Four days later, Hutton was replaced as commander-in-chief of Burma by General Harold Alexander, whose principal assets were that he was imperturbable and in favour with the prime minister. Bolstered by the arrival of the battle-hardened 7th Armoured Brigade and the 63rd Indian Infantry Brigade, Alexander lost no time in ordering a counter-attack at Pegu. The 63rd Brigade had barely landed in Rangoon when it was launched into battle. Like most Indian units in Malaya and Burma, it had a large proportion of new officers, fresh recruits and unsuitable equipment. The brigade lost almost all its senior officers in the opening encounter. The counter-attack was very nearly a disaster. The Japanese hit back and threatened to box in and destroy the troops at Pegu. On hearing the news, Alexander immediately ordered the evacuation of Rangoon. His own headquarters as well as that of the 17th Division narrowly missed being trapped by the Japanese, retreating north towards Tharrawaddy. As the Japanese approached Rangoon, the sky was lit up by columns of fire. The retreating troops had blown up the installations of Burmah Oil Company – an act that led to two decades of litigation after the war.57
The fall of Rangoon enabled a rapid build-up of Japanese forces in Burma. The Fifteenth Army was reinforced by sea with two well-trained divisions and tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft. The Japanese wasted no time in destroying the RAF in Burma. On 21–22 March, Japanese aircraft launched five devastating strikes on the airbase at Magwe and crippled British air power for the rest of the campaign. Wavell refrained from making good these losses. The tiny air force in India was held back for the defence of Calcutta and other eastern towns. In consequence, the Japanese enjoyed unchallenged control of the air over Burma.58
As the 17th Division retreated north towards Prome, the 1st Burma Division provided a screen behind which additional troops were being deployed at Toungoo in the Sittang valley. The troops were not Indian or British – but Chinese. Since December 1941, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been gravely worried at the prospect of the Burma Road being severed by the Japanese. The closure of the road for three months in 1940 had given him a taste of things to come and he was desperate to keep alive this supply artery – not least because American Lend-Lease supplies to China were routed through Rangoon. On 10 December, Chiang sent a long telegram to the British government, expressing his willingness to fully collaborate in any concerted military plan adopted by the Allies. On receiving a copy of this cable, Wavell flew to Lashio and met Chiang on 22 December. Wavell thought that the Generalissimo was ‘not a particularly impressive figure at first sight: he speaks no English, but makes clucking noises like a friendly hen when greeting one’. Nor did Wavell think much of Chinese military prowess. Thus, when Chiang offered the Chinese Fifth and Sixth Armies (each the equivalent of an Indian division in size) for the defence of Burma, Wavell turned them down. He would later claim to have advanced ‘a very qualified acceptance of one Army’. Wavell’s qualms apparently stemmed from Chiang’s demand for a separate supply channel for Chinese troops – a logistical impossibility under the prevailing conditions in Burma.59
This was at best a half-truth. Both Wavell and Dorman-Smith were loath to use Chinese troops for the defence of Burma. As Wavell explained to Churchill, ‘It was obviously better to defend Burma with Imperial troops than with Chinese and the Governor particularly asked me not to accept more Chinese for Burma than was absolutely necessary.’60 In any event, Chiang was miffed by the British response. The United States, however, was keen to placate the Chinese leader. President Roosevelt was worried that his ‘Europe first’ policy might lead a disenchanted Chiang to conclude a separate peace with Japan, so freeing up Japanese forces for use elsewhere. In a bid to stiffen Chiang’s resolve, the Americans leaned on the British to accept his offer of troops for Burma. Further, they sent Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell as chief of staff to the Generalissimo.
The acerbic Stilwell was aptly called ‘Vinegar Joe’ – a title that he embraced with relish. Although his grasp of Chinese affairs was less than sure, Stilwell more than made up for it by his tenacity and toughness. He was not particularly suited, though, to the politic needs of coalition warfare. Stilwell quickly developed a degree of contempt both for the British – ‘Limeys’ – and for Chiang, whom he dubbed ‘Peanut’. Prior to flying out to India, Stilwell read the cables on the state of Sino-Indian relations. ‘Archie misled Peanut at Lashio’, he concluded, ‘and now they are both sore each thinking the other ducked out on him.’ By the end of January, Stilwell was gloomy: ‘Will the Chinese play ball? Or will they sit back and let us do it? Will the Limeys cooperate? Will we arrive to find Rangoon gone?’61 His apprehensions were not unfounded.
Under pressure from the Americans, Wavell had already invited the Chinese to take up the defence of the Shan States on Burma’s north-eastern border. Yet, owing to the scarcity of transport, the Chinese troop movements were excruciatingly slow. The three divisions (equivalent to Indian brigades) of the Chinese Sixth Army – the 49th, 55th and 93rd – were in place only by early March. Around the same time, the Chinese Fifth Army also began moving into Burma. By this time, Rangoon had fallen.
Chiang believed that the best strategy in Burma was to hold an east–west line at Mandalay. Stilwell wanted to resist the Japanese at Toungoo as a prelude to a counter-offensive on Rangoon. Chiang, however, was opposed to a premature attack that might denude his army of its best troops and formations. Stilwell professed to agree, but his plans were unchanged: ‘to work toward the recapture of Rangoon; and only if this failed to fall back on Mandalay’.62
Another point of contention was the chain of command in Burma. On 15 March, Stilwell was informed by Washington that he and his forces would operate under the overall command of Wavell. Chiang, however, was smarting from Wavell’s earlier rebuff and objected to British command in Burma. The British, for their part, were not pleased with Stilwell’s presence in Burma. Not only did Alexander expect to command the Chinese forces, he also held that Stilwell had neither staff nor understanding of the situation on the ground. A compromise was struck whereby Stilwell was only nominally under Alexander’s command. More problematic for Stilwell was his own uncertain position vis-à-vis the Chinese forces ostensibly under him.63
Meanwhile, another layer of command sprouted up. On 19 March, the newly arrived Burma Corps Headquarters assumed control of ground operations under the Indian army’s most experienced senior commander, Lieutenant General William Slim. Operating with a shoe-string staff, Slim quickly got down to assessing the situation. He concluded that there were many reasons for the dismal performance of the British troops: a complacent grand strategy; poor intelligence; an apathetic, if not hostile, civilian populace; loss of men and morale; and lack of equipment and training for jungle warfare. The British forces had to learn ‘how to move on a light scale, to become accustomed to the jungle, to do so without much transport, to improve our warnings of hostile movements, and above all to seize the initiative from the enemy’.64
The deficiencies in training could hardly be improved on a retreat. So, Slim set himself the task of tying down and delaying the Japanese for as long as possible, while maintaining contact with the Chinese. The plan was to strike at the Japanese with mobile forces from well-defended positions. Although some of these actions went well, the fighting power of the Burma Corps was dwindling. The morale and discipline of the Indian troops remained a matter of concern. Besides, the Indian units suffered from limited mobility. The complete lack of air support added to their casualties and lowered their spirits further.
Against this backdrop, the Japanese attacked Toungoo on 19 March. The 200th Division of the Chinese Fifth Army put up a stern resistance but by 25 March, the Japanese had surrounded the town. Stilwell, however, refused to allow the division to pull out. What’s more, he was still intent on sending two divisions down south to attack the Japanese at Pyinmana and Pyawnbwe. Ultimately, on 30 March, Chiang personally ordered the divisional commander to break out of Toungoo. Stilwell claimed that ‘Through stupidity
, fear and defensive attitude we have lost a grand chance to slap the Japs back at Toungoo. The basic reason is Chiang Kai-shek’s meddling.’ Chiang, in turn, rightly felt that his fears about Stilwell’s impetuosity were proving true.65
The battle at Toungoo proved a further major setback to the Burma Corps. A counter-attack by the 17th Indian Division to relieve the Chinese was repulsed with heavy losses. Slim reported that the morale of troops ‘left a great deal to be desired’. Moreover, the capture of Toungoo rendered infeasible the planned defence of Prome and necessitated a northwards withdrawal towards Yenangyaung.66 As the British sought to escape Japanese encirclement, the retreating Chinese made their position more precarious by failing to demolish a bridge on the upper reaches of the Sittang River, so allowing the Japanese to make a rapid thrust into the Shan States.
On 3 April, the 17th Division and 1st Burma Division attempted to take up another line of defences at Yenangyaung and to stay in touch with the Chinese Fifth Army. The defensive position was hastily improvised, extremely lengthy and insufficiently deep. A week later, the Japanese 33rd Division moved up the banks of the Irrawaddy, infiltrated on a broad front and threatened the oilfields at Yenangyaung. The 48th Indian Brigade gave a good account of itself against an advancing Japanese division. But the 1st Burma Division fared poorly and escaped annihilation only thanks to the assistance of a Chinese division. On 15 April, Slim gave the signal for the demolitions to commence. Towers of flame leapt up into the sky as millions of gallons of oil began to burn. Stilwell was stunned: ‘British destroying the oil fields. GOOD GOD. What are we fighting for?’67
The short answer was: nothing more than survival. With the loss of Yenangyaung the momentum was now with the Japanese. The grievous shortages of supplies and fuel, the sinking morale, the increasing incidence of disease and indiscipline, the utter exhaustion of troops: all convinced Alexander that the defence of northern Burma was a forlorn hope. As he wrote to Wavell on 29 April:
it is not an exaggeration to say that as a fighting Force it has reached the end of its tether. When it can be done they must be relieved … rested, reorganized and equipped. And more important still – they must be trained. They DO NOT know their job as well as the Jap, and there’s the end to it.68
Alexander ordered a withdrawal across the Irrawaddy to India.
Moving ahead of the retreating columns of the Burma Corps were hundreds of thousands of Indians living in Burma. Relations between the Indians and the Burmese had been strained for the better part of the past decade. During the years of the Great Depression, the Indian mercantile community’s role in the economy of Burma came to be deeply resented. Indeed, emergent Burmese nationalism was deeply tinctured by anti-India sentiment. Indian businesses were boycotted and Indian shops picketed. Tense stand-offs often escalated into violent attacks.69 As the Japanese advanced towards Rangoon, the Indian as well as British civilians sought to flee. Prior to the city’s fall, some 70,000 Indians were evacuated to India by sea. Another 4,800 followed by air. The bulk of the exodus – the numbers may have been as high as 450,000 – took place overland: either via the Arakan into Chittagong or by the much more arduous route through the Chindwin valley into Manipur. The absence of basic amenities along the land routes fuelled charges of British racism even in rout and retreat. As many as 50,000 Indians may have perished in the attempt to reach India and safety.70 This massive influx of refugees would have important social and political consequences for India.
Helping the passage of the Indians along the Manipur route were the elephants of the Burmese forest department. In February 1942, orders had gone out for all elephants to be pulled out of timber extraction and put to work in building roads and bridges along the route to India. The elephants and their riders worked under the supervision of J. H. Williams, a senior forest department official. ‘Elephant Bill’ managed to bring to India several hundred elephants over several treks across the Chindwin. His final effort to get a further 200 out of Burma had to be aborted: ‘if I had carried on with my plan I should have congested the one remaining walking-track for the wretched Indians, and so have caused even greater hardship and loss of life’.71 Williams would go on to become ‘Elephant Adviser’ to the Fourteenth Army commander with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. This huge provision of elephants was to have a significant impact later in the war. Indeed, the Burma campaign would be the last occasion in the long history of warfare in Asia when elephants were employed on the battlefield.72
Meantime, two Chinese divisions and fragments of three others were also pulling out of Burma towards India. As the Burma Corps snaked its way up the valleys and mountains towards the Indian frontier, the Japanese nipped hard at its heels. The onset of the monsoon came as a boon to the retreating force. The rag-tag remnants of the army in Burma arrived in Manipur in mid-May 1942. On the last day of the 900-mile retreat, Slim stood on a bank beside the road watching the last of his men trickle into India:
All of them, British, Indian and Gurkha, were gaunt and ragged as scarecrows. Yet, as they trudged behind their surviving officers in groups pitifully small, they still carried their arms and kept their ranks, they were still recognizable as fighting units. They might look like scarecrows but they looked like soldiers too.73
9
Coils of War
Speaking in Bombay before his incarceration in October 1940, Jawaharlal Nehru noted: ‘the coils of war increasingly strangle the world … What happens in Europe is of great consequence to America, to India, to China. What happens in India and China is of equal importance to America and Europe. War is indivisible now.’1 Nehru’s prescience was borne out by the time he got out of prison in early December 1941. India now stood at the intersection of the two major theatres of war: the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Indian Ocean on the one side; and South-East Asia, China and the Pacific on the other. The defence of India was no longer the preserve of the British, but became a focal point of Allied grand strategy. By the same token, Indian politics could not be insulated from wider pressures emanating from Britain’s key wartime allies.
On their release from prison, senior Congressmen recognized the dramatic changes following the entry into the war of the Soviet Union as well as the United States and Japan. The stakes for India were much higher. Although Gandhi was unwilling to call off the individual civil disobedience campaign, his colleagues thought that it had run into sand. The Congress would have to consider its stance anew – especially in the light of the turns taken by the war. As before, Rajagopalachari advocated conditional co-operation with the Raj. India, he argued, should work with the British in the war to ‘facilitate the transfer of power’.
Nehru agreed that the world had changed a great deal over the past year, but felt that Britain’s attitude had made it ‘almost impossible for us to do anything but offer resolute opposition’. He ‘entirely’ disagreed with Rajagopalachari’s approach, which he felt was a ‘dangerous policy … even from the narrowest viewpoint of national self-interest’. To Britain, he paraphrased Leo Amery’s own words to Prime Minister Chamberlain in the Commons: ‘We have had enough of you. Get out.’2
These differences reached a head during the Congress Working Committee meeting in Bardoli. In the last week of December 1941, the Committee deliberated on the future course of action. Gandhi insisted that he could not forsake the path of non-violence. His colleagues, he found, fell into three groups. A small minority followed him in advocating non-participation in the war on the grounds of non-violence. Others, including Nehru, advocated non-participation for political reasons. The third group, led by Rajagopalachari, believed that the Congress should not allow its commitment to non-violence to preclude participation under all circumstances. The last group eventually carried the day. A draft statement prepared by Nehru was amended to read that the Congress took full consideration of the ‘new world situation’ created by the Japanese attacks on South-East Asia and Pearl Harbor, but only a free and independent India could undertake the defence of t
he country and support the wider war.
The final declaration, however, muddled the issue by stating that the Congress also stood by the Bombay resolution of September 1940. This resolution had, of course, been the ostensible basis for the individual satyagraha campaign. Gandhi insisted, however, that there was no question of co-operating with the British war effort: ‘the door is barred altogether against Congress participation’. Owing to these differences with his colleagues, he once again requested them to absolve him of the responsibility to guide the campaign. The Congress had come full circle from the ‘Poona offer’ of July 1940.3
Nehru hoped that by the time the All-India Congress Committee met a ‘satisfactory way out’ would be found. Yet at the meeting, Gandhi himself urged the adoption of the Working Committee’s resolution. The document, he observed, was a compromise between various views. Like the Indian dish khichri, ‘it contains pulses, rice, salt, chilli and spices’. Gandhi conceded that after the Bardoli conclave, he had thought of putting the resolution to a vote. After all, senior colleagues like Patel and Prasad were unhappy with it. Now he wanted the Congress to adopt it unanimously and relieve him of his leadership. His colleagues, Gandhi believed, should have the courage of their convictions. Speaking at the same session, Rajagopalachari declared, ‘Our co-operation is available if the British do the right thing.’4
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