Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (32 page)

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The next paragraph of the report set forth our joint proposals about operations in the Balkan peninsula. It read as follows:

13. General Wilson considers that a situation can be
anticipated in which the bulk of the German forces
south of a line Trieste-Ljubljana-Zagreb and the
Danube will be immobilised, and will so remain until
their supplies are exhausted, in which case they would
be ready to surrender to us or will be liquidated by
Partisans or the Russian forces. We have noted that as
long as the battle in Italy continues there will be no
forces available in the Mediterranean to employ in the
Balkans except:

(a) The small force of two British brigades from
Egypt which is being held ready to occupy the Athens
area and so pave the way for commencement of relief
and establishment of law and order and the Greek
Government.

(b)The small land forces in the Adriatic which are
being actively used primarily for Commando type
operations.

This was accepted by all of us without amendment or discussion.

The proposals for war in the Pacific dwelt on the importance of flexibility and short-cuts. The Allied superiority of naval and air power should enable us to avoid, wherever possible, costly land campaigns. In Southeast Asia it was agreed that the land advance into Burma from the north should be combined with the amphibian capture of Rangoon. I said that while I accepted the British obligation to secure the air route and attain Triumph and Tragedy

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overland communication with China, any tendency to overdo it would rule out our assault on Rangoon, which both the Chiefs of Staff and I wanted to capture before the monsoon of 1945.

The rest of the report was approved with little or no discussion. The planning date for the end of the war against Japan was set for the time being at eighteen months after the defeat of Germany.

The following passage requires verbatim statement:
33. Upon the collapse of organised resistance by the
German Army the following subdivision of that part of
Germany not allocated to the Soviet Government for
disarmament, policing, and the preservation of order is
acceptable from a military point of view by the
Combined Chiefs of Staff.

34. For disarmament, policing, and preservation of
order:

(a) The British forces, under a British commander,
will occupy Germany west of the Rhine and east of the
Rhine north of the line from Coblenz, following the
northern border of Hesse and Nassau to the border of
the area allocated to the Soviet Government.

(b)The forces of the United States, under a United
States commander, will occupy Germany east of the
Rhine, south of the line Coblenz-northern border of
Hesse-Nassau and west of the area allocated to the
Soviet Government.

(c)Control of the ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven,
and the necessary staging areas in that immediate
vicinity, will be vested in the commander of the
American Zone.

(d)American area to have in addition access through
the western and northwestern seaports and passage
through the British-controlled area.

(e)Accurate delineation of the above outlined British
and American areas of control can be made at a later
date.

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On Sunday, September 17, I left Quebec by train with my wife and daughter Mary to pay a farewell visit to the President at Hyde Park.

I lunched there on September 19. Harry Hopkins was present. He was obviously invited to please me. He explained to me his altered position. He had declined in the favour of the President. There was a curious incident at luncheon, when he arrived a few minutes late and the President did not even greet him. It was remarkable how definitely my contacts with the President improved and our affairs moved quicker as Hopkins appeared to regain his influence. In two days it seemed to be like old times. He said to me, “You must know I am not what I was.” He had tried too much at once. Even his fullness of spirit broke under his variegated activities.

After dinner I left for New York, and boarded the
Queen
Mary
the following morning. The voyage home was without incident. We arrived in the Clyde on September 25, and left immediately by train for London.

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11

Advance in Burma

The Relief of Imphal, June
1944 —
Ruinous
Japanese Losses — The Advance of the
Fourteenth Army — The Fight Against the
Monsoon — General Stilwell Captures Myitkyina,
August
3 —
His “Mars Brigade”— Mountbatten
Visits London to Explain his Plans — My Minute of
September
12
about the Operations — German
Resistance Compels Us to Postpone the Assault
on Rangoon — Hard Tidings for Mountbatten,
October
5 —
The Advance Continues — Changes
in the American High Command — General Slim
seizes two Bridgeheads Across the Chindwin,
December,
1944 —
Crisis in China — The
President’s Telegram of December
1 —
Withdrawal of Two Chinese Divisions and of the Transport
Squadrons — The Advance on Mandalay —

Reopening of the Burma Road, January,
1945 —

MyTelegram to Mountbatten of January
23 —

Winter Fighting in the Arakan — The Capture of
Akyab.

T
HE SWAYING BATTLE in Burma has already been described
1
up to the point when the initiative was about to pass into our hands. Japan’s invasion of India collapsed on the mountain plateau of Imphal
2
at the end of June 1944, when relieving troops from the north met the outward thrust of General Scoones’ garrison. The road to Dimapur was Triumph and Tragedy

199

open and the convoys flowed in. But the three Japanese divisions had still to be thrust back to and beyond the river Chindwin, whence they had come. Their losses had been ruinous. Over thirteen thousand dead were counted on the battlefields, and, allowing for those who died of wounds, disease, or hunger, the total amounted on a Japanese estimate to 65,000 men. The monsoon, now at its height, had in previous years brought active operations to a standstill, and the Japanese doubtless counted on a pause during which they could extricate and rebuild their shattered Fifteenth Army. They were given no such respite.

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The British-Indian Fourteenth Army, under the able and forceful leadership of General Slim, took the offensive.

Their XXXIIId Corps first cleared up around Ukhrul, while the IVth retook the southern part of the Imphal plain. By the end of July Japanese resistance was broken and the XXXIIId took up a general pursuit to the Chindwin. All along the mountain tracks they found evidence of disaster —

quantities of abandoned guns, transport, and equipment; thousands of the enemy lay dead or dying. The 5th Indian Division, thrusting south towards Tiddim, had at first a harder task. The Japanese 33d Division, which opposed them, had not been handled so roughly as the others and had been reinforced. The road twisted its narrow way through mountainous country and was easy to defend. One by one the Japanese positions were overcome, the 221

Group R.A.F., under Air Marshal Vincent, providing violent bombardments immediately before the infantry assaults.

Here, as everywhere in Burma at this time, progress, measured in miles a day, was very slow. But our men were fighting in tropical rainfall, soaked to the skin by day and night. The so called roads were mostly fair-weather dust tracks, which were now churned into deep mud, through which guns and vehicles had often to be manhandled. It is not the slowness of advance but the fact that any advance was made at all that should cause surprise.

In the Arakan our troops were held on an active defensive.

In that tangle of jungle-covered hills, with its narrow coastal strip of ricefields and mangrove swamps, the monsoon rainfall, which sometimes reached twenty inches a week,
3

stopped serious operations. On the northern front General Stilwell’s forces made steady progress. The capture of Myitkyina on August 3 gave him a forward base for future land operations, and, even more important, provided a

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staging post for the American air-lift to China. The famous

“Hump” traffic no longer had to make the direct and often dangerous flight from Northern Assam over the great mountains to Kunming. Work was progressing on the long road from Northern Assam, destined later to link up with the former road from Burma to China. The strain on rearward communications in Assam was relieved by a new oil pipeline 750 miles long laid from Calcutta, a greater span than the famous desert pipe-line from Iraq to Haifa.

For his southward advance Stilwell reorganised his five Chinese divisions into two “Armies,” one directed from Myitkyina on Bhamo and Namkhan, the other on Shwegu and Katha. The latter advance was led by the British 36th Division, which had been placed under Stilwell’s orders. It replaced the Chindit brigades
4
under General Lentaigne when, after nearly six months of arduous and exacting operations in which they had fought and overcome at least eleven enemy battalions, they were withdrawn for long-needed rest and recoupment. As a reserve in his own hands Stilwell retained his “Mars Brigade,” a mobile, lightly equipped force of about ten thousand men, whose principal component was an American regiment. With these forces he began his advance in early August to cross the river Irrawaddy, and, on his eastern flank, to get in touch with the Chinese “Yunnan” armies, about 100,000 strong, which were advancing from the river Salween towards Namkhan.