The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Mountbatten’s aspirations to turn the job of supreme commander into something like a Roman proconsul brought him into almost daily conflict with his commanders-in-chief Peirse, Giffard and, especially, Somerville. But in such cases he could always appeal directly to Alanbrooke and beat down their opposition. With Stilwell it was different. Although he was in theory Mountbatten’s deputy, it was an open secret that the real decision-maker in all things concerning Stilwell was Marshall, and Mountbatten had originally campaigned for Marshall to have no say in SEAC, just as Churchill had no say in the activities of MacArthur in the Pacific. The end of 1943 and the begining of 1944 saw Stilwell and Mountbatten locking horns over three issues, with Mountbatten emerging the victor by 2–1. For the first few months of Mountbatten’s incumbency, the USAAF 10th Force under General George Stratemeyer was outside the SEAC system and reported not to Peirse but to Stilwell. On one occasion Mountbatten gave Stratemeyer an order, which Stilwell immediatedly countermanded, neglecting to inform the Supreme Commander of this for 24 hours.30 Finding this intolerable, Mountbatten wrote to Field Marshal Dill in Washington to get Stratemeyer’s independence annulled. This was formally agreed at the Cairo conference by Marshall and General ‘Hap’ Arnold, C-in-C USAAF, and in return Mountbatten agreed to switch control of GALAHAD force from Wingate to Stilwell. On his return from Cairo, Mountbatten insisted on immediate integration of the US air force, but both Stilwell and Stratemeyer claimed a right of appeal to Washington. Mountbatten refused to allow them to appeal over his head and insisted they cable him with their objections, which he would send on to Washington with rebuttals. ‘It is time we had a showdown,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘I do not believe the US Chiefs of Staff will reverse my decision. I know it is really essential for the future conduct of the war.’31 He sent on the correspondence to the American Joint Chiefs, together with supporting letters from Wedemeyer and Wheeler, so that Stilwell and Stratemeyer could not turn the issue into a Limey-bashing one; he also included his own proposal to appoint Stratemeyer as Peirse’s second in command. This, together with the US chiefs’ reluctance to reverse an explicit undertaking they had given at Cairo, did the trick. Stratemeyer, having proved his loyalty to Vinegar Joe, accepted the ruling happily and thereafter worked efficiently with Peirse. But he took a mild revenge of a kind by displaying in his office a cartoon showing himself at his desk surrounded by the pictures of seven men, all of whom could give him orders in one capacity or another: FDR, Marshall, Hap Arnold, Chiang, Mountbatten, Stilwell and Peirse.32

  Stilwell was angry about the Stratemeyer decision, which he saw as one of Mountbatten’s ‘sly tricks’.33 There was a confrontation waiting to happen and it came at a SEAC meeting where the partisans of the two men were fairly evenly split: Ferris and Merrill in Stilwell’s corner and the three American ‘apostates’, Daniel Sultan, Wheeler and Wedemeyer in Mountbatten’s. When Mountbatten suggested moving certain American units into the Hukawng valley to help the offensive there, Stilwell cut in brusquely: ‘I should like it placed on record that I am responsible for the training of all American forces in this theatre and I am the person to decide when they are adequately trained and can move forward.’ Mountbatten replied: ‘I accept that in principle, but would remind you that these troops are being trained under British officers. I am responsible for operations and will decide when units move into the fighting lines. In other words, general, I should like to place on record that I am Supreme Commander out here and what I say goes.’ This was fighting talk, but Stilwell took it good-humouredly and laughed. ‘We none of us dispute that,’ he said emolliently.34 But in a letter to his wife, he revealed his real attitude. Referring scathingly to Mountbatten as ‘the glamour boy’, he went on: ‘He doesn’t wear well and I begin to wonder if he knows his stuff. Enormous staff, endless walla-walla but damn little fighting … And of course the Peanut is unchanged. The jungle is a refuge from them both.’35 One of the problems was that whatever initial entente there was had gone. Stilwell was irritated by Mountbatten’s compulsion to disagree with or qualify everything he said, and Mountbatten in turn was irritated by the reports of outrageous anti-Limey remarks and Stilwell’s tendency to disparage absent British commanders. Stilwell had something of an obsession about generals who would not stand and fight, usually branding them as cowards, and on one occasion placed Alexander in this category. Mountbatten responded that all Alexander had done was retreat the length of Burma, which was precisely what he, Vinegar Joe, had done, yet nobody called him a coward.36

  Irked by the Supreme Commander’s attitude, Stilwell next produced a masterpiece of counteroffensive. In terms of Chiang’s troops, Stilwell was a temporary corps commander of the newly formed Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC), while under the SEAC structure he was deputy supreme Allied commander. His biographer comments: ‘The situation was like that of the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe who tangled with himself as suitor to his own ward and wondered whether he could give consent to his own marriage, or marry without his own consent, and in that case could he cite himself for contempt of his own court?’37 The situation was about to get even more tangled. When at the next January meeting Mountbatten announced that Slim would command in the Arakan and oversee the LRP operations while Stilwell continued his campaign in the north, with the proviso that both came under the operational control of General Giffard, Stilwell protested and dug his heels in. It was an open secret that he despised Giffard as exactly the kind of craven general he had so often denounced. Slim, who was at the meeting, described Stilwell’s bitter resistance. ‘When that old man resisted anything it was a dour business. Dour, yet not without its humorous side. To watch Stilwell, when hard pressed, shift his opposition from one of several strong-points he held by virtue of his numerous Allied, American and Chinese offices, to another, was a lesson in mobile offensive-defensive.’38 Mountbatten scarcely knew what to do. He pointed out that if his own position meant anything, then logically Stilwell should come under Giffard. Stilwell riposted that as commander-in-chief of Chinese forces, he must be answerable only to the generalissimo. Moreover, he lacked President Roosevelt’s consent to put himself under a British commander. While Mountbatten was digesting this, Stilwell produced his third argument, a trump card whose logic even Mountbatten could scarcely gainsay. This was that as deputy supreme commander of SEAC he was senior to anyone but Mountbatten and therefore could not possibly come under Giffard. ‘The more Mountbatten, showing infinite patience, reasoned with him, the more obstinate and petulant the old man became,’ Slim noted.39 The real problem was that while Slim admired both Stilwell and Giffard, neither one could stand the other (and to add to the complications, Mountbatten cared for neither of them). Giffard, who was at the meeting and witnessed Stilwell’s point-blank refusal to serve under him, behaved with dignity under provocation, and Slim kept out of the fight, which was not his, while disapproving of Stilwell’s surly obstinacy.

  The temperature in the room rose. The other American officers present were in a peculiarly uncomfortable position, for although officially on Mountbatten’s staff, they believed in both patriotism and seniority. No American would want publicly to side with the British against his own countryman, and the American military were known to have a respect for rank and seniority rivalled only by the Royal Navy. Gradually Mountbatten became exasperated and red in the face; Slim thought he was on the brink of sacking Stilwell. ‘Suddenly, with one of those unexpected gestures that I had seen him make more than once,’ Slim wrote, ‘Stilwell astonished everyone by saying, “I am prepared to come under General Slim’s operational control until I get to Kamaing.”’40 Mountbatten, flabbergasted, queried how such an arrangement would work, while both Slim and Stilwell asked to be allowed to discuss it together in private. The two men agreed on tactical essentials: to get more Chinese divisions for the Ledo force and to use the Chindits to assist the push towards Myitkyina. Slim assured him that under the new direction Stilwell would have an entirely free hand. They shook on the deal. As
Stilwell put it: ‘I would fight under a corporal as long as he would let me fight.’41 Slim later reflected: ‘In practice this illogical command set-up worked surprisingly well. My method with Stilwell was based on what I had learnt of him in the Retreat – to send him the minimum of written instructions, but, whenever I wanted anything, to fly over and discuss it with him, alone. Stilwell, talking things over quietly with no one else present, was a much easier and more likeable person than Vinegar Joe with an audience. Alone, I never found him unreasonable or obstructive. I think I told him to do something he did not approve of on only two or three occasions, and on each he conformed, I will not say willingly, but with good grace.’42 After the war, Slim added the following: ‘I ought to add that Slim acted under my operational control from the end of November 1943 to the latter part of June 1944, i.e. throughout the most important part of his operations, and I never found him anything but an exemplary subordinate. I won’t guarantee, however, that he didn’t sometimes say hard things about me to his staff!’43 Both men had a keen sense of humour and, on returning to the plenary session with Mountbatten, in effect turned the proceedings into comic opera or farce, doubtless reflecting their true opinion of Mountbatten’s insistence on regular SEAC summits. At the end of the meeting Stilwell saluted Slim and said: ‘Sir, as 14th Army commander, do you have any orders for me?’ ‘No, sir,’ replied Slim. ‘And, as deputy commander, do you have any orders for me?’ ‘Not on your life,’ said Stilwell with a broad grin.44

  There matters should have rested, but Mountbatten’s ambitious restlessness brought on yet another crisis with Stilwell. Impatiently wargaming, he came up with another sideshow plan, dubbed PIGSTICK, which was to be a landing on the southern Mayu peninsula with the intention of cutting enemy communications with Akyab. He began assigning landing craft for an amphibious operation, but was immediately slapped down by Alanbrooke and told to return three fast tank-landing craft immediately for use in imminent Allied landings in Italy. There were two other, slower, tank-landing craft that Mountbatten hoped to retain, but his old enemy Cunningham spotted that these were still in the Supremo’s possession; he requested their return and the Allied chiefs gave orders to Mountbatten accordingly.45 Nothing daunted, the Supreme Commander simply fined down a few details of the original CULVERIN and rebranded it as an entirely new operation, to be named AXIOM. His now devoted and loyal ally Wedemeyer was sent on a mission to Washington to press the case, accompanied by another friendly US general (McLeod). The omens were scarcely propitious. On his way through London, Wedemeyer discussed AXIOM with Alanbrooke and found him less than keen. Alanbrooke employed a simple rule of thumb – will AXIOM shorten the war with Japan? – and concluded rapidly that it would not.46 Meanwhile in Delhi Stilwell had got wind of Mountbatten’s latest initiative – which he construed, not unnaturally, as an enterprise contradictory and inimical to his own offensive in China. There was another bad-tempered conference of the SEAC high command on 31 January, just before Wedemeyer left on his mission, where Somerville again annoyed Mountbatten by giving him lukewarm support and Wedemeyer exasperated Stilwell by backing Mountbatten against him. On general strategy Stilwell was infuriated to learn that AXIOM would not begin until the winter of 1944–45, when landing-craft could be released from the European theatre. Moreover, Mountbatten urged him to abandon his ambitions to take Myitkyina before the monsoon and content himself with reaching the Mogaung valley.47 It was all Stilwell could do to restrain himself and not explode with fury at decisions that seemed designed to avoid fighting – ‘fancy charts, false figures and dirty intentions’ was how he characterised the conference. Chiang had argued that he could not commit Y-force because the Allies had welched at the Cairo conference, but Mountbatten now argued that it was Chiang who was the betrayer and that it was his intransigence that precluded a credible campaign in north Burma. ‘Louis wishes to welsh on an entire program’ was Stilwell’s gloss.48

  Mountbatten remarked airily that if the Allied high command turned down AXIOM, he would resign and return to sea. Stilwell thought that all the talk about sea strategy via Malaya and Sumatra was simply an excuse to avoid hard fighting. He hit back by claiming that genuine cooperation between SEAC and Chiang (which emphatically meant no AXIOM) would see the generalissimo release Y-force, and that a real commitment of all Sino-British resources would mean that they could take the offensive in China in six months; it had to be realised, moreover, against AXIOM, that the European war might not in fact be over by the winter of 1944–45. At this point Wedemeyer intervened against his compatriot to say that Stilwell’s projections were chimerical, that it would take at least two years to blast a passage to China.49 There followed a series of ferocious clashes between Stilwell and Wedemeyer, whom he finally identified as a snake in the grass and a determined enemy. The Mountbatten–Wedemeyer claque greeted all Stilwell’s proposals with cries of ‘Impossible!’ Goaded almost beyond endurance, Stilwell remarked scathingly that Clive had conquered India with just 123 men, which momentarily hushed the audience. ‘Since the SEAC staff alone numbered ten times as many, this shaft was received, not surprisingly, in dead silence.’50 Once again, the personality clashes reflected differential Anglo-American global perceptions. Almost all British politicians and generals by now regarded Burma as an expensive waste of time and Chiang as a waste of space. Churchill himself intensely disliked the idea of a campaign in north Burma, which he described as ‘going into the water after the shark’ or ‘stripping a porcupine quill by quill’.51 Meanwhile FDR remained adamant in his support for Chiang and had no interest in diversions to Singapore and Hong Kong, which he saw merely as Churchill’s attempts to regain the British Empire. Stilwell tended to see the whole thing as simply the old Alexander–Wavell reluctance to fight: ‘The Limeys take me more seriously now. But they won’t fight if they can help it.’52

  Learning of Mountbatten’s plan to send Wedemeyer to Washington, Stilwell sent a rival mission of his own on ahead (five days in advance of Wedemeyer) ‘to checkmate the Limeys’, telling Mountbatten nothing of it and justifying it as action taken in his role as Chiang’s chief of staff. He need not have bothered, for the Joint Chiefs opposed AXIOM as a colonialist venture and FDR vetoed it. As Alanbrooke had repeatedly pointed out to Mountbatten, scarcity of resources always meant that a US veto was final. Yet perhaps Stilwell’s mission did achieve something, for his envoy Haydon Boatner had a private interview with Roosevelt and persuaded him to back Stilwell and the north Burma campaign to the hilt.53 The realities of the war in the Far East dictated this. Since US strategy hinged on capturing the Luzon-Formosa-Canton triangle, and for this long-range bombers were needed, the capture of the airstrip at Myitkyina now seemed an essential goal. FDR sent a cable to Churchill to inform him that AXIOM and all its variants had been rejected. A sullen Churchill refused to accept this, and impasse loomed. The logjam was broken only with the Japanese attack on Imphal in March, which made all discussion academic: the British were forced to fight in Burma. It was to be a final irony that Mountbatten would end the war as Earl Mountbatten of Burma when he had never wanted to fight there in the first place. His immediate reaction to the Stilwell–Boatner mission was fury at what he considered treachery and disloyalty. He cabled Marshall to ask for Stilwell’s dismissal. Marshall immediately contacted Stilwell and advised him to ‘eat crow’.54 To Mountbatten Marshall replied that he was prepared to go along with his request if that was what he really wanted, but he considered it ill-advised and counselled caution. Speaking of his protégé, Marshall made a determined attempt to pour oil on troubled waters: ‘You will find, if you get below the surface, that he wants merely to get things done without delays … He will provide tremendous energy, courage and unlimited imagination to any aggressive proposals and operations. His mind is far more alert than almost any of our generals and his training and understanding are on an unusually high level. Impatience with conservatism and slow motion is his weakness – but a damned good one in this emergency.’55

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