Defeat Into Victory

by Field-Marshal Viscount William Slim

  At this stage, everyone in Fourteenth Army realized the need for speed and for the boldest offensive action over the widest area. The enemy had chosen, in spite of the disadvantages of his situation, to fight us on the Irrawaddy and in the Central Burma plain. This was our opportunity finally to break up the Japanese army. Both corps and every division must strike at any enemy forces within reach. Especially must they, with air, armour, and mechanized units, fall on the scattered Japanese columns marching to the battle and destroy them before they could unite. An important element in our plan was to disrupt the Japanese command organization. In my headquarters at Monywa, I now had a very efficient wireless interception and location unit which was able with considerable accuracy to identify and locate the various Japanese headquarters. With the help of air reconnaissance and informers, we were even able to pin-point some of the more important. On them we directed, not only constant and heavy air attacks, but raids by our columns. We followed them when they moved, and bombed and harried them when they halted. Gradually their signals grew fewer, they were forced to longer periods of silence, and the orders their commanders issued lagged further and further behind a rapidly moving battle.

  From Meiktila, Cowan’s 17th Division struck in all directions. Infantry and tanks went out daily to hunt, ambush, and attack approaching Japanese columns of various sizes in a radius of twenty miles of the town. So successful were these actions, that attempted enemy concentrations were broken up and large-scale attacks prevented or at least delayed. Nevertheless, the pressure on Meiktila increased as the hostile forces built up. The enemy’s chief aim was to take the airstrip, some two miles from the town, on which, as the road to the bridgehead was now closed, all our supplies were landed. Could he succeed in denying this to us for any length of time, we should be compelled to rely entirely on dropping, and our situation would become precarious. The struggle for the airfield was savage and continuous but the 17th Division still continued to push out in all directions, killing hundreds of Japanese and capturing many guns.

  Cowan had not enough troops to spare for the complete perimeter defence of the airfield, and the enemy had, by mid-March, dug in so close to the strip that by night our troops disputed with his patrols in the no-man’s-land of the actual runway. At dawn each day, before aircraft could land, a sweep had to be carried out to drive back enemy infiltration and to clear the ground of mines. The fly-in of the airborne brigade of the 5th Division began and was completed by the 17th March. The last part of this brigade was landed while the strip was under direct artillery fire, and it says much for the gallantry of the American and British aircrews that every sortie, without exception, was completed, even though machines were being destroyed after landing. The losses in troops during this operation were surprisingly small. Only those who have landed in such circumstances can realize how quickly it is possible to empty an aeroplane of passengers.

  Soon after the brigade’s arrival, the Japanese by a great effort reached the edge of the airfield. All landings ceased, there was a great reduction in supplies, petrol grew short, reinforcements could not be brought in nor wounded evacuated except by an occasional light plane from a small strip inside the town. Not for the first time, Cowan found himself cut off in a savage battle. This time, to the anxieties of such a situation was added a deep personal sorrow. He learnt, in the midst of the battle, that his son, the splendid young officer I had met with my old regiment in the 19th Division bridgehead, had died of wounds received in the taking of Mandalay. We lost too many of our generals’ sons; the cruellest thing about war is that it takes the best.

  It was imperative to regain the use of the main strip. North of it, where the Japanese were dug in, was difficult and broken country, intersected by deep gullies which were tank obstacles. The enemy had brought up many anti-tank guns, and was freely using mines which he drew from the many local dumps. When these ran out, he grimly replaced them by human mines. A Japanese soldier with a 100-kilo aircraft bomb between his knees, tolding a large stone, poised above the fuse would crouch in a foxhole. When the attacking tank passed over the almost invisible hole, he would drop the stone—then bomb, man, and, it was hoped, tank would all go up together. Luckily the device was not very effective and accounted for more Japanese than tanks. In spite of the fiercest resistance, our infantry, supported where possible by tanks, and almost always by fighter-bombers placing their loads within a hundred yards of our troops, gradually forced back the enemy from the airfield. Even then, for days after the area near the strip had been cleared, Japanese medium artillery dominated it, and it was not until the 29th March, that the enemy was driven from the last of the broken ground in which his guns were concealed. Beaten in this hand-to-hand fighting, his scattered remnants fell back, leaving behind in our hands nearly all their guns and having suffered disastrous casualties.

  While these grim battles to take and hold Meiktila were raging, the rest of 4 Corps was not idle. Soon after our troops had passed through on their way to Meiktila, Honda’s counter-attack from the north had reoccupied the hills around Taungtha and dominated the road. The 7th Division, at the beginning of March, was stretched on an arc from Letse on the west bank, held by 28 East African Brigade, then across the river south of Pagan, through the bridgehead—now ten miles deep—and finally curving round to twelve miles upstream of Nyuangu. Inside the bridgehead had collected the ‘tail’ and supply column of Cowan’s force, some five thousand soft vehicles in all. Messervy had three important and immediate tasks:

  (i) To capture Myingyan. Until this was in our hands as river-head, we could not use our Chindwin shipping to relieve the strain on our communications.

  (ii) To reopen the road to Meiktila.

  (iii) To prevent the enemy pressure, now developing from the south on both banks of the Irrawaddy, from cutting the road again.

  He at once pushed out columns, supplied by air, across the flat sandy plain towards Myingyan. Every move by day was betrayed by dense dust clouds, and opposition was continuous from enemy rearguards well furnished with artillery. Fighting all the way, our troops reached a deep dry chasm at right angles to the advance, four miles from Myingyan. Here, the Japanese were strongly dug in, and the first assault only gained the forward trenches before it was held.

  At this moment Messervy’s second task, the clearing of the Taungtha hills to open the Meiktila road, became urgent. Masking Myingyan, therefore, he swung the weight of his attack in this direction. His plan was for an armoured column from Cowan to open the road to Taungtha, while the 7th Division drove the enemy out of the hills. Taungtha was captured without much difficulty, but it was not until the 7th March, that a footing in the hills was gained, only to be lost to a Japanese counter-attack. Another week of tough fighting was required before the heights overlooking the road were taken, and contact made with the column from Meiktila. At this juncture, the first brigade of the 5th Division to come by road arrived in the bridgehead, and completed the task of clearing the Taungtha area, while the troops of the 7th Division turned again to the capture of Myingyan.

  The first attack on Myingyan failed but, after heavy fighting, our tanks and infantry had forced a way into the outskirts by the night of the 18th. Four more days of continuous struggle were needed to take the rest of the town; the Japanese delivering suicide counter-attacks until the last. Their losses in men and guns—the enemy 15th Division lost most of its remaining artillery here—were large, and the survivors, attempting to escape, were caught in the open by our pursuing columns. Few got away. The capture of Myingyan was greeted with a sigh of relief by the Fourteenth Army administrative staffs, for time to get it working again as a port was short. The building of wharves began at once, almost under fire, and in a surprisingly short time boats from our Kalewa shipbuilding yard were unloading at them. An energetic start was also made to get the Myingyan-Meiktila railway running. Bridges were rebuilt, and even some of the captured and wrecked engines were patched up to clank and rattle precariously over the rusty perma
nent way.

  While our assault on Myingyan was in full swing, Honda’s push from the south came in. On the east bank, the I.N.A. formations in the Kyaukpadaung area, with a stiffening of Japanese troops, were directed north-west on Nyaungu. They met columns of the 7th Division striking in the opposite direction and collided head on. The Jiffs had little stomach for the fight and fled or surrendered; the Japanese were killed. Simultaneously, another brigade of the 7th Division advanced down the east bank of the Irrawaddy on Chauk. They, too, encountered Japanese advancing to meet them, and stiff fighting took place, especially some six or seven miles north of Chauk, where the Japanese clung desperately to strong positions. These were taken, a short further advance made, and the troops dug in. Here they remained, on the edge of the most northerly oilfield, as news of more Japanese concentrations in the Mount Popa area decided Messervy not to push farther south for the moment. Honda’s counter-attack from the south on the east bank had proved abortive, largely because the I.N.A., who formed an appreciable part of it, had no wish to fight. This was as well, because the other half of his thrust from the south, that came in on the west bank and was composed all of Japanese, produced temporarily a critical situation.

  The Japanese had for some time been harrassing 28 East African Brigade Group in the Letse neighbourhood, and a Punjabi battalion had been sent to stiffen it. When reinforcements reached the enemy, they launched on the 20th March determined attacks, and began to surround and push back the Africans. A British battalion was hurriedly transferred from the east bank and joined them. With them and the Punjabi battalion, in close fighting, it got the better of the enemy and slowly drove them back. Any threat to the Nyaungu bridgehead and the road to Meiktila was now, after some anxious days, relieved.

  By the last week in March, the Battle of Meiktila had been won. It had been intended as the decisive stroke and I had subordinated everything to its success, yet it had been only half of the great Battle of Central Burma. That other half had been fought out simultaneously around Mandalay.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE BATTLE OF THE IRRAWADDY SHORE

  BEFORE following the course of the battle which, simultaneously with that for Meiktila, was waged about Mandalay, it would be well to glance at events on the flanks of the Fourteenth Army, for these had their effect on the main battle and its subsequent development. On the right, Christison’s 15 Corps in Arakan and, on the left, Sultan’s N.C.A.C. had each been actively engaged.

  When, towards the end of 1944, our thoughts began to turn more optimistically to widening the scope of operations in South-East Asia, the situation in Arakan was strategically unsatisfactory. Here, we had four divisions locked up by the threat of a Japanese force much smaller than our own. The wise thing to do, as General Giffard had recognized, was to push back the enemy until they were no longer in a position easily to restage an offensive, and then, leaving say one division to contain them, free the other three for use elsewhere. If we were to take Akyab, secure the mouth of the Kaladan River, and hold the country to the east of it as far south as the Myebon Peninsula, we should be able to do this. Now that the divisions from Europe promised for South-East Asia did not seem likely to materialize, it became increasingly desirable to free our own formations from Arakan. 15 Corps had for some time been planning an offensive to achieve this. Christison had under him four divisions, the 25th and 26th Indian, the 81st and 82nd West African, with 3 Commando Brigade and 50 Indian Tank Brigade. He was supported by 224 Group R.A.F. and a naval task force, most of whose landing craft had been left in Burma waters as too worn out to be of use in Europe. Opposing Christison was Lieut.-General Sakurai Seizo, commanding the Twenty-eighth Army, who had under him in Arakan a regiment of the 54th Division and part—we were not sure at the time what part—of the 55th Division. Actually the bulk of the 55th Division had already moved into Southern Burma. This Sakurai was not the Sakurai Tohutaro, who had commanded the abortive Japanese Arakan offensive, but the names caused us some confusion.

  The offensive began on the 12th December 1944 and three days later the 82nd Division, under Major-General G. S. Bruce, took much fought-over Buthidaung and once again opened the last few miles of the road from Maungdaw to the Kalapanzin. In the many creeks around the tiny port of Maungdaw nad been collected over six hundred river craft, which in five days were carried by road through the Mayu Range and launched in the Kalapanzin River, to help in the maintenance of the advance south. Meanwhile, the 81st Division under Major-General Loftus-Tottenham, advancing for the second time down the Kaladan Valley, bypassed Kyauktaw, where nine months before it had met with disaster. Moving wide to the east through thick hill jungle, it struck at the Japanese communication centre of Myohaung which, on the 25th January, was taken by a converging movement of the 81st Division from the north and the 82nd from the west. After considerable fighting, the Japanese extricated themselves and withdrew. While this was going on, the 25th Division, under Major-General G. Wood, supplied from the sea, advanced on the 26th December to Foul Point, the tip of the Mayu Peninsula, and then occupied Kudaung Island, north of Akyab, and separated from it by only a narrow channel.

  Akyab Island had been garrisoned by a Japanese regiment of three battalions, but the unexpectedly rapid advance of the West Africans in the Kaladan Valley had caused Sakurai, or perhaps Miyazaki, commander of the 54th Division, to transfer two of these battalions to meet the threat there. In December our intelligence learnt of the departure of one of these battalions but not of the second. On the 2nd January 1945 an artillery officer flying over the island in a light aeroplane, seeing the local inhabitants making friendly signs, boldly landed on the airstrip and single-handed captured Akyab—the last Japanese battalion had pulled out forty-eight hours earlier. Our troops, who were on the point of delivering a full-scale attack, ferried peacefully to the island. It is pleasant to think that the fall of Akyab was to a considerable extent due to the Kaladan advance of the 8ist Division, which thus redeemed its earlier set-back.

  The Japanese in Arakan were now in general retreat to the south. Their only route of withdrawal for guns and vehicles was by the road that ran, a few miles from the sea, down the whole Arakan coast, meeting the new An Pass road from the Irrawaddy at Tamandu and the old road from Prome at Taungup. Christison’s aim was to trap the Japanese forces by cutting the coastal road ahead of them. Command of the air and sea and his landing craft, even if decrepit, gave him the power to do this. He planned to seize the Myebon Peninsula, thirty miles east of Akyab, by seaborne assault, and then, in a second amphibious operation, to strike at Kangaw, eight miles farther east. There he would cut the road before the retreating Japanese had reached the town. Kangaw was approachable from the sea only by narrow chaungs which were commanded from Myebon, so it was necessary to secure that place before attempting the second operation. Not only was 15 Corps likely to meet stout resistance at both places, but the naval difficulties of a landing were extreme. The Arakan coast south of Akyab is screened by mangrove swamps and cut by muddy, shallow chaungs, uncharted and unpredictable. There are no beaches worthy of the name; only a few small stretches of sand, often soft, overlooked by jungle hills, where men might wade ashore. To discover these possible landing places, and to plot a way to them, called for the greatest daring and skill from the Navy. As ever, these qualities were forthcoming; small boat parties and frogmen took soundings and examined beaches. On the 12th January 1945 a commando brigade landed by surprise against slight opposition. During the next few days, a brigade of the 25th Division followed, and the Japanese, hurriedly collecting their forces, counter-attacked in strength. They were beaten off and our troops, fighting hard, proceeded to clear the whole peninsula.

  The next step was the second landing by 3 Commando Brigade, on the 22nd January near Kangaw, under cover of heavy sea and air bombardment. The Japanese were more prepared here, and the commandos clung to a small beach-head under fierce attack until the next night, when a brigade of the 25th Division was landed. The brigade was p
lunged at once into bitter hand-to-hand fighting, as the Japanese, realizing the threat, collected all available troops and flung them against the bridgehead.

  The attack was so fierce and sustained, and supported by such heavy artillery fire that, at the time, it was thought the Japanese were using nearly a whole division. Actually, their force was much less and nearer a brigade in strength. Our men fought back and, on the 29th January, turned to the attack. They took Kangaw village and established a road-block south of it that finally closed the Japanese escape route. Two days later the enemy, reinforced, put in his fiercest counter-attack—and his last. This battle was the crisis of the Arakan operations. It lasted for a day and a night. The attack was delivered with great determination against the commando brigade in positions which, if they had fallen into Japanese hands, would have endangered all our forces then ashore. When the attack was finally repulsed, the enemy left over three hundred dead in the area.