The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [151]
On 5 March 1944, three Chindit brigades comprising over 9,000 men and 1,000 mules launched Operation Thursday, entering Burma in three separate places, with some landing by glider deep behind Japanese lines. This was far more ambitious than Longcloth had been, and was intended to cut off the Japanese Army of Upper Burma, threatening its rear as it marched towards the Imphal Plain. It was also hoped to cut the communications of the Japanese forces fighting against the Chinese armies in Burma under the effective command of Chiang Kai-shek’s chief of staff, the American Lieutenant-General Joseph ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell. A fourth Chindit brigade had already set off the previous month on an exhausting land route from the Naga Hills, across the Chindwin and over precipitous, 6,000-foot mountain ranges.
Within ten days of its launch, Calvert’s 77th Brigade succeeded in taking Mawlu, cutting Japanese road and rail links and getting his ‘strongholds’ supplied by air. Unfortunately Fergusson’s 16th Brigade, after a fatiguing overland march from Ledo that was to take over a month, was unable to capture the Japanese supply base at Indaw. Wingate’s Order for the Day for 13 March 1944 nonetheless read:
Our first task is fulfilled. We have inflicted a complete surprise on the enemy. All our columns are inside the enemy’s guts. The time has come to reap the fruit of the advantage we have gained. The enemy will react with violence. We will oppose him with the resolve to conquer our territory of Northern Burma. Let us thank God for the great success He has vouchsafed us and we must press forward with our sword in the enemy’s ribs to expel him from our territory. This is not the moment, when such an advantage has been gained, to count the cost. This is a moment to live in history. It is an enterprise in which every man who takes part may feel proud one day to say ‘I was there.’29
Tragically, an air crash at Imphal on 24 March killed the forty-one-year-old Wingate, who had possibly been warned by the RAF that sudden rainstorms made flying too dangerous at that time. ‘He died as he had lived,’ concludes one account of his campaigns, ‘ignoring official advice.’ Other accounts vigorously deny this, claiming that the weather and flying conditions were not as treacherous as has been made out. Like much else about his life, his death is surrounded with mystery and controversy.
On 9 April the Chindits were reinforced by hundreds of extra troops flown in by glider in a daring operation. The conditions they faced were horrendous: monsoon rain that could turn a foxhole into something approaching a Passchendaele trench in minutes; constant attacks of diarrhoea, malaria and any number of other tropical diseases; ingenious booby-traps and the ever present fear of them; highly accurate enemy mortar and sniper-fire; inaccurate maps; leeches; bad communications; reliance on village rumours for intelligence; sick and obstinate mules; low-nutrition food and bad water; mile upon mile of thick jungle in which it could take an hour to cut through 100 yards; the abandonment of the wounded and stragglers. These are the factors in Chindit warfare that crop up time and again in the memoirs of the survivors.30
George MacDonald Fraser, who was not a Chindit but who did serve in Burma, explained what it was like when two men of his section died in a jungle skirmish:
There was no outward show of sorrow, no reminiscences or eulogies, no Hollywood heart-searchings or phoney philosophy… It was not callousness or indifference or lack of feeling for two comrades who had been alive that morning and were now names for the war memorial; it was just that there was nothing to be said. It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less