The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Both Slim’s 14th Army corps were now across the Irrawaddy and he dominated the river along a 200-mile front from a point about 20 miles south of Pakkoku to Thabeikkyin, north of Mandalay. He had put five divisions across one of the widest rivers in the world in the teeth of enemy opposition. What he had achieved was terrific and fantastic. As his biographer points out:

  It serves to emphasise his achievement if one draws a contrast with Montgomery’s advantage at the Rhine crossing [a virtually simultaneous event]. Behind his 21 Army Groups lay the vast and efficient road and rail network of North-West Europe. He had airborne divisions on his immediate front. His technical equipment – the continuous smokescreen, amphibious vehicles, etc. – was lavish and up-to-date. An enormous artillery pool, rich in ammunition, gave him unlimited support. Compared with the Irrawaddy, the Rhine is narrow and its behaviour readily calculable.48

  A portrait of Slim at this moment of triumph has been provided by the popular writer George MacDonald Fraser:

  The biggest boost to morale was the burly man who came to talk to the assembled battalion [of the Border Regiment] … I’m not sure when, but it was unforgettable. Slim was like that: the only man I’ve ever seen who had a force that came out of him, a strength of personality that I’ve puzzled over since … His appearance was plain enough: large, heavily built, grim-faced with that hard mouth and bulldog chin; the rakish Gurkha hat was at odds with the slung carbine and untidy trouser bottoms … Nor was he an orator … His delivery was blunt, matter-of-fact, without gestures or mannerisms, only a lack of them. He knew how to make an entrance – or rather, he probably didn’t, and it came naturally … there was no nonsense of ‘gather round’ or jumping on boxes; he just stood with his thumb hooked in his carbine sling and talked about how we had caught Jap off-balance and were going to annihilate him in the open; there was no exhortation or ringing clichés, no jokes or self-conscious use of barrack-room slang – when he called the Japs ‘bastards’ it was casual and without heat. He was telling us informally what would be, in the reflective way of intimate conversation. And we believed every word – and it all came true. I think it was that sense of being close to us, as though he were chatting offhand to an understanding nephew (not for nothing was he ‘Uncle Bill’) that was his great gift … You knew, when he talked of smashing the Jap, that to him it meant not only arrows on a map but clearing bunkers and going in under shell-fire; that he had the head of a general with the heart of a private soldier.49

  Between 18 and 21 February, the rearguard of 17 Division and the all-important 255 Tank Brigade were ferried across the river. The advance on Meiktila, 80 miles from the bridgehead, began on 21 February, with 4 Corps dividing: most of 17 Division was aiming for Kamye and the rest for Seiktein, with a possible pincer movement on Taungtha in mind. The 63rd Brigade rolled up the opposition, marched rapidly to Welaung and then took Taungtha on 24 February. There was heavy resistance at Oyin on 20 February, and in a vicious encounter 70 Rajputs and 200 Japanese were killed. It was noticed, however, that even though the enemy soldiers fought with all their old fanaticism, their actual fighting skills and tactics seemed below their 1944 level; this was read as demoralisation and, by the same token, gave an enormous fillip to the Anglo-Indians.50 Thereafter the going became much tougher, since the whole of ‘Snipers’ Triangle’ between Welaung and Meiktila had to be cleared of suicide squads. Japanese tactics against the irresistible tanks were to hurl themselves under the tracks with a box of explosives, usually picric acid, attached to their chest, which would then be detonated, wiping out both the attacker and the entire tank and crew.51 The tanks found the going heavy, as they slid into dry ravine beds and clambered up the other side through clouds of dust; this was no longer jungle warfare but more like the desert kind. Eight miles from Meiktila, 63 Brigade became snarled up in a bitter struggle to overcome the enemy in well-dug-in positions, but now Slim’s prophecy about the efficacy of tanks in this kind of open country was fulfilled.52 Cowan used his armour to punch (the pun is irresistible) his way to the airfield. The plan was to have a more successful kind of Myitkyina operation: Cowan would take the airstrip, while Messervy took the town. Slim was pleased with the way things were working out. As he remarked grimly: ‘The Japanese had no experience of these massed armoured attacks and seemed quite incapable of dealing with them.’53

  But although the tanks had proved to be a veritable miracle weapon in the open country, at Meiktila itself the situation was different. As Cowan and Messervy closed in on this beautiful town with its elegant red-brick buildings, tree-lined avenues and villas set between two lakes, they found the local Japanese commander, General Kasuya, and his 13,500-strong garrison determined to fight to the last. Kasuya’s elite troops, probably no more than 3,200 in all, were dug in in terrain unsuitable for tanks, under houses, in the banks of the lakes, in concrete- and earth-covered timber-clad strongpoints and behind piled-up rice sacks. Meiktila was a good place to defend, as the approaches from west and south were along the lakes so that the entry roads were in effect causeways; and from the lakes ran deep irrigation channels and ditches. Slim’s strategy was to take Meiktila quickly, then, when Kimura turned to deal with this new and unexpected threat, to hit him with all the might of 33 Corps.54 It was a tense moment, as every division of 14th Army was now committed along the Irrawaddy, all at the limits of Allied airpower and supply. Cowan surrounded the town, then laid down a heavy bombardment and artillery barrage before sending in the tanks on 1 March. The battle was watched by Slim himself, who insisted on being present, determined that Meiktila should not become another Myitkyina. The RAF refused to fly him in on a ‘dangerous and foolhardy mission’ but the Americans were more insouciant and a B-25 of the USAAF got him to the front.55

  Cowan’s armoured onrush was countered by a stubborn Japanese defence from a deep screen of mutually supporting bunkers and fortified houses, using heavy artillery, machine guns and anti-tank weapons. Resistance was as fanatical as anything the Allied armies had seen in three years of warfare: snipers, concealed in the most unlikely places, picked off dozens of infantrymen slowly making their way down the rubble-strewn streets.56 Only very slow progress was made, and at dusk Cowan pulled out his tanks, ready for a fresh start in the morning. Next morning the slaughterous duel of tank versus bunker recommenced, with the same pattern of methodical, house-by-house, almost inch-by-inch, combat. The entire town seemed one enormous booby trap, with every house a strongpoint, every water channel containing its own hidden bunker, every ruined building or pile of bricks concealing a sniper, and every heap of rubble another anti-tank gun or machine gun. The implacable battle raged for three whole days. Japanese 75 mm guns engaged the Anglo-Indian tanks and infantry at point-blank range but were gradually and painfully eliminated one by one.57 Six p.m. on 3 March saw the end of the fighting in the centre of the town, when the last 50 Japanese left on their feet committed mass suicide by running into the lake and drowning. In the outer environs of the town there were the same terrible scenes of bloodshed, the same determined resistance and identical savage slaughter during the ensuing days (4–5 March).

  Slim hailed the capture of Meiktila in four days as a magnificent feat of arms that in effect sealed the fate of the Japanese in Burma. The slaughter was terrific. The Japanese had been determined to go down fighting, and even their sick and wounded left their hospital beds to make a last-ditch stand armed only with sharpened bamboo poles. The official body count spoke of over 2,000 Japanese dead in the town centre and 47 prisoners taken, but their fatalities were far higher, because large numbers of them had been buried alive in underground tunnels and bunkers, the ruins and the rubble concealed other corpses, many suicides had crawled away to make an end, and the lake continued to disgorge bodies for weeks afterwards. Slim himself testified to 876 Japanese dead in a single area of town just 200 yards long and 100 wide.58 Too late Kimura saw how he had been hoodwinked and diverted large portions of the army he had been preparing to repel 33 Corps in a
desperate attempt to retake Meiktila. The victorious British found themselves besieged, but Slim was as confident of the outcome as he had been at Kohima-Imphal. Kimura would have needed massive slices of luck to retrieve the situation, and even though he dispatched formidable forces to the siege of Meiktila, they arrived piecemeal, from many different directions and many different formations. Slim meanwhile could bask in the superior morale of his victorious troops, the fact that the Japanese were trying to counterattack on terrain that overwhelmingly favoured the British, and most of all, his massive air superiority. Incessant Allied air attacks played havoc with enemy communications, and Slim’s efficient signals corps was able to pinpoint the various Japanese headquarters, which were relentlessly bombed. Forced to observe radio silence so as not to call down this aerial wrath, the Japanese found themselves unable to communicate effectively with their commanders in the field. Additionally, Cowan sent out armoured formations to assail and harass incoming Japanese regiments so that they could not coordinate with their colleagues and form up into a cohesive force.59 Nevertheless, Kimura’s counteroffensive was deadly and vicious and came uncomfortably close to an unlikely success. His obvious target was the airfield, the vital artery that supplied the defenders. From 6 to 12 March the Japanese probes in this area were ineffective, but after 12 March they became much more serious, making ingenious use of anti-tank weapons, mines and ‘human mines’ – suicide fighters crouched in foxholes who would detonate 100 kilo aircraft bombs when a tank rolled overhead. After three weeks of remorseless attrition, the Japanese were close enough to the airfield that Allied flights had to cease; thereafter there was no supply, no reinforcements and no evacuation of the wounded.60

  Slim hit back in two main ways. First, he committed his remaining reserves, 5 Indian Division, which arrived by air on 17 March – just before the suspension of flights.61 Then he ordered Messervy to take Myingyan, the vital riverhead on the Chindwin, which would allow large-scale riverine supply. Myingyan proved a tough nut to crack, and a first assault failed, but it finally fell on 18 March, the day after the reserves arrived, though the British had to survive another four days of banzai charges and suicide attacks before their position there was secure. Once Myingyan was open, 14th Corps engineers and pioneers began constructing wharves, bridges and new roads, and soon there was another supply line to Meiktila. The Japanese hit back by temporarily severing the communications with the Nyaungu bridgehead, but their attempts to retake Nyaungu and Chauk failed, mainly because Bose’s much-vaunted INA proved to have no stomach for a fight against their tougher compatriots.62 Despite titanic efforts on all fronts in the circular siege of Meiktila, the Japanese just lacked that last ounce of resources and self-belief that might have secured victory even against enormous odds. The confusion in the Japanese high command did not help. Kimura had put Lieutenant General Honda Masaki in charge of retaking Meiktila, but Honda considered his mission both impossible and pointless; he thought the Imperial Army should regroup for a sustained defence farther south.63 Eventually, on 29 March, the Japanese abandoned the hopeless task of recapturing Meiktila. Sheer logic, and even basic arithmetic, dictated the decision. By the end of that month the Japanese had destroyed 50 British tanks and inflicted 300 casualties, but in the same period had sustained 2,500 casualties and had 50 big guns destroyed. This meant that to knock out one tank they would need one gun and 50 men; to retake Meiktila they would need 5,000 men and 100 guns, but they had just 20 guns and half the required number of effectives. Finally Kimura’s chief of staff, Tanaka Shinichi, visited the headquarters of 33 Japanese Army and on his own responsibility ordered 33 Army to disengage and cover the retreat of the Japanese 15th Army.64 The battle for Meiktila was finally and conclusively over.

  Once Kimura shifted his resources to meet the new threat at Meiktila, Slim ordered a general advance on Mandalay by 33 Corps, and on 26 February the three divisions in the corps began their breakout from the bridgeheads. The battle for Mandalay was always going to be a tough one, even though the Japanese commander there, Major General Yamamoto Seiei, like Honda Masaki at Meiktila, thought its defence pointless, something he was commanded to perform purely for the city’s prestige value. Interestingly, Slim shared this view, remarking that Mandalay was a news item but not a strategic target.65 The two strong points were Mandalay Hill and Fort Dufferin. Mandalay Hill was a great rock rising steeply from the plain to a height of nearly 800 feet, and dominated the north-eastern quarter of the city. Its steep sides were covered with temples and pagodas – it was something of a mini-Pagan, in fact – but the Japanese had honeycombed them with machine-gun nests. Pete Reese, to his great credit, refused to order bombers to pound the sacred places but ordered them taken by the infantry. Many observers contrasted his scrupulousness with the philistine and barbaric approach of the American troops at Monte Cassino in Italy.66 On 8 March 19 Indian Division began its cautious advance towards the hill, and on the 9th was engaged in heavy fighting with Japanese fighters concealed in cellars on the lower slopes. The Anglo-Indians proceeded up the flanks on 10–11 March, painfully winkling out and then exterminating the enemy among the Buddhist temples. As so often, the main opposition came from sharpshooters and elite units in tunnels, which the grim-faced attackers dealt with by pouring barrels of tar, petrol and oil into the access points and then igniting them with tracer bullets.67 Fort Dufferin was a much tougher proposition. A great rectangular walled enclosure, containing one and a quarter square miles of parkland, dotted with official residences, barracks and office blocks, it also boasted the royal palace of Theebaw, the last Burmese king. Essentially a medieval castle, with crenellated walls 2,500 yards long and 30 feet high, faced with thick brickwork and backed by earth embankments 70 feet wide at their base, the fort was protected in front of the thick wall by a 75-yard-wide moat, with the water crossed by railway and road bridges. By any standards it was a formidable obstacle to an army in a hurry.

  After the inevitable slog through the city of Mandalay, beset by snipers all the way and with the tanks in response blasting at anything that moved, the attackers completely surrounded the fort on 15 March. Many observers thought that the ensuing siege was like something out of the Middle Ages, although old Indian army hands inclined to analogies drawn from the Indian Mutiny.68 Huge guns were brought up to breach the walls, rafts and scaling ladders prepared, while aerial bombardment with 500 lb bombs opened up gaps in the walls but could not even put a dent in the great bank of earth. The scale of the problem soon became apparent: howitzers could make no impression on the defences, while the RAF bombardment, though causing damage, did little to shake the resolve of the defenders; the air force even sent in bombers equipped with the 2,000 lb skipping bombs used on the ‘dambusters’ raid on the Mohne dam in the Ruhr in 1943, but to no effect. On 16–17 March, attacks on the north-western and northeastern sections of the wall were beaten off with heavy loss, and on the 18th and 19th four separate attempts to cross the moat failed badly.69 Finally the Mitchell bombers did manage to bounce one bomb off the moat on to the walls and tore open a 15-foot hole, but Slim, who arrived to witness this battle just as he had at Meiktila, decided a direct assault would be far too costly. Slim was minded to bypass the fort and press on south, but Reese persuaded him to wait for the results of a commando attack through the sewers. This was just about to be launched, on 20 March, when the Japanese suddenly appeared with white flags.70 Although 19 Division had borne the brunt of the fighting, 2 and 20 Divisions had also played an honourable part, so Slim decided that there would be a formal ceremony, something like a Roman triumph, in which all three divisions would take part. These arrangements were made without any reference to Mountbatten and Leese, who were both angry and resentful when told. The reaction of 14th Army to this peevishness was a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders. One of Slim’s aides wrote waspishly: ‘It was apparently resented that those who were actually responsible had taken the credit.’71

  The victories at Mandalay and Meiktila (especiall
y the latter), as Kimura later admitted, were the masterpiece of Allied strategy in the battle for Burma, which ensured Slim’s final triumph over the Japanese.72 Slim’s encirclement of Kimura by the brilliant march on Meiktila was both a triumph of logistics and a tour de force of military imagination. As a piece of pure deception it can be rated, as Slim’s biographer argues, ahead even of the concealment of the 6th Panzer Army in the Ardennes before the Battle of the Bulge, or the disinformation that convinced the Wehrmacht that there was a huge Allied army in south-east England under General Patton, ready to cross to the Pas de Calais – one of the ruses that allowed the D-Day OVERLORD landings to succeed.73 It is also true that the Japanese colluded in their own destruction by their certainty that no Anglo-Indian army could reach Meiktila by any but the conventional route – a certainty so adamantine that Field Marshal Count Terauchi, commander-in-chief of the entire South-East Asian theatre, actually transferred Japanese 2 Division from Meiktila to Indochina just before Cowan and Messervy struck. Yet to characterise Slim’s achievement at Meiktila and on the Irrawaddy as mere deception is subtly to downgrade his brilliance. There are solid grounds for asserting that when all due allowances have been made, and mutatis mutandis (for until the twentieth century most battles were one-day or at least two-day affairs), Slim’s encirclement of the Japanese on the Irrawaddy deserves to rank with the great military achievements of all time – Alexander at Gaugamela in 331 BC, Hannibal at Cannae (216 BC), Julius Caesar at Alesia (58 BC), the Mongol general Subudei at Mohi (1241) or Napoleon at Austerlitz (1805). The often made – but actually ludicrous – comparison between Montgomery and Slim is relevant here. Although unkind critics say that Kohima-Imphal was a mere matter of slugging attrition, where even a mediocre general enjoying Slim’s superiority in manpower, artillery, resources and airpower would have prevailed, exactly the same thing could be said, a fortiori, about Montgomery’s over-hyped victory at Alamein in November 1942. Even if we allow Alamein and Kohima-Imphal to be achievements at the same level, there is no Montgomery equivalent of the Irrawaddy campaign. His one attempt to prove himself a master of the war of movement – Operation MARKETGARDEN against Arnhem – was a signal and embarrassing failure. Montgomery was a military talent; Slim was a military genius.