The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  After two weeks’ hectic work on the new Chinese army, Stilwell suffered something like culture shock when he returned to Delhi to see the opulence at the headquarters of both the British and American military. The cynics said there were so many brass hats in Delhi that a plane could land there in the fog. The ‘too many chiefs, not enough Indians’ motif was a constant one in Stilwell’s letters home to his wife, as in this one: ‘The Limey layout is simply stupendous, you trip over lieutenant-generals on every floor. Most of them doing captain’s work, or none at all.’54 He found time for a quick meeting with Wavell and dinner with the viceroy Lord Linlithgow on 30 August before flying back to Chungking on 9 September. Next day there was a conference with Madame and then an unwontedly quiet period until 21 September, when there was a formal dinner with the Chiangs, where the generalissimo seemed delighted with the photographic evidence of his new divisions at Ramgarh. ‘Why shouldn’t he be, the little jackass,’ Stilwell confided to his diary. He consoled himself with a minor triumph: ‘For the first time I carried on a conversation with the G-Mo without any help.’55 For the next few days Stilwell contented himself with mutterings in his journal about KMT graft and corruption, but then on 27 September came really serious news from Washington. The Allies had agreed to a limited war in northern Burma, to open a new road from Ledo in Assam that would connect with the Burma road and force it open; Stilwell’s project for a full campaign, objective Rangoon, was set aside. Yet even the limited campaign represented victory of sorts, for the British were not keen on an offensive in northern Burma. They had no interest in China and considered Chiang a military dead weight. Besides, in addition to the critical state of affairs on the Russian front and the plans for a cross-Channel invasion, Operation TORCH, the Allied landings in North Africa, was looming as a priority. FDR now gave a definitive answer to Chiang’s Three Demands, telling him that while there could be no question of any American divisions in Burma, beginning in 1943 100 transport planes would bring 5,000 tons of supplies over the Hump, and 265 combat planes would be delivered; to Chiang’s delight, no quid pro quo was mentioned.56

  Roosevelt’s highly conciliatory attitude to Chiang explains his next move. Baulked by Stimson and Marshall when he tried to remove Stilwell after the Lauchlin Currie report, FDR next sent out a bigger gun, Wendell Wilkie, the man he had beaten by a landslide in the electoral college in the 1940 presidential election. Wilkie was something of a curiosity. Elected as the Republican candidate that year as a complete dark horse with no significant political experience (he was a corporate lawyer), he initially campaigned on an isolationist platform. The 1940 election campaign was considered the dirtiest ever to date, with FDR’s vice-presidential nominee Henry Wallace accusing Wilkie of being ‘the Nazis’ candidate’.57 Wilkie performed creditably in terms of the popular election, winning 22 million votes to Roosevelt’s 26 million, but after his defeat he performed a complete volte-face and became an ardent supporter of his erstwhile opponent. In this capacity he had already been sent as the President’s personal representative to Britain and the Middle East in 1941. Some thought there was machiavellian method in the timing of the visit, and that FDR wanted Wilkie out of the country during the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections; apparently he suspected that Wilkie might be preparing to ‘re-rat’ and run against him again in the 1944 presidential elections. But Chiang saw a unique opportunity to get rid of Stilwell and replace him with the biddable Chennault. Accordingly he arranged Wilkie’s visit with full pageantry, laying out the red carpet as if he were royalty or one of those ‘friends of the Soviet Union’ Stalin used to entertain so lavishly. Wilkie took the bait and swallowed Chiang’s propaganda whole. His six-day visit was something of a tour de force of gullibility, which predictably excited Stilwell’s scorn.58 He noticed that Wilkie seemed particularly influenced by Madame, and if the Des Moines newspaper publisher Gardner Cowles can be believed, there was more to it than mere charm and flattery. According to Cowles, who had been special adviser to Wilkie in the 1950 election and knew him intimately, Wilkie and Madame had an affair, first consummated in China during this visit and later continued in the USA, during which the ‘power devil’ Madame conceived the notion of divorcing Chiang and marrying Wilkie. The idea was that she would use China’s wealth to get Wilkie elected in 1944 and then, as husband and wife, they would rule the world as a more successful Antony and Cleopatra, with Wilkie assigned the West as his sphere of influence and Madame the East.59

  All one can say is that in the madhouse atmosphere of Chungking in October 1942, anything seemed possible. The egregious Chennault, at Madame’s bidding, buttonholed Wilkie and completely sold him on the idea of winning the war by airpower alone. Chennault portrayed Stilwell as a stick-in-the-mud diehard general, still fighting the battles of the American Civil War with infantry alone, and ignoring the dimension of airpower. He complained to Wilkie that Stilwell used all the Lend-Lease materiel on expensive infantry projects, and claimed that if he, Chennault, was given just 105 fighters and 42 bombers, he could promise victory over Japan in a mere six months. The absurdity of Chennault’s ideas will be apparent when it is realised that in 1945 the USA was deploying no fewer than 14,847 combat aircraft against Japan and scarcely putting a dent in the defensive capacity of the Japanese homeland; only the use of the atom bomb finally compelled the enemy’s surrender. As Stilwell often pointed out, an attempt to win the war by airpower alone would simply lead the Japanese to overrun all those airfields within striking range of their armies – airfields that in turn could be defended only by the despised infantry. The document Wilkie came away with, virtually dictated by Chennault after being closeted with the envoy for two hours, has rightly been called ‘one of the extraordinary documents of the war’.60 Chiang played his part, promising Wilkie that if Chennault was made commander-in-chief in China, he would wield real power, thus virtually conceding that he had been sabotaging Stilwell. What he promised was true as far as it went, for nothing would have given Chiang greater pleasure than an American chief of staff who made no demands on his precious armies while bringing in masses of Lend-Lease materiel. Small wonder that Stilwell referred to the generalissimo as ‘the little dummy’ and remarked ‘thank God’ when he heard that Wilkie was leaving.61 But he was unaware that he was harbouring another serpent in Chungking in the form of the US naval attaché James McHugh, who was in on the plot to oust him. McHugh wrote to Navy Secretary Frank Knox to say that Stilwell’s plans for the recapture of Burma were simply a piece of quixotry by a glory-hunter and were an obstacle to Chennault’s ‘brilliant’ ideas. Knox showed McHugh’s communiqué to Stimson, who in turn showed it to the Chief of the Army. Marshall was predictably enraged and suggested that McHugh be disciplined, describing Chennault’s ideas as ‘just nonsense; not bad strategy, just nonsense’.62 The problem was that FDR continued to have a sneaking regard for Chennault, whom he considered a man with a ‘can do’ attitude. But he could do nothing against the combined opposition of Marshall and Stimson. Meanwhile Marshall put Stilwell fully in the picture about all the plots and machinations against him.

  Confident that his enemies would not prevail, Stilwell vented his anger on the generalissimo and cited a recent incident to show how woefully incompetent Chiang was as a general. ‘Peanut “directed operations” from Chungking, with the usual brilliant result. The whole thing was a mess. Peanut ordered two armies to hide in the mountains and attack on the flank when the Japs paused. The Japs simply blocked the exit roads and went on.’ But Chiang was in good spirits, thinking that Stilwell’s days were now numbered. Stilwell’s diary entry for 11 October captures the mood: ‘Date with Peanut at noon … He was quite blithe and cheerful.’63 Three days later, Chiang committed to a campaign in Burma provided the British also committed fully and that the Allies had air and naval superiority in the Bay of Bengal. It was time for Stilwell to make another of his long flights to Delhi. His visit had a dual purpose. On the one hand he had to get formal British agreement to t
he Chiang proposals to prevent him using their non-compliance as an excuse to welch on the commitment. On the other, he was concerned about negative reports reaching him about the Raj’s attitude to the training of the Chinese at Ramgarh. One report was that Wavell had approved his recent request to increase the numbers of Chinese at Ramgarh, not wishing to oppose Stilwell openly, but had then got the viceroy Lord Linlithgow to write to Churchill to complain of the dangers of having so many Chinese in India.64 It was quite clear that Wavell did not really like the Ramgarh training project and kept finding various reasons why it should be wound up. One was that Chinese–Indian cooperation would be an entering wedge for nationalism, further weakening the hold of the Raj on India. Another was that the Chinese had still not formally waived their traditional claim to northern Burma. Yet another was that the presence of the Chinese caused railway congestion, shortage of trucks and transport for animals; the Ramgarh project, in short, stymied all other operations. Stilwell thought this attitude smacked of humbug: ‘Well, to hell with the old fool … They don’t want Chinese troops participating in the retaking of Burma. That’s all (it’s OK for US troops to be in England, though).’65 He took the precaution of signalling Marshall in Washington to alert him to Wavell’s attitude and suggest bringing pressure to bear on London.

  The flight over the Hump on 15 October was noticeable for severe turbulence, and Stilwell’s pilot climbed to 20,000 feet to try to avoid it. Stilwell arrived in Delhi on the 17th and at once plunged into conferences, encountering all the above objections. Suddenly on the 19th the atmosphere changed, and Stilwell guessed that Marshall’s pressure had borne fruit in London. His guess was correct. Around this time Wavell wrote to the chiefs of staff: ‘We must accept with good grace and willingness this American-Chinese cooperation in recapture of Burma … Stilwell is pretty close and does not give away much, but I like him and think him cooperative and genuine.’66 Wavell and Stilwell agreed that the campaign would start in February 1943, though the 52 air squadrons originally envisaged would not be ready until two months later. Stilwell told Wavell that his Chinese armies would be aiming primarily at the Hukawng valley of northern Burma and in particular Myitkyina. A joint planning staff was set up, with the faithful Merrill as Stilwell’s representative.67 On 26 October Stilwell declared that he intended to operate from a base at Ledo, from which he planned to build a road along the Hukawng valley to link with the old Burma road near Bhamo. This would have a twofold purpose: to support his campaign in northern Burma and to supply China over an old caravan route.68 The British were always uneasy about the Ledo road, on the grounds that it destroyed the private shipping monopoly and allowed the Chinese road access to India. Though forced by Washington to accept it, they secretly obstructed it and even agreed to attempt the recapture of Rangoon by amphibious assault in hopes of diverting resources from the road; they were not really that interested in Rangoon, for Singapore was always their prime objective. Wavell and his men argued that even if such a road were built, it would absorb most of its capacity in simple maintenance.69 This was meant to be an ace card, but the Americans promptly trumped the ace by accepting full responsibility for the Ledo road and all its costs. This was an amazing move on Stilwell’s part, for it is normally thought to be an axiom of military campaigns that planning precedes logistics and logistics precede fighting; here the planning, the fighting and the logistical preparations were all going on simultaneously.70

  Stilwell was never at his best in planning conferences, and by 21 October he was bored and irritable after four days’ non-stop negotiations. He recorded his reactions: ‘In general we’re getting along – our Limey friends are sometimes a bit difficult, but there are some good eggs among them … the British don’t know how to take me – I catch them looking me over occasionally with a speculative glint in their eyes … Some of them that I had thought most hidebound and icy prove to have a good deal of my point of view and take delight in watching me stick the Prod into the Most High.’71 Here Stilwell made a rare admission that his judgement of men was not always peerless or perfect. But soon he was reverting to a more familiar cynicism: ‘Hell, I’m nothing but an errand boy. I run up to Chungking and jerk the Gimo’s sleeve. I tell him to better be ready to move into Burma from the south … The Chinese are going to lose a lot of face if the British do it alone. Then I fly down to India and jerk Archie’s sleeve [and tell him] the Gimo is going to move down the Salween and you better get going too. You Limeys are going to have a hell of a time with the white man’s burden if the Chinese have nerve enough to fight and you haven’t.’72 By the end of the month it was time to report to Chiang. After another bumpy passage over the Hump (this time at 17,000 feet – ‘cold as hell’, Stilwell reported), the two men conferred on 3 November. Stilwell was frank about the difficulties he had encountered with the British and the problems over a united command. ‘I said if Slim could command the Limeys it would work fine.’73 At this conference Chiang was unusually affable and claimed he would have 15 divisions ready by 15 February. After buoying Stilwell’s spirits immeasurably by saying that the American could pick the divisions for the campaign, name the commanders and have the power to sack them at any time, he brought him down to earth with the ominous proviso that all was contingent on the Allies having total sea and air superiority, by which Chiang seemed to mean a guarantee that his troops would never once be attacked from the air. It seems that his new benevolent attitude was the result of talks he had held with T.V. Soong, who had returned from Washington to brief him. Soong told Chiang that the best chance of getting increased Lend-Lease might be to cooperate with Stilwell, since the Marshall–Stimson axis in Washington meant that he was in effect irreplaceable. Yet even so there were limits to what Chiang would do. For a moment Stilwell hoped he could get rid of General Tu, the lacklustre commander of the 5th Army and his bête noire. His biographer explains why this would never be: ‘In the case of Tu Li-Ming, the inner obligations of Chinese relationships were stronger than promises, and each time Stilwell thought he was rid of him, he reappeared in another capacity.’74

  Yet in another sense Chiang had shot himself in the foot. In his eagerness to get hold of 4,300 tons of supplies by 15 February 1943 (with no guarantee, of course, that he could use them properly), he forgot that this would mean a cut in fuel for his ally Chennault, who protested vociferously. Stilwell, who had bent over backwards to conciliate Chennault, encouraging him and even ordering him to speak his mind to Wilkie, however crazed Stilwell thought his ideas, had now had enough. He noted: ‘Chennault with his squawk. He’s a pain in the neck. Still sore at Bissell. Told him to shut up and take orders.’75 Yet for most of November Stilwell was in unusually good spirits, commenting on the departure of Madame Chiang (whom he now took to nicknaming ‘Snow White’) to the USA, but without talking about the reasons.76 Some said she had had a blazing row with Chiang about his mistresses and was leaving for a cooling-off period; others that she was following her new lover Wendell Wilkie to the Land of the Free; still others that she was going on a goodwill mission to bolster the Kuomintang’s flagging image in the USA.77 But on 21 November Stilwell was back down to earth with a bump. At the Anglo-American planning conference in Delhi on the 19th, Wavell had announced both that the larger three-pronged plan for the capture of the Akyab peninsula had been scaled back and that operations in northern Burma must be postponed in favour of the purely overland offensive towards Akyab island.78 Predictably, Stilwell returned to Limey-bashing. This time the focus of his rage was a speech by Churchill, which the BBC claimed had ‘encouraged’ his American allies. Stilwell raged that the BBC always used the formula ‘British planes’ when the RAF was in action but ‘Allied planes’ when the USAAF took to the skies.79 But this time the British were as irritated with Stilwell as he was by them. Wavell complained that he was effectively communicating with Stilwell via Washington, and that Chiang’s chief of staff continued to plan operations independently when there was now supposed to be a joint Allied command. S
tilwell, he went on, even kept his own men in the dark and made decisions ‘without much reference to his staff here [Delhi] who seem to know little … His senior staff here give me the impression of being overawed by Stilwell and afraid of representing the true administrative picture.’80

  Stilwell raged impotently at the new situation: ‘Ominous stuff from India. Limeys thinking on limited lines. Their objective is a joke – Arakan Hills, Chin Hills, Kalewa … on the whole they want to dig in in north Burma and wait till next fall before going after it seriously … Peanut and I are on a raft, with one sandwich between us, and the rescue ship is heading away from the scene.’81 The British hesitancy was more than understandable, with the TORCH landings in North Africa, the battle for Guadalcanal and the struggle to supply Russia on the seaborne Murmansk run straining the resources of even the mighty United States. But Stilwell would have none of it and thought all such talk defeatism. In December he made a brave, but unsuccessful, attempt to persuade Wavell to undertake an offensive in northern Burma. At a conference with Wavell on 17 December in Delhi, he insisted that an attack on Myitkyina was essential, since the economic situation in China meant that the Ledo road had to be opened with all speed. This time Wavell was well briefed and made some telling points in rebuttal. He pointed out that there was currently no hope of Royal Navy action in the Bay of Bengal – which Chiang had stipulated as a prerequisite for his cooperation – that it was impossible to fight in the monsoon season, and that the Japanese had the advantage of interior lines.82 He also had some arguments that Stilwell found impossible to deal with, precisely because he found administration and logistics so boring. Since the railway ended at Dimapur and thereafter everything had to go to the front by road, Wavell demonstrated that to move the Chinese divisions from Ramgarh to Ledo to start the offensive would require 800 lorries and 200 tons of supplies a day over a 350-mile line of communication; but the lorries were unavailable and the infrastructure impossible, since to support Chinese operations a road would have to be built in the monsoon season.83 When Stilwell returned to Chungking to report to Chiang, the generalissimo launched a screaming tirade about perfidious Albion; whether real or simulated does not appear from the evidence. Chiang then cabled FDR on 28 December to urge the British to do more, and Roosevelt replied that he would raise the matter with Churchill at the forthcoming Casablanca conference. When he did so, Churchill brushed aside the accusation of bad faith, saying that all military promises must almost by definition be contingent on developing events.84