Defeat Into Victory

by Field-Marshal Viscount William Slim

  Sakurai’s outflanking operations began smoothly enough. With its local guides, Tanahashi Force, large as it was, succeeded in evading our posts and patrols, and in the early morning of the 4th February burst into Taung Bazaar, scattering the few administrative troops located there. Sakurai’s supply column, following up, was not so fortunate. The 7th Division caught it as it tried to get by, destroyed its escort, captured a considerable quantity of gun ammunition, much rice, and a complete field ambulance, so that the Japanese supply arrangements, already rather sketchy, were further imperilled. The porters of this column were Arakanese Mohammedans and Maughs. All dropped their loads and the Arakanese made off into the jungle, but the Maughs, two hundred of them, preferred wisely to be captured rather than have their throats cut by the local Arakanese as they attempted to escape. These prisoners, fed off the supplies they had been carrying, made and maintained an airstrip from which, during the operations, American L5 aircraft evacuated over two hundred badly wounded men. They also did most of the picking up of airdrops for one of our brigades.

  Having gained Taung Bazaar, without pause Tanahashi turned on the rear of the 7th Division, but here the Japanese met the second hitch in the great plan. When 9 Brigade of the 5th Indian Division had been sent through the pass a few days before to free the 7th Division for its attack on Buthidaung and Letwedet, a brigade (89) of the latter with the 25th Dragoons had been taken into divisional reserve. Messervy at once launched this brigade and the tanks in a counter-attack to the north against Sakurai Force. The attack, especially the tanks whose presence east of the range had not been expected by the enemy, severely jolted the exultant Japanese, but it did not stop them. They swept on round its flanks and, wading through the breast-high dawn mist of the 6th, overran Messervy’s divisional headquarters. A fierce dogfight ensued among the camouflaged tents and dug-outs of the headquarters and along the jungle paths through it. Clerks, orderlies, signallers, and staff officers threw back yelling rush after rush, but when the Japanese mortars made the area untenable, Messervy gave the order for the whole headquarters to fight its way through the Japanese to the Administrative Box. After destroying equipment, ciphers, and documents, they broke out in several groups, one led by the general himself. Casualties were numerous, but the bulk reached the Box, and Messervy had a reduced headquarters working and himself in control of his division again by the evening. The enemy swarmed round the Administrative Box, and to strengthen it Messervy called inside its perimeter two additional infantry battalions from certain outlying positions, for use as counter-attack troops. The brigades of 7th Division and 9 Brigade of the 5th Division, in accordance with the orders given for such a situation, dug in for all-round defence on their position, and beat off attacks, frontally from Doi Force and in rear from Tanahashi’s troops. On the 7th, patrols of the 7th Division moving up the Ngakyedauk Pass from the east were ambushed and had to turn back. On the 8th, patrols of the 5th Division from the west found a well-dug-in road-block across the road, for on that day Doi Force and Sakurai’s men had joined hands. The 7th Division was surrounded.

  Meanwhile Kubo Force pushed north towards Goppe Bazaar, and, dropping a detachment to close the road south, turned directly west to cross the Mayu Range. There was no track; the ridge was almost precipitous for a thousand feet. The Japanese, ant-like, dragged their mortars and machine-guns up the cliff and lowered them the other side, until they burst out on the main Bawli-Maungdaw road, much to the surprise of certain administrative units peacefully pursuing their daily tasks. Bridges were blown up, camps fired on, 15 Corps Headquarters harried, and for forty-eight hours the 5th Division was, like the 7th, cut off from all access by road. Well might Sakurai congratulate himself on the success of his blow, while Tokyo Rose crooned seductively on the wireless that it was all over in Burma.

  Actually it was just starting. The leading brigade of Lomax’s 26th Division, which I had placed under Christison, crossed the Goppe Pass into the Kalapanzin Valley, reoccupied Taung Bazaar, and began to press on Sakurai’s rear. On the same day the rest of the division, relieved in the Bawli area by Festing’s 36th British Division, followed. Briggs, with the 5th Division, although he had only two of his three brigades left, thinned out along his front, in spite of Doi Force demonstration attacks, and began to push up the Ngakyedauk Pass towards the 7th Division. At the same time, hurriedly organized forces from the 5th Division and corps reserve attacked from both sides the road-block that Kubo Force had established south of Bawli Bazaar.

  The Japanese knew they had to destroy the 7th Division in the next few days and they were going to spare nothing to do it. As their reinforcements arrived they flung them to the attack on the Administrative Box or against our entrenched brigades. The fighting was everywhere hand-to-hand and desperate. The Administrative Box was our weak spot. Commanded from the surrounding hills on all sides at short range, crowded with dumps of petrol and ammunition, with mules by the hundred and parked lorries by the dozen, with administrative troops and Indian labour, life in it under the rain of shells and mortar bombs was a nightmare. Yet the flimsy defences held, held because no soldier, British, Indian, or Gurkha, would yield; they fought or they died where they stood. How some of them died will be for ever a black blot on the so often stained honour of the Japanese Army, in the moonless dark, a few hundred yelling Japanese broke into the Box and overran the main dressing station, crowded with wounded, the surgeons still operating. The helpless men on their stretchers were slaughtered in cold blood, the doctors lined up and shot, the Indian orderlies made to carry the Japanese wounded back and then murdered too. A counter-attack next morning exacted retribution, but found the hospital a shambles, the only survivors a few wounded men who had rolled into the jungle and shammed dead.

  Such an outrage only steeled the resolve of our men. Typical was the spirit of a battery of medium artillery pent up in the Box. An air pilot reported he had seen their five-inch guns firing at a range of four hundred yards as the enemy pressed home an attack. He thought their situation desperate. A wireless signal was sent to the gunners asking how things were with them. ‘Fine,’ was the answer, ‘but drop us a hundred bayonets!’ The bayonets were dropped—and used.

  Messervy now ordered his brigades to send out strong offensive detachments to harry and cut the tracks by which the enemy’s mule and porter columns were trying to replenish their forces. The Japanese were beginning to suffer from their optimistic timetable. The ten days allowed were almost up; they had captured none of our guns or supplies; the British were showing no signs of the panic retreat expected. Instead, it was the Japanese themselves who, more and more, were becoming the encircled force. Sakurai made desperate efforts to bring in reinforcements, supplies, and ammunition; but his convoys were ambushed in the jungle, and his boats shot up from the air as they tried to creep up the rivers, while commando raids and demonstrations by light craft along the coast behind him held down the troops that might have helped him. The West African advance down the Kaladan Valley, which now threatened Kyauktaw and was approaching a position from which it might menace the Japanese right rear, was a growing threat to the whole Japanese position in Arakan. In spite of this, Hanaya, with commendable resolution, refused, until the third week in February, when the result of his main battle was beyond doubt, to send any help to his hard-pressed and outnumbered Kaladan detachment. Meanwhile Sakurai’s losses were heavy, and they were not being replaced. His wasting battalions were growing hungry. Hanaya should by this time have realized that his blow had failed and saved what he could by retreat. Instead, with typical dull Japanese ferocity, he continued to push his now increasingly disorganized units to the attack.

  The 36th British Division under Festing now went into action. It had only two brigades, one of which began to advance south down the main road on the west of the range, while the 26th Division on the east pushed south from Taung Bazaar. The plan by which Sakurai Force would be caught and crushed between the 5th and 7th Divisions and the 26th and 36th was m
oving steadily to its climax.

  My time was spent between my own headquarters and Christison’s, with occasional visits to the troops. It was good to see how the attitude had altered from that of 1943. Now confidence and the offensive spirit reigned in everyone. There were, of course, anxious moments; we had some over air supply. The American and British transport aircraft available were proving too few to meet our increasing demands. In Arakan not only were the whole of the 7th Division, part of the 5th, and most of the 26th on air supply, but the 81st West African also. This total, formidable as it was, we might have managed, but another large demand had to be met. The time for the fly-in of Wingate’s force was approaching, and, unless the whole operation was to be postponed or perhaps abandoned, it was necessary to divert aircraft first for its training and rehearsals, and later for its maintenance. This difficulty was met by Admiral Mountbatten obtaining the permission of the Combined Chiefs of Staff to borrow aircraft from the Hump. Twenty-five Commandos (C46) were lent for three weeks, thus enabling Dakotas to be sent to Wingate’s force to tide over the peak demand.

  In the first days of the battle, the Japanese Air Force tried hard to wrest superiority from us. The biggest air fights yet seen in Burma took place in the Arakan sky and went decisively in our favour. The R.A.F. shot down the Tojos and Zeros at the rate of ten for one Spitfire, until the enemy returned only on an occasional tip-and-run raid against our transport aircraft. Indeed, anti-aircraft fire from the ground was soon a greater danger to our aerial supply line than air attack. Luckily the Japanese were always unskilful anti-aircraft gunners, and, as most of the dropping was now done at night, their fire, though at times considerable, was strangely ineffective. Air supply went steadily on.

  Watching Snelling’s men at work, meeting the demands of the fighting troops, I was surprised at the range and flexibility of his ground organization for air supply. All the standard items—rations, ammunition, mail, petrol for tanks, grain for animals, and the rest—went largely on a regular schedule, but the emergency and fancy demands made were also met with the promptitude and exactness of the postal order department of a first-class departmental store. Blood plasma, instruments, and special drugs for the doctors, spare parts for guns and tanks, boots of unusual size, the daily issue of S.E.A.C. newspaper, typewriter ribbons, cooking pots to replace those destroyed by shellfire, socks, even spectacles to replace those lost—nothing was too unusual, too trivial, or too fragile to be found and packed by the supply units or delivered by the airmen. As an example, when Messervy’s headquarters took refuge in the Administrative Box it arrived minus all such domestic items as spare clothing, bedding, razors, soap, tooth brushes, and the rest. All these items were replaced within forty-eight hours, and would have been delivered earlier had not the first drop unfortunately gone to the Japanese. One item, however, even Snelling could not replace. Messervy’s red-banded general’s hat had been left behind and not another of the size was available. However, even that loss was recovered a couple of weeks later, when in a party of Japanese, ambushed while trying to escape, one was found to be wearing the general’s hat! It was duly returned, the temporary wearer having no further use for a hat of any kind. When I congratulated Snelling on the excellence of his organization he told me he regarded the Arakan show as merely a rehearsal for bigger things. How right he was!

  By the middle of February, the Japanese had shot their bolt; a week later Hanaya accepted defeat and, too late, attempted to pull out his disorganized units. Under cover of suicide detachments, who hung on to the last, Sakurai Force broke up into small groups and took to the jungle. But our 7th Division had already passed to the offensive, the 5th was battering through the Ngakye-dauk Pass, which was fully opened on the 24th, and from the north swept down, on both sides of the ridge, the 26th and 36th Divisions. The hammer and the anvil met squarely, and the Japanese between disintegrated. Kubo Force, among the cliffs and caves of the Mayu Range, was destroyed to the last man in a snarling, tearing dog-fight that lasted days, with no quarter given or expected. Of Sakurai’s seven thousand men who had penetrated our fines, over five thousand bodies were found and counted, many more lay undiscovered in the jungle; hundreds died of exhaustion before they reached safety; few survived. The March on Delhi via Arakan was definitely off!

  The spirit and cohesion of 15 Corps were shown by the fact that it resumed its general offensive, interrupted by the Japanese counter-stroke, on the 5th March. The enemy, bringing up strong reinforcements, resisted desperately. Our advance was slowed up also because drastic reductions were made in the air supply to 15 Corps. Not only had the borrowed aircraft to be returned to the Hump, and others sent to Wingate’s force, but Baldwin and I were growing increasingly anxious for the squadrons to have at least a short rest after their magnificent achievements, before the obviously approaching major test on the main Assam front again called on them for prolonged intensive effort. Road and water transport replaced air, and the advance went on. Buthidaung, a shattered wreck of a village, was taken on the 11th March, after a series of deliberate assaults on the defences covering its approaches. In these attacks Christison made use of really heavy artillery bombardments; in one of them his corps artillery put down seven thousand shells in ten minutes on a five-hundred-yard objective. Luckily our Arakan line of communication could now bear the strain. After Buthidaung, the reduction of the formidable Letwedet fortress was begun, and achieved, bit by bit, in savage fighting.

  The Japanese made one desperate bid to hold up this attack. On the 25th March, they infiltrated a suicide force of some four hundred men into the neighbourhood of the Administrative Box. The attempt had no effect on our operations; the troops in reserve quickly and with relish liquidated the lot. By the end of March the whole Buthidaung–Letwedet area was in our hands, although a few Japanese stragglers still survived, dodging about in the mass of tiger grass and the scrub-covered hillocks until the monsoon obliterated them.

  Meanwhile, on the west of the range, Briggs’s 5th Division had again set about the keep of Razabil fortress which still held out. One brigade, Warren’s, cut in between Razabil and the tunnels area; the Japanese positions, pounded out of recognition, were rushed and their last defenders bayoneted as they crouched deep in the hill-sides. It was then the turn of the 36th British Division to attack the last enemy stronghold defending the Maungdaw-Buthidaung road, the tunnels fortress. This they did with élan and skill. The Japanese resisted and counter-attacked at every step. Their reinforcements were, we knew, pouring in to refill the depleted ranks of the 55th Division and to build up the 54th behind it, but Festing’s men were not to be denied.

  On the 27th March, a Welsh battalion supported by tanks assaulted the defences of the western tunnel. In the mêlée a tank fired a shell directly into the tunnel mouth. Ammunition stored inside blew up, in a series of stunning explosions, and in the confusion the Welshmen rushed the enemy and the tunnel was ours. On the 1st April, another battalion, the Glosters, attacked the eastern tunnel positions and took a beating; but, with true West Country doggedness, they had another go on the 4th. This time the Japanese had had enough and did not wait for them. The tunnel itself was taken on the 6th April.

  The final step to clear the tunnels area and to free the road for our use was the capture of the dominating hill known as Point 551, which overlooked a stretch of the road. It was under attack throughout April, during which the 26th Division delivered three separate assaults on it. Its capture on the 3rd May, at the fourth attempt, was the toughest fighting of the whole tunnels battle. I was glad it fell to Lomax and his 26th Division, for it was here in 1943 that the bottom had fallen out of our box and of our plan to hold the Maungdaw-Buthidaung road. It was the first time we had won a battle on a spot where we had previously lost one; later we were to do this again and again, and it always gave me an especial satisfaction. Revenge is sweet. 15 Corps had now achieved all the tasks I had set it.

  It was only in the Kaladan Valley that our plans were not completely s
uccessful. Here the 81st West African Division had contributed to the general victory by a rapid advance, brushing aside opposition, to Kyauktaw and on to Apaukwa, both taken early in March. The enemy, appreciating what a threat the division was becoming, then concentrated against it a column of about four battalions under a Colonel Koba, a regimental commander of the 54th Division, who carried out a brilliant counter-attack which rightly earned him promotion to Major-General. The West Africans, rather dispersed in their advance, were caught by surprise, and they proved not so steady in defence as they were dashing in attack. They were thrown into confusion and pushed back again to the north-west of Kyauktaw. The division, having been rallied, collected in the area of Kaladan village, while its transport withdrew north up the river. It then moved on a pack-and-porter basis to the Kalapanzin Valley, near Taung Bazaar on the flank of the main battle, while a detachment retired slowly up the Kaladan River covering the transport. Koba followed up this detachment, attacked it fiercely, and eventually drove it out of the Kaladan Valley into that of the Sangu.

  Before the battle in Arakan was over it was clear that the enemy was about to take the offensive on the main front in Assam. Both my reserve divisions, the 26th and 36th, were committed and it was imperative that I should collect a fresh Army Reserve. For this purpose I began to withdraw the 5th Indian Division to the Chittagong area to rest and refit. Its place was taken by the 25th Indian Division which General Giffard sent me from India, under Davies, my old Chief of Staff in 1942. This enabled me to warn Christison that the 7th Division, in turn, would follow the 5th into Army Reserve. The intention was to transfer these reserves, if necessary, partly by air and partly by rail, from Chittagong to Imphal.