The Second World War

by Winston S. Churchill

  These words are indelible. The struggle in Warsaw had lasted more than sixty days. Of the 40,000 men and women of the Polish Underground Army about 15,000 fell. Out of a population of a million nearly 200,000 had been stricken. The suppression of the revolt cost the German Army 10,000 killed, 7,000 missing, and 9,000 wounded. The proportions attest the hand-to-hand character of the fighting.

  When the Russians entered the city three months later they found little but shattered streets and the unburied dead. Such was their liberation of Poland, where they now rule. But this cannot be the end of the story.

  CHAPTER XVI

  BURMA

  THE curtain must now rise on a widely different scene in South-East Asia. For more than eighteen months the Japanese had been masters of a vast defensive arc covering their early conquests. This stretched from the jungle-covered mountains of Northern and Western Burma, where our British and Indian troops were at close grips with them, across the sea to the Andamans and the great Dutch dependencies of Sumatra and Java, and thence in an easterly bend along the string of lesser islands to New Guinea.

  The Americans had established a bomber force in China which was doing good work against the enemy’s sea communications between the mainland and the Philippines. They wanted to extend this effort by basing long-range aircraft in China to attack Japan itself. The Burma Road was cut, and they were carrying all supplies for them and the Chinese armies by air over the southern spurs of the Himalayas, which they called “the Hump”. This was a stupendous task. The American wish to succour China, not only by an ever-increasing air-lift but also by land, led to heavy demands upon Britain and the Indian Empire. They pressed as a matter of the highest urgency and importance the making of a motor road from the existing roadhead at Ledo through five hundred miles of jungles and mountains into Chinese territory. Only one metre-gauge, single-line railway ran through Assam to Ledo. It was already in constant use for many other needs, including the supply of the troops who held the frontier positions, but in order to build the road to China the Americans wanted us to reconquer Northern Burma first and quickly.

  Certainly we favoured keeping China in the war and operating air forces from her territory, but a sense of proportion and the study of alternatives were needed. I disliked intensely the prospect of a largescale campaign in Northern Burma. One could not choose a worse place for fighting the Japanese. Making a road from Ledo to China was also an immense, laborious task, unlikely to be finished until the need for it had passed. Even if it were done in time to replenish the Chinese armies while they were still engaged it would make little difference to their fighting capacity. The need to strengthen the American air bases in China would also, in our view, diminish as Allied advances in the Pacific and from Australia gained us airfields closer to Japan. On both counts therefore we argued that the enormous expenditure of man-power and material would not be worth while. But we never succeeded in deflecting the Americans from their purpose. Their national psychology is such that the bigger the Idea the more whole-heartedly and obstinately do they throw themselves into making it a success. It is an admirable characteristic provided the Idea is good.

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  We of course wanted to recapture Burma, but we did not want to have to do it by land advances from slender communications and across the most forbidding fighting country imaginable. The south of Burma, with its port of Rangoon, was far more valuable than the north. But all of it was remote from Japan. I wished, on the contrary, to contain the Japanese in Burma, and to break into or through the great arc of islands forming the outer fringe of the Dutch East Indies. Our whole British Indian Imperial front would thus advance across the Bay of Bengal into close contact with the enemy, by using amphibious power at every stage. This divergence of opinion, albeit honestly held and frankly discussed, and with decisions loyally executed, continued. It is against this permanent background of geography, limited resources, and clash of policies that the story of the campaign should be read.

  It had opened in December 1943, when General Stilwell, with two Chinese divisions which he had organised and trained in India, crossed the watershed from Ledo into the jungles below the main mountain ranges. He was opposed by the renowned Japanese 18th Division, but forged ahead steadily, and by early January had penetrated forty miles, while the road-makers toiled behind him. In the south a British Corps began to advance down the Arakan coast of the Bay of Bengal, and at the same time, with the aid of newly arrived Spitfires, we gained a degree of air superiority which was shortly to prove invaluable.

  In February our advance was suddenly halted. The Japanese also had a plan. Since November they had increased their strength in Burma from five divisions to eight, and they now proposed to invade Eastern India and raise the flag of rebellion against the British. Their first stroke was a counter-offensive in the Arakan towards the port of Chittagong, which would draw off our reserves and our attention. Holding our 5th Division frontally on the coast, they passed the better part of a division through the jungle and round the flank of the 7th Division, which was farther inland. Within a few days it was surrounded and the enemy threatened to cut the coastal road behind the 5th Division. They fully expected both divisions to withdraw, but they had reckoned without one factor, supply by air. The 7th Division grouped themselves into perimeters, stood their ground, and fought it out. For a fortnight food, water, and ammunition were delivered to them, like manna, from above. The enemy had no such facilities; they had taken with them only ten days’ supply, and the obstinacy of the 7th Division prevented more reaching them. Unable to overwhelm our forward troops, pressed from the north by a division we brought from reserve, they broke up into small parties to fight their way back through the jungle, leaving five thousand dead behind. This terminated the legend of Japanese invincibility in the jungle.

  More, however, was to come. In this same February of 1944 there were sure signs that our central front at Imphal would also be attacked. We ourselves were preparing to advance to the Chindwin river, and the now famous Chindits* were poised for a daring stroke against the enemy supply lines and communications, notably those of the Japanese Division with whom Stilwell was at close grips. Although it was clear that the Japanese would get their blow in first, it was decided that Wingate’s brigades should carry on with their task. One of his brigades had already started on February 5. They marched across 450 miles of mountain and jungle and were supplied solely from the air. On March 5, sustained by an American “Air Commando” of 250 machines, the fly-in of two more Brigades of British and Gurkha troops began. After assembly at their rallying-point they set out and cut the railway north of Indaw.† Wingate did not live long to enjoy this first success or to reap its fruits. On March 24, to my great distress, he was killed in the air. With him a bright flame was extinguished.

  The main enemy blow fell, as we expected, on our central front. On March 8 three Japanese divisions attacked. General Scoones withdrew his IVth Corps, also of three divisions, to the Imphal plateau, so as to fight concentrated on ground of his own choosing. The Japanese repeated the tactics they had used with misfortune in the Arakan. They counted on capturing our stores at Imphal to feed themselves. They intended to cut both the road to Dimapur and also the railway there, and thus sever the supply route maintaining Stilwell’s force and the United States air-lift to China. Important issues were at stake.

  The key lay again in transport aircraft. Mountbatten’s resources, though considerable, were not nearly enough. He sought to retain twenty United States aircraft already borrowed from “the Hump” traffic, and asked for seventy more. This was a hard requirement to make or to procure. In the anxious weeks that followed I gave him my strongest support. We halted our operations on the Arakan coast, withdrew the victorious Indian divisions, and flew them to his aid. The 5th went to Imphal, where the enemy were now pressing hard on the fringes of the plain from three sides; the 7th to Dimapur. Thither by rail also came the headquarters of General Stopford’s XXXII Corps, together with a Brit
ish division and another two brigades. The road through the mountains was now cut, and these new forces began to fight their way upwards.

  Between them and Imphal lay the roadside township of Kohima, which commanded the pass to the Assam valley, and here, on April 4, the Japanese launched yet another furious onslaught. They used a whole division. Our garrison consisted of a battalion of the Royal West Kent, a Nepalese battalion, and a battalion of the Assam Rifles, with every man, and even convalescents from the hospital, who could bear arms. They were slowly forced back into a diminishing area, and finally on to a single hill. They had no supplies except what was dropped on them by parachutes. Attacked on every side, they held on steadfastly, supported by bombing and cannon-fire from the air, until General Stopford relieved them on the 20th. Four thousand Japanese were killed. The valiant defence of Kohima against enormous odds was a fine episode.

  The climax came in May, 1944. Sixty thousand British and Indian soldiers, with all their modern equipment, were confined in a circle on the Imphal plain. I could feel the stress amid all other business. All depended on the transport planes. On the principle “Nothing matters but the battle” I used my authority. On the 4th I telegraphed to Admiral Mountbatten:

  “Let nothing go from the battle that you need for victory. I will not accept denial of this from any quarter, and will back you to the full.” In the end his needs were largely met, but for more than another month the situation was at full strain. Our Air Force was dominant, but the monsoon was hindering the air supply, on which our success depended. All four divisions of the IVth Corps were slowly pushing outwards from their encirclement. Along the Kohima road the relieving force and the besieged were fighting their way towards each other. It was a race against time. We marked their progress with tense feelings. On June 22 I telegraphed to Mountbatten:

  The Chiefs of Staff have expressed anxiety about the situation in Imphal, particularly in respect of reserves of supplies and ammunition. You are absolutely entitled to ask for all aircraft necessary to maintain the situation, whether they come from “the Hump” or any other source. “The Hump” must be considered the current reserve, and should be drawn upon whenever necessary.… If you fail to make your demands in good time, invoking me if necessary to help from here, it will be no good complaining afterwards if it is not a success. Keep your hand close on the job. which seems to me both serious and critical. Every good wish.

  The finale came while this message was on the way. I quote his report:

  In the third week in June the situation was critical, and it seemed possible, after all the efforts of the previous two months, that early in July the IVth Corps would finally run out of reserves. But on June 22, with a week and a half in hand, the 2nd British and 5th Indian Divisions met at a point twenty-nine miles north of Imphal and the road to the plain was open. On the same day the convoys began to roll in.

  Thus ended Japan’s invasion of India. Their losses had been ruinous. Over thirteen thousand dead were counted on the battlefields, and, allowing for those who died of wounds, disease, or hunger, the total amounted on a Japanese estimate to 65,000 men.

  The monsoon, now at its height, had in previous years brought active operations to a standstill, and the enemy doubtless counted on a pause during which they could extricate and rebuild their shattered forces. They were given no such respite. The British Indian Fourteenth Army, under the able and forceful leadership of General Slim, took the offensive. All along the mountain tracks they found evidence of disaster—quantities of abandoned guns, transport, and equipment; thousands dead or dying. Progress, measured in miles a day, was very slow. But our men were fighting in tropical rainfall, soaked to the skin by day and night. The so-called roads were mostly fair-weather dust-tracks, now churned into deep mud, through which guns and vehicles had often to be manhandled. It was not the slowness of advance but the fact that any advance was made at all that should cause surprise.

  The Chindits had meanwhile been reinforced, and five of their brigades were now working northwards up the railway from Indaw, preventing the passage of reinforcements and destroying dumps as they went. Despite the havoc they caused, the Japanese withdrew nothing from the Imphal front and only one battalion from Stilwell’s. They brought their 53 rd Division from Siam and tried, at the cost of over 5,400 killed, but without success, to quell the nuisance. Stilwell continued his steady progress and captured Myitkyina on August 3, thus providing a staging post for the American air-lift to China. The “Hump” traffic had no longer to make the direct and often dangerous flight from Northern Assam over the great mountains to Kunming. Work proceeded on the long road from Northern Assam, destined later to link up with the former road from Burma to China, and the strain on rearward communications was relieved by a new 750-mile oil pipe-line laid from Calcutta, a greater span than the famous desert pipe-line from Iraq to Halfa.

  BURMA, JULY 1944–JANUARY 1945

  At this juncture I was in conference with the President at Quebec, and in spite of these successes I continued to urge that it was most undesirable that the fighting in the jungles should go on indefinitely. I desired an amphibious stroke across the Bay of Bengal on Rangoon, at the base of the Burmese land-mass. If the Fourteenth Army then swept down from Central Burma we might clear the way for an assault on Sumatra. But all these projects called for men and material, and there were not enough in South-East Asia. The only place they could come from was Europe. Landing-craft would have to be taken either from the Mediterranean or from “Overlord”, and the troops from Italy and elsewhere, and they would have to leave soon. It was now September. Rangoon lies forty miles up a winding estuary, complicated with backwaters and mud-banks. The monsoon starts in early May, and we should therefore have to attack by April 1945 at the latest. Was it yet safe to start weakening our effort in Europe? We carried the Americans with us on the Rangoon plan, but the sanguine hopes, which I had not shared, that Germany would collapse before the end of the year faded. It became obvious that German resistance would continue into and beyond the winter, and Mountbatten was accordingly instructed, not for the first time, that he must do what he could with what he had got.

  And so we forged slowly ahead in the largest land engagement with Japan which had so far been attained. The good hygiene discipline now practised by all our units, the use of the new drug mepacrine, and constant spraying with D.D.T. insecticide kept the sick rate admirably low. The Japanese were not versed in these precautions and died in hundreds. The Fourteenth Army joined hands with the Chinese-American forces from the north, which now included a British division, and by early December, with two bridgeheads across the Chindwin, was poised for the main advance into the central plain of Burma.

  In defiance of chronology, we may here pursue the story to its victorious conclusion. Formidable administrative problems now intervened. Far away in South-East China, the Japanese had begun an advance on Chungking, the Generalissimo’s capital, and Kunming, the delivery point of the American supply air-lift. The Americans took a serious view of this situation. Their forward Air Force bases were being overrun. Chiang Kai-shek’s troops gave little promise, and they now appealed for two of the Chinese divisions in North Burma, and also for more American air squadrons, in particular for three transport squadrons. These were hard tidings, but we had no choice but to accept. The loss of two good Chinese divisions was not so grave an inconvenience as parting with the transport squadrons. The Fourteenth Army was four hundred miles beyond its railhead and General Slim relied on air supply to help the tenuous road link. The squadrons had to go, and although later replaced, mostly from British sources, their absence inflicted severe delay on the campaign. In spite of all this the Fourteenth Army broke out of the hills into the plain north-west of Mandalay, and by the end of January, 1945, General Sultan, who had succeeded Stilwell, reopened the land route to China.

  Hard strategic decisions confronted Admiral Mountbatten when the decisive battle across the Irrawaddy began in the following month. His instructions
were to liberate Burma, for which purpose he was not to expect greater resources than he already had, and then to occupy Malaya and open the Malacca Straits. Weather was dominant. The first task was to occupy the central plain of Burma and capture Rangoon before the monsoon, and the monsoon was due in early May. He could either concentrate the whole Fourteenth Army on a decisive battle in the Mandalay plain and make a swift advance to the south, or use some of his troops for an amphibious operation against Rangoon. In either case, much depended on air supply, in which United States aircraft played a big part. Aid to China still dominated American policy, and more planes might be withdrawn and his plans ruined. In face of these dangers, which were soon to become acute, Mountbatten decided on a single, fully supported operation against the main enemy body west of Mandalay, and a subsequent advance on Rangoon, which, he was advised, could be reached by April 15.

  Events now moved swiftly. One of his divisions had already seized bridgeheads across the Irrawaddy about forty miles north of Mandalay, and throughout February they beat off a series of fierce counterattacks. On February 12 the 20th Division crossed the river lower down and to the west of Mandalay. For a fortnight they had a hard fight to hold their gains, but by then they were joined by the 2nd British Division. This convinced the Japanese High Command that a decisive battle was imminent, and they sent heavy reinforcements. They did not believe that a serious flank attack was also possible, and even dispatched to Siam a division they could ill spare. This however was precisely the stroke which General Slim had prepared. On February 13 the 7th Division crossed the Irrawaddy south of Pakokku and formed a bridgehead. The enemy thought this was a mere diversion, but he was soon to be better informed. On the 21st two motorised brigades of the 17th Division and a brigade of tanks broke out from the bridgehead, and reached Meiktila on the 28th. Here was the principal administrative centre of the Japanese main front, a nodal point of their communications and the focus of several airfields. It was strongly defended, and the enemy sent two divisions post-haste to aid the garrison, but they were held at a distance until our reinforcements arrived. After a week of bitter fighting the town was in our hands, and all attempts to recapture it were repulsed. The Japanese admit losing five thousand men and as many wounded in a battle which their Commander-in-Chief has since described as “the master-stroke of Allied strategy”.