The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Once again Sato pleaded with Mutaguchi for permission to withdraw, but the absurd Mutaguchi asked him to hold on, assuring him that Imphal would fall within 10 days. Sato was at his last gasp but, curiously, the British had almost reached crisis point themselves. Stopford was increasingly worried about the failures and slow progress at Kohima and the seeming ability of the enemy to fight on for ever, simply retreating to another position and digging in there. Even with the airlift, 4 Corps was short of rations, but the real concern was the future of airpower. After 15 June Mountbatten was due to return the 79 transport aircraft, and what would happen then? It was conceivable that if that happened, the intricate design woven by Slim at Kohima-Imphal might unravel. Accordingly, Mountbatten signalled the combined chiefs that if he returned the transport aircraft as agreed, the entire campaign would grind to a halt. What, then, was he to do? He received no answer.108 Slim was also alarmed by a memo from Peirse, which argued that on one interpretation of the agreement, the aircraft might have to be returned even before mid-June; it depended whether the planes on loan from the Middle East were to be construed as those loaned for the Arakan campaign or as part of a subsequent agreement. He contacted Mountbatten, who once again insisted that the planes were not to be given up and that he would take the responsibility. Mountbatten signalled London, where Churchill agreed that he would oppose any contrary move from FDR and the US Joint Chiefs, whatever the consequences. As he put it in his inimitable style: ‘Let nothing go from the battle you need for victory. I will not accept denial of this from any quarter, and will back you to the full.’109 This gave Mountbatten the excuse to claim that the retention of the aircraft was the result of his unique genius and strategic insight. In a letter to Edwina he made the absurd boast: ‘If the battle of Imphal is won, it will be almost entirely due to Dickie overriding all his generals.’110 This was of course a grotesque travesty. Slim had asked him for the planes, and there were no generals who opposed the move. It is around this time that we first detect a chink in the ostensibly cosy Slim–Mountbatten entente. Always wanting to go faster than conditions or events warranted, Mountbatten told Slim and Scoones that he wished the Kohima–Imphal road opened by mid-June. Slim took the line that he was not going to be hurried by anyone, and this, plus the sacking of Giffard, may have given Mountbatten the idea that Slim too was a sluggard. Certainly Mountbatten’s failure to promote Slim to Giffard’s old post after the battle was distinctly odd, and we have Alanbrooke’s word for it that Mountbatten expressly opposed such a promotion.111

  However, Slim was grateful that Mountbatten did not make an issue of opening the Kohima–Imphal road, though he did finally issue a directive instructing that the road must be opened by mid-July.112 He knew Imphal would not fall and was far more interested in destroying Mutaguchi’s divisions than the formal relief of a place that would survive until he had accomplished his mission. He had every reason for confidence. Mid-May marked the beginning of the end for the Japanese at Kohima. On the 15th, 33 Brigade assaulted the next target, Treasury Hill, and met almost no opposition. Buoyed by these successes, Stopford ordered a twofold assault: on the central Japanese positions around Kohima – Dyer Hill, Pimple Hill and Big Tree Hill – and on the Japanese left in Naga village. Stopford thought enemy resistance was crumbling, but he was soon disabused. On 19 May the attack on Naga village met with initial success, but was then held up by well-concealed Japanese bunkers and finally thrown back in disarray, with heavy casualties. The attack on the centre, by fresh troops from 7 Indian Division, was also repulsed in ferocious fighting from 24 to 30 May.113 While this slugging match was going on, Stopford tried again at Naga and took Hunter’s Hill and Church Knoll, the highest points in the village. At this the Japanese will finally did seem to snap. On 2 June they pulled out of Naga village, meaning that the northern part of the former Japanese positions at Kohima were now in British hands. In the southern sector Stopford tried to take the great Aradura ridge in the last week of May but was thrown back with heavy loss.114 The fall of Naga village, however, delivered to him a new means of approach to the Aradura, and this plus a change of tactics led to the fall of Big Tree Hill, 2,000 yards north-east of Aradura. As the entire brigade closed in for the kill, the Japanese abandoned their positions and pulled out.115 The battle of Kohima was now effectively won. Sato, who despised Mutaguchi and was yet another general ideologically opposed to him – Sato belonged to the Tosei-Ha ‘Control’ faction’ – ignored his orders to stay put and signalled to 15 Army his intention to retreat. ‘Our swords are broken and our arrows gone. Shedding bitter tears, I now leave Kohima.’116

  The 64-day battle for Kohima, an epic fully the equal of the Somme or Passchendaele, was finally over, but it still took another 15 days before the road to Imphal was completely open. The Anglo-Indian advance was painful, for they still had to winkle the enemy out of strong positions on the Kohima road, and there was heavy fighting and casualties all the way.117 On 22 June, 6 Brigade from Kohima joined hands with 9 Brigade from Imphal and Imphal itself was formally relieved, just in time to prevent the 55,000 men and 11,000 animals there from running short of food again. Kawabe came up from Rangoon at the end of May, but spent a lot of time with Yanakida so did not get round to a meeting with Mutaguchi until 6 June, when he found him still in denial about battlefield realities. Even at this late stage Mutaguchi was deluging Sato with impossible orders, which Sato simply disregarded. The first was to send a regiment south from Kohima to assist with 15 Division’s attack on Imphal in May, to which Sato signalled that this was impracticable, as his division was approaching exhaustion.118 The last was one sent after Mutaguchi had thrown in the towel at Kohima, instructing Sato to assist Yamamoto in his last-ditch assault on Palel. Sato ignored this and instead sent his men to search for unhulled rice prior to the retreat to the Chindwin. When Mutaguchi in person gave the order for the exhausted Japanese heroes of Kohima to tackle another impossible task at Palel, they answered with their feet and deserted in droves.119 Having already replaced Yanakida, Mutaguchi in a fury sacked both Sato and Yamauchi, accusing Sato of insubordination. Sato told Mutaguchi that he was overjoyed at the prospect of a court martial, for the truth about Kohima-Imphal would come out and Mutaguchi would be dragged down into disgrace with him. But Kawabe, who had already decided to end U-GO, did not want the scandal of a court martial, with rival generals washing dirty linen in public. He therefore hushed up the entire controversy. Sato was placed on the reserve and a medical certificate was issued saying that he had had ‘a nervous breakdown’.120 By this time even Mutaguchi had admitted that the game was up, but Kawabe could not formally cancel the operation until he got the all-clear from General Terauchi in Singapore, and this did not arrive until 4 July.121 Formally dismissed on 7 July, Sato made a moving farewell statement, well within the idiom of that curious amalgam of Buddhism and bushido that was Japanese military culture: ‘I ask forgiveness of those who lie dead at Kohima because of my poor talent. Though my body is parted from them, I shall always remain with them in spirit. Nothing can separate those of us who were tried in the fire at Kohima.’122

  Slim’s victory at Kohima-Imphal was total and complete. The casualty figures tell their own story. Of the 65,000 fighting men who crossed the Chindwin in March, the Japanese lost 30,000 killed and 23,000 wounded, and sustained another 15,000 casualties among the 50,000 support staff; in addition 17,000 pack animals died. Such was their fanatical fighting spirit that only 600 prisoners were taken in the entire four-month campaign.123 The total Allied loss at Kohima-Imphal and Arakan, by contrast, was 24,000. As Mountbatten rightly said in a letter to Edwina: ‘It is the most important defeat the Japs have ever suffered in their military career because the numbers involved are so much greater than any Pacific island operations.’124 Even the monsoon had entered into Slim’s calculations: he reckoned that if the garrisons at Imphal and Kohima could stand firm for two months, the Japanese would have to take the main onslaught from the weather when they were ill-equippe
d and starving. So it proved. Not only did weaponry, radios and everything metallic deteriorate in the rain and rust, but practically everything steamed or turned green, clothes rotted and men’s fingers seemed to turn white and wrinkle with age. Even worse, disease became rampant, as mosquitoes multiplied, bringing malaria in their train. At the altitude of Kohima there were times when the combatants could barely see each other and visibility was reduced to 100 yards.125 By any standards, Slim had planned and executed a military tour de force. Yet even as the Japanese broke off in disarray, and the signs of victory were evident, the military Jeremiahs were still in full cry, nervous about a possible disaster at Imphal. Worst of all offenders was Alanbrooke, a congenital pessimist, who did not even think D-Day would succeed. On 1 June he wrote in his diary: ‘In the afternoon, a long meeting with Pownall to discuss the heart breaking situation in Burma. I see disaster staring us in the face, with Mountbatten incapable of realizing it, Pownall clever enough but too lazy to appreciate the danger and Giffard I am afraid lacking the adequate vision to see where he is going to. Oh! How I wish we had some more men with more vision.’126

  Why did Slim win Imphal-Kohima so decisively? Part of the answer lies in the manifold mistakes made by the Japanese themselves. Their military leaders did not have a clear objective, they were complacent, and they did not plan their offensive meticulously. What was the point of the attack on Kohima, which Slim considered an act of monstrous folly, since it meant he could bleed 33 Division dry while not suffering the kind of real anxiety he would have felt if Dimapur had been under attack? The answer seems to be that it was a compromise between the ‘march on India’ ideas of Mutaguchi and the more cautious and defensive stance of the higher command. When Tojo gave the go-ahead for U-GO on 9 January 1944, he sanctioned an attack on Imphal not as the prelude to an invasion of India but only as a pious hope that the Imperial Army would be able to report a victory somewhere to compensate for the string of defeats in the Pacific.127 Although Mutaguchi’s forces moved at lightning speed once they had crossed the Chindwin, detailed plans had not been laid for trapping and eliminating the three British divisions in the Imphal area. An airborne invasion in the rear of 20 and 17 Divisions, along the line of the Chindits in Operation THURSDAY, would have cut them off from Imphal. The counter-argument would no doubt be that the Japanese lacked the aerial capability for such an operation, but in that case Mutaguchi should have asked himself whether his goals were ever feasible. But he could certainly have prevented the rapid reinforcement of Imphal by 5 and 7 Divisions simply by timing the Arakan operation to coincide more closely with U-GO. By leaving a gap between the two campaigns, he gave Slim the chance to switch these two divisions to the other front.128 Perhaps an even worse fault was that the Japanese had never really surmounted the ‘Pearl Harbor’ syndrome – the blitzkrieg campaigns that had won them most of East Asia in five months from December 1941 to April 1942. Just as Napoleon, having defeated the Austrians so many times, fatally underestimated them and nearly came to grief in his 1809 Wagram campaign, so the Japanese totally failed to appreciate that 1944 was not 1942 or even 1943, that the enemy had learned from their mistakes and refashioned their army so that they were now a totally different kind of opponent.129 The issue of leadership is also salient. Where Slim had the confidence of both his superiors and his ancillary generals, many of whom he had personally trained at military academy, the Japanese leadership was always in disarray, divided between the ideological factionalism of Tosei-Ha and Kodo-Ha. The result was that Mutaguchi ended by sacking three of his four field commanders. That the lack of unity in Japanese command was an important factor can be seen from the sequel to Kohima-Imphal. Mutaguchi was in disgrace and sacked by the end of the year. Tojo resigned as prime minister and chief of the Imperial general staff. At one time Terauchi was tipped as his successor, but Koiso Kuniaki became the new prime minister, while Terauchi stayed in command of the Southern Army.130

  On the Allied side, airpower was crucial to the victory. General Stratemeyer’s Eastern Air Command, one of the units that came under the direction of the Supreme Allied Commander, consisted of the Strategic Air Force, Troop Carrier Command, the Photographic Reconnaissance Force and the 3rd Tactical Air Force, responsible for battlefield back-up. Air Marshal Sir John Baldwin, in charge of the 3rd Tactical Air Force, was an old ally of Slim’s who had honed his skills in the Arakan campaign. Baldwin began the airlift to Kohima, code-named Operation STAMINA, on 8 April, but his planes took time to build up to the daily requirement of 540 tons. By 30 June his aircraft had flown in 19,000 troops, 14,317,000 pounds of rations, 1,303 tons of grain for the pack animals, 835,000 gallons of fuel and lubricants, 12,000 bags of mail and 43,475,760 cigarettes, using 404 aircraft from 15 squadrons.131 All this was done using the airfield at Imphal alone, since the one at Palel was considered too exposed to Japanese artillery fire and commandos. Baldwin was an expert at the fast turn-round of planes, as he had proved when establishing Broadway for Wingate during Operation THURSDAY. His delight in his own expertise is evident: ‘Nobody has seen a transport operation until he has stayed at Broadway in the full light of the Burma full moon and watched Dakotas coming in and taking off in opposite directions on a single strip all night long, at the rate of one landing or one taking off every three minutes.’132 Mutaguchi had not factored into his calculations either the general Allied air capacity or the ability of aircraft to move two divisions from one theatre to another with such speed. While the British were being supplied in this way, the back-up for Mutaguchi’s armies was non-existent: they had to survive by hunting, or capturing Allied airdrops. In many respects the ability of the Japanese to fight on for four months at Kohima-Imphal was staggering, for they were without air or armour support, with inadequate artillery, no reinforcements or exiguous ammunition, supplies or rations. At the height of Kohima-Imphal the Japanese were outnumbered two to one, while the Anglo-Indian forces enjoyed a five-to-one superiority in armament. Yet not even this expresses the true disparity, for the two-to-one ratio masks the fact that the British fought in relays, with brigades ‘spelling’ each other, while the Japanese soldiers were never relieved. Of course it had always been Slim’s intention that when he engaged the enemy in a major battle, he would so with crushing superiority at all levels.133

  All of this has seduced the unwary into asserting that Slim’s victory was a foregone conclusion, that a military incompetent could have won Kohima-Imphal with such crushing superiority of resources. This downplays and underrates Slim’s talent at every level. At Alamein General Montgomery enjoyed a similar preponderance of power over the Germans, yet the groundwork for his victory had been done by others, notably Auchinleck, whom ‘Monty’ and Churchill then tried to airbrush out of the picture. The reason the Japanese faced such tough, disciplined and versatile forces at Kohima-Imphal was that Slim himself had forged a ‘New Model Army’ and had worked for nearly two years on building up equipment, morale, elan and esprit de corps. Besides, Slim’s personality was ideal for this particular campaign, since he had two great gifts: the ability to turn round a battle that was going in the enemy’s favour; and the talent to improvise quickly so that the enemy was soon dancing to his tune. In contrast to the muddled objectives of the Japanese, he knew precisely what his aims were at every hour of every day, and this clarity communicated itself in his lucid and economical strategic briefings, which so impressed all who heard them.134 A master of timing, he had the art of proceeding neither too fast nor too slow. The war in Burma was bedevilled by leaders who either demonstrated sluggishness and inertia, such as Wavell and Giffard, or were flamboyant bulls-at-a-gate who believed that speed and expedition were everything, notably Churchill, Mountbatten and Wingate. Even Napoleon sometimes came to grief through impatience, but Slim’s ability to wait calmly for the right moment was almost Oriental. Ironically, in view of his low opinion of the Japanese, the military leader in history he most resembles is the great sixteenth-century shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Allied to this
was a rock-like imperturbability: he was unflappable because he was confident he would win, and he realised that a calm, stoical surface did wonders for morale.135 None of this made him a plaster saint. He was all too human, and to his officers he could reveal a tetchy side. On one of his visits to Imphal he arrived late for a conference of senior personnel because his escort had lost the way. He told the assembly: ‘I know you think the Military Police are bloody awful. Now I know why!’136 No man can live under permanent stress without cracking sometimes, and despite the great victory at Imphal, there was plenty more stress in store for Slim.