Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [223]
Fifty miles southwards at Myitche, where 7th Indian Division crossed the Irrawaddy on its way to Meiktila, Slim’s men were assisted by another diversion, which drew off the most effective local Japanese formation to meet a threat from an East African brigade at Seikpyu. So successful was this, asserted the British official historian blandly, “that it was counterattacked599 and driven back to Letse, thereby drawing away from the main battlefield the only formidable striking force the Japanese had in the area.” This account was a trifle disingenuous. In truth, Fourteenth Army was dismayed by the precipitate flight of the East Africans. An apologetic signal from their commander sought solace in the fact that one unit had retained its cohesion when the remainder fled: “Despite recent bad behaviour600 bulk 28 EA Brigade, 46 KAR (Nyasaland) remained unaffected…and have stood firm. Consider this fine performance especially in view behaviour remainder brigade.” Yet, while it was true that one significant Japanese unit went in pursuit of the East Africans, sufficient enemy remained at 7th Division’s crossing point, four miles above Nyaungu, to cause much grief to the South Lancashire Regiment.
Its men undertook the longest opposed river crossing of World War II. The Irrawaddy at this point was over 2,000 yards wide, which rendered it an alarming obstacle for heavily laden infantrymen in frail boats, even if the enemy was weak. The first of the South Lancs successfully rowed their boats across in silence and darkness during the early hours of 14 February. They established a bridgehead on the far bank without alarming the enemy. Then two Japanese were spotted swimming, apparently for pleasure. The enemy soldiers were shot, and thereafter a firefight developed. The rest of the South Lancs were late reaching the riverbank, and began the passage in daylight. Many of their boats’ chronically unreliable outboard engines puttered to a stop in midstream. Japanese machine guns began to rake them, killing two company commanders and wrecking wirelesses. The commanding officer’s boat was sunk. He and his companions with difficulty swam to safety back on the British bank.
The current began to sweep boats downstream, in a deadly parade past Japanese guns. A battalion of Punjabis which followed the South Lancs faced the same ordeal. Col. Derek Horsford and his Gurkhas watched the melodrama with mounting horror: “The South Lancs’ CO601 eventually staggered into the presence of the brigade commander stark naked, and collapsed before his eyes, totally exhausted by his own and his unit’s ordeal.” Yet matters were not as bad as they briefly seemed. Horsford’s Gurkhas made the crossing almost unscathed.
“With maddening sluggishness602 the boats nosed their way across the water,” wrote an eyewitness. “Two boats grounded on a submerged and treacherous sandbank, but the men, quite undaunted, waded shoulder-deep in the swift current up to the beaches. At last all the boats grounded and the men swarmed up the cliffs and nullahs to their objectives on the high ground. More and more boats followed, heavily laden with troops, until boats were going both ways in an almost continuous stream while the air and artillery curtain of fire moved gradually downstream, and then back again behind the cliffs and beaches.”
Once the British and Indian vanguards were ashore, they met little serious resistance. Some Japanese scuttled into tunnels, in