To enable him to carry out this program the air transport line from India over the Hump would have to be built up and defended, but not, he added with obvious reference to Stilwell, according to present methods which “show a complete lack of conception of the true use of air power or even of basic military strategy.” Rather, given “full authority,” Chennault said he would defend the Hump as Scipio Africanus had defended Rome by striking at Carthage (that is, the Japanese home islands), or as Grant had defeated the South by cutting Lee off from his line of communications. The entire program was “simple,” a word repeated four times in the letter, as was the claim that “I have no doubts of my success,” and that if given real authority, “I can cause the collapse of Japan.” The prerequisite was that “I be given complete freedom of fighting action” and freedom to deal directly with the Generalissimo. The only reference to ground action in the document was to the effect that his program would “enable the Chinese ground forces to operate successfully.”
The letter was the self-annunciation of a military messiah. As such it explains the intensity of Chennault’s desire for the top command without which his messiahship could not function. It explains too why his resentment of Stilwell as the man in his way was to grow into venomous hatred. Militarily Chennault’s proposals had a certain “simple” logic which might have been operational if nothing else had been happening in the war. Given the various realities which he overlooked, his views, as Marshall said afterwards, were “just nonsense; not bad strategy, just nonsense.” To Roosevelt, however, this was not so clear. Chennault’s letter, which might otherwise have been dismissed as megalomania, carried the authority of a brilliant fighter of proven performance. His feeling for the upright pronoun echoed the self-assurance of General MacArthur, which in that time of gloom and confusion was almost welcome. Chennault merited attention not because the President believed he could bring about “the downfall of Japan” but because if he could accomplish even a portion of what he promised, it would be worth giving him the means.
Following the despatch of Chennault’s letter, the Generalissimo mobilized further pressure for Stilwell’s recall through his American confidant, Colonel McHugh, the Naval Attaché. A former language officer and author of a Chinese-language textbook, McHugh in the 1930s had been a close friend and golfing companion of the Generalissimo’s then-adviser, W. H. Donald, and in those days used to lunch three or four times a week at the Chiangs’. As an intimate of the palace circle, he served as Ambassador Johnson’s eyes and ears, much to the irritation of his fellow Attaché at that time, Colonel Stilwell, who saw McHugh always bustling with private knowledge and whispering to the Ambassador.
Chiang Kai-shek and Madame now summoned McHugh to lunch and emphasized the benefits to the Allied cause of replacing Stilwell with Chennault. McHugh heartily endorsed the suggestion in a report to Secretary Knox in which he stated that Stilwell’s insistence on the recapture of Burma was a personal ambition resulting from his defeat and represented a dissipation of strength preventing the effective employment of air power in accordance with Chennault’s program. The Generalissimo would be encouraged and “the war in this theater would be materially aided by the removal of both Generals Stilwell and Bissell and their huge staffs,” especially if “the baton were passed to Chennault.” The Generalissimo wanted Chennault in full control. Neither Bissell nor Brereton nor any of Stilwell’s air staff understood the basic principles of air strategy and Stilwell himself “does not even visualize the damage that could be done to Japan” by air attack.
Secretary Knox passed the report on to Secretary Stimson who showed it to Marshall who was infuriated, the more so when he learned that McHugh had repeated his thesis to Wavell in Delhi. Marshall believed this intervention caused “irreparable harm” to the American war effort in CBI and angrily required of the Navy that McHugh, who was then on his way home, should not be allowed to serve again in China. Meantime a copy of the document reached the President who read it, according to report, “with much interest.”
Already prepared to let Stilwell go, Roosevelt was receptive to the pressures on behalf of Chennault and to the idea of concentrating on air power. But he faced the opposition of the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff who considered the reopening of Burma essential, not in opposition to air power but in support of it. A dependable supply route was necessary to meet the needs of both ground and air forces operating in China. Stilwell himself mistakenly believed, as he wrote to Stimson at this time, that the ATC “will never be able to do more than supply very small quantities of important materials.” Less pessimistic, the War Department made the essential point, in commenting on Chennault’s plan and McHugh’s report, that even if the ATC could be built up to lift the necessary supplies, both the route and its terminal in Assam remained vulnerable to attack as long as the Japanese occupied north Burma. To save the air freight route it was necessary to move forces into Burma. To deliver combat materials to the Chinese ground forces a land route to supplement the air route was essential. These purposes could be attained, the Operations Division stated, “only by a fight to regain Burma.”
Uninterested in logistics or in the ground foundations of air power, Chiang Kai-shek never accepted this proposition. No more did Chennault and his many partisans.
At the War Department Chennault’s bid for the top command had no chance of being considered seriously. He was regarded as a maverick by the military establishment and had made matters worse by committing the unpardonable sin of going “outside channels” in appealing directly to the President and in continuing to mobilize the lobbying of his apostles. But the dynamics of a messiah complex do not admit of the impossible, and Chennault, fanatically supported by his public relations aide, Joseph Alsop, believed the command should and could be his. Assisted by the ceaseless efforts of Chiang and Madame who took for granted that anything was possible by political influence, and of Harry Hopkins who listened to Alsop, his cause was pressed with growing effect.
Marshall and Stimson separately and explicitly reaffirmed their support of Stilwell in interviews with T. V. Soong, who was leaving on October 10 to return to Chungking. They made it plain that the support had a purpose—the expectation of military action. As Stimson put it, the problem of supplying China depended on reopening ground communication, and that depended on military action, and that depended, since the British and Chinese admittedly did not get on well together, on the American representative being a “fighting military leader,” not just a smooth and diplomatic person. He asked Soong to tell Chiang Kai-shek that “pepper was required more than molasses.”
Privately Marshall informed Stilwell of the efforts through Currie and McHugh to have him recalled, assured him of support and advised him to “develop more of patience and tolerance than is ordinarily expected of a man, and much more than is your constituent portion.”
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In Chungking winter weather had set in, bringing rain, fog, mud and slime, but at least better than the terrible muggy heat of the last few months. Ho Ying-chin was in one of his cooperative phases. Prodded by Stilwell’s insistence that China must show action on the Thirty Division program to justify continuance of Lend-Lease aid, he offered to “settle everything.” “My God, can it be possible?” Stilwell asked himself. Each recurrent promise encouraged him to believe he was making headway.
To prepare the ground in Burma the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) despatched a mission headed by a former Treasury agent, Colonel Carl F. Eifler, with the principal object of denying use of the Myitkyina airfield to the Japanese. It was to organize sabotage of railroad tracks, bridges, rolling stock and river tankers in order to reduce shipments of fuel to the air base. Stilwell’s parting instruction was, “Eifler, I don’t want to see you again until I hear a boom from Burma!”
Given an assistant of ability and initiative, he was prompt to delegate authority. “He never told me what to do,” recalled General Wheeler who handled the vast logistic problems for the t
heater; “he just told me what he wanted.” While malcontents from time to time wanted to transfer to a theater of greater opportunity, the “old reliables” remained: Bill Bergin the Adjutant and “mainstay” of his headquarters staff, Carl Arnold, the senior aide in place of Dorn, who was now named Artillery officer; Powell, the Operations officer; Williams, the medical officer; Merrill; and Paul Jones. Stilwell had sent for his son, Joe Jr., then a lieutenant colonel, who arrived in November to serve as G-2, as well as his son-in-law, Colonel Ernest Easterbrook, who came with Colonel Arms to join the Ramgarh staff. He brought Jones up from Delhi because he liked to have an old friend around with whom he could talk about the family, and Jones was in any case invaluable. “Paul makes good wherever you put him—running a railroad, warehousing supplies, driving coolies or repairing trucks. I wish I had a hundred like him.” For those “who ran out on us,” Stilwell designed with the help of Pinky Dorn an Order of the Rat to be hung from a Double Cross. “Pinky is going strong—mad at lots of people….He keeps up a healthy hate for all hypocrites and stuffed shirts.”
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On October 14 after receiving the American reply to the Three Demands, Chiang Kai-shek undertook to engage in the offensive in Burma. He presented Stilwell with a Chinese plan of campaign (in fact Stilwell’s own plan) which again insisted, as a prerequisite for the participation of 15 to 20 Chinese divisions, on the British and Americans sending enough naval and carrier units to establish sea and air superiority in the Bay of Bengal and on an amphibious landing at Rangoon. The problem now was to commit the British. Stilwell left for India on that errand on October 15. To bring the two unwilling allies to the point of action he employed what he called his “sleeve-jerking” technique. “Hell, I’m nothing but an errand boy,” he explained. “I run up to Chungking and jerk the Gimo’s sleeve. I tell him he better get ready to move down the Salween because the British are planning to move into Burma from the south…and the Chinese are going to lose a lot of face if the British do it alone. Then I fly down to India and jerk Archie’s sleeve” and tell him, “The Gimo is going to move down the Salween and you better get going too. You Limeys are going to have a hell of a time with the white man’s burden if the Chinese have nerve enough to fight and you haven’t.”
The British were already making difficulties about the increase of Chinese troops at Ramgarh. Although Wavell had approved the increase, Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, referred the matter to London. Stilwell’s quills instantly went up. “So they are determined to bitch it. Sent George a hot radio asking for help.” If the British stopped the entry of Chinese, the insult to Chiang might cause him to “pull out of the whole show.” The British motive, Stilwell recognized, was “long-range policy: fear of Chinese-Indian cooperation.” Long-range policy—with reference to the Empire in the case of the British and with reference to domestic survival in the case of the Chinese—in fact governed the conduct of the war by both allies. Their concern was not simply how to win but how to emerge from the war with existing interests enhanced or at least preserved. The United States had not yet adopted the Clausewitz concept of war as a continuation of policy. War was still considered an aberration, something to be finished off as quickly as possible so that society could go about its regular business.
In Delhi Wavell raised all sorts of difficulties to make it plain that the incoming two divisions for Ramgarh were not welcome: the railroads were congested, 200 troops a day would have to be the upper limit, there was a shortage of trucks and animal transport, it was a diversion of resources from the Indian Army. “They don’t want Chinese troops participating in the retaking of Burma. That’s all.” Wavell wanted to know how many Chinese troops were still to come and what for. “WHAT FOR? My God! I told them to help our allies retake Burma.”
The British fear was not without basis. Some months later, in July 1943, the Chinese Ministry of Information published a map which revived ancient claims to include all north Burma as Chinese territory.
On the third day of talks with Wavell Stilwell found a remarkable change. “They will give us a sector at Ledo. They will supply us….Everything is lovely again, so obviously George has turned on the heat.” Wavell agreed in general to the ANAKIM plan for retaking all of Burma including Rangoon “as a basis for planning.” The slot assigned to Stilwell for the advance of the Chinese forces from Ramgarh was the Hukawng valley of north Burma, which the British were confident he would never get through. Myitkyina and its airfield and a junction with the Yunnan force was the objective. A joint planning staff was set up with Merrill acting as Stilwell’s representative. To move the Chinese from Ramgarh to Ledo and from there into north Burma and sustain them in the field would require, it was calculated, 800 trucks and 200 tons of supplies a day delivered over a 350-mile line of communications. The British offered 500 trucks plus animal transport for pack artillery and suggested, with some foresight, that air supply should be considered. A million Indian laborers were at that time engaged in construction of airfields. It was further agreed that the Americans would assume responsibility for building a road from Ledo through the Hukawng valley to supply the offensive as it advanced and eventually to link up with the Burma Road.
The Ledo Road was yet another project of the American “Support China” policy which was unwanted and disliked by the British. They would have preferred to maintain the roadlessness of the frontier in the interests of the shipping monopoly, and even more because they wanted no access to India for the Chinese. They agreed to the road on paper because of Washington’s insistence and because open refusal would have antagonized the Chinese more than ever, but they never ceased to oppose and obstruct it behind the scenes. Although British engineers had built a road through the Tamu Pass in country almost as difficult, they claimed the Ledo trace was impossible; it could not be done, it was a waste of effort, a drain on available resources. The reason they agreed to the Rangoon operation was in the hope of avoiding a completed road, but since what they really intended was to wait until they could go to Singapore, not Rangoon, this commitment was not very firm.
“It is no fun bucking two nationalities to get at the Japs,” Stilwell wrote home, but the prospects now seemed to him improved. He found “some good eggs” among the Limeys and he dined again with Lord Linlithgow who pumped him about probable Chinese action after the war and earned the comment, “He has done some thinking on his own.” Eldridge, the Roundup editor, wrote to the Stilwell family that Uncle Joe was still “hopping all over the place like a cricket…sticking his nose into everything” and violating all uniform regulations. The last to adopt the wearing of shorts, “he now wears them to dinner” although they were supposed to be barred after sundown. The old campaign hat, which proved airy and practical in the tropics, was held on by a shoelace instead of a leather strap.
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The Generalissimo in a new turn-about was now all willingness and cooperation. At a conference on November 3 he agreed to put 15 divisions on the Yunnan side, to put his available artillery with them and to be ready by February 15. When Stilwell said 15 would be plenty if they were good troops, properly led, Chiang quickly agreed, at Madame’s suggestion, to let him pick the divisions and name the commanders. As Stilwell recognized when he thought it over, this would have left him no excuse in the event of failure—had the offer been carried out, which it never was. Chiang agreed that Stilwell was to command the Ramgarh force and could fire Lo at any time and reiterated his insistance on naval and air domination “or he wouldn’t move.”
“Something has happened. If they mean what they said, it’s grand. The biggest step forward we have taken.” The unexpected agent of change was T. V. Soong, who had arrived in Chungking and was present at the conference. His own position depended on how much Lend-Lease he could produce. After his talks with Stimson and Marshall he had concluded that he could do better working with Stilwell than against him. He arrived with a gift of a watch and a cigaret lighter for Stilwell and had obviously persuaded the Generalissimo
that he could get more matériel from the United States by agreeing to military action than by resisting it. “Teevy” now became an active ally and intermediary with the Generalissimo, replacing Madame, who was shortly to leave for the United States. As measured by the absence of an uncomplimentary nickname, Stilwell’s appreciation of his help was genuine. Conferences with the War Ministry began to produce results. “Well this begins to look like something. Actually accepting an offensive operation. Actually assigning troops, reducing number of divisions, filling to strength, adding weapons, and attaching artillery….The word has passed that I cut ice here now; it is obvious in their treatment of me.”
At Stilwell’s insistence Teevy even obtained the promised removal of Yu Fei-p’eng, supply chief of the first Burma campaign, and of Tu Li-ming, former commander of the Fifth Army, from any connection with the Y-force—or so it appeared at the time. But in the case of Tu Li-ming, the inner obligations of Chinese relationships were stronger than promises, and each time Stilwell thought he was rid of him, Tu reappeared in another capacity.
Supply and transport for the reorganized 30 divisions from which the Y-force would be drawn were planned in discussions between the Operations staff of the Chinese War Ministry and General Wheeler who came up from Delhi. Depots and traffic control, medical, signal and engineer service, and equipment from mosquito nets to howitzers filled the agenda. The exact requirements in personnel and matériel needed to bring a reorganized Chinese regiment up to strength, and the percentage of the Lend-Lease contribution in each category had been worked out in detail by the American staff working with the Chinese Operations Division over the past months. For the initial operations of the Y-force it was calculated that 4,300 tons would need to be brought over the Hump in the three months before February 15. Since this cut into the cargo space for fuel for Chennault, he protested vigorously. Stilwell regarded him at this stage more or less tolerantly as an ill-disciplined prima donna rather than as a major rival. “Chennault with his squawk” he noted on the occasion of an earlier protest. “He’s a pain in the neck. Still sore at Bissell. Told him to shut up and take orders.” That was not going to suffice. The requirements of the Y-force, and Stilwell’s calculation of a continuing need of 3,500 tons a month for the Chinese ground forces, were soon to bring the issue to a head.