Chapter 201 Volume Six, Chapter Eleven Advances in Myanmar

June 1944 Imphal breaks siege Japanese suffer devastating losses Fourteenth Army advances against the monsoons Battle of Monsoons General Stilwell captures Myitkyina on August 3 His Mars Brigade Mountbatten visits London to illustrate his various missions September 12th My Memorandum on Combat Operations German resistance forced us to delay the attack on Rangoon October 5th Mountbatten got word of the difficulty to continue the advance of the US Army's top commander Personnel transfer China's crisis President Dec. 1st Telegram Two Chinese divisions and several airlift squadrons withdrew and advanced towards Mandalay. In January 1945, the Burma Road was reopened. On January 23, I sent a telegram to Mountbatten and captured Rakhine (Achabu) in winter operations. .

The vacillating war situation in Myanmar has already been described above, and the initiative is about to be transferred to our hands. [1] The Japanese invasion of India was defeated on the Imphal mountain plateau at the end of June 1944; at that time, several relief forces that came down from the north joined forces with the garrison that General Skoons had broken through.The road to Dimapur was opened, and car convoys were coming in.But the three Japanese divisions had yet to drive them back to the other side of the Chindoon River, from where they had come.The Japanese losses have been devastating.It is estimated that more than 13,000 people died on the battlefield. If the deaths of wounded, diseased or starved are included, the total, according to a Japanese estimate, reaches 65,000.The rainy season is now at its peak, and active combat operations have come to a standstill in this season in the past two years.No doubt the Japanese were counting on a respite, when they could free their shattered Fifteenth Army and regroup.We don't give them that respite.

【1】Refer to Chapter 31 of Volume Five, "Myanmar and Its Periphery". The Anglo-Indian Fourteenth Army, under the shrewd and capable leadership of General Slim, took the offensive.Their 33rd Army first cleared the battlefield around Ukrul, while the 4th Army captured the southern part of the Imphal Plain again.At the end of July, the resistance of the Japanese army was crushed, and the 33rd Army launched a general pursuit, which reached the banks of the Chindun River.The pursuit troops found signs of the enemy's disastrous defeat everywhere along the various mountain trails. A large number of abandoned artillery, transport vehicles and equipment; the enemy was killed or dying by the thousands.The Indian 5th Division's determined push to the south was initially a more difficult task.The Japanese 33rd Division, which fought against the division, was not as badly damaged as other units, and they had already received reinforcements at this time.The road to advance is winding and tortuous, like a narrow path through a mountainous area, easy to defend.One by one the Japanese positions were taken, and the 221st RAF, under the command of Air Lieutenant-General Vincent, bombed heavily immediately before the infantry could attack.Here, as elsewhere in Burma during this period, progress was measured in miles a day, extremely slowly.However, our soldiers fought in the tropical rainstorm, and they were soaked day and night.The so-called roads are mostly dusty paths in good weather, but now they are trampled into a thick layer of mud. Cannons and vehicles have to pass on them, and they often have to be pushed and pulled by manpower.It is not surprising that progress has been slow, but it is surprising that we are making progress.

Our troops were forced to take an active defensive position in the Rakhine Mountains.In that chaotic, jungle-covered hill country, bordered only by a narrow strip of paddy fields and swamps overgrown with mangosteen trees, the monsoon rainfall sometimes amounts to twenty feet a week,[1] bringing to a halt all serious combat operations. .On the northern front, General Stilwell's troops advanced steadily.As a result of the capture of Myitkyina on August 3, he gained a forward base for future land operations and, more importantly, a staging point for American airlifts to China.The famous Hump air transport no longer required the direct and often dangerous flight from northern Assam over the high mountains to Kunming.On the long road starting from the north of Assam, the project is constantly advancing, and it is scheduled to be connected with the old road from Burma to China.The tension in the rear lines of communication in the Assam region has been relieved by the successful laying of a new 750-mile oil pipeline from Calcutta, which is bigger than the famous desert oil pipeline from Iraq to Haifa. It will be longer.In order to advance south, Stilwell reorganized the five Chinese divisions under his command into two armies, one of which was ordered to move from Myitkyina to Bhamo and Nankang, and the other to Ruigu and Jiesha.The latter advance was led by the British 36th Division, which had been placed under Stilwell's command.This division took over from the Chindit brigades[2] commanded by General Rantan, which had at that time carried on a campaign which lasted almost six months and which had been fraught with hardship and danger, and which had at last defeated the enemy by at least eleven. The battalion is now withdrawn for the necessary long-term rest.Stilwell kept his Ares Brigade in reserve, a mobile, lightly armed force of about 10,000 men, composed mainly of an American regiment.He led these troops on the march in early August, crossed the Irrawaddy River, and on his eastern flank, made contact with the Chinese Yunnan troops of about 100,000 men who were advancing from the Salween towards Nankang.

【1】The average annual rainfall in London is about twenty-four inches. [2] Refers to the expeditionary force commanded by the late General Wingate that penetrated behind enemy lines. With regard to the future combat action policy in Southeast Asia, it was reviewed again at this time. After discussing with his three commanders in chief, Admiral Somerville, General Giffard and Air Admiral Pierce, Mountbatten set off for London Describe his plans.He had been ordered to advance into central Burma by land, and this advance must continue until the Fourteenth Army had crossed the Chindoon and joined Stilwell's forces from the north.However, as his communication lines are getting longer and longer, and the number of supply planes he needs to rely on is limited, it is difficult to say whether he will be able to reach Yangon from Mandalay.He therefore proposed a large-scale amphibious attack on Rangoon mentioned in the previous chapter, and assigned the code name of this operation to be Vampire.Once his troops gained a foothold there, they could push north to join Fourteenth Army.It was a very good idea, but required far more troops and ships than Mountbatten had at his disposal, which could only be obtained from North West Europe.

My views on this plan and its various proposals are contained in a memorandum of the Quebec Conference. PM sends General Ismay to Chiefs of Staff Committee Battle against Japan on September 12, 1944 Britain can take part in this war in two ways: one is: direct participation in some individual American operations in the Far East; The enemy, at the expense of its strength, recovers British territories occupied by the Japanese.Of the above two approaches, I favor the latter for the following reasons: (1) The following operational policy is almost always correct, that is, to seize the earliest opportunity and engage in the most protracted and uninterrupted combat with the largest number of enemies within the shortest distance.

(2) This would be best accomplished by direct assaults across the short shipping route across the Bay of Bengal, targeting vampires (Rangoon), long guns (Sumatra), or other first targets within reach. (3) Once the line of communication is stretched, the strength of the troops fighting the enemy will be greatly reduced. A large amount of oil poured in from one end of the oil pipe, but only a trickle flowed out from the other end. The length of the line was long, and the amount of leakage in the middle was incalculable. 2. On the above grounds, it is concluded that I object to sending any British troops to join the Australian and New Zealand forces under the command of General MacArthur.Our contribution will be both small and faltering.On the other hand, I am not opposed to supporting General MacArthur with a mobile force of the British Navy, including several aircraft carriers, or a few squadrons of the Royal Air Force, provided that the result of sending these forces does not impair our main operation across the Bay of Bengal That's fine.

3. Admiral Le Hai informed me yesterday that they have decided to accept the British offer to send a fleet to take part in the main operations against Japan.Therefore, organizing a detachment from this fleet to support General MacArthur's operations would not contradict this policy. 4. In sum, our policy should be to give maximum naval support to the major American operations, but to continue with our own advance to Rangoon as the prelude, or one of the preludes, to a future major attack on Singapore.This was Britain's highest aim throughout India and the Far East.This is the only thing worth striving for, for it will restore British power in the region, and in the pursuit of this we will give the greatest assistance to American operations, by means of It is to engage the greatest number of enemies at the earliest opportunity possible.

In the discussions at the Quebec conference we won the Americans over to our Rangoon plan.This portends many benefits for us.The troops of Britain and the Empire fought for six months in the mountains and jungles of Burma and on the frontiers of India, losing 288,000 men to disease alone.But attacking Rangoon by sea and advancing north would cut off the enemy's lines of communication and divide their forces.The defeat of the Japanese army in Burma would free up a considerable number of troops, which could immediately be used to attack targets across the Bay of Bengal. considered most beneficial.For this purpose, we decided to do everything possible to attack Rangoon before March 15, 1945.To launch such a combat operation, it is estimated that five or six divisions will be needed, but Mountbatten can only send two or three divisions, and at most one division can be squeezed out from the United Kingdom.Failure would mean not only unnecessarily many sacrifices due to disease due to prolonged combat operations in Burma, but also a setback in our entire further disposition to attack the Malay Peninsula and that region before 1946.

I had therefore suggested that the solution was to send an American division or two to Burma instead of to Europe.This plan was better than removing the two active divisions from Montgomery's force at once, and would allow more troops to be quickly engaged in the war against Japan without having to withdraw any troops fighting the Germans. I made it clear at the Quebec meeting that I did not ask for an immediate decision on this matter on the spot, but that all I wanted was that the Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces study my proposal.General Marshall agreed to do so, but for various reasons my suggestion was not adopted.The rosy expectations that I had not hoped for, that Germany would be defeated before the end of the year, had finally been dashed.At the end of September, it became clear that German resistance would continue into winter and beyond, so Mountbatten was instructed (not for the first time) that he must use everything at his disposal to arrange himself as best he could.Therefore, I sent a telegram as follows:

Prime Minister to Admiral Mountbatten October 5, 1944 The National Defense Committee has had to conclude that the March vampire program has been discontinued, and our Chiefs of Staff Committee has made this recommendation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States.You will then receive a formal order.At the same time, you must know that the reason for postponing this combat operation is not the attitude adopted by you and the Southeast Asian Military Region, but the influence of a much larger force on the Western battlefield.Now you have to move on to the November (1945) issue that brought the Vampire Project up for discussion.I am indeed very sorry that we were not able to carry out this plan of operations, which I had been so concerned about, but German resistance in both France and Italy has proved more tenacious than we had expected.We have to get rid of them first. During this whole time, my Fourteenth Army and Stilwell's Army were also slowly pushing forward.The Indian 5th Division captured Tiding on October 18 and, with the aid of concentrated and precise air bombing, cleared the enemy from Mount Kennedy, a commanding height of 8,000 feet.They fought forward from there until they reached the Jiling Temple.After the 33rd Army captured Davout, it dispatched an East African brigade to advance eastward.The brigade established a valuable bridgehead at Sittang across the Chindoon River. The rest of the 11th East African Division marched south along the Kebo Valley towards the Jiling Temple, arriving there on November 14 with the Indian Fifth Division.It was a formidable march through a country known for malaria and typhus, requiring great physical difficulties.Now all our units in Myanmar implement a good sanitation discipline, apply a new drug, Merbaklin, and frequently spray the insecticide DDT, which greatly reduces the disease rate.However, the Japanese army was not proficient in this precautionary measure, so hundreds of them died.The troops of the East African Division advanced from Keling Temple to Gariwa and crossed the Chindun River.Here the sappers built a bridge nearly four hundred yards in length in twenty-eight man-hours, and they performed many other feats throughout the campaign.In this way, General Slim's Fourteenth Army relied on the two bridgeheads across the Chindoon River on the central front in early December, maintaining an unshakable position for its main advance into the central plains of Burma. During November, personnel changes occurred among the senior military officers of the US military.Washington recalled Stilwell.The broad and varied functions which he held were succeeded by three others.General Wedemeyer succeeded him as Chiang Kai-shek's military adviser, General Wheeler became Mountbatten's second-in-command, and General Salton took over the northern front.Here, Allied forces slowly drove back two divisions of the Japanese Thirty-third Army.By mid-November, Bhamo was tightly surrounded, but the Japanese held on tenaciously for another month.On December 10, the British Thirty-sixth Division conquered the British capital.There, six days later, they joined up with the Indian 19th Division, which was advancing eastward across the river with a bridgehead at Chindun Kiangsi.In this way, after more than a year of hard fighting, advancing and retreating, the troops of the two allies finally joined forces. However, some dire administrative problems lie ahead.Far in the southeast of China, the Japanese had begun months earlier to advance towards the Generalissimo's capital, Chongqing, and to Kunming, the delivery point for American air supplies.In November, General Weydemeyer took the situation seriously.The forward bases of the U.S. Air Force stationed in China, which used to attack the enemy's coastal ships continuously, have been occupied one by one.The Chinese troops could not be counted on, so Wedemeyer requested that the two divisions of the Chinese troops in northern Myanmar be transferred back. At the same time, he also requested to transfer more U.S. Air Force squadrons, especially the three Air Force transport squadrons. The President of the United States sent me a telegram. President Roosevelt to Prime Minister December 1, 1944 I received a call from General Wedemeyer outlining the grave situation in China and stating that he agreed with the Generalissimo's decision to transfer the two best-trained Chinese divisions from Burma to the Kunming area.No doubt you have read this telegram, which was given to Mountbatten and your delegation in Washington, so I will not repeat it here. We have received General Wedemeyer's local opinion on the seriousness of the situation, and what he knows of it and his plans for operations in Burma. I think he understands the situation and what needs to be done better than anyone at this moment.Moreover, we were faced with the fact that the Generalissimo, in the midst of a serious crisis threatening the survival of China, had decided to send back the two divisions to prevent the Japanese advance on Kunming.If Japan captures Kunming, the land and air terminal, it will be of no use to us to open a land route to China.In this case I therefore think: we cannot put pressure on the Generalissimo to change his decision. This is difficult news, but we have no choice but to accept it. Prime Minister to General Hollis and to the Chiefs of Staff Committee December 2, 1944 The Grand Marshal's right to withdraw any division he requested to defend its vitals from Japanese attack was beyond dispute.I have no doubt that he would like to bring two divisions (American trained) home first.We cannot stand in the way of this.Let him call back if he asks.What happened in Burma (later) required urgent and immediate study.Please draft me a telegram agreeing to the withdrawal of the two divisions by the Americans. The loss of two elite Chinese divisions was not as inconvenient to Burmese operations as the loss of an air transport squadron.The Army Group was four hundred miles away from the starting point of the rail transport, and General Slim relied on air supplies to make up for the weak road connection.Several of Mountbatten's master plans depended on his transport planes to complete.The few squadrons China needed had to be transferred, and although others were later sent to replace them, most of them from Britain, the lack of air transport at critical moments greatly delayed the campaign. Despite all this, the Fourteenth Army broke through the mountains and into the plains northwest of Mandalay.General Stopford's Thirty-third Corps was on the RAF 2nd while a division in the lead of General Messervey's Fourth Corps was sneaking southward across the Irrawaddy to establish a bridgehead south of its confluence with the Chindoon. With the support of the 2nd Brigade, they went upstream from the confluence and occupied the north bank of the Irrawaddy River.The 19th Indian Division had crossed the river at two points forty miles north of Mandalay.By the end of January, General Salton's troops had reached Nankang on the Old Burma-Yunnan Road and joined the Yunnan troops further east.The land route to China, which had been blocked by the Japanese invasion of Burma in the spring of 1942, was reopened. The first convoy of land convoys departing from Assam arrived at the Chinese border on February 28. Prime Minister to Admiral Mountbatten (South East Asia) January 23, 1945 On behalf of His Majesty's Government, I extend my warmest congratulations to you for the fulfillment of the first part of the order given to you at the Quebec Conference, namely, the reopening of the overland routes to China.In spite of the delay and disappointment of the reinforcements promised to you on several occasions, you have still taken this front under the circumstances.Do this to yourself, to your field commanders, and above all to the tried and tested units of the Fourteenth Army. As you have done throughout, His Majesty's Government warmly acknowledges with gratitude the American Forces and the Chinese Forces for assisting us in every possible way at all times. The subsequent development of central Burma will be described in another chapter, but the Rakhine winter battle, though auxiliary, was an important one and must be described here.Its importance lies in two aspects.The airlift for the Fourteenth Army on the Mandalay Plain has almost reached the maximum that the Dakota aircraft can bear.Not only that, all the military supplies transported forward by this method must be transferred to the delivery airport via the frequent Assam Railway.If General Christsen's Fifteenth Army can establish several airfields south of Rakhine (Achab), then the planes carrying seaborne supplies directly from India can take off from there, and the Fourteenth Army can fly from Manda During the assault on the southern front that Le advanced to Yangon, he supplied the materials he needed.Secondly, if a single Japanese division, alone, was quickly routed in the face of our superior forces in Rakhine, we could support them with two or three divisions and those under Air Commodore Earl Bandon. The 224th Air Force Battalion of the Royal Air Force, transferred to fight elsewhere. The attack on Rakhine began on December 12 and made good progress.By the end of the month, our army had reached the gulf separating Rakhine (Achab) Island from the interior and was preparing to attack.On January 2, an officer on our artillery reconnaissance plane found that there was no sign of enemy troops there, so he landed at Rakhine (Achabu) Airport, and the local residents told him that the Japanese troops had withdrawn.Most of the garrison had been drawn farther north to fight; the remaining battalion had withdrawn two days earlier.This is the strange end of the long story of the Rakhine (Achab) War, which has caused us suffering and disappointment for nearly three years.Fifteenth Corps soon occupied Langley Island, built some forward airfields there, and, after a heavy fighting, took Congo on the mainland.At the end of January, Fifteenth Corps, like the troops further north, had reached its main objective and was preparing to advance further.