In spite of all these disadvantages we could have, if not defeated the Japanese, at least made a much better fight of it with even the small force of reliable troops we possessed, had they been properly trained. To our men, British or Indian, the jungle was a strange, fearsome place; moving and fighting in it was a nightmare. We were too ready to classify jungle as ‘impenetrable’, as indeed it was to us with our motor transport, bulky supplies, and inexperience. To us it appeared only as an obstacle to movement and to vision; to the Japanese it was a welcome means of concealed manoeuvre and surprise. The Japanese used formations specially trained and equipped for a country of jungle and rivers, while we used troops whose training and equipment, as far as they had been completed, were for the open desert. The Japanese reaped the deserved reward for their foresight and thorough preparation; we paid the penalty for our lack of both.
To me, thinking it all over, the most distressing aspect of the whole disastrous campaign had been the contrast between our generalship and the enemy’s. The Japanese leadership was confident, bold to the point of foolhardiness, and so aggressive that never for one day did they lose the initiative. True, they had a perfect instrument for the type of operation they intended, but their use of it was unhesitating and accurate. Their object, clear and definite, was the destruction of our forces; ours a rather nebulous idea of retaining territory. This led to the initial dispersion of our forces over wide areas, an error which we continued to commit, and worse still it led to a defensive attitude of mind.
General Alexander had been confronted with a task beyond his means. He had been sent to Burma with orders to hold Rangoon, presumably because it was obvious that, if Rangoon fell, it was almost inevitable that all Burma would be lost. On his arrival he found the decisive battle of the campaign, the Sittang Bridge, had already been lost, and with it the fate of Rangoon sealed. The advent of the Chinese may have roused a flicker of hope that its recovery was possible, but the loss of Toungoo and the state of the Chinese armies soon quenched even that glimmer. It was then that we needed from the highest national authority a clear directive of what was to be our purpose in Burma. Were we to risk all in a desperate attempt to destroy the Japanese Army and recover all that had been lost? Ought we to fight to the end on some line to retain at least part of Burma? Or was our task to withdraw slowly, keeping our forces intact, while the defence of India was prepared? Had we been given any one of these as our great overall object it would have had an effect, not only on the major tactics of the campaign, but on the morale of the troops. No such directive was ever received. In the comparatively subordinate position of a corps commander, immersed in the hour-to-hour business of a fluctuating battle, I could not know what pressures were being exerted on the local higher command, but it was painfully obvious that the lack of a definite, realistic directive from above made it impossible for our immediate commanders to define our object with the clarity essential. Whoever was responsible, there was no doubt that we had been weakened basically by this lack of a clear object.
Tactically we had been completely outclassed. The Japanese could—and did—do many things that we could not. The chief of these and the tactical method on which all their successes were based was the ‘hook’. Their standard action was, while holding us in front, to send a mobile force, mainly infantry, on a wide turning movement round our flank through the jungle to come in on our line of communications. Here, on the single road, up which all our supplies, ammunition, and reinforcements must come, they would establish a ‘road-block’, sometimes with a battalion, sometimes with a regiment. We had few if any reserves in depth—all our troops were in the front line—and we had, therefore, when this happened, to turn about forces from the forward positions to clear the road-block. At this moment the enemy increased his pressure on our weakened front until it crumbled. Time and again the Japanese used these tactics, more often than not successfully, until our troops and commanders began to acquire a road-block mentality which often developed into an inferiority complex.
There was, of course, nothing new in this idea of moving round a flank; it is one of the oldest of stratagems, and there were many answers to it. The best answer would have been to do the same to the Japanese before they did it to us, but we, by reason of our complete dependence on motor transport and the unhandiness of our troops in the jungle, could not carry out these hooks successfully in any strength. They were only possible for forces trained and equipped for them. Another counter would have been to have put in the strongest possible frontal assault on the enemy while the flanking force was still distant in the jungle and he was divided. Japanese tenacity in defence and our lack of artillery, however, was such that before our assault had made much progress the flank blow was likely to be delivered. If we could have arranged our forces in more depth we might have held off the hook when it approached the road, but we never had enough troops to allow this. In any case, if we had, we could have employed them more profitably offensively. Lastly, there was at least a partial answer in supply by air, which would, temporarily at any rate, have removed our dependence on the road, but that needed aircraft and we had literally none. Equipped and trained as we were in 1942, we had no satisfactory answer to the Japanese road-block.
The most infuriating thing was that, while we guessed these movements round our flanks were almost certainly going on, we could never get warning of them. Contrary to general belief, these columns did not move fast through the jungle; their progress was steady but slow, almost leisurely. They did not start very early, halted during the midday heat, and allowed themselves ample time to cook before a full night’s rest. They took few precautions, often moving in dense columns without protective detachments. For warning of our proximity they relied largely on Burman informers, and for their routes on local guides. Apart from the absence of air reconnaissance and the lack of co-operation of the inhabitants, we felt terribly the want of light, mobile reconnaissance troops, who could get out into the jungle, live there, and send back information. Our attempts to form such units did not have much success. The extreme inefficiency of our whole intelligence system in Burma was probably our greatest single handicap.
As to the two corps commanders, neither Stilwell nor I had much to boast about. His difficulties were greater than mine, and he met them with a dogged courage beyond praise, but his Chinese armies were, as yet, not equal to the Japanese. He was constantly on the look-out for an aggressive counter-stroke, but his means could not match his spirit. He could not enforce his orders nor could his inadequate staff and communications keep touch with his troops. When he saw his formations disintegrate under his eyes, no man could have done more than and very few as much as Stilwell, by personal leadership and example to hold the Chinese together, but once the rot had set in the task was impossible.
For myself, I had little to be proud of; I could not rate my generalship high. The only test of generalship is success, and I had succeeded in nothing I had attempted. Time and again I had tried to pass to the offensive and to regain the initiative and every time I had seen my house of cards fall down as I tried to add its crowning storey. I had not realized how the Japanese, formidable as long as they are allowed to follow undisturbed their daring projects, are thrown into confusion by the unexpected. I should have subordinated all else to the vital need to strike at them and thus to disrupt their plans, but I ought, in spite of everything and at all risks, to have collected the whole strength of my corps before I attempted any counter-offensive. Thus I might have risked disaster, but I was more likely to have achieved success. When in doubt as to two courses of action, a general should choose the bolder. I reproached myself now that I had not.
In preparation, in execution, in strategy, and in tactics we had been worsted, and we had paid the penalty—defeat. Defeat is bitter. Bitter to the common soldier, but trebly bitter to his general. The soldier may comfort himself with the thought that, whatever the result, he has done his duty faithfully and steadfastly, but the commander has failed in his d
uty if he has not won victory—for that is his duty. He has no other comparable to it. He will go over in his mind the events of the campaign. ‘Here,’ he will think, ‘I went wrong; here I took counsel of my fears when I should have been bold; there I should have waited to gather strength, not struck piecemeal; at such a moment I failed to grasp opportunity when it was presented to me.’ He will remember the soldiers whom he sent into the attack that failed and who did not come back. He will recall the look in the eyes of men who trusted him. ‘I have failed them,’ he will say to himself, ‘and failed my country!’ He will see himself for what he is—a defeated general. In a dark hour he will turn in upon himself and question the very foundations of his leadership and his manhood.
And then he must stop! For, if he is ever to command in battle again, he must shake off these regrets, and stamp on them, as they claw at his will and his self-confidence. He must beat off these attacks he delivers against himself, and cast out the doubts born of failure. Forget them, and remember only the lessons to be learnt from defeat—they are more than from victory.
BOOK II
Forging the Weapon
CHAPTER VII
THE THREE V’s
APART from my not too cheerful musings on the past campaign, I had little to occupy me for the few days I was in Ranchi, except visits to hospitals. These visits were as depressing as my thoughts. No one had expected the proportion of sick among the returning troops to be so appallingly high. The hospital provision was inadequate. Inadequate in amount, in accommodation, staff, equipment, and in the barest amenities. To supplement the few existing hospitals new ones were being improvised, and hurriedly raised medical units swept up from all parts of India to man them. Schools and other large buildings were requisitioned, the medical staffs arriving barely ahead, sometimes indeed after, a swarm of patients. It was no unusual thing to find a desperate hospital staff frantically organizing the unloading of their equipment and the clearing and cleaning of rooms left by previous occupants in no very sanitary state, while the sick lay on verandas and under trees awaiting admission. I saw many of my staff and hundreds of my officers and men lying grievously sick or wounded, some dying, in the squalid discomfort of these places. It was months before the hospitals of Eastern India reached even a reasonable standard of comfort. That they were able to function at all in the summer of 1942 was due to the superhuman exertions of commanding officers and their matrons and to the devoted, unceasing labour of their staffs, British and Indian. The European civil population rallied to our help. Its women worked in the wards, kitchens, and offices; they opened their homes to convalescents and they made up in sympathy and energy what they lacked in numbers. Their menfolk, nearly all over middle age, left office, tea-estate, mill, and colliery at the end of a full day’s work to lend a hand in canteens and rest centres. I have read in English newspapers bitter criticism of the alleged indifference of the British civilian community in India. I can only speak of Eastern India, but there, from my own observation, I would say British residents, official and non-official, did as much in direct service to the troops as any community of their size in the Empire. It is worth remembering, too, that they were the only community who asked for conscription to be imposed on them. There were no other conscripts in India.
At the moment there was little for me to do, so although quite fit, even if a stone or two lighter, I asked for, and got, a couple of weeks’ leave. Just as I was off to join my family in Simla, I was ordered to Calcutta to take over the newly formed 15 Indian Corps whose sign, the three V’s for fifteen and victory, gives its name to this chapter. I travelled down to Calcutta with General Broad, who commanded Eastern Army, of which the corps was part, and after a hurried take-over entered on a series of fresh tasks and problems.
The situation in June 1942 was an anxious one, likely at short notice to become critical. Eastern Army, with its headquarters at Ranchi in Bihar, was responsible to General Headquarters, India, at Delhi, for the internal security and external defence of all Eastern India, which included, of course, the conduct of the war in Burma. The forces at its disposal were meagre and of necessity spread over a vast area. In Army Reserve, about Ranchi, were the 70th British Division and 50 Armoured Brigade. To safeguard strategic railways and to support the various provincial civil administrations, a number of small garrisons were scattered at great distances from one another. Forward, the Army had two corps deployed to hold the Burma frontier against the Japanese and to safeguard the Bengal–Orissa coastline. 4 Corps, with its headquarters at Imphal in Assam, faced the enemy roughly along the northern portion of this frontier. It contained the newly arrived 23rd Indian Division and what was left of the troops who had come out of Burma in the 17th Indian Division, not yet re-equipped, fever-ridden, and much below strength, but still, wonderful to relate, with fight in them.
South of 4 Corps, in the jumbled mass of forest-covered hills on each side of the Indo-Burmese border, was a gap of nearly a hundred miles before the left of 15 Corps in Arakan was reached. This gap, although quite unguarded, was not at the moment as dangerous as it might appear because the monsoon was in full blast, and even the Japanese at this season could hardly bring any appreciable force through such country. Still, it was a disquieting factor, and would become a real danger when the rains stopped.
To hold the southern Burma front, 15 Corps had only the 14th Indian Division under Major-General Lloyd, who had outstandingly distinguished himself as a fighting brigadier in the Middle East. The division was complete and mobile on a mixed animal and mechanical transport basis, but it was not yet battle-tried and its jungle training left much to be desired. It was concentrated mainly about Comilla, east of the Meghna River, with detachments at Chittagong and a rather nebulous forward line of outposts watching the Japanese. My other division, the 26th Indian, located mostly around Calcutta, had as its tasks the internal security and coastal defence of Bengal and Orissa. It was not then a mobile or battle-worthy division at all, being woefully short of all forms of transport; nor could it, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as a trained formation. Besides its two divisions, the corps had a few other combat units, such as the Calcutta garrison, tied to the soul-destroying duties of internal security in a great city. My only armour was one Indian States Forces armoured car regiment.
Two infantry divisions, only one of which was operable, were not much with which to face an increasing Japanese army, to control an uneasy area as large as a major European country, with a population of millions, and to defend against probable invasion seven hundred miles of coast, uncovered by any naval force. The supporting air force, recovering as it was from the disasters of the Burma retreat, was far too small and ill-equipped to meet the demands that might be made on it. Help, if it came at all, would not be great, and it might take some time to come—gloomy thoughts that could only be dispelled by action.
In the steamy heat I began, with my Chief of Staff, to assess my three tasks. The first, the southern Burma front, did not present an immediate anxiety. The Japanese Army seemed as little prepared as we were to advance during the monsoon, and we might reasonably look for a breathing space, during which we could build up the 14th Division for a limited offensive after the rains. The internal situation, my second responsibility, was not, however, reassuring. The Congress Party, by far the most powerful political party in India, was rapidly working up anti-Allied feeling. It not only urged all Indians to refrain from the war effort, but its agents conducted a campaign against recruiting, and attempted to suborn sepoys from their allegiance. Many of its leaders seemed to have the naïve idea that, if the Japanese Army were allowed to enter India, it would at once set them up as the Government and gracefully withdraw, leaving India to the Indians, or rather to the Congress. The fate of half China was not held to have any bearing on the matter. The Moslem League, the next most important political body, a little more realistic, did not adopt an actively hostile attitude, but, rather shamefacedly, refused cooperation in defence. The immed
iate results of all this were not serious; recruiting and the loyalty of Indian troops were not affected. There was, however, developing in the civil population of Eastern India, a restlessness, which, fanned by fantastic rumours and worked on by unscrupulous propaganda, might at any time break out in violence. In the event of invasion, there would be an extremist minority which would take every advantage of the inevitable panic to hamper and confuse the Allied defence and to aid the enemy. The Non-Congress Government of Bengal, a coalition of Indian politicians, would on the first signs of Japanese invasion have collapsed. It showed the feebleness of its moral and administrative standards in the terrible famine that afflicted Bengal shortly afterwards. The fact that all our communications to the Burma fronts ran for hundreds of miles through Bengal and Bihar did not lessen anxiety, which remained and mounted, but was not immediate.
As things appeared then, it seemed to me that the most serious danger, and the one we were least prepared to meet, was invasion from the sea. The Japanese could send a battle fleet into the Bay of Bengal, secure in the knowledge that we had no naval forces of any size nearer than East Africa, and that even these were incapable of challenging it. Our air forces would be hard put to it to meet a concentration of enemy land planes based on the Burmese airfields, especially if the enemy added a carrier force at sea. The monsoon made landings on open beaches too hazardous, but the coast is so indented that quite large vessels might in places steam some distance inland before disembarking troops, while the Japanese in China had shown a disconcerting ability to land in places and at times that our experts had declared impossible. In any case, there would be favourable conditions for a large-scale attempt as soon as the monsoon subsided, and we were in no state to meet it.
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