We had often talked of this before; now we were to see if the methods we had devised would be the right ones. The leading division, at the moment the 5th, would move with an armoured and motorized infantry group ahead. There would be a bound forward, as rapid as possible, to seize an airstrip or a site for one, the fly-in to it of airfield engineers, and the quick follow-up of the air transported brigade. Then, while that brigade held the air base, cleared the surrounding country, kept open the road, or, if necessary, reinforced an attack, the rest of the division would make its next bound. Each division would lead in turn, reach its objective, halt, and let the other through. There must be no pause. Airstrips would be required at least every fifty miles, but preferably, to save road transport, at more frequent intervals. The rate of our advance would be in direct ratio to the speed with which they could be brought into operation. In fact, after the first day or two we put airfield engineers with the tanks at the head of the column, so as to start work on airstrips at the earliest possible moment.
The armoured group ahead of the 5th Division quickly covered the twelve miles to Yamethin, drove through the town, and pushed on. When darkness fell, however, a Japanese suicide party some three or four hundred strong with anti-tank guns infiltrated into the town from the east and dug in among the houses. At dawn next day they commanded the only road and the soft vehicles, which had halted for the night north of Yamethin, were held up. The intruders proved extremely difficult to dislodge, and it was not until the 14th that the last of them was exterminated and vehicles could pass freely. Angry at the delay, the 5th Division pushed rapidly on for thirty miles to Shwemyo, which it occupied on the 16th. Just beyond the village, the road runs through a deep valley with the Shwemyo Bluff, a ridge some seven hundred feet high, completely dominating it for several miles, and forcing it to pass through narrow defiles. There is no other way for wheels past the Bluff, and we had always feared that we might be held up there. For a time it looked as if we should.
The Japanese had rushed up from South Burma a fresh regiment of their 55th Division, which was now hurriedly digging in on the Bluff. Pressing in front with his leading brigade, Mansergh debussed his second and sent it by a forced, outflanking march, deep through hills and jungle, to take the enemy in rear. On the 18th, our men suddenly fell upon them, still digging, and flushed them from their half-completed entrenchments at the bayonet point. Meanwhile, to save air transport which was urgently needed to bring in supplies, especially petrol, several lorry loads of which had been destroyed by Japanese fighters in an attack on our armoured group, the air transported brigade was brought by road to the landing ground at Shwemyo. That night our leading troops harboured two hundred and forty miles from Rangoon.
On the 19th, the armoured group, still in the lead, rumbled twenty miles down the road, to find Pyinmana strongly held. While the main column was catching up, the tanks bulldozed a by-pass road round the town, went ten miles farther, and seized the airfield at Lewe—a more valuable prize than the town. In a matter of hours the airstrip was repaired and troops and stores were being steadily flown in.
Lieut.-General Honda, commanding the Japanese Thirty-third Army, with several of his staff, was visiting Pyinmana when our troops were suddenly reported on its outskirts. Luckily for him, his staff car was faster than our tanks. Leaving one mechanized brigade to clear Pyinmana, the other, with its armoured group from 255 Tank Brigade, swept on. The situation at this stage had in it an element of comedy. 4 Corps was charging south down the road and railway, while, driven off these, in the hills on each flank, faint but pursuing, enemy parties of all sizes were marching hard in the attempt to reach Toungoo before us. If Radio Tokyo had announced, ‘Our forces are pursuing the enemy rapidly in the direction of Rangoon’, it would have been nearer the truth than usual.
All eyes were now on Toungoo. Japanese and British alike were converging on it in desperate endeavours to forestall one another. We must occupy it before the enemy could concentrate there, if we were to avoid the long delay of clearing the town house by house. There was another reason. Its group of airfields, some of the best in Burma, were the most northerly within good fighter range of Rangoon and, if the amphibious landing there were to be practicable, we must have them as bases for its air cover. The landing was now scheduled for the 2nd May; on naval advice it could not be later owing to weather. This date provided us with our last and, I was beginning to think, the most formidable competitor in the race. We were beating the Japanese, there was as yet no sign of the monsoon, but, if we were to beat ‘Dracula’ too, we should have to step up our time-table. We had eleven days to be in Rangoon, and over two hundred miles to go—twenty miles a day. That put us on our metal!
Kimura was driving his men as hard as Messervy and I were driving ours. He had ordered all troops in the Shan Hills to get to Toungoo with sleepless speed. Their roads were the fair-weather hill-tracks that ran roughly parallel to our route, sixty or seventy miles to the east. Opposite Toungoo and about seventy miles from it, this track turned abruptly west and joined the Rangoon road in the town. Led by the partly reorganized 15th Division, the Japanese, ferrying fast in any kind of vehicle left to them, made for Toungoo, and it looked as if they might beat us to it. But I still had a shot in my locker for them. As they drew south, their way led them through the country of the Karens, a race which had remained staunchly loyal to us even in the blackest days of Japanese occupation, and had suffered accordingly. Over a long period, in preparation for this day, we had organized a secret force, the Karen Guerrillas, based on ex-soldiers of the Burma Army, for whom British officers and arms had been parachuted into the hills. It was not at all difficult to get the Karens to rise against the hated Japanese; the problem was to restrain them from rising too soon. But now the time had come, and I gave the word, ‘Up the Karens!’ Japanese, driving hard through the night down jungle roads for Toungoo, ran into ambush after ambush; bridges were blown ahead of them, their foraging parties massacred, their sentries stalked, their staff cars shot up. Air-strikes, directed by British officers, watching from the ground the fall of each stick of bombs, inflicted great damage. The galled Japanese fought their way slowly forward, losing men and vehicles, until about Mawchi, fifty miles east of Toungoo, they were held up for several days by roadblocks, demolitions, and ambuscades. They lost the race for Toungoo.
Still leading 4 Corps’ advance, the 5th Division, brushing aside disjointed opposition, in three days covered fifty miles and, on the 22nd April, with a final spurt, our armour crashed into Toungoo. Although we had heavily bombed the town the day before, the arrival of our ground forces was a complete surprise. The signals of a protesting Japanese military policeman on point duty were disregarded, and the first tank went over him. Panic reigned as our tanks roamed the streets, the enemy flying in all directions, intent only on escape. They left behind them only fifty dead, so fast did the living make for the jungle to swell the numbers trudging south. Honda had established his army headquarters in Toungoo and had issued the usual optimistic orders that it was to be defended to the last. He staged another hurried flight, but this time he abandoned most of his headquarters equipment and it was several weeks before he recovered any control over the remains of his army. We had not expected so swift a victory at Toungoo. Now it was one hundred and sixty miles to go and eight days left. The race between 4 Corps and 15 Corps, which was to make the Rangoon landing, promised a close finish. Betting at this stage was three to one on 4 Corps, but even the most optimistic of its supporters would have liked a 31st April in the calendar.
Without a pause the 5th Division, sweeping aside Japanese fugitives, next day reached Pyu, over thirty miles south of Toungoo. Here, although the important bridge had been demolished, the site was undefended and the construction of a new bridge was quickly in hand. On the way, the 1st Division of the Indian National Army was encountered. It surrendered en masse, with its commander, one hundred and fifty officers, and over three thousand men. They were just in time to begi
n work on the captured airfields. On the 24th April, the 17th Division, close up and ready, was due to pass through and take the lead, but the 5th, its blood thoroughly up, went on another twenty miles to Penwegon. Here, when our first armoured car crept up, the Japanese demolition party was already in position at the bridge—but asleep. They never woke. In the 17th Division, indignation battled with consternation when the 5th thus overran their mark. We were now one hundred and fourteen miles from Rangoon with seven days to the 2nd May.
I knew that with the loss of Toungoo, Kimura must realize that the situation in South Burma was critical. He was probably out of touch with his army commander, now a fugitive, and he could not have much left in the way of reserves. We learnt, on the 24th, that he was moving his headquarters to Moulmein, but whether this meant that Rangoon would be abandoned or whether, as I had always feared, he would leave a garrison there, I could not tell.
I did not think he would risk running the gauntlet of our Navy and Air Force in an evacuation by sea. Whatever he did, he would have to hold Pegu as it covered his last withdrawal route to the east, and all our intelligence confirmed that the enemy were concentrating for its defence. Although, of course, we did not know it at the time, Tarauchi, the Japanese Supreme Commander, had ordered Kimura to hold South Burma at all costs and, if possible, Rangoon too. Kimura decided that to hold Rangoon was not possible. He again showed energy in crisis, and called every man and unit to the defence of Pegu. Disregarding the possibility of a sea landing, which in any case he believed we should not attempt so near the monsoon, he brought 24 Independent Mixed Brigade from Moulmein, and hastily formed two new brigades, each under a Major-General, from the miscellaneous units of the Rangoon garrison and the lines of communication. One of these brigades contained several anti-aircraft batteries and they brought with them their guns to be used in an anti-tank role. Into these improvised brigades Kimura swept shore-based naval units, fishermen, and civilians. By the 28th April, this force of three brigades, with numbers of fugitives from the north, was collected at Pegu, and, apart from a handful left to carry out demolitions, no Japanese were in or south of Rangoon. I calculated that Kimura would try to hold Pegu throughout the monsoon if it were only to allow his troops in the Irrawaddy Valley to escape over the Salween River. We could expect bitter resistance.
On the 25th April, the 17th Division took the lead. After some twenty miles, its armoured spearhead ran into a Japanese rearguard, many of whom were horsed cavalry, and ploughed through them, killing some and scattering the rest. On the 26th, Daiku was reached—eighty miles from Rangoon with five days to go and Pegu in between. Next day, where fifteen miles farther south the road passed through a defile between the six mile wide Moyingyi Reservoir on the east and swampy ground on the west, more serious resistance was met. Here, the enemy had laid a considerable mine-field, which took toll of our tanks and was defended by suicide parties of Japanese engineers and infantry. By evening a way had been forced through the mine-field, in which the defenders left three hundred dead. All night skirmishing went on and, next morning, the 28th, our advance again met stiff opposition ten miles north of Pegu. After heavy air bombardment, at the approach of our troops the Japanese pulled out, but it was not until evening that our armour reached the outskirts of Pegu to find the town strongly held.
That morning, another of our armoured and infantry columns had hooked round the Moyingyi Reservoir and cut the Japanese escape road to the east of it, compelling their retreating vehicles to be abandoned or to take to cross-country tracks farther south. A Jiff officer who surrendered reported that over four hundred British and American prisoners of war were in a village some distance away. They were being escorted from Rangoon towards Moulmein, when their Japanese guards, hearing the road ahead was cut by our rapid advance, abandoned them and fled. Patrols were at once sent out to locate the party and did so, unfortunately not before some of our aircraft seeing a column of men in khaki, as distinct from the green all our troops wore, had dived and straffed them, killing and wounding several. Some of the officers and men rescued were from the 17th Division, captured in the 1942 fighting, and now found themselves back widi their old formation.
The troops of 4 Corps were already on reduced rations, having given up food for petrol and ammunition, but the knowledge that they were only forty-seven miles from Rangoon and that the Japanese at Pegu were the only obstacle between them and the capital, spurred them on. The town of Pegu stands on both banks of the winding Pegu River. The road to Rangoon crosses the river by the main bridge in the town itself; the railway crosses twice, by two bridges to the north. The Japanese were cunningly entrenched in the town and covered both railway bridges which they had demolished. Cowan’s plan was first to clear the part of the town on the east bank by a double assault, delivered by a brigade from the north and his armoured column from the east and south-east. On the morning of the 29th April, both these attacks were launched. The northern attack broke into the town, but was held short of the road bridge. The armoured column, hampered by mine-fields and canals, was unable to use its tanks to the full and although the infantry pushed on alone they were not, unsupported, able to penetrate far among the houses where Japanese resistance was desperate.
Undismayed, Cowan now extended his operations to the west bank. In a series of small dog fights the approaches to the railway bridges on the east were cleared and attempts to cross made. These were held back by heavy fire, until a platoon of Indian infantry, crawling over the wrecked girders of the southern bridge, succeeded most gallantly in gaining the west bank. With the bayonet they cleared the nearest Japanese trench and held out until more of their battalion, swimming, rafting, and scrambling over the wrecked bridge, joined them. We now had a footing, even if a somewhat precarious one, on the west bank. While this was going on, our troops on the east bank, against bitter opposition, overran almost the whole of the northern residential area of Pegu, but at nightfall on the 30th the enemy still covered the intact road bridge.
I had spent the 29th April at my headquarters, now established in Meiktila, where I had received rather alarming reports of a Japanese counter-attack directed down the Mawchi road against our line of communication at Toungoo. I was told the main Rangoon road was already under Japanese artillery fire. We had only one brigade of the 19th Division to hold this attack and it might prove very embarrassing if the enemy made any further headway, so on the 30th I flew to Toungoo. As I drove down the main road towards Rees’s headquarters, I had convincing evidence of the accuracy of at least one item of my intelligence report—the Japanese were quite noticeably shelling the road. I found Rees as usual cheerful and unalarmed, though at that moment superior enemy forces were pressing on his brigade not very far to the east of us. His troops had dug in among the hills astride the road and he was confident they would hold. I visited some of his units, and stayed to watch a battery firing at Japanese reported to be collecting for an attack. One of the gunners, stripped to the waist, his bronzed body glistening with sweat, was slamming shells into the breach of a twenty-five-pounder. In a lull in the firing I stepped into the gun pit beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to do all this on half rations.’ He looked up at me from under his battered bush hat, ‘Don’t you worry about that, sir,’ he grinned, ‘Put us on quarter rations, but give us the ammo and we’ll get you into Rangoon!’ I did not doubt it; with men like diat who could?
The Japanese on the Mawchi road tried hard to carry out their orders and cut our communications, but my gunner and his comrades were too good for them. Helped by the Karens, who clung to the Japanese coat-tails, Rees was able in the days that followed, not only to hold them, but to push them back farther into the hills, until the Rangoon road, at any rate, was no longer under their fire. An unspectacular task, out of the limelight of the race for Rangoon, but essential and carried out, as were all 19th Division’s tasks, cheerfully, promptly, and with no little grief to the enemy.
During the night at Toungoo, reports of
the Pegu fighting had come in which made me eager to see what was happening there. Accordingly on the morning of the 1st May, taking with me Messervy and two or three others, including Major Robert Fullerton one of my American staff officers, I set off by air. As we approached Pegu I committed a very foolish and culpable act. I told my pilot to fly on south as I wished to see for myself what the country over which the 17th Division would have to operate was like. Sitting beside the pilot I had just seen, far away in the direction of Rangoon, tall columns of smoke—which might be bombing or perhaps evidence of evacuation—when we came under considerable anti-aircraft fire. We received several hits, one of which exploded against Fullerton’s leg. My pilot with great skill and coolness took evasive action in clouds and landed us on a newly-made advanced strip just north of Pegu. There was a dressing station alongside the airfield and by the greatest good fortune John Bruce, the consulting surgeon of the Fourteenth Army, happened at that very time to be visiting a forward surgical team. Bruce, one of the foremost British surgeons, saved Fullerton’s life, but nothing could have saved his leg. I felt—and still feel—very guilty about this. I had no business as Army Commander to go where I did, and, if I was so stupid as to go, I had no excuse for taking Messervy or the others with me.
After this unhappy introduction to Pegu, I found that during the night the situation had improved. We had kept our hold on the west bank and, on the east, patrols probing forward in the dark had reported the enemy thinning out and the sound of motor transport driving away. At dawn our troops had advanced to the attack, but found the whole of Pegu on the east bank clear, except for mines and booby traps. Leaving his air-transported brigade to deal with the west bank and the small parties of Japanese roaming the countryside, Cowan prepared for the final stage of the advance on Rangoon. If the only delay was to come from the Japanese, he could nave pushed through the remaining forty miles in the next two days and reached Rangoon some hours ahead of the landing party. Unfortunately, it was not.
Defeat Into Victory Page 60
