Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [221]
Deception on this scale was only possible when the Japanese had lost the capability to conduct air reconnaissance, indeed possessed negligible intelligence-gathering capability. They lacked transport swiftly to change deployments, and firepower to hit hard even when they did so. The open country suited British armoured and mobile forces. This does not diminish Slim’s achievement, however, in wrongfooting his enemy and masterminding an offensive which now began to inflict devastating casualties upon the Japanese, at small cost to Fourteenth Army. There was hard fighting in Burma between February and May 1945, when the British entered Rangoon. But the energy of Japanese defensive actions and counter-attacks reflected despair, rather than any realistic expectation of reversing the tide.
Fourteenth Army’s advance on Mandalay, November 1944–February 1945
EVERY MAN of Fourteenth Army experienced a surge of relief when, in the first days of 1945, they left behind the thick jungle and steep hills of northern Burma, breaking out into the flat paddy fields of the country’s central plain. “There was a wonderful594 spirit of freedom and sheer joy at being able to move in open country again, to see tracks and villages,” wrote Col. Ted Taunton of the Northamptonshire Regiment. “The bad spell of claustrophobia against which we had had to fight so hard during the past three weeks was a thing of the past.” When they met Burmans, however, they sensed uncertainty. Local people questioned whether the British had returned for good, or were merely conducting further Chindit-style guerrilla operations from which they would retreat once more into India, leaving inhabitants who had smiled upon them to face Japanese retribution. A divisional headquarters wrote of the Burman: “He is neither pro-Jap595 nor pro-British, he will go with the winning side. When the British left Burma he looted the British and if the Japanese are on the run, he will loot the Jap in the same way.”
Slim’s men found themselves facing not sustained Japanese resistance, but fierce local battles wherever the enemy thought these worthwhile, or found himself unable to withdraw. Maj. John Hill commanded a company of the 2nd Berkshires in his battalion’s attack on an abandoned village named Kin-U. No artillery was available, but three hundred mortar bombs plastered the area to cover their assault, on a frontage of two hundred yards. The British had advanced most of the way through the village before its eighty-odd Japanese defenders responded. These were desperate men—a captured diary showed that they had been feeding themselves on monkey and dog meat. They poured all the fire they could muster upon the Berkshires, whose gunner forward observation officer was badly wounded. By one of the drolleries of war, Hill found that this man’s replacement had attended the same prep school as himself. A sergeant-major was killed as he brought forward ammunition. Hill’s company headquarters became so heavily engaged that his second-in-command and storeman killed a Japanese soldier apiece.
At nightfall, the young captain led forward a patrol of Indian stretcher-bearers to his foremost platoon, pinned down by the enemy. They found two dead and one wounded British soldier, but could not locate the rest. Next morning, however, they awoke to find the enemy gone, having killed six and wounded seven of Hill’s company. This was a characteristic little action, of the kind which steadily eroded Slim’s strength. So grave was the worldwide British shortage of manpower that casualties, and especially junior leaders, could seldom be replaced. Fourteenth Army’s numbers shrank with every step that it advanced southwards.
From an early stage, though the invaders sometimes