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got,” warned 20th Indian Division’s commander, Douglas Gracey. “Use them with the greatest care.” The dash for Rangoon, in the first days of the monsoon, which came a fortnight early, represented the high peak of Britain’s war in the Far East. The Japanese were broken, even if some soldiers still possessed their familiar, terrifying will to fight: “I turned to see617 a Jap racing across in front of the bunker, a sword flourished above his head,” wrote a soldier of 17th Division south of Meiktila. “He was going like Jesse Owens, screaming his head off, right across my front; I just had sense enough to take a split second, traversing my aim with him before I fired; he gave a convulsive leap, and I felt that jolt of delight—I’d hit the bastard!”

A Cumbrian soldier said: “If thoo wez a Jap, an’ saw this lot coomin’618—Goorkas, an’ Pathans, an’ Sikhs, an’ them bloody great black boogers frae th’ East African Division—fookin’ Zulus, or suumat—aye, an’ us, an’ a—wouldn’t you pack it in?” For the last time in its great history, Britain’s Indian Army rode to the charge, triumphant after more than three years of defeat and disappointment. Slim himself was almost killed overflying Rangoon. Japanese fire hit his aircraft, wounding an American liaison officer. On 1 May, 25th Indian Division staged an amphibious landing on the coast south of the capital. Two days later, after killing four hundred of their own wounded who could not be moved, the Japanese abandoned Rangoon, and retreated eastwards. Prisoners at the city’s jail painted a huge sign on its roof for the RAF: JAPS GONE. EXDIGITATE. The British marched in.

The Japanese retreat from Burma was marked by systematic atrocities against Burmans and Indian civilians, who were tortured and casually killed until the very end. The vanquished vented their bitterness on any victims to hand. Through the months that followed, Fourteenth Army fought on against broken Japanese units striving to retreat eastwards into Siam—there were still more than 60,000 enemy at large—but Slim’s forces dominated the battlefield. The main campaign was ended. The British Union flag flew once more over Burma. The scale of loss on both sides619 highlights the fact that the decisive battles had been fought in 1944. At Imphal and Kohima, the Japanese suffered more than 60,000 casualties, the British and Indian armies 17,587. By contrast, in the Irrawaddy, Mandalay and Meiktila campaign Japanese losses were around 13,000, British and Indian 18,195—but only 2,307 of the latter were fatal. In the final, “mopping-up” phase, the Japanese lost perhaps 28,000 men, Fourteenth Army 435 killed. As in every Far Eastern campaign, overall loss figures mask a huge disproportion in numbers of dead. Thirteen Japanese died for each fatal British and Indian casualty. Significantly more Chinese fell in the struggle to reconquer Burma than did British soldiers. The Raj’s Indian volunteers paid most of the human price for victory. The Japanese lost around two-thirds of all their forces deployed. The remainder were able to escape across the land frontier into Siam, whereas escape from the Pacific islands was almost impossible. The modest British figures masked heavy losses suffered by some rifle companies. Just 12 out of 196 men who had entered Burma with B Company, 2nd Berkshires, in November 1944 remained in its ranks in June 1945. Five officers and 107 men had been killed or wounded, while the unit as a whole lost 24 officers and 374 men. “I began to realise how much620 the battalion had changed,” wrote Maj. John Hill. “So many had left us and so many arrived…We had very few men left who lived in Berkshire.”

Slim’s drive on Rangoon, April–May 1945

ON 9 MAY, in the very hour of its triumph, Fourteenth Army was struck by a thunderbolt. The hero of the campaign, their commander, was summarily relieved. The supremo of Burma operations, Gen. Oliver Leese, a former protégé of Montgomery’s in North Africa and Italy, had never thought much of Slim. Leese chose this moment to announce his replacement. Slim’s chief of staff, Brig.