiktila, Shwebo, and Myitkyina. The Burma Public Works Department had done a very fine job in constructing these all-weather airfields so rapidly and with such small mechanical resources, and it was not their fault that they had been told to put them in the wrong place. Add to the unfortunate location of our main airfields the facts that we possessed only one radio direction-finding set, a meagre complement of anti-aircraft artillery, and that the newly raised and hurriedly trained Burma Observer Corps had no wireless, and was thus tied to the scanty civil telephone and telegraph system, and it is easy to picture the disadvantage at which our tiny air force operated.
Rangoon had suffered heavily from bombing, but the two and a half British squadrons and one American squadron defending the city, in meeting thirty-one day and night attacks in the first two months, destroyed one hundred and thirty enemy aircraft with sixty probables, and compelled the Japanese to abandon the attacks after the end of February.
The majority of the enemy fell to the A.V.G., who not only had in the P40 the better fighter, but were more experienced than most of the British pilots. It was thus possible for the last convoys of reinforcements to enter Rangoon and for the demolitions and final evacuation to be completed without serious air interference. At the same time, P4o’s and Buffaloes—the range was too great for Hurricanes—attacked any enemy airfield within reach, and our few bombers ranged far into Siam. Rarely can so small an air force have battled so gallantly and so effectively against comparable odds.
Such an effort could not be maintained. On the 31st January 1942, our operational strength was thirty-five aircraft, against one hundred and fifty Japanese. Appeals for reinforcements were refused; Malaya and the Dutch East Indies still had first call. Singapore fell on the 15th February, and at once the Japanese air forces began to receive heavy additions. By mid-March, there were fourteen regiments of the Japanese Air Force deployed against Burma, a total of some four hundred aircraft with a daily effort of two hundred and sixty. Against this we could produce a daily operation average of under forty-five. The odds were growing too heavy, even for British and American airmen.