by Frank McLynn
The great Japanese eastern push through the Shan states was a total triumph. The Chinese withdrew to Lashio, but the Japanese advanced and took it on 29 April; they then pressed on to further triumphs in the north, capturing Bhamo on 4 May and Myitkyina on 8 May. By the time of the next Slim–Stilwell–Alexander conference, at Kyaukse, 25 miles south of Mandalay, on 25 April, all were agreed that the only recourse was to get out of Burma with as many divisions intact as they could manage. The conference was reported by one onlooker as follows: ‘Slim dominated the scene, and made certain once and for all that no British or Indian troops would withdraw into China. Alexander gave me, at any rate, the impression of being rattled. I think he needed Slim to help him compete with Stilwell.’81 The last week of April was the grimmest possible time, with bitter fighting around Meiktila and General Cowan falling back with great speed to Wundwin and beyond. By now all was chaos and confusion. In their retreat the Chinese behaved very badly – ‘their necessities knew no law and little mercy’, in Slim’s graphic words, but as the scale of the Allied defeat became clear, war crimes and atrocities increased exponentially on all sides. British soldiers who drove jeeps with open tops were sometimes found decapitated by wires stretched across roads at neck height.82 In the panic and rumour of war, it came to Stilwell’s ears that the British, instead of covering the Chinese retreat north of Wundwin, were trying to get ahead of them in a Gadarene rush to safety. This was all the Limey-hating Stilwell needed. Without pausing to verify the report, he sent Slim a blistering message, accusing him in highly emotional terms of having failed to carry out his duty as the rearguard. Slim takes up the story:
I dare say my nerves were nearly as stretched as his – we were neither of us having a very good time – and I was furious at this injustice to my troops who were at that moment fighting briskly far to the south of his Chinese. I replied with a very stringent refutation of the charge. This was the only time Stilwell and I fell out, but a few days later he sent me a message withdrawing the accusation and coming as near to an apology as I should think he ever got.83
Here it is appropriate to remark that Stilwell had a near obsession about the alleged cowardice of his allies and a conviction that practically everyone in both the British and the American armies was ‘yellow’.84 Stilwell’s convictions about Chiang’s duplicity and perfidy were quite correct, but it may be that he transferred these feelings, appropriate in that quarter, into areas where they had no validity at all. This is another way of saying that Stilwell, despite his great talents and impressive insights, was also a flawed individual.85
Meanwhile Stilwell’s relations with the generalissimo, never great, reached rock bottom. The trigger seems to have been a fatuous decree by Chiang that water melons should be distributed to his troops, one for every four men.86 Railing at this idiocy, Stilwell incautiously used his secret code word for Chiang – ‘the Peanut’ – in a public context and the contemptuous nickname was passed on to the generalissimo, who would certainly have assassinated any of his own generals for so impugning his honour. From that day on in Chiang’s eyes Stilwell was a marked man, and he would intrigue against him tirelessly for the next two years. The first fruit of this new antipathy was Chiang’s refusal to discipline his generals for gross insubordination, cowardice and dereliction of duty. Stilwell had wanted action taken against both Ch’en of the 55th Division, who deserted during the battle for Taunggyi, and Tu, whom he fingered as an egregious scrimshanker.87 But Chiang pointedly ignored these requests. Chiang’s anti-Western animus was increasing all the time, fuelled partly by Stilwell and partly by FDR’s ‘Europe first’ policy. Particular offence was caused to Chiang, and for once Stilwell agreed with him, when Wavell suddenly ordered a bombing raid on Rangoon by US bombers, ostensibly to take the pressure off India. Having been told repeatedly that there were no fresh Allied resources to spare in Burma, Chiang now received the most blatant proof that Britain, not China, would always be the number one priority with Washington. In vain did the US ambassador in Chungking explain that General Marshall had had to assign US planes to help the British in South-East Asia as a quid pro quo for getting Churchill’s agreement to a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 (which never happened), since the British wanted to postpone direct strikes at the heart of Europe, thinking them premature.88 To Chiang all this had as much relevance as if it were happening on Mars. His enemy was the Japanese and his only concern was the Japanese (or so he said; actually his only real concern was the Chinese Communists).
To Stilwell it seemed that Chiang was becoming more imbecilic and more impossible by the moment, especially when he sent a message saying that Mandalay must be defended at all costs and then immediately another one countermanding the first order. Stilwell replied with a radio signal to say that he also wanted General Lu of the 28th Division court-martialled; again this request was ignored.89 Despairing of his so-called boss, Stilwell was no happier with the British, whom he repeatedly accused in his diary of running from a fight. ‘Alex has 36,000 men to take out [of Burma]!’ he thundered. ‘Where the hell have they all been?’ In Stilwell’s view, laziness and incompetence in the British upper class extended even to an insouciance about their own nationals. He went to confer with British headquarters about the British families still in his war zone. ‘Dumb Limeys sitting around. Got a captain finally. Not interested, don’t you know. “Our people are all out, I believe.”’90 At the beginning of May his anger became near apoplectic when he listened to a BBC broadcast that tried to put a positive ‘spin’ on the shambles of the long retreat into India: ‘General Alexander, a bold and resourceful commander, has fought one of the great defensive battles of the war. And a lot of crap about what the Limeys have been doing.’91 In despair at both Chiang and Alexander, Stilwell decided that the only credible future lay in getting to India with six Chinese divisions, so that he could train them like Western soldiers, and they could eventually return to Burma and defeat the Japanese. ‘God, if we can only get those 100,000 Chinese to India, we’ll have something.’92 Amazingly, given his hatred of Stilwell, Chiang gave approval in principle to the plan to train six of his divisions in India, subject to the sole proviso that the troops should not be used to put down risings by Indian nationalists. It may be that Chiang’s thoughts were elsewhere. Late in April, FDR had joined Stilwell and the British on his hate list as a result of the Doolittle raids. On 18 April, USAAF commander James H. Doolittle led a daring raid on Tokyo by B-25 bombers – a brilliant propaganda coup to show that Japan was vulnerable to air attack.93 Although the aircraft took off from the carrier Hornet some 700 miles off the Japanese coast, the plan was that they would then fly on to land at Chinese airfields. In the long term Japan responded by trying to take out all US aircraft carriers, and their disastrous defeat at Midway in June was the result. In the short term they vented their ire against China and its airfields. They launched ferocious attacks on the coastal areas of China where the Doolittle fliers had crash-landed and committed many atrocities and massacres of entire villages with women and children. Since Chiang had not even been informed about the raid until it was too late to cancel it, he felt both slighted and angry that, as he saw it, the Chinese people were having to pay the price for a futile American propaganda gesture.94
But now it was time for Stilwell to get out of Burma. On 1 May he had radioed for a plane to take him to India when he learned that Chiang’s favourite general Lo Chin-ying had vanished or deserted; it later transpired that he had stolen a train at gunpoint with the intention of escaping north to Myitkyina but had crashed it 25 miles up the line. It suddenly seemed to Stilwell that if he departed by air, the Chinese soldiers would think that he too had decamped in panic and would never trust him again. He therefore took the decision, worthy of the samurai warriors of his Japanese opponents, that he would trek out overland. Decanting most of his headquarters staff on to the waiting C-47 transport plane, he announced that he intended to march out with the rest. He assembled a party of 140 people who seemed to
represent all parties on the Allied side: there were 26 Americans, 13 Britons, 16 Chinese, some Burmese nurses and civilians, plus Indian cooks and mechanics. As his right-hand man on this perilous expedition he had the trusty Frank Merrill. ‘By the time we get out of here, many of you will hate my guts, but I’ll tell you one thing: you’ll all get out.’95 There was a choice of routes: either to India or north to Yunnan via Myitkina, but Stilwell initially kept his options open. From Kathaw the party set out for Indaw on 4 May, following a northern tributary of the Chindwin. They managed 14 miles a day in dreadful conditions in the hottest month of the year, just before the monsoon, prey above all to malaria and dysentery. They were beset by soldier ants, thorn bushes, sores, blisters and sundry infections; at one point they encountered a rogue elephant.96 At one stage Frank Merrill, who never enjoyed robust health and had a weak heart, fainted of sunstroke in the middle of a river and had to be pulled over on an air mattress and afterwards carried by bearers; he was unconscious for two hours.97 Stilwell’s journal conveys the flavour of the terrible journey: ‘May 8. Start ordered for 5.00. Off at 5.45. Delay in kitchen. Made Dorn mess officer. No guard on food. No check. Did four marches to Saingkyu. Arrived 10.15. Limeys’ feet all shot. Our people tired. Damn poor show of physique. Chattering monkeys in the jungle. Bombers over, reminder that we are not yet out.’98
They crossed the Chindwin on rafts on 13 May. At Indaw Stilwell decided to turn west for India, taking a little-known route to avoid the mass exodus of Chinese and refugees. At this point the monsoon burst on them with full fury, but at least that alleviated all thoughts of Japanese pursuit. At Kawlum, reached on 14 May, there was good news: ‘Heavy rain caught us just as we arrived. Soaked. Well, we were met at Kawlum by the British from Imphal. Food, doctor, ponies and everything. Quite a relief. Had chow with the British. Canned sausage, while our people had pig. Jones, Sibert and I struggled up the mountain and back to be polite. Rained like hell.’99 The convoy was now relatively safe, but there was a further week of strenuous hiking over the Manipur hills in the monsoon before journey’s end. The daily mileage improved: on 19 May the party covered 21 miles, but nothing could ever quite dampen Stilwell’s epistolary Anglophobia: ‘Two thirds of Limeys on ponies. None of our people.’100 The Limey-bashing got worse when they reached Imphal the next day, with Stilwell in his diary initially praising his allies and thus setting them up for the ‘sucker punch’: ‘Cordial reception by the Limeys. The provincial administrator failed to send our messages. The colossal jackass. “Oh, were they to be forwarded,” he says. The colossal jackass.’101 From Imphal the party was taken by lorry and train to Tinsukia, where there was a meeting with Wavell and Alexander, and then flown to Delhi. Stilwell was jubilant about his exploit and told his wife it had given him a new lease of energy with which to confront ‘the Peanut’. One of his aides commented admiringly: ‘Hell, that was a picnic excursion for him. He’s just made of steel wire, rubber and concrete for guts.’102 The general was certainly in gung-ho mood at his press conference in Delhi, where he made a famous announcement: ‘I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it.’103
Stilwell received the plaudits of President Roosevelt, a personal commendation from Stimson, a cordial message from General Marshall and even a eulogy from Madame Chiang. But her husband did not join in the chorus of praise. Apart from the pre-existing reasons for enmity and hatred towards Stilwell, Chiang fumed that his Chief of staff had not sent him a single message in May, in which time he had managed to transmit at least half a dozen to Washington. He was also angry about the losses to his beloved legions, for not only had thousands been killed in bitter fighting with the Japanese, but tens of thousands more had perished or gone missing on the retreat north. The first the generalissimo learned of Stilwell’s arrival in India was when Brigadier General John Magruder of the American Military Mission in Chungking casually mentioned it to him. Chiang was furious and made clear to all within listening range that he had no confidence in his chief of staff. ‘Stilwell deserted our troops and left for India without my permission,’ he thundered, once again ignoring the fact that Stilwell’s role as his aide was only one of four positions he filled.104 Nevertheless Chiang at once mobilised his friends, allies and stooges to make a maximum propaganda onslaught on his favourite hate figure. Prominent in the lists was Chennault, who finally threw off the mask of affability and used Stilwell’s jungle trek as ‘proof’ that his superior officer did not understand airpower. ‘If Stilwell had been a company, battalion or regimental commander whose primary responsibility was for the troops in his immediate command, his walkout would certainly have been commendable. But of a man with the tremendous burden of ranking American officer in Asia and Chief of Staff of the Chinese Republic, it was a startling exhibition of his ignorance or disregard for these larger responsibilities.’105 The considerable anti-Stilwell faction in the USA also tried to make political capital out of Stilwell’s ‘eccentric’ and ‘inappropriate’ decision to trek out of Burma instead of flying out. One of FDR’s key assistants, Thomas Corcoran, minuted that Stilwell’s decision was wrong on at least three counts: he was disobeying Chiang; his trek might have failed and he might have become the prisoner of the Japanese; and what he did was inconsistent with the dignity of a commander-in-chief.106 These were the opening shots of a brutal anti-Stilwell propaganda campaign, waged either by the generalissimo’s conscious minions or by Roosevelt’s more Right-thinking or unthinking acolytes. The Chiang–Stilwell quarrel, which was to poison and bedevil Allied efforts in Burma, was destined to run and run.
4
To understand the actions of Slim and Stilwell in Burma it is enough to concentrate on their distinguished military careers before the coming of World War II. This is not the case with Orde Wingate, the third of the four larger-than-life personalities in the Burma war. With him the roots of his controversial personality and behaviour must be sought in early childhood. Wingate was born into a military family in February 1903. His father was a religious fundamentalist who had become a member of the Plymouth Brethren and then, aged 46, married the eldest daughter of another family in the Brethren. When the young Orde was two, his father reached retirement age and returned to England from India with his family. Wingate and his six siblings experienced the most austere and repressed childhood. They were kept away from other children for fear of spiritual ‘contamination’ and instead endured a regime of religious mania, spending whole days reading and memorising the Old Testament. Robert Louis Stevenson had a childhood suffused with gloomy thoughts of hell-fire and damnation, but was otherwise a pampered and much-loved child. In Wingate’s case, added to the religious indoctrination was a spirit-shrinking spartan regime, a kind of secular boot-camp.1 When the family moved to Godalming, Surrey, in 1916, Orde was finally sent as a day boy to Charterhouse school, but he was always an outsider who did not mix and played no sports. In 1921 he was accepted into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, training as an officer in the Royal Artillery. It was here, according to his recollections, that he endured a salient trauma. Freshmen who broke the rules or the code – and Wingate habitually broke all rules, whether social or hierarchical – had to undergo a ritual known as ‘running’. First a howling mob of military students summoned the culprit from his room; then he was stripped naked; then he had to run between lines of senior students who whacked him with knotted towels; finally the victim was thrown into a tank of icy water.2 By force of personality, Wingate fixed his eyes on his tormentors and defied them to do their worst. Taken aback by the ‘unhinged’ response to their ceremony, the students declined to chastise him. He then showed his contempt for the proceedings by plunging into the water tank himself. He had thus shown himself to be ‘one to note’ at an early age, for other trainee officers at Woolwich described this particular form of fazing as singularly terrifying.3