by Frank McLynn
Genuinely flabbergasted at the sycophancy and servile deference exhibited at the court of this secular Chinese emperor (‘I have never come across such awesome reverence as they showed towards the generalissimo. I very much doubt whether devout Christians could show any more reverence for Our Lord if He were to appear on earth again’), Mountbatten decided to get Madame to coach him in some more fine points of etiquette. She pulled the time-honoured but still effective Chinese trick of telling him that he was the only ‘foreign devil’ who really understood China, that he was different from other foreigners, etc. He responded by presenting her with a Cartier vanity case set. At his second meeting, on 19 October, Mountbatten scored a notable diplomatic triumph. He promised Chiang 10,000 tons a month over the Hump and in return Chiang agreed that Mountbatten could send guerrillas into Indochina, in an arrogant assumption that that area was within the Chinese sphere of influence.87 That night, on the eve of Mountbatten’s departure, the generalissimo paid him the unprecedented compliment of coming to his quarters to tell him that he had formed the highest possible opinion of his new friend. When the supremo left next day, a delighted Chiang wrote to George VI to shower compliments on his kinsman and ambassador. Mountbatten noted in his diary: ‘I must say I left the Chiang Kai-sheks with a real feeling of affection and regard, and I am sure that this is reciprocated since I was told on my return that he had been ringing up constantly to make certain that I had arrived back safely.’88 Pownall expressed scepticism about how much Mountbatten had really achieved, though he conceded that he had probably done much better than Wavell on his disastrous visit to Chungking in December 1941.89 But the gung-ho Mountbatten was full of his ‘triumph’ and wrote enthusiastically to FDR about his visit. The President replied that he was ‘really thrilled over the fact that for the first time in two years I have confidence in the personality problems in the China and Burma fields – and you personally are largely responsible for this’.90
The coded reference to Stilwell was significant, for Mountbatten also thought he had made a great hit with the American. Highly vulnerable to flattery, Mountbatten thought it a singular compliment when Stilwell told him he admired him uniquely as a fighter, unaware that he had already said the same thing to Slim and would say it again to the future Field Marshal Sir Francis Fasting. Writing to Field Marshal Dill in Washington about Stilwell, Mountbatten opined: ‘I feel you should know that all the British I have met have the lowest possible opinion of his intellect and cooperativeness, and I am told that 90% of the Americans hate his guts. Nevertheless he and I are getting along surprisingly well and so far I have no complaints about his relationships with me, and I have every intention of trying to make a success of them.’91 He was being naive about both Chiang and Stilwell. Always polite and rarely saying no to anyone’s face, Chiang was a master at telling people what they wanted to hear, though he lived in an eternal present in which words were not supposed to have any future consequences. Stilwell had seen it all before and laughed at Mountbatten’s naivety. ‘He thinks they will do everything … The Chinese politeness has fooled Dicky [sic].’92 And, despite his initial good impressions, Stilwell was already disillusioned with his new boss, though taking a leaf out of the Chinese book, he was always scrupulously polite in public, never giving a hint that he increasingly detested Mountbatten. So convinced was the Supremo that he had tamed Vinegar Joe where so many stuffed-shirt Brits had failed that he invited him back with him to Huang Shan, where Mountbatten announced his intention of setting up an Allied high command in which British, Americans and Chinese would function as one staff, in the manner of Eisenhower’s HQ in the Mediterranean. Later, in Delhi, the two men discovered they had a common interest in the movies, and Mountbatten recorded the unique experience of ‘going to the pictures’ with Vinegar Joe.93 Stilwell, however, had cause to be grateful to Mountbatten. He was still in his job in Chunking, with both Chiang and the Soong sisters geniality itself. ‘The Peanut is now affable again … May calls me Uncle Joe now.’94 But the honeymoon was not destined to last long. Already the looming spectre of another Allied conference was casting its shadow.
10
Having at least temporarily settled relations with Stilwell and patched up the Chinese end of his operation, Mountbatten turned his attention to Slim and Wingate. On 16 October he designated Slim commander of the new 14th Army – the new version of the old BURCORPS. On 22 October he met Slim for the first time, at Barrackpore. In the absurd confusion of ranks that characterises the British army – and many other armies as well – Slim’s official rank was still colonel, though he had the wartime rank of major general and the temporary rank of lieutenant general by virtue of his command of the new reorganisation of his units into the 14th Army – the official nomenclature under which the ‘Forgotten Army’ would win fame. Slim, never a complainer, nevertheless thought he had been given the toughest of hands to play, for the new 14th Army was deployed along a 700-mile front from the Chinese border to the Bay of Bengal. The new commander described the terrain:
Along the Indo-Burmese border, in a shallow curve, sweeps the wide belt of jungle-clad, precipitous hills, railless, roadless and, for six months of the year, during the monsoon rains, almost trackless. Sparsely populated by wild tribes, disease-infested and even unmapped in places, much of this area has been penetrated only by occasional Europeans and then only in the dry season. It could fairly be described as some of the world’s worst country, breeding the world’s worst diseases.1
Slim asked Mountbatten to address his troops, knowing of his reputation as a morale-booster and possibly also hoping to size up the new commander. It was one of Mountbatten’s least attractive qualities that he was a magpie, appropriating other men’s bright ideas and presenting them as if they were his own original thoughts. On this occasion he managed to filch two of Slim’s best thoughts. One was a variation on the ‘Forgotten Army’ as a misnomer, for no one in England had ever heard of them (see p. 93). The other was Slim’s original contribution to Burma warfare, the suggestion that the British army could fight on during the monsoon.2 Slim seems to have taken the ‘plagiarism’ in his stride. He realised that Mountbatten was above all a histrionic and a showman. Indeed the Supremo was known to prize Frederick the Great’s advice that to make a hit with their troops commanders should behave like actors on the stage.3
In his books and speeches Slim never had anything but praise for Mountbatten.
Youthful, buoyant, picturesque, with a reputation for gallantry known everywhere, he talked to the British soldier with irresistible frankness and charm. To the Indian he appealed equally. The morale of the army was already on the upgrade; he was the final tonic … His comparative youth … was something of a stimulant to most of us, and certainly to our troops … From the very start, no one could fail to like the Supreme Commander – even Stilwell, in a picturesque phrase once admitted that to me – and his quick brain, backed by a remarkable memory and tireless vitality, enabled him to grasp the intricacies of the whole vast organisation of which he was the head.4
Later, as his knowledge of Mountbatten deepened, he began to see his flaws and described him to confidants as a playboy who liked to be liked, tried to please everybody and therefore agreed with the last person he spoke to: ‘the only way to get anything done is to ensure that you see him last’.5 Nevertheless he always worked well with Mountbatten and kept out of the rancorous disputes between the staffs of the Supreme Commander and those of the commanders-in-chief. Slim could see no personal reason for envy and dislike of the new Supremo, while fully understanding why senior navy personnel resented him. Privately, though, there is good reason to believe that he sympathised more with the ‘Auk’ and the old India hands than with the brash and bumptious Combined Ops staff Mountbatten had brought to India with him. It tended to be a golden rule that those who operated at arm’s length from Mountbatten disliked him while those who worked closely with him admired and idolised him. On the other hand, Slim’s own plans were in jeopardy fr
om the tension between the commanders-in-chief’s planners and the Supremo’s: ‘It was rather like a game of tennis,’ he remarked ruefully.6 By the end of 1943 the Mountbatten–Slim entente was firmly established and was clearly the key aspect of the new command dynamic, confounding those who had thought that Mountbatten–Wingate would be the significant axis. Slim, in a word, was lucky with his boss, for he would not have fared so well under any of the other men who had originally been suggested for this command – Sholto Douglas, Tedder and Cunningham being obvious cases in point.7
The talks at Barrackpore were full and frank, though on Mountbatten’s side unacceptably vainglorious. Slim told the Supremo that he disliked Barrackpore as it was too close to Calcutta yet 550 miles from the front and 400 miles even to Imphal, with the Chinese front still farther away: ‘It was as if I was controlling from London a 700-mile battle front in the Italian Alps.’ Mountbatten took the point and authorised a move to Comilla, 200 miles east of Calcutta, which would make it easier to visit his forward units in Assam. He warned, however, that Slim would be required at frequent SEAC conferences in Delhi, which would mean extra travelling.8 When Mountbatten produced documents to confirm Slim as the new commander of the 14th Army, Slim queried whether he should not have asked Giffard first. Mountbatten’s response was typical: ‘No, I am the Supreme Commander and Giffard is my subordinate.’ Mountbatten assured Slim that there would be no trouble with Giffard, but Slim knew his man better than the Supremo did. When Mountbatten informed Giffard, he was angry and resentful about the Supremo’s ‘interventionism’ and said grudgingly that he would have to think about it. Mountbatten at once cabled Alanbrooke to ask if Giffard had to obey his direct order if given one. Alanbrooke replied in the affirmative, further deepening the rift between supreme commander and commander-in-chief.9 Yet if he backed Slim to the hilt at a personal level, Mountbatten’s strategic views (really those of Churchill, which he was parroting faithfully) bade fair to make Slim’s position otiose, for he told him that he was in favour of any offensive in Burma taking place in the south rather than the north. Churchill’s continuing obsession with peripheral campaigns, preferably amphibious ones, put him on a collision course with his American allies and had been one of the reasons for his appointment of Mountbatten, whom he described as ‘young, enthusiastic and triphibious [sic].’10 Mountbatten painted an altogether fantastic picture of the coming combined operations in the south, claiming that SEAC would soon have so many ships that the harbours of India and Ceylon would not be big enough to contain them.11 This was of course an idle Churchillian boast, for by January 1944 the D-Day operation and that in southern France would take all the landing-craft. Churchill, Alanbrooke and Mountbatten were forever hankering after Rangoon, the Andaman islands, Sumatra or Singapore, but the much-vaunted amphibious operations against these targets never happened because the European and Pacific wars consumed all available resources. Slim’s eventual success in northern Burma happened, ironically, solely because FDR was determined to bolster China.
Mountbatten went away from his talks with Slim elated and recorded his favourable opinion of the new commander of the 14th Army: ‘I thought him absolutely splendid in every way and never changed my point of view from beginning to end. I have reason to believe he liked me too from the beginning. Nothing could ever come between us. I saw Bill Slim whenever I could and never missed a chance of seeing him on any visit to the front. We talked over everything with the utmost candour and he and I saw eye to eye all the way through.’12 Now it was time to turn his attention to Wingate, meant to be his strong right arm but still lying seriously ill in hospital. On 1 November Mountbatten reported his progress:
He has been terribly ill with typhoid and is still very weak, but he is now well on the road to recovery. This he owes to the fortunate fact that his wife, hearing he was ill, informed someone at COHQ that the only person who could manage him was Sister MacGeary, the matron of the Imphal hospital, who had looked after him the last time he came out of Burma. This they telegraphed to me in Chungking and I arranged to have her flown down. From the time she arrived, Wingate took a turn for the better and this week has been able to sit up in bed and take an interest in his important work.13
Wingate proved his boast that he had a special hotline to Churchill when the Prime Minister sent him a personal ‘get well’ cable, to the consternation of his enemies. He was finally released from hospital into the Supremo’s personal care in the second week of November, though the doctors warned he would not be fully fit until the New Year. Determined to prove them wrong, Wingate enjoyed a threefold convalescence. First he stayed with Mountbatten at Faridkot House, ate ravenously and began to put on weight at the rate of two pounds a day. Then he transferred to the viceregal lodge as Wavell’s guest, over the protests of Lady Wavell, who did not like him. As a compromise she agreed to take him if MacGeary came too, and she exercised such an iron control over her patient that Lady Wavell was won over. On 17 November he moved from the viceroyalty for the third part of his convalescence, with the family of Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, who noted, as the Wavells had, that Wingate had ‘an anxiety not to disobey Matron MacGeary that seemed part affectionate and part fearful’.14
Mountbatten just had time to reply to a letter from Edwina, who warned him against Madame Chiang (simple jealousy or dog-in-the-mangerism?) before flying out for the Cairo conference, which Stilwell was also to attend. Despite his secret and never healed antipathy to Stilwell, Chiang, primed by the Soong sisters, was convinced he needed him to speak on his behalf at the coming conclave of top Anglo-American generals so as to increase his share of Lend-Lease and to present a coherent strategic and logistical plan of future Chinese army operations – something his own generals were not competent to do. After a very cordial meeting with the generalissimo on 6 November, Stilwell commented sourly: ‘the rattlesnake was affable as hell’. Chiang told his sister-in-law that his talk with Stilwell was the most satisfactory he had ever had.15 Yet once again Stilwell’s position was complicated and to an extent undermined when FDR sent out yet another of his personal representatives to Chungking. Roosevelt was still working on his idea that the post-war Big Four would be the USA, Soviet Union, Britain and China, and against very strong Soviet opposition had managed to get China included in a four-power declaration on the shape of the post-war world. At the same time he was trying to get the USSR to enter the war with Japan. Stalin, willing to aid FDR over Japan but not over China, was lukewarm at the prospect of meeting Chiang, but the generalissimo solved his problem for him by telling Roosevelt he would attend a four-power meeting only if the President met him first. Stalin was unwilling to agree to these terms, so FDR’s four-power meeting was off. The only way he could salvage something of his vision was to have two conferences, the first with Chiang and the British, the second with Stalin and the British. It was agreed that the first meeting would be in Cairo and the second in Tehran.16 To finalise the details of the Cairo conference and to smooth out any diplomatic wrinkles in advance, FDR sent to Chungking his faithful aide Brigadier General Patrick Hurley.
It remains a mystery why Roosevelt should have entrusted so many delicate missions to Hurley, who was both an extreme right-winger and generally regarded as a bit of a joke. He had been Secretary of War in Herbert Hoover’s 1928–32 administration and had been employed by General Marshall in early 1942 to investigate the feasibility of evacuating American troops trapped by the Japanese on the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines. Thereafter he had acted as FDR’s roving ambassador, in New Zealand, the Soviet Union and the Middle East. No more disastrous choice as a China envoy could be imagined, for Hurley was rabidly anti-Communist in a mindlessly ideological way and thus a priori committed to Chiang and the Kuomintang, whatever corruption he uncovered.17 Stilwell knew him and despised him, and assigned his star military attaché and expert linguist, Colonel Barrett, to put him in his place. When the absurd Hurley arrived at Chungking airport as the classic beribboned buffoon, Barrett remarked s
cathingly: ‘General, I see you have every campaign ribbon but Shay’s rebellion.’18 Apart from his other deficiencies, Hurley was a ‘stirrer’ and quickly put it about that Stilwell had lost Mountbatten’s confidence. Stilwell took the bait and was soon writing furiously in his diary:
Hurley talked with Louis [Mountbatten] who is after my scalp. I stand between him and dominance in China and he wants to get rid of me. Hurley warned him about my status in the United States and told him that he could expect plenty of trouble, and that if he got me, I would go after him. Said that I had kept China in the war at a very critical period and was considered in the US as the ‘saviour of China’ … The old doublecross is going strong. Louis is playing the ‘Empah’ game and won’t take chances. All he wants is something that can be labelled a victory, and if the Chinese can be left to take it on the nose, so much the worse for them – and me. Louis is working up the ‘controversy’ between me and Chennault and spoke of it to Hurley.’19