By the time he returned to Burma the crippled 17th Indian Division had withdrawn from Rangoon toward Prome on the Irrawaddy. At the same time the leading division of the Chinese Fifth Army, the motorized 200th, had come down about level with the British to Toungoo on the Sittang.
The Allied idea, hardly firm enough to be called a plan, was to hold a line across lower Burma through Prome and Toungoo about 150 miles north of Rangoon. Joint operations on a horizontal line presented a certain difficulty because all communications in Burma ran longitudinally along three main river valleys. These were formed by the Irrawaddy and Chindwin on the west, by the Sittang and upper Irrawaddy in the center, and on the east by the great Salween, rising like the Yangtze in remotest uplands behind Tibet. Mandalay, the ancient capital, stood roughly in the center of the country on the banks of the Irrawaddy and at a fork in the railroad of which the western branch led to Myitkyina and the eastern to Maymyo and Lashio where it connected with the Burma Road. Chiang had not yet released the other two divisions of the Fifth Army, the 22nd and 96th, although Stilwell had obtained his promise to send them as far as Mandalay as soon as food supply could be arranged.
Stilwell established headquarters at Maymyo, the hill station and summer capital with dusty streets and lawns and gardens in the English manner where the British Government had now removed. The quarters for himself and his staff were in a red-brick Baptist mission house hung with purple bougainvillea and planted with roses, eucalyptus and honeysuckle.
The history of campaigns tends to be told in terms of the commanding officer, but he does not operate without a staff. Stilwell’s was mixed in capacity; as in any operation some were competent, some not. It was said of General Hearn, who was to remain Stilwell’s Chief of Staff until the end, that if you wanted something done you went to someone else, but his loyalty and dependability were compensating virtues. Among the line officers who served as tactical advisers and liaison with the Fifth and Sixth Armies was Colonel George Sliney whom a British colleague pronounced “one of the best artillery officers any army has produced.” The several graduates of the Chinese language program were invaluable and they were supplemented by Colonel Tseng Shih-kwei as chief interpreter. A graduate of VMI who had fought with bravery and distinction at Shanghai in 1937, he was endowed with the peculiar Chinese combination of worldly charm and strong character and was to remain a close and valued adjutant to Stilwell throughout his mission. None of the staff had prior experience of Burma—its food, roads, currency, transportation, politics or other components of the sea in which they swam. On the whole, given the circumstances, Stilwell did not have a staff adequate to the task confronting them. Too many, in the opinion of one observer, reflected “the influence of two decades of easy-going Army posts and country club porches.” The British, who were responsible for supply and transport for the Chinese, considered the American staff, with some justice, pitifully inadequate to handle the six (later nine) Chinese divisions. Stilwell in turn considered the British incapable of working with the Chinese “because they looked down on them.”
Burma, 1942
At Flagstaff House, the Victorian pile on the hill where beer in a silver mug was always ready for guests, British Headquarters consisted of one full general, one lieutenant general, five major generals, 18 brigadiers and 250 staff officers. They served a dwindled field army of less than 15,000, all that was left active of what had been two divisions plus the Armored Brigade. They wore shorts and insisted on writing what Stilwell called “Leavenworth orders” even when the sky was falling.
Stilwell paid a courtesy call at Flagstaff House on the Governor-General (Doormat-Smith in his diary), who was astonished to hear an American announce himself as commander of the Chinese armies in Burma. Puzzlement grew when General Tu Li-ming of the Fifth Army presented himself shortly afterwards in the same capacity. “Ah, Your Excellency,” he replied smiling, when Dorman-Smith asked how two men could hold the same position, “the American General only thinks that he is commanding. In fact he is doing no such thing. You see, we Chinese think that the only way to keep the Americans in the war is to give them a few commands on paper. They will not do much harm as long as we do the work.”
Tu’s version of the situation posed a recurring question between East and West: Which face of a mutual situation was the reality? Who was keeping whom in the war? What was the truth of Stilwell’s position? The problem caused his command in Burma to take on the complications of a Pirandello play.
While he was establishing relations with the Chinese generals a new commander appeared in Maymyo—the hero of Dunkirk, the very pattern of a gallant British Guards officer, the younger son of an earl, the man originally intended to lead the British share of GYMNAST, General the Right Honourable Sir Harold Alexander. He had come to take over command of Burma from Wavell who reverted to Commander-in-Chief in India. “If we could not send an army,” wrote Churchill, “we could at any rate send a man” although “never have I taken the responsibility of sending a general on a more forlorn hope.” Wavell had already reported that he had “grave doubts” of holding Burma. Alexander had a reputation for imperturbable cheer in peril and stress, gained under fire as a young lieutenant in World War I and confirmed in the desperate hours when he brought the British out at Dunkirk. He was said to have commented favorably on the marmalade while breakfasting in his “shiniest boots and best breeches” amid fear and fire on the beach. “Confidence spread around him,” according to Churchill, but to instill confidence into the defense of Burma at this stage was impossible.
Without roads or Rangoon no reinforcement in arms or men could be brought in even if they had been available. The day after the fall of Rangoon, March 8, Java surrendered, yielding 13,000 more Allied soldiers into prison camps or forced labor. Japanese broadcasts proclaimed the coming invasion of India. The date rounded out, since Pearl Harbor, the three most humiliating months of Western history in relation to the East. To the public in America the reality was obscured by grandiloquent pronouncements and drumbeating headlines, but not to soldiers bombed and wounded and retreating on the spot. They lost confidence in their leaders, in themselves and in a cause that for most of them was not their own. Men will fight in their homeland with no thought of giving up, but in Burma motive was lacking. Burma was the last ditch for no one except the Burmese, who only wanted the belligerents to go away. The despatch of Alexander was an empty gesture.
Stilwell met him with every anti-Limey antenna quivering on the alert. He saw a slight figure, a long, sharp nose, protuberant eyes, a Guardsman’s mustache and what he took to be a condescending stare. Alexander “let me stand around outside till Shang Chen came….Astonished to find ME—mere me, a goddam American—in command of Chinese troops. ‘Extrawdinery!’ Looked me over as if I had just crawled from under a rock.” When it came to a discussion of the channels of command, Alexander “just looked blankly at me.” Not to be gorgonized by a stony British stare, Stilwell gave him a “dirty look” in return. In the meantime he had radioed Chiang Kai-shek to send the 22nd and 96th Divisions to Pyinmana, 130 miles south of Mandalay, to back up the 200th which was under attack at Toungoo. While waiting for an answer he decided to act and told Lin Wei to start the movements. The British staff, informed of the move, were “pleased, trying to be friendlier,” and Alexander was “a new man, all smiles and jokes about how I’d gotten his Chinese troops away from him.” Relations improved except with Alexander’s Chief of Staff, a haughty character named Major General T. J. W. Winterton whom Stilwell dubbed “Plushbottom” from the Moon Mullins comic strip. He wired Marshall that cooperation had been arranged and “matter of command need not affect conduct of operations.” Stilwell believed Pershing had been right in insisting that national units be kept intact but he also believed in unity of command and was perfectly willing, if not happy, to serve under Alexander.
Action made everyone look better. Tu is “O.K. Solid on tactics. Ready to fight.” Lin and Hsiao and Shang Chen all agreed that
a fight should be made at Toungoo. Stilwell was “amazed at the way the Chinese accept me”—a judgment that proved superficial—and decided that “the only trouble is up top.”
Deficiencies were making themselves felt. Radios were few, communications poor, medical facilities lacking, malaria and blackwater fever appearing, his own staff not the most adequate to the circumstances and Japanese bombing steadily blasting one Burmese town after another. The enemy was able to put an average of 260 planes a day in the air against an Allied average of about 45, consisting of one RAF squadron and the dogged AVG fighters who accounted for a remarkable rate of kills despite a chronic shortage of fuel, planes, parts and pilots.
In the cool and pleasant surroundings of Maymyo the top-heavy British staff milled in confusion and planlessness for which Stilwell had the same remedy as in Washington: “The whole mob should sit down, say nothing for two hours and try to think.” But they could not think purposefully because they had no clear directive as to their objective after the fall of Rangoon: whether to hold as much of Burma as possible or to withdraw slowly while the defense of India was prepared. The one clear objective that received urgent attention was the building of an escape route over the long-unused road through the Tamu Pass in the Chin Hills to Imphal in India. In the back of every mind was the monsoon coming in the middle of May which would turn trails into mud slides and make Burma a trap unless there were egress by road. The hordes of Indians streaming out of cholera-ridden refugee camps at Mandalay toward the Tamu Pass were limited by the Army to 500 a day over the road so as not to interrupt construction.
Major Frank Merrill, a former Japanese-language officer who had come from the Philippines after Pearl Harbor to act as liaison with the British, told Stilwell the story of the Burma campaign up to now: “no plan, no reconnaissance, no security, no intelligence, no prisoners,” in contrast to the Japanese who had excellent communication, great aggressiveness and high mobility. In Merrill who was to play a leading role in Burma Stilwell found a valuable associate. He was a shrewd and genial soldier, tall, heavyset and shortsighted, with glasses perched on a sunburned peeling nose, who had enlisted in the Army at eighteen and afterwards taken the examination for West Point six times before the Academy decided to overlook his astigmatism and accept him.
Another remarkable man, Dr. Gordon Seagrave, appeared at Maymyo at this time to offer his services. An American Baptist missionary surgeon of long experience in Burma, he was unorthodox, uncompromising, outspoken and dedicated, with something of Stilwell’s caustic character and hatred of pretensions. He had organized a hospital in the Shan states and trained a staff of Burmese nurses and now came to offer his unit to serve the Chinese Fifth Army at Toungoo, preferring to serve under American Army leadership than under the British. Seagrave expected to be thrown out since he considered that Stilwell had never heard of him and would probably be prejudiced against missionaries and Burmese nurses. To his surprise the General and his medical officer, Colonel Robert Williams, agreed to his proposal and even asked for his ideas and suggestions on supplies needed for the Chinese troops. At the quickened pace of war he and Stilwell reached mutual understanding and respect with few words exchanged. It was apparent to Seagrave at once that bootlickers “didn’t even get a ‘good morning’ ” from the General and that he was best “when you are talking business with him for he gets the point before you are half through and his decision is quick as lightning.”
To persuade Chiang Kai-shek to unleash the Chinese divisions Stilwell flew back to Chungking on March 17 and with Shang Chen at his side battled with the Generalissimo for two days. “Every point he set up I knocked down. Just kept at it and at it….Exhausted.” Shang Chen conferred with Ho Ying-chin and Pai Ch’ung-hsi and two other members of the General Staff and to Stilwell’s astonishment reported that all four agreed on the need for action and would urge the Generalissimo to consent. Repeated arguments were even shaking Madame; “In fact she told me to keep it up.” Encouraged and relieved, Stilwell believed the Chinese were accepting his status “which is close to a miracle. At least I know now there are Chinese officers who would agree if they dared.” This knowledge gave him the first good night’s sleep since Calcutta, for he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the G–mo’s military ideas. He woke up on his fifty-ninth birthday without feeling for the first time in months that “all was lost.” At his first press conference since the announcement of his mission he professed his faith in “my troops”—the Chinese—and told the press that “the happiest day of our lives will be when Chinese and American troops together enter Tokyo.”
He received a birthday telegram from Marshall saying, “Your presence in China is a tremendous reassurance to the President, to Colonel Stimson and to me.” Conscious of the forlorn position to which he had delivered his best corps commander, Marshall continually sent him messages of appreciation in lieu of reinforcements. In response to Stilwell’s report of Chiang Kai-shek’s refusal to take orders from the British, Marshall dropped his insistence on unity of command and urged the British to permit a duality between Alexander and Stilwell if they wanted to make sure of the participation of the Chinese. Alexander appreciated the point and was agreeable. Roosevelt carried the matter to Churchill, who acquiesced.
In Chungking Chiang Kai-shek was yielding a little on the question of using the Chinese troops. Stilwell secured a promise that the 22nd Division could go down to the level of Pyinmana to support the 200th and could even help the British in case of danger at Prome, but only under Stilwell’s command and “only in an emergency.” Chiang insisted the 96th must stay at Mandalay. Whether the Japanese had the forces for an offensive toward the north was not yet clear. If nothing happened in a month, Chiang said, maybe the Chinese could attack (“He wants it to be easy”). He repeated that the Fifth and Sixth Armies must not be defeated, “so I told him to send someone who could guarantee that because I couldn’t.” Next day Chiang vacillated saying he would pull out entirely if the British gave up Prome. “He can’t make up his mind. Changeable.” Before Chiang could renege further Stilwell flew back to Burma and immediately on reaching Lashio signed the orders for movement of the Chinese divisions. He hastened on by car to the Fifth Army at Pyawbwe. The Japanese offensive had started and Toungoo was being attacked. Tu was worried. He agreed to hurry down the 22nd to support the 200th and to hurry over a division of the Sixth Army to back up the 22nd. Stilwell rushed back to Maymyo to arrange the movements. “The suspense till the 22nd gets going is bad.”
On that day calamity struck at Magwe, the airfield on the Irrawaddy 100 miles above Prome. A bombing raid by 200 Japanese planes caught the RAF and AVG by surprise on the ground. They retreated with what they had left to Loiwing in China, an AVG base just over the Burma border north of Lashio. After two or three halfhearted engagements with disproportionately heavy losses, the RAF squadron withdrew to India without informing General Alexander and did not participate further in combat or reconnaissance. By patching up and cannibalizing their damaged planes the AVG continued for a while to keep a small fighting force in the air. The pilots, forced to fly at a constant disadvantage, were growing bitter and mutinous and resentful of the failure to receive the comparatively small reinforcements with which they believed they could have achieved ascendancy over the enemy. Reinforcements in the form of the planes of the supersecret mission to bomb Tokyo were in fact scheduled to fly on to join Chennault, but the Tokyo mission was still four weeks off. Stilwell’s diary was terse on March 23: “No air support left now.”
This was the crux of the situation, he wrote to Stimson that night. The opportunity for “what might have been effective opposition has been definitely lost.” It had already taken so much time to get the G–mo to move his armies that the delay had “fatally compromised any chance we might have had here in Burma.” The Fifth and Sixth Armies had been sent in without any services at all: their rations, rail transport and fuel for trucks were supplied by the British. “As far as I can see, the
staff of the Chinese Army did not interest—or bother—themselves in any way about this expedition.” He had had to go personally to dig out the Surgeon General. The discipline and spirit of the troops was excellent but the Generalissimo’s “tactical ideas are fantastic.” He was obsessed by Mandalay and believed “the only way to defend it is to sit on it.”
Habitually Stilwell anticipated the worst and went on making the strongest effort he could. During the week of March 24–31 a frantic endeavor was made to bring the 22nd Division into position to launch a counterattack at Toungoo in order to break through the threatened encirclement of the 200th which was defending the town, and to hold firm the flank of the British at Prome. Four days passed, marked by long and mysterious delays on the railroad—arranged, as Stilwell began to suspect, from Chungking—before the 22nd was even brought into position. Twice Stilwell ordered the offensive, twice General Tu and his subordinates, after arguments, analyses, excuses and promises, agreed to perform, and twice the 22nd failed to move.
The edge of war moved north with incessant air raids, villages in flames, more and more refugees choking the roads in a long frieze of bullock carts, heat and thirst and dust. “Hell to pay on the railroad. Crews running away. No trains below Pyinmana. No trucks.” When Stilwell demanded 150 trucks, he was sent 50 by General Yu Fei-p’eng, the fat chief of supply who controlled 700 trucks at Lashio and was using them for the transport of military supplies to private warehouses in China. All Stilwell’s orders had to be relayed through General Tu to Lin Wei to still another liaison figure, General Hou, who had a secret radio set connecting with Chiang Kai-shek, for confirmation at the top; then relayed back down again before they could be acted on. At the same time Madame communicated the Generalissimo’s wishes to Stilwell in letters that arrived in a special letterbox by every plane on the Chungking-Lashio run. This procedure was followed because it was believed the Japanese could break the radio codes. The letters were full of warnings, admonitions and Chiang’s favorite piece of tactical advice: “He wishes to emphasize again to you the necessity of following the principle of ‘deep column tactics.’ ” Three letters came in one day with several changes of mind ending with renewed permission to move the 22nd Division which Stilwell had already ordered. “Christ, the mental load on a commander who has strings tied to him.”