Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

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  The passivity of the Y-force in the midst of the publicized fighting in Burma was causing unfavorable comment in Chungking and discomfort to many Chinese who were not satisfied with the Generalissimo’s explanations. He remained unaffected. Renewed urging came from Roosevelt who had moved—or let himself be carried by the War Department—a long way toward taking the Sultan-of-Morocco tone he had once deplored to Chiang Kai-shek. “It is inconceivable to me,” he radioed on April 3, “that your Yoke forces with their American equipment would be unable to advance against the Japanese 56th Division in its present depleted strength. To me the time is ripe for…advance without further delay….A shell of a division opposes you on the Salween….To take advantage of just such an opportunity we have during the past year been equipping and training your Yoke forces. If they are not to be used in the common cause our most strenuous and extensive efforts to fly in equipment and furnish instructional personnel have not been justified….I do hope you can act.” This was tough but without teeth; it contained no or-else. Chiang was reported by Madame to be very annoyed at the tone and likely to leave the message unanswered as his way of not accepting the loss of face it conveyed.

  At this point American impatience at last reached the point of quid pro quo, although, as sometimes happens at historic moments, the originating authority for the decision is not clear cut. Roosevelt was absent in Warm Springs. Stilwell communicated with Marshall and received assurance that unless the Y-force moved, its Lend-Lease supplies should end. Stilwell so instructed General Hearn, his Chief of Staff in Chungking, in a message reading, “I agree fully with George. If the Gmo won’t fight, in spite of all his promises and all our efforts, I can see no reason for our wasting another ton. I recommend diversion to air activities of all tonnage being delivered to any Chinese agency.” To avoid another issue of face with Chiang Kai-shek the ensuing negotiations were carried on by Hearn with Ho Ying-chin at the working level below the throne. Ho was informed that unless the Y-force moved, its Hump tonnage for the current month would be diverted to the Fourteenth Air Force. The Generalissimo was shocked into action though spared the necessity of a personal concession. Within two days of Hearn’s notice, on April 14, Ho Ying-chin stamped the official seal on the order to the Yoke divisions to cross the Salween. He took care to inform Marshall that the decision “was made on initiative of Chinese without influence of outside pressure.”

  “Wish to God he had three months ago,” wrote Dorn, American Chief of Staff to the Y-force. Divisions had still not been brought up to strength, he reported to Stilwell, but officers were eager to accomplish the mission. Hsiao I-shu, Chief of Staff to Wei Li-huang, was highly competent and all for action and General Lu Tze, in charge of supply, “is a ball of fire. When he says trucks will be there, they are there a day ahead of time.” Even Ho Ying-chin was coming down for the jumpoff. The jumpoff immediately showed symptoms of the endemic postponement disease. “My God repeat God,” Stilwell radioed Dorn, “so that begins again. Do not shoot yourself before notifying me three days in advance.”

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  Stilwell now staged the final dash for Myitkyina. Given the delays and slowdowns already experienced and the several failures to eliminate the 18th Division in battle, and with Sun and Liao deliberately stalling, there was no chance left but a desperate gamble. As of April 21 he determined on a rapid secret penetration across the mountains by a striking force of GALAHAD and Chinese to seize the Myitkyina airstrip, permitting reinforcements and heavy weapons to be flown in to complete capture of the town. The Kachins warned that the steep Kumon mountain range could not be crossed by pack animals except in dry weather but Stilwell was determined to make the attempt. Except for a battery of 22nd Division artillery, the Chinese selected for the march were not of Sun’s or Liao’s men but one regiment of the 30th and one of the newly arrived 50th Division. Even so Stilwell believed he could not count on their impetus without an American vanguard, which made it necessary to send the battered remnant of GALAHAD out once again.

  This was a grave choice because the Americans were sick, dazed and exhausted from their marches and battles and believed themselves used up, in rightful need of evacuation and rest. More than half by now had already been evacuated, chiefly because of disease; 1,400 were left of the original 3,000. Though sunk in misery and wrath they were the only force at Stilwell’s disposal that he could count on to do as it was told. Colonel Hunter, though he came to hate Stilwell, was schooled in the West Point creed of obedience and Merrill was ready to resume overall command. The 90 days of GALAHAD’s mission would be up on May 7, but 90 days or not, as Stilwell saw it, the campaign required them, and their officers declared them fit to go.

  The men thought otherwise. In their three treks so far they had covered nearly 300 miles, slipping and stumbling, battling jungle growth and struggling with fallen mules, waiting for airdrops, eating cold K-rations, sleeping on wet ground, suffering hunger, fever, thirst and above all, as every step took them deeper into hostile land and nearer to a dismaying enemy, fear. It was the sense of “danger—above everything,” according to the account of Lieutenant Charles Ogburn, that was the worst. Morale was not helped by their sense of being unappreciated and by their resentment of what they considered Stilwell’s exaggerated rewards and recognition of the Chinese. Much of the sullenness, even given the hardships, might have been dispelled by personal encouragement from the Commanding General, by citations, promotions, medals and just such evidence of appreciation as he was giving the Chinese. Stilwell had congratulated the unit after the fight at Walawbum, but in Pershing’s tradition he took a puritan view of decorations for his countrymen. Neither he nor Merrill were men who spared themselves and he believed that Americans should fight without needing to be “patted on the back or have their hands held,” as he put it in the bitter aftermath.

  When, after the bloodshed and casualties of the fight at Nphum Ga, orders came not to return to India but for yet another march over a 6,000-foot mountain pass and rougher territory than before, the GALAHAD survivors heard it in consternation. They could hardly believe it when “our own battalion commander and our own column commanders and our regimental and battalion surgeons all collaborated in the fanciful idea that the majority of the outfit was in condition to continue….” They felt they were being sent to their deaths like the Light Brigade because someone had blundered, or because Stilwell had determined to make a record for the Chinese “if necessary at the expense of the one American infantry unit in the theater.”

  Stilwell told Merrill that he knew he was calling on the men for more effort than could fairly be expected but that he had no other option. Once the airstrip was taken he authorized Merrill to begin evacuating the Marauders “without further order if everything worked out as expected.” The task force of 1,400 Americans, 4,000 Chinese and 600 Kachin Rangers moved out on April 28. At the same time, as if released by invisible reins, Sun and Liao moved forward in a renewed drive on Kamaing. Perhaps encouraged by the British relief of Kohima on April 20, Chiang Kai-shek had presumably given permission.

  Now the swollen clouds spilled their burden and the trails became torrents. Stilwell was tormented by anxiety. He had organized and despatched the task force to Myitkyina in great secrecy without telling Mountbatten for fear of the gloating triumph of SEAC if it should fail. Whenever on earlier occasions he would talk of the goal to Slim he always insisted that Slim speak of it to no one else. That Myitkyina was the ultimate object and crowning purpose of Stilwell’s campaign was hardly a secret in the theater—indeed had been specifically stated as such in Roosevelt’s message to Churchill of February 25—but Mountbatten’s staff had so convinced him that Myitkyina could not be taken, or if taken could not be held, or if held was not worth it, that he never believed Stilwell could achieve more than a rainy-season anchorage in the Mogaung valley. In April SEAC was not yet thinking in terms of exploiting success at Imphal, when won, into reconquest of north Burma, but rather was still pull
ing away toward the sea in favor of assault on Rangoon if not Sumatra. In response to urging by the Joint Chiefs to fulfill the agreed plan for north Burma, Mountbatten replied on April 14 that conquest of that area by the given dates was “impossible” and even by a later date “unsound and should not be attempted.”

  On April 14 SEAC moved physically in the direction of the sea strategy by transferring its headquarters 1,500 miles southward from Delhi to Kandy in Ceylon. Providing a fleet base in the Indian Ocean, Ceylon was that much nearer to Malaya and Sumatra and even farther than Delhi from land operations in Burma.

  A decisive move in American strategy followed. The Joint Chiefs affirmed on May 4 the intention to land on the Philippines, Formosa and the China coast, the last for the purpose, as Admiral King wrote with undeterred faith, of supplying and “utilizing Chinese manpower as the ultimate land force in defeating the Japanese on the continent of Asia.” Much had been learned in the course of the last two years to suggest that to induce China’s leaders to carry out America’s fighting plans was not as easy as blowing a whistle, but old ideas die hard. The Navy was especially eager. Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, thought the process might be foreshortened by bypassing the Philippines if the enemy’s deteriorating strength permitted, except that a mere mention of this possibility, as he wrote to King, caused General MacArthur to “blow up” and deliver an oration on his “sacred obligation—redemption of 17 million people—blood on his soul—etc., etc.” Nimitz and King agreed that Stilwell should name the best place on the coast from the point of view of meeting with the Chinese forces, and that early consultations with him should be sought as to ultimate Chinese operations.

  The Army was thinking more in terms of China as a base of heavy bombers than of utilizing China’s manpower to fight. Stilwell was notified that supply of the air effort under his command for the purpose of assisting the assaults on the Philippines in November and on Formosa in February was to have first priority. With this intent the Joint Chiefs on May 3 gave his mission a new directive: Myitkyina was to be his primary goal, independent of SEAC, and the new purpose of his overall mission was to be the development of overland communications to China and the conduct of such operations in China as would most effectively support the effort in the Pacific.

  In effect, though unacknowledged, this marked the silent separation of Anglo-American effort in Asia. No one said as much in so many words. The American staff of SEAC moved with their British colleagues to Kandy and continued to function as before. But the direct thrust through the Pacific, with Stilwell’s spearhead through Burma to China in its support, were now fixed policy regardless of imperial pull toward the periphery.

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  It had been arranged that the Myitkyina task force would signal to alert the troop carriers when they believed themselves within 48 hours of their goal. While the force struggled painfully over the mountains at a crawl of four to five miles a day, Stilwell pushed on through the Mogaung and waited in suspense for the signal. Perversely the weather now provided several clear days, but he was blocked by stalling tactics again. Against growing fatigue (“Fell up the hill into CP, exhausted….No wind, no legs….Felt like an old man when I staggered in”) he forced himself forward to the command posts to drag action from the Chinese by the face-losing method. “Told them to fight or I would go stand in the trail up front. This makes them move and is the only thing that does.” But combat casualties were causing concern. “The 22nd Division has had 57 company officers killed. Can’t push them under the circumstances….Christ but I feel helpless.”

  Clambering and crawling over the mountains, sometimes on hands and knees, or cutting steps into the muddy inclines, while half their pack mules died from exhaustion or slipped and fell into the gorges, the Myitkyina task force crept forward. A Japanese-held village was surrounded and taken after a sharp fight en route. Colonel Kinnison, commander of one of the three combat teams, and several of the men died of mite typhus. Two of the combat teams at the end of their rations halted at prearranged clearings to wait for airdrops. Colonel Hunter’s team kept going and on May 14 sent the 48-hour signal. In the Mogaung Stilwell was joined in his tense wait by General Old, commander of troop carriers for the Tenth Air Force. On May 15 the 24-hour signal came in. On May 16 Colonel Hunter’s team moved to a bivouac within two miles of the Myitkyina airstrip to ensure a quick springboard for surprise attack. It was feared that skirmishes with Japanese patrols en route might have forewarned the garrison, but Kachin scouts found no signs of alert and reported the airstrip lightly held. There were in fact no more than 700 active Japanese troops holding Myitkyina at that moment.

  At 10 o’clock on the morning of May 17 the attack on the airstrip was launched by the 150th Regiment of the 50th Division while the GALAHAD 1st Battalion was assigned to take a nearby ferry terminal on the Irrawaddy. Surprise was complete and the airstrip quickly seized and surrounded. At 10:50 Stilwell received from Merrill, who was at task force headquarters at Nawbum, the prearranged signal “In the Ring” meaning “At the Field.” Colonel Hunter wanted to make sure his hold was secure before sending the conclusive signal. As soon as “In the Ring” was received, General Old flew a reconnaissance plane over the Myitkyina airstrip but reported on his return that he could see nothing. “We’ll just have to sweat it out,” Stilwell recorded, periodically venting his anxiety in his pocket diary during this day. The wait lasted four hours. At 3:30 the message came, MERCHANT OF VENICE! meaning “Transports can land.” With a single “WHOOPS!” in the diary, Stilwell ordered guns and reinforcements started on their way; “first ones over at 4…told them to keep going all night…WILL THIS BURN UP THE LIMIES!”

  It did. The first important Japanese position to be recaptured in Southeast Asia had been taken by Stilwell’s task force while the British had not yet succeeded in taking even Akyab. It was brutally embarrassing for the Supreme Allied Commander to wake up and discover a component of his forces in Myitkyina when he had not known the expedition was on its way, though in view of the Joint Chiefs’ directive of May 4 his unawareness could only have come from looking in the other direction. Mountbatten was outraged that he had not been informed, and further discomfited by a sharp query from Churchill who wanted an explanation for how “the Americans by a brilliant feat of arms have landed us in Myitkyina.” Public relations was unprepared for the coup, but after a day and a half of internal stress produced a very handsome Order of the Day addressed to Stilwell in Mountbatten’s name. “By the boldness of your leadership,” it read, “backed by the courage and endurance of your American and Chinese troops, you have taken the enemy completely by surprise and achieved a most outstanding success by seizing the Myitkyina airfield.” The crossing of the Kumon range was declared to be “a feat which will live in military history” and care was taken to bring in the Chindits “who have been severing Japanese communications between Myitkyina and the south” for a share of the credit. Global strategists including Wedemeyer flew all the way up to the muddy clearing in the woods to share in the occasion they had declared to be impossible.

  The triumph, Stilwell’s first in two years of ceaseless frustration, was nectar to a parched soul, but unfinished. It was beset at once by misadventure and threat of reverse. Everyone at NCAC expected the opening of the airstrip, giving access to reinforcements, to lead to the quick fall of Myitkyina proper. Stilwell decided the honor should go to the Chinese; two battalions of the 150th Regiment advanced on the town on the afternoon of May 17, but coming under Japanese sniper fire at dusk, fell into confusion, fired on each other in error and continued shooting and killing each other in uncontrollable response until they were pulled out. This was matched by an American snafu when the Tenth Air Force Headquarters sent an antiaircraft battery on the first transports instead of the infantry and food preordered by Merrill and Hunter.

  The full effect of these errors was not yet realized and expectations were still high when Stilwell (with no less than twelve correspondent
s) reached the airstrip the next morning. Greeted by Merrill who had flown in to take command, the two men were caught by the camera as Stilwell stepped from the plane, hugging and laughing for joy. But the day ended badly. A second foray by the 150th Regiment resulted in the same confusions as before. The Marauders, sustained on their march only by the belief that they would be flown out to Ledo as soon as the airstrip was taken, were now asked for further effort. Hunter hurriedly summoned the two lagging combat teams whose airdrops in some cases had missed or gone astray. Many men had not eaten in several days, many limped from Naga sores, others suffering from dysentery had cut away the seats of their pants so as not to be hampered in combat and were in Merrill’s words, “a pitiful but still splendid sight.” Merrill himself was felled by another heart attack on May 19 and had to be evacuated.

  The Japanese rushed reinforcements from other garrisons and outposts in north, east and west. Within a week, despite the Chindit block to the south, they had 3,000 men in Myitkyina and 5,000 within two weeks. They fought the same suicidal defense as they did on the Pacific islands. After the failure to take Myitkyina immediately, the monsoon closed in and the situation congealed in a deadly slough of troubles, quarrels and failures of all kinds. “Good God, what goes on at Mitch?” Stilwell asked himself, tortured with worry. In order to keep pressure on Sun and Liao to clear the Mogaung valley so the Road could go through, he remained with the NCAC. “Rain—if we can’t land planes we can’t land troops…this is one of those terrible worry days when you wish you were dead.” June was an uninterrupted month of such days. Even when the ceiling was zero the transports flew in men and supplies to Myitkyina, seeming to “smell their way to the field,” in the phrase of Seagrave who was serving as ever at the front. But G-2 seriously underestimated the number of Japanese in the garrison and the Chinese, though reinforced by fresh regiments, could not prevail over the entrenched defenders. And as Stilwell had to admit on one of his visits, “GALAHAD is shot.”