I had not long been back at my headquarters when events began which threatened to upset some, and then most, of the plans I had brought with me from Delhi. The seven offensive operations, scheduled for 1944, had been approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Cairo Conference at the end of November 1943. Only a week later, however, at Teheran, Marshal Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan if all Anglo-American efforts were directed first to defeating Germany. Roosevelt and Churchill accepted the condition, and, as part of this concentration against the main enemy, more than half the amphibious resources of South-East Asia were ordered back to Europe. As this rendered impossible the sea assault on the Andaman Islands, it was planned to use what remained for a landing behind the Japanese in Arakan. The Generalissimo had made the move of his Yunnan armies into Burma conditional on the Allies carrying out an amphibious operation against the Japanese in South-East Asia. When he was informed that the contemplated attack on the Andamans had been abandoned but that a smaller landing would be carried out, he refused to regard this as fulfilling the agreement made at Cairo and withdrew his orders for the advance of the Yunnan force. This, in turn, would make the airborne landing of an Indian division in the Indaw area to co-operate with the expected Chinese advance from Yunnan useless, and indeed likely to be disastrous. So that operation, too, had perforce to be cancelled. However, in spite of this, plans and preparations for the Arakan landing were pushed on, and I held several conferences with the commanders and staffs detailed for the operation. Then, at the end of December, the Chiefs of Staff informed the Supreme Commander that, as the Generalissimo did not accept the Arakan landing as a substitute for the attack on the Andamans, amphibious operations in South-East Asia would be cancelled and all landing craft returned forthwith either to England or the Mediterranean. So that was that.
As our schemes, one by one, each with its picturesque code name, went the way of the ten litde nigger boys, the planners worked manfully, and at times frantically, to adjust projects to melting resources. It was no fault of theirs or of the Supreme Commander’s, who had been subjected to such sudden and violent cuts in the forces firmly promised, that our operations were thus whittled away. It says a good deal for his resilience and for the spirit of the troops, that they took these disappointments and all the wasted effort they entailed, philosophically and good-humouredly. Even the poor planners, in a whirl of feverish activity, could laugh at themselves, and one of them found time to put into verse something of the turmoil of plans, modifications, substitutes, cancellations, and code names in which they existed as:
Plan followed plan in swift procession.
Commanders went; commanders came,
While telegrams in quick succession
Arrived to douse or fan the flame.
The practical result of all this was that the projected operations in South-East Asia for 1944 were reduced from seven to four:
(i) The overland advance of 15 Corps in Arakan.
(ii) The advance of Stilwell’s Chinese on Myitkyina.
(iii) A long-range penetration operation by Wingate’s force to help Stilwell.
(iv) An advance on the main front in Assam by 4 Corps to the Chindwin.
The correct strategy, that of a landing in Southern Burma, had thus perforce to be abandoned, and we fell back on this four-pronged invasion. As I thought over the coming campaign, I was confirmed in my belief that, in spite of this, it should be possible to re-enter and reconquer Burma from the north; but there were disturbing features in our latest plan. The Japanese, we knew, were being steadily reinforced. On both the Northern front, as more Chinese divisions came into action, and on the Southern in Arakan, with its shorter and easier communications, we could count on concentrating superior strength to the enemy. In Assam, however, on the Central front, where the decisive battles would have to be fought, the most optimistic calculations cast doubt on our ability to move and maintain, over so precarious a line of communication, forces even equal to those the Japanese could muster against us. To be frank, too, at this stage, much as our troops had improved in training and morale, I did not want the first big clashes to be on equal terms, division for division. I wanted superior strength at the decisive point for the opening of the struggle; after one victory to confirm the spirit of the Fourteenth Army, I should not worry so much about the odds against us.
I racked my brains and bullied my administrative staff to discover some means of getting even one more division on to the Central front, but without avail. With the transportation we had at that time, and with the vast numbers of non-combatants needed to build roads and airfields for an advance, to squeeze in another fighting formation would have been to take a grave administrative risk. It was a risk, however, which I think I should have insisted upon, but I did not. Had the campaign taken place as planned we should have suffered from my failure to do so. I became a better judge of administrative risks later.
There was, of course, an attractive alternative by which the odds could be turned in our favour. If we could somehow seriously weaken the Japanese Army before we plunged into Burma, the whole picture would be changed. The only way this could be done was, at an early stage, to entice the enemy into a major battle in circumstances so favourable to us that we could smash three or four of his divisions. The thought of how to do this constantly nagged at my mind, but my generalship was not enough to find a way to provoke such a battle. I devoted myself, therefore, to ensuring that our offensive as planned should be successful.
Three of my commanders, Stilwell, Scoones, and Christison, had already discussed their plans with me, and had them vigorously in hand. There remained only the plans for Wingate’s operation in support of Stilwell to be finally settled. Wingate and I, in Delhi and elsewhere, had discussed at length the principles on which his force should be used, its training, its composition, and his plan for its use. On the whole, Wingate and I agreed better than most people expected, perhaps because we had known one another before, or perhaps because we had each in our own way arrived at the same conclusions on certain major issues, the potentialities of air supply, the possibility of taking Burma from the north, and in our estimates of the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese. Of course we differed on many things. It was impossible not to differ from a man who so fanatically pursued his own purposes without regard to any other consideration or person.
His force, known for deception reasons as the 3rd Indian Division, had in it British, Gurkhas, Burmese, and Africans, but no Indians. It had finished its training in India, and was now placed under my command. I called Wingate to Comilla to clear up several matters about the forthcoming operations on which there might be misunderstanding, and to give him his orders.
The proposed employment of Wingate’s force had, like that of all others in the theatre, to be repeatedly modified and changed as resources available waxed and waned. He was, however, fortunate compared with others, in that while for them there was more waning than waxing, his resources had, thanks to the power and brilliance of his advocacy in Whitehall and Washington, greatly increased. He had, first of all, taken over complete the 70th British Division that had formerly been part of my 15 Corps at Ranchi. This was done after the separation of Fourteenth Army from India, when the division, which had remained behind, was no longer under my command. I was not, therefore, consulted on the change; had I been, I would have opposed it as strongly as I could. I was convinced—and nothing I saw subsequently caused me to change my mind—that a battle-tried, experienced, well-knit British division, like the 70th, would have more effect against the Japanese than a special force of twice its size. Moreover, the 70th Division was the only British formation trained in jungle warfare. It was a mistake to break it up. With it Wingate’s force now had an infantry strength of over two divisions and an elaborate staff and administrative set-up. In addition it had the unique luxury of its own air force. Admiral Mountbatten, fired by Wingate’s burning enthusiasm, had in turn persuaded General Arnold, head of the United Sta
tes Army Air Force, to provide the 3rd Indian Division with an American force, known as No. 1 Air Commando, containing not only fighters and light bombers for close support, but transport aircraft, gliders, light planes for inter-communication and evacuation of wounded, and the necessary maintenance organization. The pilots were carefully chosen and the commando raised and commanded by Colonels Cochrane and Alison, both outstanding fighting aces, and, what is not always the same thing, first-class organizers and leaders. One of the first difficulties that Wingate’s force posed was this very air component. It was represented very strongly by the air staffs, American and British, that it was uneconomical permanently to lock up what was an appreciable proportion of our total air strength in Burma in support of one subsidiary operation. While I agreed in principle with this argument—private air forces are no less wasteful than private armies—I felt strongly that the air commando must remain part of Wingate’s force. It had been generously given with that intention, it had wholeheartedly identified itself with the force, and to take it away now, apart from provoking heated squabbles with all sorts of people, would depress and upset the men just as they were about to embark on a most hazardous and arduous venture.
The next difficulty was with Wingate himself. I do not think he ever confided his intentions or ambitions fully to anyone, certainly not to his own staff or to his superior commanders, and it was evident to me from our discussions that there had been a considerable development in his views. His original idea had been that of a force, which, penetrating behind the enemy lines, would operate in comparatively small, lightly-equipped columns to harry his communications and rear establishments, while our main forces struck the decisive blows elsewhere. From this, as he increasingly appreciated the possibilities of air supply and transportation, he had gradually swung to the view that the main force should be the penetrating one, the subsidiary forces those that would remain, comparatively static, on what might be called the perimeter. This entailed, first, a great increase in die penetrating force, and, second, demanded for it a much heavier scale of armament as it would be required, not only to hold landing-ground bases against major attacks, but to assault strongly defended positions. As usual, I found Wingate stimulating when he talked strategy or grand tactics, but strangely naïve when it came to the business of actually fighting the Japanese. He had never experienced a real fight against them, still less a battle. The Japanese, unlike the Italians, with whom he had dealt in East Africa, were not to be frightened into a withdrawal by threats to their rear; they had first to be battered and destroyed in hard fighting. Wingate’s men were neither trained nor equipped to fight pitched battles, offensive or defensive. The strategic idea that a penetration formation, operating behind the enemy, could be die decisive force was by no means new or unsound—I used it myself in the great Mandalay–Meiktila battle of 1945—but what would have been unsound was to attempt it with his present force and with our present air resources. At one stage of South-East Asia planning, when it was intended to fly in a standard Indian division to the Indaw area where it would form the central core of an advance by the Yunnan Chinese, we were approaching the idea; but even when that operation had been abandoned, Wingate still hankered after a large force. I did not blame him; all commanders do.
His first demand to me was that I should give him Lomax’s 26th Indian Division, which had originally been earmarked and trained for the Indaw landing. I refused. He already had more troops than we should be able to lift and supply by air. The division was the only reserve I had in my whole army; it would have been madness to break it up on the off-chance that Wingate might use it next year. Besides, I knew that if there were ever the chance of the decisive battle I hoped for, the division would be vitally needed.
However, Wingate was, as all good commanders should be, a most determined and persistent fellow, and he had set his heart on expanding his command. When he found argument failed, he turned to sterner measures. Such had been his romantic success with the Prime Minister that he claimed the right to send him messages direct, with his views and recommendations, irrespective of whether Admiral Mountbatten or any other superior commander agreed with them or not. I had been told this extraordinary arrangement existed, so when Wingate began by saying that, while he held a personal loyalty to me, there was a loyalty above that to an immediate commander, I knew what was coming. I asked him to whom it was. He replied, ‘To the Prime Minister of England and to the President of the United States.’ He went on to say diat they had laid on him the duty of reporting direct to them whenever any of his superiors, in his opinion, were thwarting his operations. With the greatest regret he felt that this was such an occasion, and he must, whatever the consequences to me, so report to the Prime Minister. I pushed a signal pad across my desk to him, and told him to go and write his message. He did not take the pad but he left the room. Whether he ever sent the message I do not know, nor did I inquire. Anyhow that was the last I heard of his demand for the 26th Division.
Wingate was back next day, and we resumed our study of his operations. The original plan had been much on the lines of his first raid but in two waves. Three of his brigades were to have entered Burma and reached their operational areas by long jungle approach marches across the Chindwin and through the Japanese front. After some two or three months, the next wave of three brigades was to go in on foot to relieve the first. When the transport aircraft of No. 1 Air Commando, however, became available, Wingate wished to fly one brigade to Paoshan in China and introduce it, across the Salween River, into Burma from the east. The rest would cross the Chindwin as already proposed. By this time, however, I was getting reports from 4 Corps that all crossings along the river were closely watched by the enemy, and in Scoones’s opinion, with which I agreed, it would be impossible to get the brigades across without their being intercepted. As it was essential that columns should reach their operating areas without serious interference, this plan was abandoned and we settled down to calculate the possibility of flying them in direct. This had the additional advantages of saving fatigue and giving more time for effective operations. We were already committed to the air supply of the 81st West African Division in Arakan and other projects, and, even if we used the air commando gliders for troops instead of heavy equipment, we found we should still be short of the minimum air lift. However, by supplementing the air commandos, at peak periods, from the meagre resources of Troop Carrier Command, we calculated we could lift two brigades in March and two later. The Paoshan idea, attractive as it appeared, was therefore discarded and we decided that in each wave two brigades should fly and one march. Wingate, of course, knew that the fly-in of the 26th Division to Indaw was no longer contemplated, and I made it quite clear that I could allot him no more aircraft and no more troops, beyond an extra Gurkha battalion and some artillery that I gave him.
Wingate was dissatisfied with the rate of fly-in, and so was I. Still, as it was impossible to increase it without cancelling operations already begun, which I would certainly not do, or by taking aircraft off the Hump route to China which even the Supreme Commander had not the power to do, I had to stand firm on that too. He made one last attempt to make me change by saying he could not accept the order I had drafted. I gave him an unsigned copy of the draft, told him to take it away, sleep on it that night, and come back at ten o’clock the next morning, when I would give him the same order signed. I told him I had never had a subordinate officer refuse an order, but if one did, I knew what to do. General Giffard happened to be visiting my headquarters, and I asked him to be in my office next day when Wingate came. I rather expected trouble, but, as soon as Wingate was seated in the chair on the other side of my desk, I passed the signed order across to him and, with a slightly wry smile, he accepted it without comment.
We set up Wingate’s headquarters at Imphal alongside that of 4 Corps. He was now developing his ‘stronghold’ technique, the method by which airstrips as bases for his columns would be held. This demanded ever-increasing scales of
defensive equipment, artillery, anti-aircraft guns, mines, machine-guns, sandbags, and the rest. I went over with him his ideas of the defence of one of these strongholds, and found that he had little appreciation of what a real Japanese attack would be like. I told him to get Scoones’s ideas on the ‘floater model’ of defence as practised in 4 Corps, by which each garrison had a satellite mobile column to operate against the rear of any enemy attacking formation. Scoones must have been a little amused to find this appear as a new Wingate method of defence. Meanwhile the first wave of the Special Force, as we usually called the 3rd Indian Division, moved up into the forward areas from which it would fly or march into Burma.
Thus for the moment ended our orgy of planning, but in war it is not only one side that plans. I had throughout been conscious that, improving as our intelligence was since 1942, it was far from being as complete or accurate as that in other theatres. We never made up for the lack of methodically collected intelligence or the intelligence organization which should have been available to us when the war began. We knew something of the Japanese intentions, but little of the dispositions of their reserves, and practically nothing about one of the most important factors that a general has to consider—the character of the opposing commanders. I had all the information I could obtain about Lieut.-General Kawabe, my opposite number, who as Commander-in-Chief, Burma Army Area, controlled all Japanese land and air forces in Burma, but it did not amount to much on which to build up a picture of how his mind would work. At this time, from what I had seen of his operations, I could only expect him to be, like most Japanese commanders I had met, a bold tactical planner of offensive movements, completely confident in the superiority of his troops, and prepared to use his last reserves rather than abandon a plan. Many years before, when I was working for the Staff College examination, I had studied the Russo-Japanese War, and one thing about that campaign I had always remembered. The Russians never won a battle. In almost every fight they accepted defeat while a considerable portion of their forces, in reserve, was still unused. On the other hand, the Japanese were prepared to throw in every man, and more than once tipped the scales of victory with their very last reserves. The Japanese generals we were fighting had been brought up on the lessons of that war, and all I had seen of them in this convinced me that they would run true to form and hold back nothing. This was a source of great strength to them, but also, properly taken advantage of might, in conjunction with their overweening confidence, be a fatal weakness.
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