Shortly afterwards, the 5th Indian Division itself arrived from the Middle East. It had been overseas since August 1940 and had seen as much and as varied fighting as any division. It had a spirit and a self-reliance that come only from real fighting. It owed much to its commander, Major-General Briggs, and like all good divisions—and bad ones—reflected its commander’s personality. The war had found him in command of a battalion in this division; a battalion that in some extraordinary way was always where it was wanted, that always did what was wanted, and was ready to go on doing it. So Briggs got a brigade. His brigade was just as steadily successful as his battalion had been. It went into the toughest spots, met the most difficult situations, and came out again, like its commander, still unperturbed and as quietly efficient as ever. So, while others fell by the wayside, Briggs got his division. I know of few commanders who made as many immediate and critical decisions on every step of the ladder of promotion, and I know of none who made so few mistakes.
Towards the end of our stay in Ranchi another new Indian division, the 20th, joined the corps. It was commanded by Douglas Gracey, a fellow Gurkha, whom I had known for many years, and who, as a brigade commander, had co-operated with my 10th Division against the French in Syria in 1941. Full of energy and ideas, he had a great hold on his Indian and Gurkha troops.
I was indeed fortunate in these three divisional commanders. Messervy, Briggs, and Gracey all served with me later in Burma. Messervy became an inspiring corps commander, Briggs a most successful commander-in-chief in Burma during the trying time after the war, and Gracey, after brilliantly commanding his division, carried out in an outstanding manner a most difficult military-political task in Indo-China.
My stay in Ranchi was interrupted by two visits to Arakan; once by myself, and once with most of my headquarters, as I shall relate. In spite of this, training in Ranchi was continuous and progressive. There were infantry battle schools, artillery training centres, co-operation courses with the R.A.F., experiments with tanks in the jungle, classes in watermanship and river-crossing, and a dozen other instructional activities, all in full swing. Our training grew more ambitious until we were staging inter-divisional exercises over wide ranges of country under tough conditions. Units lived for weeks on end in the jungle and learnt its ways. We hoped we had finally dispelled the fatal idea that the Japanese had something we had not.
As I went from division to division and saw their keenness, their toughness, their jungle-craft, and their speed of movement, I began to feel that, when the time came, we should live up to the 15 Corps sign of the three V’s, for fifteen and victory.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST ARAKAN CAMPAIGN
WHEN we withdrew, rather precipitately, from Akyab Island in April 1942, chaos and civil war spread throughout Arakan. First, the local inhabitants fell on die wretched Indian refugees, who were still in thousands trying to escape by the coastal route. This exodus was followed by a bitter internecine struggle for land and power between the Arakanese and the Maughs, two sections of the population. The Maughs got the worst of it and many were driven across the Naf River to take shelter in territory still held by us, there to make yet another refugee problem. Faction fights among the victorious Arakanese then became the order of the day, until the Japanese, pushing up to Buthidaung, restored some sort of uneasy peace.
This was the position when I took over 15 Corps, a command that carried with it the responsibility for the Arakan front. Our information of Japanese movements and intentions was meagre. The first necessity was to improve it, and to this end we began the organization of ‘V’ Force in Arakan. It already existed on the Central front and was slowly spreading out to cover the gap between us and 4 Corps. ‘V’ Force was primarily an intelligence organization, much on the lines of our old ‘Yomas Intelligence Service’ of lamented memory. A number of selected British officers, where possible those with local knowledge, was sent into the most forward areas. There they collected round them a small escort of inhabitants, and built up a network of agents who operated behind the Japanese front, bringing and sending back information. Japanese intelligence officers had built up much the same spy system on their side, and the collection of information developed into a duel between the rival organizations. I think our officers, being much more intelligent and enterprising than their opposite numbers, had, after a time, the better of the exchanges. On both sides the agents used were without training in observation and without any military knowledge, but they did begin to produce some sort of information, and their standard gradually improved. As was bound to happen, many of the agents worked for both the enemy and ourselves, but on the whole this was to our advantage as they quickly came to prefer our officers and their methods to those of the Japanese. Later, along the whole front, ‘V’ Force became an important and very valuable part of the intelligence framework. It later extended its activities to include minor raiding operations, and frequently fought successful actions with Japanese patrols and detachments, but in July 1942 an attempt to bolster up the Arakanese in our area by issuing fire-arms of various sorts was judged premature and abandoned.
Our most forward outposts at Cox’s Bazaar and Teknaf were held, I discovered, only by armed police, borrowed from the Civil Government, who, not unreasonably, regarded this as a role more suited to troops than to them. Actually for this work, police, with their local knowledge and contacts, were better than soldiers, but obviously we had to get at least patrols of the 14th Division forward, if only to inspire confidence among the police. The bulk of Lloyd’s forces were still north of Chittagong, and he was, as yet, reluctant to stretch so far south. However, G.H.Q. India and Eastern Army, to say nothing of 15 Corps, were all contemplating a minor offensive in Arakan at the end of the monsoon, and, whether we made it or remained on the defensive, a proper reconnaissance screen well ahead of the main force was clearly essential. I, therefore, pressed Lloyd to get his patrols moving.
Visits to his division showed that it was becoming a better-knit fighting force, and I sympathized with Lloyd’s wish to keep it concentrated as long as possible for training, but, as I pointed out, as long as the enemy remained quiescent, it could train rather more realistically farther south. Lloyd agreed and preparations for the move forward were put in hand. I had every confidence in Lloyd and was sure he would be well supported by his staff under Colonel Warren, whom I had taught at the Staff College and knew well. Warren concealed a quiet and determined character beneath a deliberate manner, and he had the priceless gift of imperturbability which was later to stand him and his commanders in good stead.
My first inspection of Chittagong, the only port of consequence on the whole coast and therefore of primary importance in any advance, was not reassuring. The Japanese had bombed it once or twice, not very seriously, but some partially trained non-Regular Indian troops, who formed its garrison, had not stood even that light introduction to warfare well; there was a distinctly jumpy feel about the place. Its wide perimeter could not be held by merely static defence. All the more reason, therefore, to get the 14th Division moving.
Towards the end of July, G.H.Q. India became firm in the intention to order an Arakan offensive. Its modest objects were to clear the enemy out of Mayu Peninsula and to take Akyab Island. Prospects of success were good. As far as we knew, the Japanese had only four divisions in Burma, though more were believed to be coming. Of the four, one was in the far north-east watching the Yunnan Chinese; two were on the Assam front and in Central Burma; one, the 55th, was in Western Burma, and of this only one regiment with some divisional units was in Arakan. The rest of this division was guarding the long coastline and in South Burma. An advance on Akyab should not, at first, meet more than four battalions and some divisional troops. Lloyd would, therefore, have a handsome margin of superiority, at any rate in the opening exchanges.
There were, as always in war, other factors besides numbers. The ground was one—the most important. The Mayu Peninsula is some ninety miles long and
about twenty wide at its northern end, whence it tapers to a point just short of Akyab Island. Down its centre runs the Mayu Range, a razor-sharp ridge, from one to two thousand feet high, almost precipitous but jungle covered. The lower slopes, in a tangle of broken spurs, approach to within a thousand yards or so of the sea on one side and of the Mayu River on the other. The narrow strips of flat ground on each side are split by innumerable streams or chaungs, which on the west especially are tidal with treacherous banks of mud at low tide. Such a terrain would afford, at frequent intervals, ideal positions for defence, and gravely hamper the deployment of an attacking force.
Before Eastern Army had decided to control the offensive direct, and while we had thought that, if it came, we at 15 Corps would be responsible for it, we had, of course, begun the consideration of a plan. Leaving out a full-scale amphibious assault, which lack of resources made impossible, there were three ways of advance on Akyab:
(a) A methodical approach straight down the peninsula.
(b) A series of hop, skip, and jump minor amphibious operations working down the coast in hooks behind the successive Japanese positions.
(c) A long-range penetration expedition of the type for which Wingate’s brigade was now training. This, swinging out well to the east, could reach Akyab by the back door.
We felt that a straightforward advance, even with superior force, would be slow and costly and, knowing the Japanese tenacity in defence, might be held up. The amphibious hooks would at the best be weak, and our flotilla, owing to Japanese air attacks could only work at night, so that the hooks would be very short ones. The long-range penetration method we liked very much, but it could not be effective by itself. Our final answer, as far as we got to an answer before we were called off, was a combination of all three. The main advance by the 14th Division down the peninsula; a couple of battalions, scraped up from internal security and trained with the flotilla, for the hooks; and Wingate’s brigade for a simultaneous strike at Akyab or beyond.
Eastern Army had straight away to give up the idea of using Wingate’s brigade. General Wavell had rightly decided to use that in the north, to co-operate with a Chinese advance from Yunnan. Eastern Army had very understandable doubts of the value of our cherished flotilla for even small landing operations. I admit it did look a bit Heath Robinsonish, but I think we could have found places to land by night where there was no enemy, and the R.A.F., if we were willing to risk it, might have welcomed the chance to draw out the Japanese airmen. However, Eastern Army came down in favour of the orthodox direct advance overland, relying, with what seemed good reason, on their preponderance of strength.
This, our first offensive in the theatre, was never intended to accomplish more than the very limited objective of taking Akyab. Its most important effects would not be the minor improvement in the tactical situation that the possession of Akyab would give, but the moral effect that any successful offensive would have on world opinion, on our allies, and, most important of all, on our own troops. Morale in places was not too high and we badly needed a victory of some sort. It was a mistake to blazon the advance as an invasion of Burma. Even if the limited success aimed at were attained, it would not come up to the expectations raised, and, if we failed, the depression would be the greater. It is better to let a victory, if it comes, speak for itself; it has a voice that drowns all other sounds. If it does not come—and victory is never certain—the less preliminary drum-beating there has been the better.
From Ranchi, to which we had moved in August, we watched with growing anxiety the progress of the Arakan offensive, now no longer our responsibility. The weather, difficulties in collecting supplies and equipment, and other reasons, delayed its start, and it was not until mid-December that the 14th Division began in earnest its ninety-mile move on Akyab. The advance was made on both sides of the Mayu Range, along the sea-coast and astride the Mayu River, with a flanking detachment still farther east in the Kaladan Valley. The central spine of the range was not occupied; it was judged too precipitous and too thickly jungle-covered to be passable. For most of the way, therefore, it effectively separated the two prongs of the advance.
To begin with, all went well. The little port of Maungdaw on the estuary of the Naf River, and the town of Buthidaung were taken against slight opposition. The west to east road between them, which pierced the range by two tunnels—relics of a vanished railway—was occupied, giving us the only lateral road in the peninsula. The last days of 1942 found Lloyd’s troops, on the right of the range in the coastal plain just short of Donbaik, ten miles from the tip of the peninsula; and on his left, approaching Rathedaung in the Mayu River Valley, about fifteen miles from Foul Point. A carrier patrol even reached that point, separated by only a narrow channel from Akyab Island, and returned to report no enemy seen.
An unfortunate pause in the advance until the 6th January then occurred, which gave the Japanese time to bring up reinforcements and to dig in at both Donbaik and Rathedaung. Our left attack on Rathedaung, gallantly pressed, was repulsed; two set-piece frontal attacks on the right across the paddy fields on Donbaik also failed disastrously. The Japanese held Donbaik with little more than a battalion, with other troops in reserve, yet so skilfully were their positions sited and hidden that an attack on the restricted front between the ridge and the sea failed to dislodge them. For the first time we had come up against the Japanese ‘bunker’—from now on to be so familiar to us. This was a small strong-point made usually of heavy logs covered with four or five feet of earth, and so camouflaged in the jungle that it could not be picked out at even fifty yards without prolonged searching. These bunkers held garrisons varying from five to twenty men, plentifully supplied with medium and light machine-guns. They were quite impervious to bombardment by field-guns and even the direct hit of a medium bomb rarely penetrated. They were sited in groups to give mutual support, so that it was impossible for assaulting troops to reach a bunker without coming under fire from at least two others.
Some reports and many rumours of these set-backs in Arakan spread through the Eastern Army. The high hopes inspired by the drum-beating that had preceded the offensive died down and heads began to be shaken. Reinforcements were sent from India to give renewed impetus to the attack, until eventually four fresh Indian brigades and one British brigade had been added. The 14th Division now had nine brigades and it was, I think, the largest that ever went into action. To overcome the bunker difficulty, 15 Corps was ordered to send one troop of Valentine tanks to Arakan. The tank brigade commander protested against such a small detachment and I supported him, as it was against all my experience in the Middle East and Burma. ‘The more you use, the fewer you lose.’ I argued that a regiment could be deployed and used in depth even on the narrow front chosen for attack. We were overruled on the grounds that more than a troop could not be deployed and that the delay in getting in a larger number across the chaungs was more than could be accepted. Reluctantly we sent the troop, and the secret of its move was admirably kept. This and the gallantry of the crews were the only admirable things about the episode.
The third assault on Donbaik went in, but the handful of tanks was knocked out almost at once, and the attack again failed. After a pause to bring up fresh troops a fourth attack on the same frontal model, but now without tanks, was made on the 18th February. By sheer gallantry, Punjabi troops penetrated to the bunkers, but were eventually thrown back after suffering very heavily. The Japanese technique was, when our troops reached the enemy positions, to bring down the heaviest possible artillery, mortar, and machine-gun concentrations on them, irrespective of any damage they might inflict on their own men. Actually, as the Japanese defenders were mostly in bunkers they suffered little, while our troops, completely in the open, had no protection from this rain of projectiles.
In the second week of March, I was summoned to Calcutta by the Army Commander, General Irwin, who told me he wished me to visit Lloyd in Arakan. I asked him if, now so many brigades were operating there, he
intended to send my headquarters with me to take over control. He replied that he did not want me to take any operational command, nor did he think a corps headquarters necessary at this time, but he might decide to send us there later. All I was to do now was to look around, get into the picture, and report to him.
I reached Lloyd’s headquarters, near Maungdaw, on the 10th March, and spent some days there and with forward brigades. My first impression was that the force, nine brigades with a very large and difficult line of communication area, was much too big for a divisional headquarters, even if augmented, to command and administer. My second, that in many units morale was very definitely on the down-grade. There was every night a great deal of panicky firing which on one occasion developed into a full-scale battle—at least in ammunition expenditure—between two adjacent parts of the force. Warren, Lloyd’s chief staff officer, remarked dryly the next morning, ‘At least we won that battle!’ Lloyd had been ordered to make yet another attempt to break through the Donbaik position, and had been given 6 Brigade, four battalions strong, from the 2nd British Division for the purpose. The plans for this attack seemed to me very like those of its predecessors—a direct frontal attack. Lloyd assured me that there was no other way; he had no ships for a hook down the coast and his patrols had reported repeatedly that the ridge and its jungle were impassable to a flanking force. He was confident that with this fresh British brigade, improved covering fire by artillery and aircraft, and the increased knowledge he had gained of the Japanese defences, he would this time succeed. I told him I thought he was making the error that most of us had made in 1942 in considering any jungle impenetrable and that it was worth making a great effort to get a brigade, or at least part of one, along die spine of the ridge. He replied that he had given a lot of thought to this and had decided it was not feasible and his brigadiers agreed. Looking at the densely covered and almost perpendicular slopes of the Mayu Range, it was difficult to question this. In any case, I had no operational control over Lloyd, and, as he pointed out, plans were so far advanced that the date of the attack could not be put back to allow of changes, if time were to be left to stage the capture of Akyab. Wrongly I left it at that, flew back to Calcutta, and made my report to the Army Commander. He, also, having studied the question and heard the opinions of subordinate commanders, was compelled to believe that a flanking move via the ridge was impossible. He did not say so, but I judged he was not altogether enthusiastic over another attack on Donbaik, but that he was being pushed from Delhi to undertake it. I had some time before asked for ten days’ leave in Simla, where my wife and daughter were living, and, on the assurance that I should not be required, I left.
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