Symbolic stunts to bolster domestic morale are part and parcel of modern warfare. However, the collateral damage inflicted by the Doolittle Raid on China was substantial. The B-25s had been stripped of all but essential equipment to make them light enough to take off from the USS Hornet. Their wingspan required that they take off with their port wing over the side so that their starboard wing did not hit the carrier island. A line was drawn on the Hornet’s flight deck to make this possible and prevent the planes from crashing into the Pacific. Their engines had to be throttled at maximum power with the breaks on to permit a short take-off run. Too heavy to re-land on the Hornet, the plan was that, after the raid, the B-25s should make their way to Nationalist air fields along the east coast of China.
Having been compelled to take off early, because the Japanese had spotted the flotilla, the planes ran out of fuel before reaching their destination. Three ditched at sea, one flew to Vladivostok and the rest crash-landed in the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi. Two Japanese columns of 50,000 troops each swept through northern Zhejiang to destroy Nationalist air bases and then thrust into Jiangxi province to do the same there.25 The devastation was enormous, not only because of the Japanese actions, but also because the Nationalists continued their scorched earth policy.26 President Roosevelt and chief of staff General George Marshall had ignored Chiang Kaishek’s warning that the Doolittle Raid would trigger Japanese reprisals.27
The US involvement in the Allied defence of Burma was similarly conducted to show support for China, by taking on the Japanese somewhere on land while minimising expenditure of military assets. In February 1942 General Joseph Stilwell was sent to China as chief of staff to Chiang Kaishek in his capacity as Allied commander of the China Theatre. The headlines that greeted Americans as they opened their newspapers that spring ran along the lines of ‘Chinese Cavalry Routs Jap Panzers in Burma’ 28 and ‘Stilwell’s Chinese Army Hurls Back Foe in Burma’.29 The US press widely quoted Stilwell as saying that ‘America means business in this war and the happiest day of our lives will be when Chinese and American troops together enter Tokyo’.30 Such headlines were music to the ears of US political and military leaders, who did not take for granted their fellow citizens’ ‘willingness to make the wholehearted commitment’ that the war required and ‘accept the inevitable costs that full-scale war required and entailed’.31
Behind sunshine tales of Allied harmony and vigour lay a different reality. Burma was an accidental battlefield. The Japanese had planned to move no further north than Moulmein at the mouth of the Salween river in south-east Burma, in order to neutralise a British air base there. However, Nanshin made more rapid progress than expected. That made it attractive for Japan first to move north-west from Moulmein to cross the Sittang river and take the port city of Rangoon, the only remaining substantial port through which Allied supplies could be shipped to China, and then to head north for the Yenangyaung oil fields, which produced 4 million barrels a year. Occupying the hugely fertile rice fields in the valleys of the Irrawady, Sittang and Salween rivers was a further attraction.32 The Japanese forces faced little opposition. Burma’s population was generally hostile to British rule and initially only some 10,000 British, Burma Army and India Army troops stood in their way.33
The Japanese routed the Allies. On 22 January, the 55th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army crossed from Thailand into Burma. Moulmein was in Japanese hands just over a week later, on 31 January. Attempts over the next few weeks by 17th India Division, 1st Burmese Division and British units to conduct a fighting withdrawal towards Rangoon descended into chaos, especially after a tough five-day battle, from 19 to 23 February, for control of the Sittang river bridge ended in a decisive Japanese victory. While the British had initially declined Nationalist assistance, they now welcomed it. On 3 March, at staff talks at Lashio, the largest town in north Burma’s Shan state, the Nationalists pressed the British to hold Rangoon while they concentrated their 5th Army at Toungoo, 200 kilometres north of Rangoon, to begin a counter-offensive from there.34 That plan ceased to make sense after the British decided that Rangoon could not be defended and evacuated the city on 7 March. The torching of 5,000 tyres, the destruction of 900 trucks and the wrecking of 1,000 machine guns, all destined for China, by the retreating British troops annoyed the Nationalists.35 With Rangoon in Japanese hands, the British and the Nationalists concluded that their best option was to attempt to defend the Yenangyaung oil fields and the city of Mandalay in Upper Burma.
General Joseph Stilwell only arrived in Burma after the event, when a Japanese victory there was virtually assured. He had been chosen to lead the American war effort in the region and to assist Chiang in part because of his knowledge of China. He had served three tours of duty there, the last as Military Attaché from 1935 to 1939. General Marshall had initially offered the position to General Hugh Drum, who had declined when he learned that no ground, air or naval forces would be made available to him, which had led him to conclude that he would be sent as ‘just another empty gesture of good will’.36 Stilwell, however, accepted that the US would not commit significant resources to Burma. His formal role was to act as chief of staff to Chiang Kaishek, and to be the commander of all US forces in the theatre and supervisor of supplies sent to China.37 He had to take the long road to Chongqing, travelling there via Europe, the Middle East, India and Burma. He reported to Chiang Kaishek for the first time on 6 March, just after the British had begun torching Rangoon.
General Stilwell had served under General Marshall while the latter carried out the ‘Benning Revolution’ at Fort Benning, the USA’s premier infantry school. To avoid costly man-wasting static battles like those of the First World War, Marshall instilled offensive tactics in his trainees, aiming to snatch quick victories in operations directed by commanding officers willing and able to take the initiative at the front. As Marshall put it, ‘a democracy cannot afford a Seven Years War’.38 When discussing operational plans with Stilwell on 9 March, Chiang Kaishek stated that, given what had just happened, the best option for the Allies was to focus on the defence of Mandalay in Upper Burma. Wedded to the offensive, General Stilwell would have none of it, arguing that ‘our best option is to begin an offensive at Toungoo … we shall score a huge victory.’
General Stilwell’s orientalist disdain for most things Chinese prevented him from taking Chiang Kaishek seriously. According to him, the Nationalist leader was ‘a stubborn, ignorant, prejudiced, and conceited despot’ who ‘wants to be a moral potentate, a religious leader, a philosopher, but has no education. If he had four years of college education, he might understand conditions in the modern world.’39 Stilwell characterised discussions with Chiang about next steps in Burma as ‘a session of amateur tactics by Chiang Kaishek … I showed him the solution, but the stooge jumped in … I let them rant.’40 The ‘stooge’ was one of Chiang’s most senior staff officers. In holding out for an immediate counter-attack, Stilwell was following the example of his mentor, General Marshall. It took Churchill in high bulldog mode to persuade Marshall that an invasion of France in the spring of 1942 could only result in a bloodbath, a judgement borne out by the failed Allied raid on Dieppe in August and then by the difficulties US and British forces encountered when they invaded French North Africa. If Marshall could not ignore Churchill, Stilwell was not going to let a mere Chinaman stand in his way.
Stilwell returned to Burma on 11 March, after Chiang had assigned command of his Fifth and Sixth Armies to him. Chiang Kaishek had done so primarily because he did not want a British officer in charge of his forces but also to draw the US into China’s war with Japan. Stilwell promptly ordered two Nationalist divisions, 55th Division and 22nd Division, to move south to Toungoo, where the 200th Division, the one that was fully mechanised, had already taken up position. They were to prepare for an immediate counter-offensive on Rangoon. Four days later, 200th Division was encircled and withdrew into the city. As a mechanised force, its strength lay in operating in the open fi
eld. The 200th Division fought hard, but it failed to destroy a bridge that gave access to the road network leading to Lashio, not far from the Chinese border, 200 kilometres north-east of Mandalay. Once they had this bridge in their possession, the Japanese decided on an immediate advance towards Lashio to separate British and Nationalist forces and capture a key Nationalist logistical and command centre. The Japanese took Lashio on 29 April, rendering any further resistance hopeless.
As the disaster unfolded, Stilwell, aware of the extent to which he had been built up in the press as an American hero, became worried: ‘What a sucker I’ll look if the Japs run me out of Burma.’41 His loss of Burma, however, was reported not as a defeat worsened by misconceived tactics, but as an impressive effort by ‘outnumbered forces who gave the best they had against a foe with more equipment’.42 His retreat, largely made by vehicle and in front of what he referred to as the ‘deluge’ of Nationalist ‘hordes’,43 was turned into an awe-inspiring tale of selfless leadership, with Stilwell said to have preferred to stay with his men as they marched through unforgiving jungle and over high mountain ridges rather than accepting an offer of being flown out.44 He was portrayed as the prototypical straight-talking all-American hero, preferring action to flowery words, in contrast to the politicians in Washington and London. The New York Times thundered that Roosevelt and Churchill ‘could learn something from General Stilwell, who is no orator but has been in the thick of battle. As for the lesser officialdom, it could sit at Stilwell’s feet and learn from him some salutary rules both as to diction and as to policy.’45
It would be unfair to place the blame for the Burma disaster on Stilwell. He arrived too late to make any real difference. Japanese superiority at sea and in the air, and the fact that the Japanese forces were more accustomed to jungle warfare, were the decisive factors. However, Stilwell’s attempt to begin a counter-offensive in contradiction of Chiang Kaishek’s orders cost the Nationalists some of their best troops. Chiang Kaishek fumed in his diary: ‘the responsibility for the enormous sacrifice of our forces in Burma lies entirely with Stilwell’s command failures. Rather than admitting his own mistakes, he just blames our senior commanders. When we began to lose, he was all in a fluster and only thought about fleeing to India, having no concern for our forces.’46 In reality, only two Chinese squads of eighteen soldiers accompanied Stilwell.47 He had asked Washington, but not Chongqing, for permission to head to India rather than China. Allied cooperation in east Asia could hardly have begun in a worse way.
Bad Blood
The place of China in the Allied strategy for the defeat of the Axis powers was never satisfactorily resolved. China could not simply be abandoned, partly for military and partly for political reasons. At least half a million Japanese troops were tied down there and China’s manpower and resources would become available to Japan if China fell or surrendered. The inclusion of an Asian country as a full member of the alliance was important for symbolic reasons. But that did not answer the strategic question of China’s function in the defeat of Japan.
All too real logistical difficulties impacted answers to that question. Supplies to China coming from the USA first had to round Cape Horn off southern Africa, then sail to Karachi on the west coast of India. From there they had to be transported by rail to Assam in eastern India and flown over the Hima layas, a dangerous route, to the city of Kunming in Yunnan province. Even then they would still be hundreds of kilometres away from the Chinese fronts. This journey took about four months.48 Convoys from the US to the UK took just a couple of weeks, meaning that much more could be achieved in a much shorter time by giving primacy to Europe.
The differing views of the two most senior US commanders in China about optimum use of the limited supplies that reached China turned the China Theatre into a site of acrimony. Even if General Stilwell managed to escape to India with two Nationalist divisions without Chiang Kaishek’s authorisation, the arrival of Nationalist forces there offered a practical way for the US to assist China at little cost. In early March, when Stilwell met Chiang in Chongqing, he had stated that the US was ready to train and equip thirty Nationalist divisions and that 800 US officers would arrive soon to assist with this programme.49 With the Burma supply line cut, the USA had no way to ferry the required supplies to China. However, 8,000 Nationalist soldiers were now in India and military supplies meant for China were accumulating there. The army training programme could therefore be implemented in India. The British were prevailed upon to provide housing, food and pay for the Nationalist forces and to allocate barracks at Ramgarh, 300 kilometres west of Calcutta, to the programme.50 The attractiveness of the project for the Nationalists was obvious; it allowed them to outsource the training of a large modern force. Additional troops were selected from various war zones in China. From October 1942, American transports began delivering 400 Chinese troops to Ramgarh per day; by the end of the year 32,000 troops were undergoing training there, a figure that would nearly double over the next two years.51
The question became what to do with this force, known as X Force. For Stilwell, the point was to drive the Japanese from north Burma in order to open up a supply line to China large enough to equip a new army in Yunnan province, which became known as Y Force. Once that army was ready, according to Stilwell, it should drive to the China coast to open a port there, and then take on the Japanese. Stilwell was convinced that the Japanese had to be defeated in China.52
That was not General Marshall’s view. In a memorandum to the USA’s Joint Chiefs of Staff dated 25 August 1942, he argued for ‘the re-opening of the Burma Road’, partly on the grounds that it would ‘keep China in the war’53 and prevent the ‘total collapse of Chinese resistance’.54 Boosting Chinese morale and demonstrating that the US stood with China were key objectives. A longer-range aim was to use the Ledo Road, from Assam to Kunming, as a supply line for US air bases in China from which the Americans could undertake bombing campaigns against Japan.55 The Ledo Road would be fitted out with an oil pipeline. Marshall did not believe that Japan needed to be defeated in China.
Stilwell’s view not only differed from that of his commanding officer, but also from the maverick, quarrelsome and flamboyant Claire Chennault, the man who had had a hand in designing the ill-fated attack on the Japanese flag-ship, the Izumo. Chennault had spent much of his youth hunting and fishing in north-west Louisiana. ‘Beyond the fringes of cleared cotton fields,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘I stayed out for weeks at the time’, happy in the presence of ‘wolves, bears, deer, wild turkey, occasionally panthers, and many smaller species of wild game’.56 He learned to fly in the Army Air Service in the First World War and became chief of the Pursuit Section of the Air Corps Tactical School, joining its aerial acrobatics team. He resigned his commission as captain in April 1937 because of ill health but also because of conflicts with his superiors about air tactics. Chennault disagreed with the prevailing view that bombers would dominate air warfare in the future and that they did not need fighter protection.57
Chennault went to China in 1937 on the invitation of Chiang Kaishek to knock the Nationalist air force into shape. The offer was attractive to him, not just because of the high salary that came with the job, but also because it provided an opportunity to prove his theories. Precisely because China was a peripheral theatre, it attracted a motley crew of people like Chennault, out of sorts and out of favour in their home countries. They included the Communist Agnes Smedley, a troubled denizen of Missouri who found her calling as a journalist, became the lover of an Indian independence movement leader and a supporter of the Chinese Communists, developing an obsession with General Zhu De, their commander-in-chief. Herbert Yardley was another one, a cryptanalyst who had established the USA’s MI-8, the Black Chamber dedicated to breaking enemy codes, in the First World War and had been hired by Chiang Kaishek to help break Japanese codes. Yardley’s memoirs of his days in China, full of gambling, drink and womanising, are highly readable, if short on information.58
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bsp; General Adrian Carton de Wiart stood out even among this group of eccentrics. A British officer born of a Catholic aristocratic Belgian family, Carton de Wiart had fought in both the Boer War and the First World War, during which he had been awarded the Victoria Cross. He regarded as his happiest days those spent shooting and hunting ‘in feudal splendour’ after the First World War on a Polish estate, which had been given to him.59 During the Second World War, he served in Norway, Yugoslavia and Italy, where he was imprisoned, including for four months in the Villa Medici in Rome, getting on well with some of his equally aristocratic wardens. Although shot in the stomach, arm, face, ankle, leg and ear, he declared in his memoirs that ‘frankly, I had enjoyed war’.60 To Carton de Wiart war was sport, jolly good sport. After being repatriated in 1943, Churchill sent him off, eye-patch and all, to Chongqing as his personal representative to Chiang Kaishek. It is often in peripheral theatres that one finds mavericks, attracted there for their own reasons or sent there because they are either not wanted or not appreciated at home.
Unconventional ideas can also find their chance in such places. Colonel Orde Wingate’s long-range penetration tactics, in which units were deployed far behind enemy lines and relied on resupply by air, were tested in Burma. Similarly General Chennault was able to try out his innovative air war tactics in China. Two ideas were central. The first was the importance of reliable intelligence so that fighters could be fed accurate information about the flight path of incoming bombers. Chennault developed a ‘spider net of people, radios, telephones, and telegraph lines that covered all of free China’. This provided warning of Japanese raids but also ‘located and directed friendly planes’.61 The second was that he trained his air crews to fly in pairs to slash through a formation of enemy bombers, ‘using speed and diving powers to make a pass … with one plane always protecting the other’s tail’.62 After one attack, they would ascend once more and then dive again, repeating the manoeuvre as often as possible.
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