With the loss of both Guadalcanal and Papua, the Japanese were determined not to lose Lae, a somewhat precarious base farther up the coast on New Guinea, nor their other bases along the northern coast. Their attempt to reinforce Lae with 6,900 troops and a number of crated Zero fighters sent by sea from Rabaul in eight transports escorted by the same number of destroyers led to the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, when on 2 March 1943 Allied aircraft spotted the convoy. The result was a massacre as over the next three days more and more fighters, bombers and dive-bombers were summoned to attack ships the Japanese could only muster a handful of Zeros to protect. A new Allied technique of skip bombing, a variation of which would be employed two months later by the RAF against the Mohne Dam in Germany, proved especially effective. Bombs were dropped from masthead height so that their forward motion bounced them along the surface of the sea into the less well-armoured sides of the ships. Once crippled by the bombs, the ships were finished off by PT boats. By the end of the battle, only four destroyers made it back to Rabaul; they and two submarines had managed to rescue 2,734 soldiers and sailors from the water but around 6,000 others had drowned or been killed, including those machine-gunned in the water by aircraft and PT boats.* The loss of the convoy to Lae was a further blow to Japanese pride and Imperial Headquarters forbade the sending of any more convoys to New Guinea: from now on, the bases there would be supplied by submarine or barges with a shallow draught under which torpedoes would pass without exploding (or so the theory went).
In Tokyo the emperor was displeased – he thought the convoy destroyed in the Bismarck Sea should have been aimed much farther up the coast of New Guinea, where it might have been able to land its troops without interference – and Imperial Headquarters demanded a show of strength. This took the form of a series of air raids on Allied positions on Guadalcanal and Papua New Guinea, including one on MacArthur’s headquarters in Port Moresby, which, while a nuisance, had little effect and only incurred further losses of Japanese aircraft that could not be made good. Between June and September 1943 Australian and American forces were landed, some of the latter by parachute drop, east and west of Lae and by 16 September Lae and its associated base of Salamaua had been taken. The surviving Japanese, 7,500 of them, withdrew north, making for Sio on the coast. It was only fifty miles away but such were the terrain and the weather that it took them a month to get there, by which time the Allies were already planning to attack there too. Between December 1943 and January 1944 the Allies, mainly the Americans now, were established on the southern tip of New Britain and on the opposite coast of New Guinea, thus controlling the Straits of Vitiaz and cutting Japanese communications between Rabaul and New Guinea. When Australian troops supported by tanks advanced against Sio, the garrison there, augmented by the fugitives from Lae, had little choice but to embark on another jungle safari, this time to Madang, 250 miles up the coast. This too was a desperate ordeal and of the 12,000 men who began it, 2,000 died en route from disease, accident and starvation. Their commander, now Major-General Hatazo Adachi, was not with them – he had escaped from Sio by submarine.
Another Japanese foothold on New Guinea was the mountainous island of Biak. If Papua New Guinea looks like a turtle, then Biak is just to the north of the turtle’s neck, and on 27 May 1944 12,000 US troops landed there, expecting to deal swiftly with a few hundred Japanese. To their dismay, Allied intelligence had got it wrong and the garrison was around 10,000 strong, and determined to sell their lives dearly. The Japanese commander, a colonel, decided to allow the Americans to land and to advance inland, when they would then come up against his men dug in at the base of cliffs and in dug-outs scattered all over the mountainside. The American advance was slow and MacArthur sacked the commander and replaced him with the fifty-eight-year-old Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger, who had masterminded the assault on Buna. Finally, but not until August 1944, Biak fell.
Nevertheless, by the spring of 1944 the situation of the remaining Japanese on New Guinea was perilous: to the north was the sea, now controlled by the Allied navies, to the east were the Australians and the Americans, to the west were the Americans, and to the south was inhospitable mountain and jungle, while in the skies above the Allies had complete air superiority. The American two-pronged strategy was working, but they were still a very long way from Japan and the Japanese would never be driven out of their toeholds in New Guinea and its offshore islands: their army and navy commanders would only accept the inevitable when the Japanese emperor and government surrendered to the Allies in September 1945, and even then they took a week to make up their minds.
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In India, General Irwin’s plan for the reconquest of the Arakan went through several versions. In the end, there were insufficient ships to allow a series of amphibious landings; the terrain was thought unsuitable for flanking movements and there were insufficient aircraft to land a brigade behind the Japanese, so it was decided to make a straightforward advance down the peninsula. On 21 September 1942, 14 Division began its advance south from Chittagong. It had to make frequent stops to construct its own communications route and bring up supplies as it went and by 14 December the division had advanced 180 miles, or just over two miles a day, which even in thick, roadless jungle is poor going. Another pause to regroup and resupply gave the Japanese time to reinforce and by 6 January 1943, when the advance began again, resistance was severe. For the first time, the British encountered the Japanese bunker, their standard method of defence in the jungle.
A bunker was a hole dug in the ground then roofed and faced with tree trunks, over which was four or five feet of packed earth. It might hold anything from five to twenty men, and these were usually well supplied with machine-guns and light mortars. Bunkers were well camouflaged, very difficult to locate except at very short range and sited where they could support each other. Packed earth has the capability to absorb enormous shock, which is why it is a far better protection than, for example, concrete and these bunkers could often withstand a direct hit from an artillery shell with little if any damage to the occupants. When attacked, the Japanese would disappear into their bunkers and bring down massive artillery and mortar fire on their own positions, a tactic against which the men of 14 Division, attacking over open ground or through jungle with no overhead cover, had no answer.
Now the advance became even more tortuous and slow, with attacks on the tip of the Mayu peninsula being unable to penetrate the Japanese defences. Irwin sent more troops to reinforce Lloyd, and at one stage 14 Division, organized and staffed to command three or at most four brigades, was trying to command nine. Still Irwin would not allow Slim’s corps headquarters, which was structured to command two to four divisions, to get involved. Slim was ordered to send one troop of Valentine tanks to Lloyd, to be used as bunker busters, and his objection that a troop was far too small a unit to be effective was overruled. A troop was sent, and all its tanks were lost.
It was now clear that the Arakan offensive had ground to a halt, and Wavell had to decide what to do with his Long-Range Penetration Brigade, 77 Brigade, which had been organized and trained to be inserted behind enemy lines in support of a conventional offensive. The conventional offensive had failed here, and the options were to send in 77 Brigade anyway, to salvage something from the Arakan battle even if this meant revealing its existence to the Japanese, or to keep it until it could be used as part of a wider operation later. The brigade’s commander was in no doubt – he wanted to go and to go now. Brigadier Orde Wingate, forty years old in 1943, was one of those odd characters that the British military establishment throws up from time to time – ‘Chinese’ Gordon and T. E. Lawrence spring to mind – and who are regarded as dangerous lunatics or cutting-edge visionaries depending on one’s viewpoint. Wingate’s father, an army officer, was a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and his mother belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, and their non-conformism in matters of theology was reflected in their son’s frequent refusal to conform to a
ccepted military standards. Wingate was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1923, and his service in Palestine in 1937–38 turned him into an ardent Zionist when most British army officers, and most Foreign Office officials, were Arabist. When an Arab revolt directed against the British and the increasing number of Jewish immigrants settling on Arab land broke out, Wingate threw himself wholeheartedly into the operations of the Special Night Squads, composed of Jewish junior ranks recruited locally commanded by British officers and NCOs, and who aimed to out-terrorize the terrorists. Here he came to the attention of the General Officer Commanding in Palestine, Wavell, who always had a sneaking admiration for the unorthodox and protected Wingate from the consequences of his rudeness to those who had ideas other than his and his firm belief that he and only he knew how to conduct clandestine operations.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, Wingate, now a major, raised and commanded Gideon Force, made up of Abyssinian guerrillas commanded by British officers, during the campaign in Italian East Africa. He did well, but his arrogance and refusal to credit anyone else at all with any ability made him many enemies, and, when he returned to Cairo after the Italian capitulation, he attempted to cut his throat with a Bowie knife in a hotel bedroom. An officer in the room next door found him and had him taken to hospital, where his life was saved. Normally a failed suicide would not be permitted to remain in the army, particularly not an officer,* but Wavell, despite describing Wingate as a very prickly subordinate, saved him and when Wavell was rusticated as Commander-in-Chief India, he sent for Wingate, who as an acting lieutenant-colonel began to press the merits of special operations behind the enemy lines. The result was 77 Brigade and the rank of acting brigadier for Wingate. His troops were the unpromising Thirteenth Battalion the King’s Liverpool Regiment, a Territorial battalion raised at the outbreak of war and which had been on coastal security duties in England before being sent to the Far East, 2 Burma Rifles (Karens, Kachins and Chins with a few Gurkhas), and a company of army commandos, the whole being stiffened by Third Battalion 2nd Gurkha Rifles.
Wingate’s plan was to infiltrate his brigade – now to be known as the Chindits for the mythical Burmese beast, the Chinthe, that they adopted as their formation sign – in eight-company- or two-company-sized columns into northern Burma, 300 miles north-west of the Arakan front, to get behind the Japanese lines and cause as much mayhem as possible. They would travel light, carry mortars and radio sets on mules, be supplied by air drop and call upon RAF bombers in lieu of artillery. The daily ration per man was to be twelve ounces of biscuit (shakapura* for Indians and Gurkhas, hardtack ship’s for the British), two ounces of cheese, one ounce of milk powder, nine ounces of raisins, three quarters of an ounce of tea, four ounces of sugar, one ounce of sweets or chocolates, half an ounce of salt, twenty cigarettes and a box of matches. This was not exactly a balanced diet, and it was hoped to supplement it by fish or meat bought or trapped in country and with an occasional air drop of bully beef, but the medical establishment reckoned that men could remain physically fit on it for up to three months.
In February 1943 Operation Longcloth was launched from Imphal, 300 miles north-east of the Arakan; the columns crossed the Chindwin, moved into northern Burma and began to blow up Japanese railway lines and attack and ambush isolated Japanese supply columns and bases. The concept of supply from the air worked up to a point and in lightly held northern Burma the Chindits’ operations were mostly successful, but once Wingate took his columns east of the Irrawaddy River, the now aroused and very grumpy Japanese began to take notice. Eventually Wingate had to split his columns into small parties of ‘dispersal groups’ and order them to make their way back to India independently. Four months later, the last groups returned to Imphal. A quarter of the brigade had been lost, killed or, captured or had died of wounds or disease; they had only received their already sparse rations around half the time; they had perforce to abandon their heavy weapons and mules, and morale of the troops was not enhanced by the necessity of leaving their wounded behind in the care of locals, who might or might not hand them over to the Japanese. They had marched around a thousand miles and, while they had proved that, with proper preparation and enough air support, units could be maintained behind the Japanese lines, they had achieved nothing of strategic value and such damage as they had caused was quickly and easily repaired. To Churchill, however, always attracted by the maverick, here was something that could be trumpeted to balance the uninterrupted run of British defeats in Asia, and Wingate was summoned home and accompanied Churchill to the Quadrant Conference held in Quebec in August 1943. Quadrant was mainly devoted to discussions about a cross-Channel invasion in 1944 and atomic weapons policy, including a secret agreement signed by Roosevelt and Churchill whereby each promised not to use an atom bomb against the other, but the conference also heard Brigadier Wingate expound on his theories about long-range penetration in Burma. The Americans, anxious to reconquer northern Burma in order to open up the overland route to China and bring Chiang Kai-shek’s assets fully into the Allied campaign against Japan, were sold and Wingate was promised massive American air support and equipment in his next venture.
Argument still rages amongst soldiers and historians as to the merits or otherwise of the Chindits. On the one hand, they achieved very little for the time, energy and assets devoted to them; on the other, they had at least inflicted some damage on the Japanese and could be held up as a success story amid all too many failures. What is incontrovertible, however, is that the reports of the doings of the Chindits, suitably embellished, did act as a tonic both at home and in the United States and did publicize the doings of an army that, in Mountbatten’s words, was not so much forgotten as positively never heard of. Wingate returned to India and was promoted again – he had now moved from major to major-general in just over two years – with a brief to expand the Chindits to divisional size. With his elevated status and the confidence of the prime minister, his eccentricity knew no bounds. He grew a bushy beard, rode around on a grey horse, took to holding conferences stark naked except for a pith helmet and would attend a gathering of his elders and betters in Delhi with a large alarm clock set to go off in half an hour. (At least he was now clothed.) If when the clock rang a decision had not been reached, he would walk out. He stopped washing, on the grounds that it harmed the natural oils of the skin, and became more and more impatient, dismissive of his superiors and disregarding of the chain of command, sending missives direct to the prime minister (who had to be talked out of making him an army commander) and to the Secretary for India. It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the man was stark raving mad,* and the frequent comparison of him to various messianic Old Testament prophets, who in their dealings with burning bushes, angels, devils, flying carpets and ladders that reached to heaven can also be presumed to have been stark raving mad, tends to support that contention. That said, like many lunatics, he was certainly able to inspire many of those who worked with and for him, if not those above or distant from him.
There were other changes in the command structure emanating from Quadrant. The new post of Supreme Commander South-East Asia Command was created, to be filled by Lord Louis Mountbatten, while Wavell, raised to the peerage as a viscount, would succeed the Marquis of Linlithgow as Viceroy and Governor General of India, with General Sir Claude Auchinleck brought back from gardening leave as Commander-in-Chief India and Slim appointed to command Eastern Army, to be renamed Fourteenth Army. Mountbatten, now an acting admiral with the honorary ranks of lieutenant-general and air marshal, and in the view of many of his contemporaries grossly over-promoted, established a staff largely of his own nominees and far larger than his post required firstly in Delhi and then, after April 1944, in Ceylon. (That he imported as his personal barber an employee of Trumper’s in London and enlisted him in the RAF as a sergeant was, for example, thought to be just a wee bit over the top.) The new Supreme Commander was frustrated in his wish to direct operations personally – he had ex
perts from all three services to do that – but he did have to persuade British, Americans and Chinese to work harmoniously together and in that the famous Mountbatten charm was generally successful, except in the case of Stilwell, who saw straight through him.
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In the Arakan, on 18 March 1942 the Japanese, having beaten off every attempt to penetrate their defences, turned to counter-attack and 14 Division began to collapse. Irwin sacked Lloyd, took over the division himself, then ordered Major-General Lomax and 26 Division from Calcutta to replace 14 Division. By now the Japanese were infiltrating behind the British, and on 14 April Irwin ordered Slim and XV Corps to take over the battle. Slim quickly realized that trying to hold on to any part of the Arakan was not a practical proposition and began to organize a withdrawal. By 11 May the army was back where it started. Morale was severely dented, more equipment and vehicles had been lost, and, while battle casualties had been few, the sick list had grown alarmingly, largely from malaria. Only the onset of the monsoon stopped the Japanese from pressing them any harder. The remnants of Burma Corps knew that they had been out-fought, out-manoeuvred and outgeneralled. Tactically they had not been anywhere nearly as competent as the Japanese, and spirits were at a very low ebb indeed. It was now up to the commanders of the army in India to rebuild, retrain and re-equip their men to go back into Burma, and particularly to restore their confidence in their ability to beat the Japanese. General Irwin was now a busted flush as Commander Eastern Area; he had tried to dismiss the one British general in the Far East who really knew how to fight the Japanese – Slim – and, when Wavell refused to countenance it, Irwin did at least have the grace to send Slim a signal: ‘You’re not sacked – I am.’ Wavell, promoted to field marshal in February 1943, asked for General Sir George Giffard to succeed Irwin.
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