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which Slim’s men entombed them with explosive charges. In one place, astonished British soldiers saw Japanese survivors form up in full equipment, then march into the river to drown themselves. Other defenders proved to be halfhearted members of the renegade Indian National Army, who surrendered or melted away into the countryside. Within days, the British striking force was concentrated on the east bank of the Irrawaddy, with no Japanese capable of stopping the dash on which it now embarked, sixty miles eastward to Meiktila.

The Japanese were soon being forced back from the river everywhere Slim’s forces crossed. On 8 March, north of Mandalay the 19th Indian Division reported, “Opposition encountered appears very disorganised.” Its senior staff officer, Col. John Masters, wrote exultantly:

We rumbled down the cattle tracks in the heavy dust, past strands of jungle where the crackle of small arms fire showed that we had caught some Japanese. The tank treads clanked through villages blazing in yellow and scarlet conflagrations, palm and bamboo exploding like artillery, grey-green tanks squatting in the paddy round the back, ready to machine gun any Japanese who tried to escape before our advancing infantry…trudging along the sides of the road plastered with dust and sweat…The light hung sullen and dark overall, smoke rose in vast writhing pillars from a dozen burning villages, and spread and joined to make a gloomy roof. Every village held some Japanese, every Japanese fought to the death, but they were becoming less and less organised.

Even at this late stage, the Japanese commanders refused to acknowledge the British push towards Meiktila as more than a feint. Thus, when 17th Indian Division reached the town, its spearheads met only a ragtag defence, which was swept aside in the first days of March. The Japanese 15th and 33rd Armies in the north were now cut off. At last, Kimura understood how disastrously he had been outmanoeuvred. He perceived no alternative save to throw everything into an attempt to regain Meiktila. As the British poured reinforcements into the town by road and air, one of the most desperate battles of the Burma campaign began, while further north Slim’s forces closed on Mandalay. Each side deployed some six divisions. The Japanese, however, were obliged to do most of the attacking. Wherever they moved, they exposed themselves to British aircraft and artillery. While the units of Fourteenth Army were well-fed, heavily armed and equipped, those of their opponents were in sorry condition. There were around 3,200 Japanese in Meiktila itself, but most were service troops. Allied tanks moved boldly, because the Japanese were poorly supplied with anti-tank weapons and mines. Indeed, given the state of their formations, it is astonishing that Kimura’s soldiers put up the fight they did.

The 1/3rd Gurkhas, who were flown into Meiktila, fought their first action in defence of its airstrip. The battle proved “fairly traumatic,” in the words of its adjutant, Captain Ronnie McAllister. “The tanks took a pasting603 because we advanced across open ground, unreconnoitred. It was a general shambles. The Japanese did not open fire until our chaps were twenty-five yards away.” In earlier years back in India, McAllister, a career soldier, worried that he would be left out of the war. Now, however, he and his comrades found themselves in a nightmare predicament. They were led into battle by an old “dugout” North-West Frontier colonel named “Badger” Spaight, who was utterly confounded by the experience. To the relief of his men, after the first days Spaight was sacked, to be replaced by his second-in-command, Robert O’Lone, “who thoroughly understood what he was doing, after three years in the job.” Thereafter matters went much better, though in Burma the battalion suffered a total of four hundred casualties, almost half its strength. “The Japanese still had the reputation604 from 1944, and we were very scared of falling into their hands, but by now we had much more of everything than they did. It was obvious we