Stilwell and the American Experience in China

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  On April 3 the track of the bombing that left thatch and bamboo villages flaming in the hot midday wind reached Mandalay. Four hundred were killed, the railroad station and hospital destroyed, acres of streets burned out, telephone wires dragging in the ashes, debris and corpses of men and animals lying about, many of them blown into the moat under the huge stone walls of the eighteenth-century palace. The many-towered city was still burning when Stilwell came there on April 8 to confer with Sun Li-jen. With police and civil servants and most of the population having fled, the British authorities had difficulty restoring services and collecting the dead. The stench was appalling. Bloated bodies floated in pink water amid stagnant green scum. Dogs and pigs rooted among decaying corpses in the streets and crows pecked out dead eyes. Replete on the necrophilic diet the birds staggered like drunkards from body to body. Chiang Kai-shek and Madame who came to Mandalay on the same day as Stilwell seized on the horrors to scold the British and vent the angry disillusion in the West which had been mounting among the Chinese since Pearl Harbor. “In all my life of long military experience,” Chiang wrote to Churchill, “I have seen nothing to compare with the deplorable unprepared state, confusion and degradation of the war area in Burma.”

  Armed, as he thought, with new authority, Stilwell hastened once more on the rounds of divisional headquarters in the effort to concentrate the Fifth Army for a fight in the Pyinmana area and the Sixth Army on the Chinese left to guard approaches in the Loikaw area on the Salween front. Nothing went right. The Japanese kept advancing and cutting off Allied positions in short quick hooks that seemed to come out of nowhere. Air raids persisted, disintegration of order and services accelerated, and the flow of the Generalissimo’s letters continued. He reversed himself three times on whether, where, when and which Chinese units could be used to reinforce the British sector, causing redeployment on the inadequate transportation system. One letter ordered the bodies of all Chinese dead to be shipped back home in pine coffins so that they could be buried with their ancestors.

  At Pyinmana where Stilwell went to show himself to the troops of the 200th, “a fine looking lot of soldiers,” the earth rocked under the concussion of Japanese bombs, while over the crackle of burning houses, smoke and flames rolled skyward, spreading in a vast dark umbrella as if to emphasize the darkness in which he fought. Without aerial reconnaissance it was impossible to learn the enemy’s lines of approach. “God, I feel like a blind man,” he told Dorn. The AVG pilots were refusing to fly at low levels they considered death traps, and an urgent request to the RAF for two reconnaissance planes produced no response. The American Tenth Air Force in India, which had eight bombers at the time with 17 more on the way, sent no support despite Stilwell’s demand, because according to Brereton who came to see Stilwell on March 24, his gunners had no gunnery training and the force would not be ready to go into action until May 1. Although he was officially under Stilwell’s command, Brereton preferred to consider himself under Wavell and had imbibed in Delhi the spirit that accounted Burma a lost cause.

  Stilwell prayed for the monsoon, hoping to be able to hold until the rains came and bogged down the Japanese. On his rounds he would stop to visit Seagrave and his nurses working tirelessly in sweat and blood over the wounded. Looking up, the doctor would find Stilwell watching silently and they would smile grimly at one another. “He always had time,” Seagrave wrote, “for someone who was trying to do a good job.” Some among the American staff were no longer trying but turning sour, becoming jittery and criticizing the General for stubborn persistence in a campaign in which neither British nor Chinese had any faith, as they had none in themselves or in each other.

  —

  Suddenly, like secret ink becoming visible, the easternmost prong of the three Japanese drives came into view. Piecing together scattered reports from the Sixth Army of contacts with enemy detachments, Colonel Roberts at G-2 realized that these represented the probing spearhead of a drive on Lashio where the road to China could be cut. He reported urgently to Stilwell who went off to inspect the disposition of the Sixth Army front and found this discouraging in the extreme. Units had been moved without orders to defensive positions, command posts were lax, General Kan Li-chu, the Army commander, was careless, uninformed and unable to control his divisional generals of whom one, General Chen Li-wu, commander of the 55th Division, had given up vital ground by a needless withdrawal before an inferior Japanese force. He had also failed to carry out strict orders to retake a given position. Villages here were still peaceful in beautiful highland country rich in pine and cedar trees. “Well, whaddya know,” Stilwell remarked to Dorn, “pine for the Peanut’s coffins.” Starting as a code name, Peanut was coming into regular use as his name for the Generalissimo.*1 On his return to Headquarters he could leave orders with Lo for General Kan to be reprimanded, and General Chen to be relieved of his command and for the lost positions to be regained, but he could not ensure the orders being carried out. Except for the first, none was.

  On the Irrawaddy front three days later the Japanese broke through, bypassing the 1st Burma Division and heading for the oil fields at Yenangyaung. General Slim could get no effective action out of demoralized troops and gave the order to destroy the oil fields on April 15. Stilwell, hastily summoned by Alexander to Maymyo, found “disaster and gloom.” Alexander confessed to him that his men were “simply afraid of the Japs,” and in his anxiety “calls me Joe now.”

  In this hour he found too a letter from Chiang Kai-shek ordering the issue of a watermelon to every four men. Nothing in the course of Stilwell’s theater command was to have a more baleful effect. Coming at the darkest time in Allied fortunes, when Burma was crashing about his ears—due in large part, as he believed, to the G–mo’s other interferences—the watermelon order clinched his contempt for Chiang Kai-shek, and since this ultimately became known, it in turn angered the Generalissimo. The mutual effect was far-reaching.

  By previous arrangement with the Generalissimo, Sun Li-jen’s 38th Division had been moved down to the Irrawaddy front to strengthen the link with the British and was now thrown in to stem the Japanese for long enough to save the 1st Burma Division. Through three days of desperate battle at Yenangyaung the Chinese of the 38th Division held ground and counterattacked along with the British Armored Brigade in the strongest fighting of the campaign, exhibiting the qualities Stilwell always said they would under determined leadership. The Chinese action permitted the escape of the 1st Burma Division—although with loss of most of its motor transport, mortars, field and antiaircraft guns, and 20 percent casualties—and incidentally saved the 17th Indian Division further to the east, which could have been overrun if the Japanese had destroyed its companion.

  Fear spread after the battle, fanned by the same savagery the enemy had practiced in China. Indian prisoners were tied by the Japanese in bamboo houses and set afire or soaked in gasoline and burned alive. More shocking and frightening to Westerners in Burma was the fact that captured British officers were used no better; in some cases they were stripped and tied to trees for bayonet practice. Until now every Westerner who ever entered Asia had taken it for granted that he would receive different treatment than a native.

  Before the battle was joined, on April 15, Stilwell radioed a pessimistic summary of the situation to Marshall. He expressed his belief that the British had written off Burma for some time. He was convinced there were enough troops in India to have saved Burma and they “could have been marched in long ago had they meant business.” In his own mind he concluded from what he considered Alexander’s unwillingness to commit his forces that he was under orders from London to make a token resistance and withdraw from Burma. This was a view gaining wide credibility among Americans, not only on Stilwell’s staff. “Sir Childe Harold Alexander has small intention of holding the Dark Tower he has come to, if it proves too painful,” wrote Mrs. Luce privately to Stilwell on April 10 after a conversation with Alexander. (He had added a “priceless” remark: “I
do hope Joe doesn’t leave. I would find it very difficult to command the Chinese without him.”) Colonel Louis Johnson, the rather bellicose former Assistant Secretary of War whom Roosevelt had despatched as his special envoy to India, gained the same impression. The British preferred to give up Burma, he reported, rather than be indebted to the Chinese or make concessions to Burmese nationalists in order to retain it. They intended to regain it at the peace table in any event and wanted it free of any commitments as to future form of government.

  Burma was last on everybody’s priority list. When a Japanese fleet of six carriers entered the Bay of Bengal in the first week of April, Wavell’s alarm for Calcutta was so great that it inspired Brereton to send his eight bombers on a not too effective raid of Rangoon and the Andaman Islands where the Japanese were accumulating shipping. Occurring within a week of the time he had denied support for Burma, the action infuriated Stilwell and even more Chiang Kai-shek who had been assured that the Tenth Air Force was under Stilwell’s command and took Brereton’s raid as proof that the United States would sacrifice China’s interest to Britain’s whenever necessary. Chiang’s experience of allies was intensifying his anti-Western sentiments rather than the contrary. He let it be known that such diversions from the China theater coupled with further Allied war reverses could make China go “completely antiforeign overnight”*2 and quit the war.

  Nevertheless, when it came to a choice between West and East, Marshall did not waver. When planes from the Japanese carriers attacked Ceylon on April 9, justifying Wavell’s alarm, he agreed to assign the Tenth Air Force to the defense of India. This was the price of Britain’s agreement to begin the buildup of forces in the British Isles for the cross-Channel invasion of Europe. The Americans led by Marshall were bent on the invasion; the British were reluctant and made their agreement conditional on defense of the Middle East and India. Marshall was reminded by his staff that his decision would “adversely affect the Chinese situation and Stilwell’s operations,” but China’s interests were in fact secondary. In extenuation he informed the Generalissimo and Stilwell that the threat to Calcutta and the east coast of India was “critical not only to India itself but to our future ability to assist China.”

  Stilwell had to make do with moral, in place of air, support. “I assure you that in the world wide picture your efforts assume a clear cut and definite importance,” Marshall told him, which did not help to stop the Japanese. With not enough planes to go around it was all Marshall could offer.

  —

  “We are about to take a beating, I think,” Stilwell wrote to his wife on April 16. To be defeated in his first active command was a bitter prospect that filled him with rage for revenge and vindication. He was already planning a campaign to recapture Burma. Whatever it was to the English, Burma in his mind was still the essential corridor to China where he believed the eventual campaign against Japan would be fought, with American troops, as he hoped, joining Chinese under his command.

  In the midst of catastrophe he drew up the plan that was to be his vehicle of return. It called for the transfer of Chinese troops to India where they could be trained and equipped under American direction as the task force for reconquest. He never proclaimed to the public, “I shall return,” but this became a determination fixed in iron. He intended to beat the enemy who was now beating him and prove that the Chinese, properly led, could do it and become their own saviors. On April 16 he sent the plan by one of his staff to Chungking for the Generalissimo’s approval.

  As Chiang’s Chief of Staff he advised that the supply route to China by road and air across north Burma would probably become interrupted by Japanese air power. Therefore the Chinese forces must go to the weapons if the weapons could not come to them. He proposed a force to be organized and trained in India of two corps, each of three divisions with Chinese officers up to the grade of regimental commander. Higher commanders and principal staff officers were initially to be American until Chinese could be substituted. He took the crucial question—how were the troops to reach India?—in a wild leap, proposing that they should march across north Burma from Myitkyina via Mogaung and Shingbwiyang (names that were to acquire a terrible familiarity) over the trace of the Ledo Road to the railhead in Assam “with such assistance from the U.S. Air Freight Line as may be practicable.” He had been notified that 25 transport planes had been assembled or were on their way to Assam and ready to begin operations. He wanted the movement of Chinese troops to begin May 15, which meant during the monsoon. Since he knew this was the worst time, it can only be supposed that he named a date as early as possible on the assumption that Chiang would not meet it anyway.

  Stilwell specified “Recapture Burma” as the plan’s objective with the decisive effort to be made from India and a supplementary effort by other Chinese divisions from Yunnan. From this plan he never varied. Chiang Kai-shek gave his approval “in general” two weeks later on condition that the Chinese should not be used in support of the British against the Indians in case of an uprising. The War Department also gave its approval since the plan fitted the American concept of fighting the war on the mainland of Asia with local troops.

  —

  In the faint hope that Burma’s northern tier might still be held, Stilwell was trying, futilely as it proved, to move the 200th Division by truck and train to fill a gap that had opened between the Chinese and British. At this moment news reached Headquarters of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, the wildly adventurous mission that was to have brought 16 B-25s to join Chennault’s air force. Every one of the 16 was lost. Owing to enforced takeoff from the aircraft carriers at a greater distance than planned, the planes ran out of fuel and crashed in China in or near the occupied zone. The Japanese swept over the districts where Chinese had succored American crews in a brutal punitive campaign and sent a force of 53 battalions to destroy the airfields from which bombers might again strike at Japan. Although it caused some diversion of forces by the enemy, the brave Doolittle blow was designed primarily to pierce the discouragement and sluggish production of the American people, and carry promise of ultimate victory amid the general Allied gloom. It achieved its result at the cost of death and ruin to many Chinese and the increased resentment of Chiang Kai-shek. Because of the security problem Chiang was not informed of the operation to be carried out on his territory until about a week before the date. He objected strenuously, fearing loss of certain airfields in Chekiang through enemy action. He was informed, however, that the mission was too far advanced for cancellation. The episode did not help to persuade him that China was being treated as an equal much less a great power. In Burma it enhanced the isolation of men and officers who already had ceased to look skyward to identify a plane because it was certain to be Japanese.

  On April 20 came the decisive stroke: the Japanese end run for Lashio broke through on the eastern flank, scattering the 55th Division. “Disaster at Loikaw. 55th completely smashed…Kan terrified…Jesus. This may screw us completely.” In the gap on the central front the enemy outflanked the 96th Division. “Looks like a collapse here too. Jesus again. Sent Sibert to find out….Phone wires all cut. Are the British going to run out on us? Yes. The outcome is becoming apparent.”

  Days followed of frantic effort to plug holes, to regroup, to agree on plans and try to deploy tangled divisions to conform to them, but the crumbling could not be arrested. Few of the Chinese units were where they were supposed to be and could not be moved into position because trucks could not be obtained; “65,000 gallons of gas and 850 trucks at Lashio about April 18,” Stilwell noted in passing, but they were too busy hauling goods to China to haul soldiers. Trains were blocked or stalled, commanders were out of touch, military discipline was dissolving. Liaison officers brought “tales of disobedience and absence.” (In an aside Stilwell noted “the way the boys look at me in the jams, dead-pan, to see how I take it: ‘Will it break you down I wonder?’ ”)

  Generals Tu and Kan, gripped by fear of losing their armies, kept units
from advancing or ordered withdrawals, on one occasion against the wish of a divisional commander who wanted to fight. To recapture Taunggyi, a key point reached by an advance column of Japanese, Stilwell personally took command of a Chinese company under intense fire and ordered it to stand fast until reinforcements arrived. Then, at Lo’s suggestion, he offered a reward of 50,000 rupees if Taunggyi were taken by 5 o’clock. The goal was promptly accomplished with an hour to spare but the reverse method—a demand for the execution or court-martial of General Chen of the 55th whose division simply vanished into the hills—failed. Stilwell’s demand for punishment was ignored. As for the 55th, he said in awe to Belden, “There’s not a trace of it. It’s the god-damnedest thing I ever saw. Last night I had a division, and today there isn’t any.”

  “It is an impossible situation,” he concluded in one of his periodic summaries, “which I will have to see through as best I may. CKS has made it impossible for me to do anything, and I might as well acknowledge it now.” The Generalissimo’s trip to Lashio had been a farce; “it fooled me completely, sap that I was….But I thought he was being sincere….” The higher commanders were impossible to control and, with exceptions like Sun Li-jen and some others, were “saturated” with the Generalissimo’s doctrine that it took three to one for defense and five to one for attack. Stilwell thought with envy of the 8th Route Army and wished, as he often told his staff, that he could “get those Communists down here to fight.”