Tell Them of Us - The British Army in Burma 1941-5
Flying Pig
As far as dedications go, this article must be given to the hundreds of thousands of men who fought and gave their lives for King and Country in Burma during the Second World War. Its title comes from the epitaph laid for those who fell defending Kohima against the Japanese; perhaps an ironic one for men who were part of what became known as 'the forgotten army'. Yet however much they may have featured in the news reports back home, the actions of the British and Indian troops who defended a jungle-covered colony of an antiquated empire miles from home deserve never to be forgotten.
The Empire of Japan had joined the Second World War in December 1941 with the goal of acquiring land and resources to put it on a par with the great colonial powers. Its strikes into the European colonies of Asia - under the name of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere - had been both unexpected and thunderously successful, and it had dealt a severe blow to the United States Navy in its attack on Pearl Harbour. For Britain, the greatest humiliations came when the Japanese took Hong Kong, Malaya and crushingly the island fortress of Singapore from a combined force of British, Indian and Australian troops. From here the Japanese planned to march into Hindustan and conquer Britain's largest and most prosperous colony.
Japanese moves towards the invasion of Burma began among the 30,000 men of the Indian Army that they had taken captive in Singapore. It was hoped by the Japanese that once they had crossed the border into the Raj proper the already-strong local feelings towards independence would ignite and that the British would be thrown out of India by the Indians, leaving the way open for Japan to take over. They played to this anti-British sentiment by allowing a Bengali politician by the name of Chandra Bose to recruit their Prisoners of War for his Indian National Army, which would fight against the British with Japanese support. It is estimated that two-thirds of the Indian prisoners of war at Singapore chose service in his army over the brutality of Japanese captivity.
It had not been thought before the war that Burma would come under attack at all. As such, the commander of the Burma Army, Lieutenant-General Thomas Hutton, had only two divisions - the 17th Indian and the 1st Burma - available to him, and these were mostly populated by fresh recruits with new equipment. In the event of war, it was expected that the Chinese would support him, since their only source of supplies from the Allied powers came through the Burma Road running north-south across the country. The supreme commander for the theatre - General Sir Archibald Wavell, as Commander-in-Chief at GHQ India - had ordered Hutton to lay his defences in advanced positions, not appreciating the inferiority of the troops under his command and expecting reinforcements to come from his former command in the Middle East in the event of war.
The Japanese Army attacked with Thai support through Thailand and into the southern part of Burma. The British repelled some minor attacks in various places, but it soon became clear that their main objectives were the airfields at Tavoy and Mergui, both in the Tenasserim region, which were essential to the fighting over Malaya. The Burma Army had been ordered to hold these against the invaders, despite concerns that they would be almost impossible to reinforce: concerns which were vindicated on 18 January 1942 when the Japanese, having crawled over the Tenasserim ridge, attacked Tavoy with a regiment from their 55th Infantry Division. The defending force - composed of the 3rd and 6th Burma Rifles - was totally overwhelmed and evacuated Tavoy in chaos. The defenders of Mergui did likewise before they too could be attacked. For those few troops who had already seen combat elsewhere, fighting in the East was very different to what they were used to. In Europe and Africa, against the Germans or Italians, it was a given that rules of engagement would be followed and that if a medic found an enemy soldier wounded he would treat him as one of his own. The Japanese were as likely to bayonet a British casualty as they were to treat him, and there were many cases of Japanese wounded hanging onto grenades, detonating them as soon as Allied medics came near. On more than one occasion British officers were known to shoot the wounded to spare them a worse fate at the hands of the enemy.
Initially, detachments of the Royal Air Force (including a squadron of American volunteers known as the 'Flying Tigers') managed to defend the capital, Rangoon, from Japanese air raids. However, since the vast majority of the airfields that they were using were between Rangoon and the enemy, they ran rapidly short of places from which to launch aircraft as the Japanese troops advanced and seized ground, and once the Japanese began flying aircraft from the airfields on the Tenasserim it became increasingly impossible to protect the city, and before long indiscriminate bombing was a nightly terror for the local inhabitants.
The Japanese finally came towards Rangoon on 22 January, coming westward across the Kwakareik Pass. This position was held by the 16th Indian Infantry Brigade, which was totally unable to withstand the attack and dropped back at speed. Next, the Japanese division moved on Moulmein, at the mouth of the bridge-less Salween River so that the river was behind the defending brigade, in this case the 2nd Burma Infantry Brigade. They were stranded with their backs to the water, and day after day were compressed into a smaller and smaller space until the last day of the month, when, leaving all their equipment behind, they fled across the river - the lucky ones by boat, the unlucky swimming. 600 men were killed or taken captive, the wounded left for the Japanese.
The situation across the line was dire. Brigadier Jackie Smyth - a holder of the Victoria Cross from the Great War with a reputation for both extreme courage and hot-headedness - was acting Major-General in charge of the 17th Indian Division, now the only Allied formation between the Japanese and Rangoon. His men were holding the Bilin River, which was at that time of year scarcely more than a ditch with a trickle of water running through it. He sent messages to Hutton requesting that he be allowed to withdraw to the better defensive positions behind the Sittang, but - probably influenced by orders from his own superiors - Hutton ordered him to hold the line. Smyth hoped at least that the Bilin would provide a decent co-ordinating line and ensure that his forces could maintain some sort of unity in what was their first real battle, facing two very highly regarded Japanese divisions.
On 14 February shots rang out as the Japanese divisions attacked. Combat in a jungle is characterised by low visibility and is accordingly both chaotic and ferocious; troops engaged at very close quarters with their rifle rounds tearing through the dense undergrowth, often resorting to fighting with the bayonet and hand-to-hand. For two days the 17th held on, with Japanese troops constantly trying to outflank them and the British throwing in every reserve battalion available to keep themselves in the fight. Eventually, realising that the situation was hopeless, Hutton gave Smyth permission to withdraw and the division withdrew, battered and tired, under the cover of the night of the 19th back to the Sittang river. His men would have to move everything back on foot, under constant pressure and harassing attack from the enemy and falling victim to extreme heat and lack of provisions.
The British were woken on the 20th by the sound of aircraft overhead. Initially, the men believed that the RAF still had control of the skies and were startled by the whistle-blasts from their sergeants indicating an enemy air attack; diving for cover only as soon as they saw either the red circles on the aircrafts' wings or the advancing cloud of dust made by machine-gun bullets. Most of the troops were still armed with the same weapons as their division had been using since the end of the Great War, and they returned fire as best they could with the Lewis Guns, but not a single enemy aircraft was shot down. Those who could took cover in a nearby rubber plantation, but with water running low they had to move off the next day and they reached the Sittang seriously dehydrated and having come under sporadic Japanese fire for the entire thirty miles. The Japanese plagued them as they withdrew with their infamous cunning; British troops reported snipers tied into the tops of trees, and ambushes triggered by wounded men left exposed or shouts in English: the unfamiliar climate and territory, coupled with the very unfamiliar enemy, deeply unnerved the British soldiers.
There was at that time only one bridge over the Sittang, and the Japanese knew that if they could take it and disable the 17th they would have a clear route towards Rangoon. At 0500 they launched a small attack on Smyth's HQ at Kyaikto, which the British managed to repel. The British tasked a detachment of various units - including the Duke of Wellington's Regiment from Wiltshire - to protect the bridge.
Unfortunately, two brigades of Indian infantry - the 16th and the 46th - had dropped behind and were cut off to the east. Smyth had originally positioned the 1st Battalion of the 4th Gurkhas to the friendly western end of the bridge in case the Japanese landed paratroopers as his division made its way across, but they were soon rushed to the other side of the bridge when the Japanese came on foot from the east. The enemy charged, and would have taken the east side of the bridge were it not for the timely and courageous intervention of the 3rd and 5th Gurkhas, who attacked ferociously but were mauled and forced to disengage. The 17th fought the same vicious combat it had experienced at the Bilin for the best part of the day, with the two eastern brigades struggling unsuccessfully to link up with the bridge, and by nightfall on the 22nd still - just - held the bridge. Meanwhile, Smyth ordered his engineers to lay charges ready to detonate the bridge should the Japanese take it.
By the morning, with the Indian brigades still in contact and cut off from the main body of the 17th, it became clear that the Japanese had won and the bridge would fall within an hour. Smyth was faced with an agonising choice - whether to destroy the bridge leaving more than half of his battered division stranded on the other side of the six-hundred-yard river, or to leave it standing and allow the Japanese a clear route through to Rangoon. He chose the former, and the bridge exploded at 0530 hours. Fortunately for the allied troops, the Japanese did not have time to waste killing the stranded brigades and diverted immediately north, meaning that the survivors of the 17th were able to swim across the river. By the time they had consolidated, they were down to 3,500 men - not far over a third of their original strength - with 550 rifles, ten Bren guns, and twelve Thompson SMGs. Most of the men had lost their boots while crossing the river, and all the heavy equipment - artillery pieces from the Great War and Lewis machine-guns - had been lost.
The Sittang was now theoretically a fantastic defensive line, but the near-destruction of the 17th Division meant that the British had nowhere near enough troops to defend it. Wavell nevertheless gave orders that Rangoon should be held, expecting reinforcements, including an Australian infantry division, to come from the Middle East. Hutton was replaced by General Harold Alexander on the 28th February as commander of the Burma Army, and a furious Wavell sacked Brigadier Smyth the following day, replacing him with Brigadier 'Punch' Cowan. It is a fact that nobody who has not been in a situation where such high stakes hang upon a split-second decision can condemn Smyth for his actions, but other officers of the army, while reminding Wavell of how difficult the decision had been, did not feel that they could throw their weight behind the choice he had made and so nobody really spoke up for him. Smyth would not receive another command for the remainder of the war, although this was far from the end for the 17th which would see far more action in the months ahead.
Unfortunately for the British, the Australian government refused to allow its troops to be sent to Burma. Nevertheless, reinforcements did come from Britain and India, including the 7th Armoured Brigade and the 63rd Indian Infantry Brigade. The Burma Army's strategy became to give up Rangoon without a fight, but to convince the Japanese that the city would be heavily defended. To that end Alexander sent out counter-attacks at Pegu - forty miles from the capital - which were tactically successful and achieved their aim, but made it clear that Rangoon was all but lost to the Japanese. On the 7 March, the Burma Army burnt down Rangoon harbour, blew up its oil terminal, and began to pull out to the north.
The Japanese had already begun to surround the city and set up a heavily defended roadblock at Taukkyan, obstructing the Burma Army's line of retreat. The initial British attack on this position was small, made by a troop of the 7th Hussars supported by infantry, but it was beaten back having lost a tank and large numbers of foot soldiers. They tried again, sending a squadron from the Royal Tank Regiment and the 1st Battalion the Gloucestershire Regiment, supported by artillery, but were again unable to break through. Finally, two companies of the 13th Frontier Force Rifles were sent in, and when they were in turn repulsed the British fell back and established a defensive perimeter. During the night the Japanese pushed hard to break the British lines, but as the sun came up they were still firmly entrenched.
Two battalions - the 1st battalions of the 11th Sikhs and the 10th Gurkha Rifles - of the British contingent were fresh, having come back from Pegu. The British decided to send these two in, along with a squadron from the 7th Hussars and artillery support, on the morning of the 8th. Their advance into position was complete chaos; the Sikhs were mauled by a Japanese air strike and the Gurkhas managed to get lost and only arrived after the scheduled start time. To make matters worse, the artillery somehow failed to carry out their fire mission, but the Sikhs and Hussars pressed ahead anyway and, thanks to a sudden bayonet charge by the Sikhs, overwhelmed the Japanese defenders.
Unbeknownst to the British, their plan had worked perfectly. The Japanese had been totally convinced that Rangoon would be defended and their commanders had instructed them to press a quick assault to destroy the Burma Army rather than surrounding the city. As such the roadblock had been strong, but it was only in place to protect the Japanese flank and, once their troops had passed through the area, the bulk of its defenders had been pulled back. At about midday the Japanese 215th Regiment entered Rangoon to find it empty, and realised with horror that the column that they had previously thought to be only a detachment of the defenders was in fact the entire British Army in Burma. They gave chase, but had no real chance of actually catching it and had missed their golden opportunity to wipe out the Burma Army.
The Allies tried to regroup and oppose the Japanese in central Burma, expecting reinforcement from the Chinese Expeditionary Force of three Chinese armies each about the size of a British division. These Chinese forces were to hold a front south of Mandalay, while the British defended the Irrawaddy Valley. The Burma Army's divisions were transferred to a new formation - Burma Corps - under the command of one Lieutenant-General William 'Bill' Slim.
Slim was far from a typical general of his day. For one, he was bred from very different stock to the likes of many in the officer corps; his parents were impoverished middle-class sorts from the port city of Bristol, and he came relatively late to the army having worked as both a teacher and a factory foreman. He had started his career in 1914 as a private soldier in the Territorials - probably the most lowly man in Kitchener's Army - been made lance-corporal and then demoted soon after for accepting a drink from a lady by the wayside in Yorkshire. He had been the first man on the beach at Gallipoli and was wounded there, by that time a regular officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was discharged for his wounds from the army, but somehow managed to end up fighting with them in Mesopotamia within the year. Between the wars he transferred to the 6th Gurkha Rifles and gained there a huge fondness for the Indian Army and an unswerving loyalty to the British fighting soldier.
The General inherited a situation which was growing rapidly more and more untenable for his forces. Rather than slowing down their advance, as the Allies had hoped, the Japanese seemed to be pushing on with a new speed and vigour, adding two fresh divisions from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies to their two already in country. These were supplemented by the many captured British vehicles, giving them far greater mobility than their opponents, and the RAF had all but lost its grip on the skies about Burma. Japanese bombers were pounding every major settlement in the areas controlled by the British, and the Burma Independence Army was growing ever stronger and more troublesome for the British. To make matters worse, many of the ethnically Bimar (the majority ethnic group in Burma) soldiers of the Burma Rifles were deserting.