Major problems that faced me were the timing and location of the crossings, notably the relation between those of 33 Corps and 4 Corps. In what order should the divisions cross and where? It would, of course, have been nice to have crossed everywhere simultaneously and thus have confused and spread out the opposition, but this was out of the question. We lacked not only the equipment but also the supporting arms to allow more than one division in each corps to cross at a time. The broad plan was to persuade Kimura to believe that the main crossings would be north and immediately west of Mandalay, so that, when he was thoroughly committed in desperate fighting in that area, the decisive blow at Meiktila would catch him off balance.
Obviously the first crossing should, therefore, take place north of Mandalay. If the 19th Division got over here, it would look as if it was meant to join with the British 36th Division, already on the east bank, in a strong drive on Mandalay from the north. This would draw enemy formations to meet it. The 19th Division was, therefore, ordered to snatch a crossing as quickly as possible, well above Mandalay. There would then inevitably be a pause while the rest of 33 Corps drew up to the river and prepared to cross. 4 Corps, with much farther to go and more unknown perils to meet, might be later in arriving on the river about Pakokku. Would it be better to let the next division of 33 Corps cross west of Mandalay before 4 Corps farther south? If it did, it should strengthen the idea that our main thrust was in the north and might attract and pin down still more Japanese formations in that area. On the other hand, I was very nervous that Kimura would realize that the southern crossing was in strength. The longer Messervy’s divisions hesitated on the bank or were assembled near it, the greater the risk of discovery. I decided, therefore, that the first 4 Corps crossing should take place as soon as Messervy was in position to launch it. This would mean that it would probably be either simultaneous with, or a little after, the 33 Corps crossing west of Mandalay. As soon as possible after the establishment of its bridgehead, 4 Corps would deliver the mechanized and airborne blow at Meiktila.
Once these decision were made, I left it to corps commanders to select the exact locations for their crossings, to choose which divisions should make them, and to prepare the best tactical plans and arrangements that the meagre resources I had allotted them would permit. It was a busy time for all of us. Corps and divisional commanders were immersed not only in the daily control of the fighting, but in the immensely complicated build-up and preparation for the crossings. Unless one has been engaged in the actual staff work of such operations, it is impossible to realize the vast amount of detail and the accurate timing on which, by the narrowest margins, success may depend. Nor is it easy to realize the burden of an anxiety that may not be shown, but which all commanders must carry. I had again moved my and 221 Group Headquarters, this time into the jungle just north of the Kalemyo-Kalewa road, and I paid frequent visits by air to both corps; but my main responsibility at this time was to see that the transportation resources of the army brought forward smoothly and steadily the great tonnages of supplies, ammunition, and equipment required for the crossings and for the new battles that would follow.
I really believe that the heroes of this time were the men who kept the wheels turning and the wings flying—the Indian drivers who, two to each three-ton lorry, drove night and day in shifts over hundreds of miles of crumbling roads; the Sappers who built up those roads almost between the passing wheels; the R.I.E.M.E. men who worked incredible hours to turn the worn vehicles round again; the Air Force mechanics, stripped to the waist, who laboured in the sun by day and the glare of headlights by night to service the planes. All of them were magnificent to watch. They identified themselves utterly with the troops ahead; they were and felt themselves to be a part, and a vital part, of the team. They had the pride and bearing of fighting men, for they were one with them.
Yet sometimes, even when I was in the midst of these splendid men or with the forward divisions, doubt and fear slunk in upon me. I was asking so much of them—was it too much? In no other theatre would an army have been launched on such a task with so pitiful an equipment. Success depended on what? Luck? A Japanese pilot streaking the tree tops in his Oscar, an enemy agent with a wireless set crouched above the track counting tanks, or a prisoner tortured until he talked—and Kimura’s divisions would move, the muzzles of his guns swing towards our crossing places. Imagination is a necessity for a general, but it must be a controlled imagination. At times I regained control of mine only by an effort of will, of concentration on the immediate job in hand, whatever it was. And then I walked once more among my soldiers, and I, who should have inspired them, not for the first or last time, drew courage from them. Men like these could not fail. God helps those who help themselves. He would help us.
I drew comfort, too, at this time from quite another thought. I had, more than once, in two great wars, taken part in the forcing of a river obstacle, and I had on every occasion found it less difficult and less costly than expected. I had also read some military history, and, although I cudgelled my brains, I could not call to mind a single instance when a river had been successfully held against determined assault. As the time drew near for the first crossings, I hugged this thought to me. Historically, the odds were in my favour.
When on the 9th January 1945 the 19th Division had first reached the Irrawaddy, they had slipped a British patrol across by night near Thabeikkyin. This patrol located some Japanese positions on the east bank and got back safely. By the 11th, Rees’s troops were probing up and down the west bank, and on that day got more patrols across, ten miles south of Kyaukmyaung. A battalion, at the same time, bumped into the well dug-in and fiercely defended enemy position on the west bank near Kabwet. A brisk little action ensued, in which our troops cleaned up a part of the position, but it became clear that the Japanese had, and intended to keep, a bridgehead of their own on our bank. Rees detailed troops to contain and to reduce this position, which, being in the middle of his stretch of river bank, was a considerable nuisance. During the next few days the 19th Division continued to draw up to and clear the west bank. Then, on the 14th, an infantry company crossed by stealth near Thabeikkyin, to be followed by one of the remaining companies each day, until a whole battalion was over. At first they met only slight opposition from patrols, but were soon held up just south of the village, where a small bridgehead was formed. During the night of the 14th/15th January the main 19th Division crossing began about Kyaukmyaung, twenty miles south of Thabeikkyin. Here the Japanese held no posts on the river bank, and the first battalion to cross remained concealed until the next night, when another joined it and there were some patrol clashes.
A third battalion crossed on the night of the 16th/17th and, for the first time, on the 17th, the enemy, realizing that a serious attempt at crossing was in progress, collected his rather scattered troops and attacked heavily. This he continued at intervals throughout the day, but all these attacks were beaten off. By the 19th, the whole of 64 Brigade was in the Kyaukmyaung bridgehead, and was steadily expanding it against increasing opposition. On the night of the 20th/21st, after heavy artillery preparation, the Japanese put in several determined attacks, which were again repulsed with heavy loss after hand-to-hand fighting. In spite of mounting resistance and growing casualties, the brigade pressed outwards and seized a ridge of scrub-covered rock, eight hundred feet high, parallel to the river, three miles inland, and a bare peak rising abruptly from the river bank, two and a half miles south of the original crossing. These successes deprived the Japanese of direct observation over the bridgehead, blinded their artillery and thus, in fact, ensured its retention. Farther north, the bridgehead at Thabeikkyin had been reinforced just in time to throw back a series of savage counter-attacks.
The Japanese, confused by numerous feints and patrol crossings elsewhere, had not been quick to decide which were the real crossings, and even then they took some time to concentrate against them. Every hour of this delay was invaluable to the sweating 19
th Division, ceaselessly ferrying men and supplies across the river on almost anything that would float. Yet, once they had begun to assemble, the enemy reacted swiftly and violently. As I had hoped, Katamura, commander of the 15th Japanese Army, responsible for the river line here, took these crossings to be an attempt to join up with the 36th British Division, as a preliminary to an advance down the east bank on Mandalay by the whole of our 4 Corps, which he still thought was on the Fourteenth Army’s left. He called up his 15th and 53rd Divisions and added artillery units from his other divisions, the 31st and 33rd. Kimura, who himself believed, as did his army commander, that this was the expected British 4 Corps attack, transferred to Katamura a strong force of additional artillery and some of his few remaining tanks. This was a formidable force with which to overwhelm the two brigades of our 19th Division newly across the river, but Katamura, luckily for us, instead of building up a strong, well-prepared attack, committed the common Japanese error of launching his troops into the assault piecemeal as they arrived. Covered by the heaviest artillery concentration that our troops had as yet endured on so small a front, he put in attack after attack, some by direct suicide assault, some by infiltration. These were kept up almost daily and nightly for three weeks. Gradually, as the enemy dead piled up, the edge was taken from the attack and, in the beginning of February, for the first time, there was a lull for two days and two nights. Tanks had now been ferried over, and preparations were begun for the break-out.
I had visited the bridgeheads and seen something of the bitter struggle to retain them. The fighting had been severe, the casualties to our men considerable and the strain of fighting in these restricted places with their backs to the river no light one. The troops looked fine-drawn and thin, but were in good heart. I was able to visit my own old battalion, the 1/6th Gurkha Rifles, in which I had served for many happy years. It was good to see them again and to be told by their divisional commander that they had done well in the bridgehead fighting. I spoke to Gurkha officers whom I had first known twenty-odd years before, when I was Adjutant and they were chubby recruits straight from the Nepal hills. Now they were subadars, commanding companies and platoons on a hard-fought field, wise soldiers and real leaders. The British officers whom I had known as junior subalterns—some, the sons of my friends, even as babies—were now seasoned battalion or company commanders, among them General Cowan’s son, a most gallant and promising young officer. I felt proud—and a little conscious of my fifty-odd years—as I looked at them.
They were all loud in their praises of Vincent’s airmen who supported them. He had moved fighter squadrons to strips within a few miles of the river and the answer to a call for help from the bridgeheads came in a matter of minutes. When I visited these airmen I saw pilots leaving for their fifth or sixth sortie of the day. Their part in holding the bridgeheads was a great one. They became particularly effective in locating and silencing the Japanese artillery, and in shooting up his tanks.
After the lull, the Japanese renewed their attacks on the bridgehead, but their assaults were neither in the same strength nor pressed with the same resolution. They were attempts to hold rather than to evict. The fact was, that during February, our increasing pressure nearer to Mandalay was preventing further reinforcement of the Japanese facing the 19th Division. While the enemy thus weakened, our men in the bridgehead gathered strength as replacements for casualties, tanks, transport, and supplies were ferried over to them. They, in their turn, passed to the attack. Day by day, night by night, they pushed back the enemy, a hundred yards here, a quarter of a mile there, as in bitter local actions we drove them out of villages and off high ground. Steadily the bridgehead grew in area and in security.
While 19th Division fought hard to gain and hold its footing over the Irrawaddy, the 20th Division, under Gracey, drew near to Monywa. The town had been largely destroyed during die Retreat in 1942 and it had since then been subjected to numberless air bombardments, so that it was now a mere skeleton, but it had remained the chief Japanese river port and administrative centre on the Chindwin. We knew that it had been extensively fortified, and we did not expect it to be given up without a struggle. Nor was it. From the 14th to the 16th January, Gracey’s men were engaged in clearing its approaches and the surrounding country of enemy parties who withdrew on the town. The assault proper began by heavy attacks on the defences by fighter bomber and rocket aircraft. The enemy positions were of exceptional strength, comparable to those at Kohima, and were held by part of a regiment of the Japanese 33rd Division, who, as was their habit, made us pay for every strong-point we took. On the 22nd January the last resistance was overcome, the survivors of the garrison faded away, and Monywa was ours.
As soon as Monywa was securely in our hands, I moved my Tactical Headquarters there as it was admirably placed to control both my corps. On the 8th February my main headquarters with the Headquarters 221 Group joined me there, and we set up a complete and very comfortable joint headquarters, partly in the jungle and partly in some of the least battered houses on the outskirts. The Japanese had left behind a number of booby traps which were disconcerting, but my chief frights came from snakes which abounded in the piles of rubble. They seemed specially partial to the vicinity of my War Room which lacked a roof but had a good concrete floor. It was my practice to visit the War Room every night before going to bed, to see the latest situation map. I had once when doing so nearly trodden on a krait, the most deadly of all small snakes. Thereafter I moved with great circumspection, using my electric torch, I am afraid, more freely than my security officers would have approved. It seemed to me that the risk of snake bite was more imminent than that of a Japanese bomb. Paying one of my nightly visits, moving slowly, and, as I was wearing rubber-soled shoes, silently, I lifted the blanket which served as a door. On the other side of the room, seated before the situation map, lit by a shaded light, were the officer on duty and a younger colleague who had recently joined the headquarters. The older officer was speaking in the voice of assured authority. He placed his finger firmly on the map. ‘Uncle Bill,’ he announced, ‘will fight a battle here.’ ‘Why?’ not unreasonably asked the youngster. ‘Because,’ came the answer, ‘he always fights a battle going in where he took a licking coming out!’
On the day Monywa was taken, other troops of the 20th Division, pressing on, reached the Irrawaddy at Myinmu. Near here, a few days later, there was a fight with a large Japanese party attempting to withdraw over the river. Resisting stubbornly, the enemy had been almost annihilated, when the last survivors, in full equipment and with closed ranks, under the astonished eyes of our men, marched steadily into the river and drowned. For the next ten days the division searched for a crossing place. Daring reconnaissances were carried out and our patrols, constantly pushed across the river, maintained a reign of terror and thuggery among the Japanese posts on the southern bank.
During this period I visited Gracey’s units, and, on one occasion, attended a performance of some well-known Ensa artistes near Allagappa, not far from the river bank. I thought what a tribute it was to our Air Force that in broad daylight we could collect several hundred men to watch a show almost within artillery range of the enemy. It was a good show, too, and I was sorry I should have to leave before it was over to get back to the airstrip. However, just when I was due to leave it was whispered to me that a Japanese raiding party was across the road I should have to travel, so I was able, with a clear conscience, to continue my enjoyment while the intruders were chased away, and afterwards to thank the artistes, one of whom was a lady.
At this time the Japanese commander, Kimura, realized that his attempts to delay us in the Chindwin–Irrawaddy loop had for all practical purposes failed. He still retained a footing on the north bank at Sagaing, where he was so strongly dug in among the hills that it would have been very expensive to eject him. His other holds on our bank at Kabwet, in the midst of our 19th Division, and in our 20th Division sector, had by now been wiped out. Although he had failed to
drive the 19th Division bridgeheads back into the river, and he must have known we were about to attempt crossings in the stretch of river west of Mandalay, Kimura did not waver in his determination to hold the line of the Irrawaddy, and at all costs prevent us entering Central Burma.
His dispositions were made solely to meet the threat from 33 Corps, for as yet he had no knowledge of our projected main stroke at Meiktila with 4 Corps. The activity towards Pakokku he regarded as demonstrations by minor forces. He hoped to contain the 19th Division in its bridgeheads with his 15th Division; his 31st Division would hold Sagaing and the southern river bank as far west as Ngazun. The impending crossing by our 20th Division he would meet in the first place with his 33rd Division, strengthened by a regiment of his 4th Division, additional artillery, and the bulk of what was left of his 14 Tank Regiment. He had, indeed, already moved troops from Pakokku northward. His 53rd Division he would place centrally, just south of Myotha, as a mobile reserve to strike as required when the battle for the crossings developed. Though we did not discover this until a week later, he brought one regiment of his 2nd Division from Meiktila to reinforce the west of Mandalay. In addition, he proposed to withdraw troops from his 18th Division on the Lashio sector to Mandalay. Kimura exhorted his troops to stand fast and promised them victory in what he called the ‘decisive battle of the Irrawaddy Shore’. The length of the river line he had to defend and his shortage of troops he tried to counteract by preparing many more positions than he could expect to hold simultaneously. He moved bodies of troops from one to the other to deceive us and hoped when our plans were clearer to be able to occupy the appropriate ones in time.
Defeat Into Victory Page 50