Defeat Into Victory

by Field-Marshal Viscount William Slim

  The engineer resources of the Fourteenth Army did not permit both the Tiddim road and the Kabaw Valley route to be made and maintained at the same time. I had already decided in favour of the Kabaw Valley, which was not only a much easier road to make but, with fewer curves and none of the terrible gradients of the other, was obviously much better suited to the heavy traffic expected in the dry weather. The result of this decision, however, was the abandonment of the Tiddim road as a line of communication; it was allowed to fall away behind the troops as they advanced. As it was impossible in the hills to build any landing strips, the 5th Division became completely dependent on air dropping for all its requirements. It also relied for direct fire support largely on the fighter bombers of 221 Group, R.A.F. What this regular air supply and support meant in skill and strain to the aircrews only those who have flown among these shrouded hills can judge. Yet throughout the whole of this monsoon the fighters of Air Marshal Vincent’s 221 Group flew over our troops every single day. I do not think such devotion has ever been surpassed in any air force, and I doubt if it has been equalled.

  One result of the decision to abandon the road was that casualties could not be evacuated. They must either accompany the division or be dumped in native villages, in either event an unhappy prospect. I was particularly worried about the victims of scrub typhus, a disease that was proving lamentably fatal without really good nursing, so I had asked for a few nurses to volunteer to accompany the division. The only difficulty was to pick the handful required from the numbers who eagerly volunteered for what could only be a dangerous and hard task. These devoted women not only saved many lives, but were a morale-raiser to the whole division.

  It was at this period that a formation that had, up to now, been lurking discreetly in the wings, took the stage in no mean part. The Lushai Brigade, it will be remembered, had been hurriedly improvised from certain spare Indian battalions and some local levies to prevent Japanese infiltration through the Lushai Hills. Its headquarters, under Brigadier Marindin, whom I had known well as a battalion commander in the Retreat of 1942, was at Aijal, in roadless country over a hundred miles south-west of Imphal. As an orthodox infantry brigade it left something to be desired. There had been very little indeed in the way of equipment or transport to give it; its signals were improvised, it had neither engineers nor artillery. I am told, though I do not vouch for this, that when it went into action, so scant was the equipment of its headquarters, that staff officers could be heard politely saying to one another, ‘May I please have the map for a moment?’ And that when the brigade was not in action ‘the’ map served as cloth to the brigader’s camp table. It certainly had vermouth stains on it on the one occasion I used it! But what it lacked in equipment the Lushai Brigade made up in initiative.

  As the Japanese showed no signs of coming to the Lushai Brigade, I thought that the brigade had better go to them. At the end of June I gave Marindin an order which might have made many a brigadier look a little doubtful, but which seemed to please him mightily. It was: ‘Completely to dislocate Japanese traffic on the road Tiddim–Imphal from Tiddim northwards, and render it useless to the enemy as a line of communication.’ I told him that he could not rely on air support. I would give him what I could, but it would not be much. If he got into trouble, no one could help him; he would be too far away. And, as generals always do on these occasions, I wished him luck. I placed the brigade under the 5th Division with which they were soon in close co-operation.

  The brigade of four Indian battalions, the Lushai and Chin Levies and some ‘V’ Force detachments, was scattered over a wide area. It took time to collect them, organize their transport, most of it local mules and porters, and start on the march to the Tiddim road. Marindin’s plan was to deploy the brigade on as wide a front as possible, giving each battalion a sector with orders to raid the road at least once a day somewhere in that sector. He spread three of his battalions along the west of the road from Milestone 44 to Tiddim, not continuously, but with gaps of from ten to fifteen miles between the sectors. With his fourth battalion—my old friends the Bihar Regiment from Ranchi, who were so proud of their womenfolk—and the Levies he improved on my orders. He launched them on a drive into the Chin Hills to capture the local capitals, Falam and Haka, fifty miles south of Tiddim, and to rouse the Chins, who in the main had remained loyal throughout their occupation by the Japanese. The Chin Levies were overjoyed at the prospect of liberating their own country. They took with them their families, rather like the Children of Israel trekking out of Egypt, dumping them in their own villages as they recaptured them one by one. The whole brigade when deployed was thus operating vigorously against the Japanese line of communication and rear areas on a front of over one hundred miles.

  The two most northerly battalions were in position by the end of July after most difficult marches of eighty and one hundred and twenty miles, over mountains five thousand feet high, and across flooded rivers. They wasted no time. The Japanese soon found movement by day or night was harried, not only from the air, but by stealthy ambushes and sudden bursts of fire. They were compelled heavily to piquet the road. At least five or six hundred Japanese were tied up in this static defence; over two hundred were killed, many wounded, and numbers of vehicles destroyed; all at the cost of twenty or thirty casualties to our troops.

  It was, however, Marindin’s third battalion, which, getting into position somewhat later, made the biggest bag. This battalion concentrated on a small sector of eight miles where the Japanese road ran on the east bank of the Manipur River through a precipitous gorge. Our men on the west bank, protected by the raging torrent, could keep this road under constant fire at ranges from one hundred and fifty to five hundred yards. The enemy could not build a diversion to his road through the gorge, and, unless he staged a major operation to bridge the river elsewhere and send a considerable force to deal with the Lushai Brigade, he faced two alternatives. Either he could run the gauntlet or, abandoning his vehicles, take to the hill-sides to the east. This battalion, keeping the road under Bren and mortar fire day and night, accounted for several hundred Japanese and destroyed over one hundred vehicles. Lorry traffic on this sector ceased.

  Helped by these actions of the Lushai Brigade, the main advance on the Tiddim road was taken up by a fresh brigade (161) of the 5th Division. Its operations followed the pattern of the brigade it relieved, continually ejecting Japanese rearguards from their positions by air strikes, flanking hooks, and frontal attacks, bridging streams and clearing landslides. On the 14th September the leading troops reached the west bank of the Manipur River, a hundred and twenty-six miles from Imphal.

  Evans, who commanded the 5th Division, had expected that the enemy would put up a strong resistance at the Manipur River, which now, in flood, was a most formidable obstacle. All available intelligence supported him in this belief. He had, therefore, obtained Stopford’s agreement to sending back his rear brigade (123), not yet committed, by lorry through Imphal to Shuganu and thence down the east bank of the Manipur River, to come in behind any enemy barring the advance of the 5th Division. The brigade, with a mountain battery and a field company of Sappers and Miners, collected at Shuganu in the first week of September and moved south. It was completely on a pack basis and maintained entirely by air. By the 14th September, as the 5th Division was reaching the river, this brigade, pushing on rapidly, seized the high ground opposite it on the east bank. The enemy, realizing that he was in imminent danger of being cut off, contented himself with shelling our crossing place, and gave up the defence of the river line.

  Even with the Japanese driven from its banks, the crossing of the Manipur was no easy operation. The river, one hundred yards wide, was in full spate, flooding through its gorge at a speed of ten to twelve knots, hurling itself against boulders in fountains of spray, and bringing down tree trunks in full career. Its roar, audible for miles, was like that of a great football crowd. Not without difficulty the engineers got a rope across, and a flying bridge
—a ferry attached to a cable—was built. The first boat to attempt the crossing was capsized by the fury of the stream. All its occupants were lost. But the cable held and next day, the 16th September, the ferry was working, though a crossing was still a hazardous and nerve-testing experience. Ferrying, in these conditions, was a slow business, but by the 19th a road-block had been placed behind the Japanese rearguard whose shelling, particularly that of some 155-mm. guns, had been thoroughly unpleasant. Next day the rearguard was attacked. An attempt by the enemy to break through the road-block after dark failed, and they took to the jungle, abandoning ninety dead and the objectionable 155-mm. guns.

  Without pause, Warren who had replaced Evans, a victim of climate and exhaustion, in command of the division, pushed on for Tiddim with the troops already across, while tremendous efforts were made to get the remainder of the division over the river as the road behind it collapsed in mud and landslides. The leading brigade (123), in spite of the difficulty of the country, advanced on a wide front so as to overlap the frequent but small Japanese rearguards. By the 1st October our troops were in the hills some miles due east of Tiddim, in contact with the enemy who still covered the town and held the main road approach. The advance was a succession of minor engagements in which the Japanese 33rd Division still fought well and put in frequent counter-attacks. The outflanking tactics of our troops paid, and even the formidable ‘Chocolate Staircase’ position was turned in this way and abandoned by the enemy after little resistance. Chocolate Staircase was the name given to the Tiddim road where in seven miles it climbed three thousand feet with thirty-eight hairpin bends and an average gradient of one in twelve. The road surface was earth, and marching men, animals, and vehicles soon churned it into ankle-deep mud. The hill-side, and with it the road itself, often disappeared in thunderous landslides; then every available man had to turn to with pick and shovel to shape a track again. No soldier who marched up the Chocolate Staircase is ever likely to forget the name or the place. The enemy made several more desperate attempts to block the road to Tiddim but the constant threats to his line of retreat, his fear of losing guns and vehicles, the accuracy of 221 Group’s air strikes even in this country, and the unquenched élan of our troops in direct attack had their effect. Tiddim was occupied on the 17th October.

  As ‘Vital Corner’ and Kennedy Peak were approached the Japanese resistance became more stubborn. The 8,800-foot Kennedy Peak was the highest point passed on the Tiddim–Kalemyo road, and there they were expected strongly to bar our way. To outwit their defence, Warren staged two wide turning movements. One, on the right, by a brigade (161), aimed at the road junction two miles south of Fort White; the other, on the left, by a battalion to strike into the Kalemyo road in the Stockades area, some ten miles east of the Fort. The brigade reached its objective, but the battalion was held up in the hills about twelve miles east of Kennedy Peak. While these flanking moves were taking place, the remainder of the division with its tanks pushed steadily up the main road. Its leading brigade (9) sent a battalion in a close left hook round the mountain, to cut the road just south of the Peak, where it established a road-block.

  In several days’ fighting and after very accurate softening up by the R.A.F. and Mitchell bombers of the U.S.A.A.F., the enemy positions covering Vital Corner, well dug and backed by concealed artillery, began to give way to our frontal assault. On the 3rd November resistance crumbled. The Japanese, attempting to withdraw by the main road, ran into the battalion of 9 Brigade. After frantic and costly efforts to force a way through, they broke up into small parties and, abandoning everything except their small arms, took to the surrounding jungle. Our troops and tanks took heavy toll as they followed up the disorganized enemy, many of whom were intercepted by the battalion which had been sent on the wide left turning movement. On the 4th November, Kennedy Peak was ours. The Japanese losses were heavy and their dispersal almost complete, yet as our advance continued they were able temporarily to throw it back by a counter-attack on the night of the 6th. This was their last effort. On the 8th, Fort White was entered by our patrols and junction made, as planned, between 9 and 161 Brigades. A rapid advance followed against light opposition and in the afternoon of the 13th November, as already related, a patrol of the 5th Indian Division met a patrol of the 11th East Africa Division and together entered a deserted Kalemyo.

  The 5th Indian Division had completed a remarkably fine feat of arms and endurance in its advance from Imphal to Kalemyo. The carefully checked figures for enemy casualties, excluding those inflicted by the Lushai Brigade—and only fresh bodies on the ground were allowed to count—were 1,316 killed and 53 prisoners. The divisions own battle casualties in the same period were 88 killed, 293 wounded, and 22 missing. The contrast is a fair measure of the skill this experienced Indian division had now reached in the art of killing Japanese. The division, after clearing its area of enemy stragglers, collected in Kalemyo, and was flown out to refit in the Imphal plain.

  The Lushai Brigade throughout had maintained its galling pressure on the enemy rear areas. By mid-September, its activities had been extended and the Lushai Scouts and Levies were operating towards the main Tiddim–Fort White road and even east of Fort White. In October, the brigade was given the role of protecting the right flank of the 5th Division in its advance and of breaking into the Myittha Valley with the ultimate object of seizing and holding Gangaw, seventy-five miles south of Kalemyo. This was something of a tall order for the brigade, but, unperturbed, it proceeded on a hundred-mile front, ambushing, raiding, infiltrating, to carry it out. On the 18th and 19th October, it occupied the Chin capitals of Falam and Haka amid great rejoicings and reunions of the loyalist tribesmen, not a little enlivened by the free distribution of rice and stores captured from the Japanese.

  The small enemy detachments in the Chin Hills withdrew, skirmishing, as the columns of the brigade advanced eastward. On the 15th November, our troops reached the Myittha River, forty-five miles south of Kalemyo, but a Japanese detachment still held Gangaw and there were many small parties and stragglers scattered along the river. The Levies and Scouts pushed on eastwards and, by the end of November, were on the Chindwin, twenty miles south of Kalewa, and raiding the east bank. The main force of the brigade pushed south up the Myittha Valley towards Gangaw. By mid-December, when greater events were impending, the Lushai Brigade had patrols on the east bank of the Chindwin, had cleared the whole country west of the Myittha River, and was closing in on the last Japanese foothold in the Myittha Valley at Gangaw.

  There is no doubt that the enterprise and dash of this improvised and light-hearted brigade was a very real contribution to the pursuit to the Chindwin. It had operated for six months on pack transport, supplemented by an unavoidably meagre air supply, across two hundred miles of jungle mountains, against the enemy flank and rear. Considering the paucity of its equipment and resources, it gave one of the most effective and economical examples of long-range penetration.

  Another independent brigade which had played a less spectacular, but none the less helpful, part was 268 Indian Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier Dyer, a commander whose resource and cheerfulness became renowned throughout the army. Formed originally as a motorized brigade to work with armoured formations, all its regular battalions were withdrawn in August 1944, and it was reconstituted with one Nepalese and three newly-raised Indian infantry battalions, all then untried in battle. Its task was, during September, to clear the wild jungle country on the west bank of the Chindwin north of Sittaung of Japanese patrols and Indian National Army stragglers. In combing out this area, it uncovered several concealed Japanese supply and arms dumps, from which the enemy hoped to support themselves when, as they frequently attempted to do, they re-infiltrated across the river. At the beginning of October, 268 Brigade also took over from a brigade of the 11th East African Division the Sittaung area itself, including the newly-established bridgehead. Our patrols on the east bank then pushed deeper into the screen that the Japanese were now buil
ding against our penetration, and enlarged the bridgehead.

  While all these diversions on the flanks had been going on, the main advance of the 11th East African Division to establish a bridgehead across the Chindwin at Kalewa continued. The road to Kalewa enters the gorge of the Myittha River five miles east of Kalemyo, and the Japanese held the entrance in some force. A road-block was placed behind the enemy position and maintained in spite of counter-attacks. In a series of assaults, supported most accurately by air strikes, the Africans gradually forced their way through the defile against stubborn opposition. On the 2nd December they entered Kalewa which had been reduced to ruins, largely by our air bombardment, and was deserted.

  Meanwhile a brigade (21) of the 11th Division, moving south from Mawlaik, scattered a Japanese detachment that attempted to bar its path, and, on the 24th November crossed the Chindwin on tarpaulin rafts, about twelve miles north of Kalewa. It then bore down on the enemy holding the east bank opposite Kalewa.

  The time had now come to establish the permanent bridgehead. Fowkes, commanding the 11th Division, planned with the help of his brigade already on the east bank to put another brigade (25) over the river just north of Kalewa and then to pass his third brigade (26) through to seize all tactical features within artillery range of the bridgehead. The crossing took place on the night of the 3rd/4th December according to plan. The enemy’s opposition developed during the day and he shelled the ferries, but the bridgehead was firmly established by nightfall. Next night the follow-up brigade began crossing and pushed on down the Pyingaing road. Stiff opposition was encountered. Throughout the establishment of the bridgehead R.A.F. fighter bombers gave constant and close support which, in several instances, led to the Japanese abandoning positions even before our troops attacked them. It was not until the 8th December that the enemy, under pressure from both the bridgehead itself and the brigade coming down from the north, began to give way, and to withdraw on Shwegyin.