by David Rooney
The Chindits and the concept of long-range penetration were the brainchild of Orde Wingate, who fearlessly espoused their cause. Tragically for them, after visiting Broadway and congratulating the Chindits his plane crashed on 24 March and he was killed. His death was a major factor in the future destiny of the Chindits and Stilwell. The appointment of Wingate’s successor involved one of the most bizarre incidents of the Burma war. 111 Brigade under Lentaigne had flown in to Chowringhee but had not been heavily involved with the enemy. Despite this, Lentaigne had apparently lost his nerve and ‘his bowels turned to water’. An even earthier comment was that he kept shitting in his pants. John Masters, Lentaigne’s Brigade Major and later well known as an author, faced a serious dilemma. He was urgently pondering how he could get a message out to Chindit HQ saying that Lentaigne must be relieved of his command when a signal came in that Lentaigne had been appointed to command the whole Chindit operation. This meant that instead of the fiery and abrasive Wingate arguing the Chindit case with Slim and Stilwell, there was the supine Lentaigne whose nerve had broken. He had been a brave colonel but was now hopelessly out of his depth.
Apart from his weakness, the appointment of Lentaigne had other repercussions that were to cost the Chindits dear. His unit had been transferred to the Chindits against their wishes, and with both Morris and Masters he openly derided Wingate’s ideas. When Lentaigne flew out to take over the Chindit HQ, a substantial part of his brigade was detached and sent up to block the Bhamo to Myitkyina road. Then, to the amazement of the brigade’s officers, he appointed his crony Masters over the heads of more senior colonels to command the main part of the brigade.
At this stage the role of the Chindits – and particularly their relationship and involvement with Stilwell – was influenced by strategic decisions. On the ground, Calvert’s defence of Broadway and White City against all the forces the Japanese could throw at him (including the new 53 Division which had been flown in to support the attack on Imphal but was diverted to Broadway) had completely closed the rail and road supplies to the Japanese army facing Stilwell. Further east Morris Force, which had been detached from Lentaigne’s brigade, had hurried north and cut the road to Myitkyina from Bhamo. Thus the Chindit operation had fulfilled the agreement made at Quebec that their main role would be to support Stilwell.
While the battles at Kohima and Imphal were still raging, Slim went to Stilwell’s headquarters and discussed the wider issues, including the role of the Chinese divisions. Stilwell continued his disgruntled criticism of the Limeys and their commanders, which was in sharp contrast to Slim’s more generous attitude. After the visit Slim wrote:
In all these actions Stilwell kept a close hand on the Chinese troops, steadying them when they faltered, prodding them when they hesitated, even finding their battalions for them when they lost them … Stilwell met me at the airfield looking more like a duck hunter than ever, with his wind jacket, campaign hat, and leggings … I was struck, as I always was when I visited Stilwell’s headquarters, how unnecessarily primitive all its arrangements were. There was, compared with my own or other headquarters, no shortage of transport or supplies, yet he delighted in an exhibition of rough living, which like his omission of rank badges and the rest was designed to foster the idea of the tough, hard-bitten, plain, fighting general. Goodness knows he was tough and wiry enough to be recognised as such without the play acting Stilwell, thank heaven, had a sense of humour and he could and did, not infrequently, laugh at himself.
One topic that was high on their agenda was the possibility of moving the Chindit brigade westwards from Broadway so as to have a more direct influence on the fighting at Imphal. This would have been a great asset at the time, but Slim rejected the idea and kept loyally to the Quebec agreement. He wrote later that it was a mistaken decision and the Chindits would have been more effective fighting against the Japanese in retreat from Imphal. Next Stilwell, Slim and Lentaigne discussed the proposal that was crucial to the future of the Chindits – that 77 Brigade from Broadway and the main part of 111 Brigade under Masters should move north in order to have a more direct effect on the battles in the Mogaung valley and the approaches to Myitkyina.
The whole issue was bedevilled by the continuing suspicion between the Americans, the British and the Chinese and between the different pressure groups. The Chiefs of Staff in Washington had to decide on priorities between the demands of the build-up for the Normandy invasion in June, of MacArthur’s drive across the Pacific, and of Stilwell’s fight to capture Myitkyina and reopen the Burma Road. Most Americans were suspicious of British aims and continued to believe that Mountbatten, who previously had commanded Britain’s Combined Operations Forces, in fact preferred an amphibious operation that might lead to the recapture of Singapore. This suspicion substantially increased when the headquarters of SEAC moved from Delhi to Kandy in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in April 1944. Critics reasonably asked why such a huge logistical exercise should be undertaken when the battles for Mogaung, Myitkyina, Imphal and Kohima were still raging.
Stilwell, on the ground in the Mogaung valley, had sound reasons for opposing the idea of moving the Chindit brigades to the north. By blocking the supplies to the Japanese divisions that faced him, the Chindits had made a major contribution to his success – though he never acknowledged this. If they moved north towards Mogaung he feared, correctly that the large number of Japanese units which were still attacking Broadway and White City would move rapidly north as soon as they were abandoned. He wanted the Chindits to stay at Broadway to keep the supply routes closed and to continue to tie up the substantial Japanese forces in the Indaw area. He argued this case vigorously with Slim and Mountbatten and the Chiefs of Staff. He continued to argue, as he had consistently since the end of the 1942 retreat, that his top priority was to reopen the land route to China. Romanus and Sunderland, in describing this matter, state that ‘Stilwell feared that in retreating to the north the Chindits would bring with them the swarms of Japanese they had attacked’.* Slim, in his book Defeat into Victory, does not even mention the decision about the role of the Chindits although he was closely and directly involved in it. It is not certain who initially put forward the proposal to move the main Chindit units to the north, though Lentaigne, like Slim a former Gurkha officer, appears to have been the main supporter of the idea. Slim seemed to be happy to go along with it, and in fact had to go to see Stilwell to gain his acceptance. Two factors probably influenced the decision: the difficulty in supplying Broadway and White City by air during the monsoon, expected in mid-May, and Lentaigne’s rejection of Wingate’s thesis. Shelford Bidwell, who was generally critical of Wingate, wrote that Lentaigne ‘would have to change from milling around in scattered columns all over the jungles of Northern Burma in Chindit fashion, and concentrate his forces according to more orthodox tactics’.† Thus, for a variety of complex reasons Slim and Lentaigne implemented the crucial decision: that Broadway and White City should be abandoned, that 77 and 111 Brigades would move north towards Mogaung, and finally – and disastrously for the Chindits – that they would come under Stilwell’s command.
From the time that Stilwell took over the Chindits there were four main elements to the north Burma campaign: the move of 111 Brigade to a stronghold, code named Blackpool, near Mogaung; the campaign, under his orders, of 77 Brigade to capture Mogaung; the approach of Morris Force to Myitkyina from the south; and his own main drive down the Mogaung valley and the dramatic approach by Merrill’s Marauders to Myitkyina. For the sake of clarity these will be described separately.
111 Brigade and Blackpool
Militarily this was the least important Chindit operation, but it illustrates in dramatic fashion many of the major issues that arose between Stilwell and the Chindits, as well as the significance of Wingate’s ideas on long-range penetration. The failures of 111 Brigade also gave ammunition to Wingate’s detractors – especially those in the military establishment, who to this day nurture their unreasoning criticism. The injustice of such c
riticism will become obvious because the failures of 111 Brigade were caused almost entirely by Masters’ rejection of all Wingate’s precepts.
The brigade flew into Chowringhee (Indaw) on 6 March 1944 immediately after 77 Brigade flew to Broadway. They made almost no contact with the Japanese and, largely because of Lentaigne’s poor leadership, spent five days milling around, at the end of which they had achieved nothing and were totally exhausted. They should have destroyed the railway south of Indaw but failed to do so. There was much comment in 111 Brigade that when behind enemy lines Lentaigne and Masters – and their other crony Morris, who led the group up to the Bhamo road – were ‘excessively timid’.
When Lentaigne, after he took over the whole Chindit operation, first proposed to send 111 Brigade, now under Masters, to form a block at Blackpool, Calvert and the other Chindit leaders were aghast because the plan rejected all of Wingate’s ideas. In spite of this opposition, on 23 April Lentaigne ordered the brigade to move north and establish a block on the railway where it approached Mogaung. At the same time 77 Brigade was ordered to move out of Broadway and, after a brief rest in the Gangaw hills, to move towards Mogaung. There were now five Chindit brigades in Burma, and, because Lentaigne and Slim did not intend to use them in their proper long-range penetration role, there are fairly solid grounds for the view of the critics that a great many highly trained troops spent time wandering about in the jungle without achieving very much. Before his death Wingate had foreseen, and had outlined in detail, an aggressive long-range penetration role for the Chindits as the Japanese retreated from Imphal and Kohima. These ideas were ignored, and under Lentaigne and Masters the Chindits were condemned to massive casualties because Wingate’s precepts were ignored.
Masters described the Blackpool campaign in his book The Road Past Mandalay. He wrote that he thought he should have challenged the order to go to Blackpool but felt it would make no difference ‘because the hand that pulled us away was not that of Joe (Lentaigne), but of Slim acceding to Stilwell’.* This view is inaccurate since, as is now well known, Stilwell strongly opposed the Chindits’ move, but it does highlight Slim’s responsibility for what happened. Masters describes in detail how he decided on the exact position of the Blackpool base, and his description proves that he totally ignored Wingate’s basic rules for a stronghold. The first and absolute rule for a stronghold was to place it in rough country where the enemy could not approach with heavy artillery or armour, with the result that the stronghold could be defended against everything else with weapons that could be flown in – as was brilliantly illustrated at Broadway. Masters ignored this basic precept at dire cost. Before his brigade had time to dig slit trenches at Blackpool or put up barbed wire they were pounded by Japanese artillery. Experienced Chindits felt an atmosphere of trepidation and doom as they approached Blackpool, and ‘Underlying all their anger and fury was the conviction that if Wingate had been alive they would not have been at Blackpool at all’.† 111 Brigade established Blackpool early on 8 May 1944, and from that moment the Japanese artillery, together with their terrifying 6-inch mortar, continued the daily assault. On 17 May they put down a particularly savage barrage. Louis Allen wrote that the Japanese barrage merely reinforced Wingate’s precepts.‡ Another of his fundamental precepts was the establishment of a serviceable airstrip both to bring in food and ammunition and to fly out the wounded. At Blackpool there was a dangerous hump in the middle of the airstrip that wrecked several aircraft, inhibiting use of the strip. Then the Japanese brought up anti-aircraft guns along with their other artillery and shot down planes coming in to land. Finally the severe monsoon storms made flying very difficult, and during the last disastrous days of the occupation of Blackpool almost no supplies were flown in and no wounded were flown out. Unlike Wingate, who constantly visited his front-line units, Lentaigne, who never visited Blackpool, seemed by his indifference to compound their suffering and became an object of thinly veiled contempt. The troops muttered, ‘Had Wingate lived this would never have happened.’
These were the unhappy and disastrous events that led to a major crisis between Stilwell and Lentaigne. Lentaigne’s plan had been for two brigades – 14 and 77 – to support the Blackpool base, but because of a particularly severe onslaught by the monsoon neither of the brigades arrived in time to help. 111 Brigade began to set up Blackpool on 8 May. By 20 May, with dwindling supplies of ammunition and food, increasing numbers of badly wounded men and the pounding of the whole area by Japanese artillery and monsoon storms, Masters was sending urgent signals demanding immediate relief or permission to withdraw. Later he wrote harrowing descriptions of the suffering, but he never admitted that most of it was caused by his initial mistakes and his rejection of Wingate’s precepts for establishing a stronghold. As often happens in war, he was fiercely critical of everyone else. Of the time when the other brigades failed to reach him he wrote: ‘40 flaming columns of Chindit bullshit sat on their arses and drank tea and wondered how we were getting on.’*
On 24 May another Japanese attack forced back the perimeter held by a Gurkha unit and the whole position rapidly became untenable. Masters gave the order to withdraw on 25 May and then had to make a heart-rending decision. He agreed that gravely wounded men, some of whom had lost arms or legs and could not possibly be moved, should be shot rather than leave them to the doubtful mercies of the Japanese. The shattered remains of the brigade then moved slowly south towards a village they had passed only seventeen days before. There is ample evidence of the mutinous feelings of many Chindits who thought that Blackpool was doomed from the start. One wrote, ‘If Stilwell or Lentaigne or even Slim had appeared they would not have lived to see the dawn.’†
The disaster of Blackpool and the Chindit 111 Brigade has been described in some detail because Masters’ decision to abandon the base became a major issue in the fraught, tense and bitter discussions between Stihwell on the one hand and Mountbatten, Slim, Lentaigne and SEAC on the other. Stilwell demanded further efforts from the Chindits – as he did from Merrill’s Marauders – at a time when the men were in such a pitiable condition that further effort was impossible. The doctor with 111 Brigade, an intrepid Ulsterman who was himself recommended for the VC, told Masters that most of the brigade were on the threshold of death from exhaustion, undernourishment, exposure and strain. Men died simply from a cold, a cut finger or the least physical exertion. Stilwell saw the abandonment of Blackpool as another example of cowardly Limeys rejecting his orders and refusing to fight. One wonders if he would have voiced that view if he had had the slightest knowledge of their physical and mental plight.
Romanus and Sunderland described the moment when Stilwell learned that Blackpool had been abandoned. ‘While Stilwell and Lentaigne were conferring on 25 May on holding a position (Blackpool) near the railway … and were agreeing that it should be evacuated only in a case of emergency, the block was already being evacuated. Stilwell’s anger at this course of events, together with the steadily declining strength of the Chindits, created a crisis which soon required the attention of the highest S.E.A.C. officers.’* This sorry tale of bitter recrimination between Stilwell and all the Chindit units continued from May through to July. Behind it lay Stilwell’s obsession with capturing Myitkyina and his failure to understand the long-range penetration role of the Chindits. He held to his view that if a man could walk he could be used as front-line infantry. And his anger followed 111 Brigade. After leaving Blackpool the brigade reached a location near Lake Indawgyi having lost more than one-third of its strength, carrying nearly 200 badly wounded men and every day losing men who died from total exhaustion. ‘They were so spent and drained that at any rate no further operations could be called for. Then came the incredible order: 111 Brigade was to move out and attack Mogaung from the west while 77 Brigade took it from the east.’†
After a very brief lull during which over 600 casualties were flown out from Lake Indawgyi in Sunderland flying boats, the brigade accepted its orders and moved n
orth through the continuing monsoon towards Mogaung. It was ordered to capture a hill, Point 2171, overlooking the Mogaung river. There, from 20 June to 5 July they endured what many survivors said were worse conditions than at Blackpool. The Japanese held the hill with well-prepared defences, but eventually the Gurkhas – in a wild attack led by a Gurkha officer who won a posthumous VC – finally captured it. Then in July, for no obvious tactical reason and after more than two weeks of suffering and carnage, the brigade was ordered to withdraw – prompting the bitter question, ‘What was the point of attacking the hill in the first place?’ Increasingly they believed it was the weak Lentaigne passing on the hellish orders of Stilwell. When they withdrew Masters threatened to resign his commission unless his men had a medical inspection. One hundred men were found to be fit for duty out of a brigade of more than 3,000 who had moved to Blackpool on 8 May.
77 Brigade and Mogaung
When Lentaigne first proposed the idea that 77 Brigade should move north from Broadway and, with 111 Brigade, approach Mogaung, Calvert could hardly believe it. He had provided exemplary leadership at Broadway and White City and had repulsed every Japanese attack. 77 Brigade had destroyed the strength of far more Japanese fighting units than Stilwell ever faced. Calvert, like others, was horrified because Lentaigne’s orders ignored all of Wingate’s precepts, which had been fundamental to the whole Chindit approach. He was warned that his signals came close to insubordination. In the end he had to give way, and with a heavy heart he handed over Broadway to the Nigerian Chindit Brigade and led 77 Brigade northwards to the Gangaw hills. Here they rested for a few days, took additional air drops of food and were able to enjoy relief from the stench of rotting bodies which had been their permanent accompaniment at Broadway and White City.