SEAC SOUVENIR - The Services' Newspaper of South Eas... http://www.cbi-theater.com/seac/seac_souvenir.html Unroll the map of this eastern half of the world. Without it you will find it hard to understand the war that nobody knows. We do not tell the whole story here, it would be beyond our purpose. For that would have to recount how Japan seized in a hundred days the widest dominion on earth. It would have to record the folly and failure of many people, the heroism and fortitude of so many more. Our tale begins long after the disasters of Hong Kong, Singapore and Rangoon. It leaves out the glory of Guadalcanal, New Guinea and Guam. These last were one hinge of the struggle to halt the march of Japan. Burma, the subject of this tale, was the other. Sometimes to the folks at home, these two have seemed to be totally separate affairs. To the Japanese they have always been a single, terrible war. The conquest of Australia was Japan's objective in South West Pacific. The Invasion of India was the task she set herself in South East Asia. Both these designs have been smashed, with a completeness which toppled down General Tojo, Japan's Man of the Victories, and destroying not only the springs of further Japanese aggression but the bases of her military survival. We, in South East Asia, know that enemy aircraft which were desperately needed to defend Saipan and Guam, vital links in Japan's Pacific island chain, had been shot down in combat over the jungles and paddy-fields of Burma. And we appreciate that crack Infantry divisions which might have reinforced the "March on Delhi" were trapped and are starving in the Pacific islands. We cannot tell it all here, and in any case there are chapters yet to write. In these pages we tell simply WHAT HAPPENED THIS YEAR ON OUR SIDE OF THE HILL. In the Burma Campaign, 1944, the Fourteenth Army and Eastern Air Command held and broke the enemy's advance on India, inflicting on him the greatest land defeat suffered by the Imperial arms since Japan entered the modern age ninety years ago. Some future Churchill, as historian viewing in the perspective of a world convulsion this merciless grapple in the jungle shadows, may find in it one of the turning points of the campaign in the Far East. None will ever write of these long marches, lonely patrols, and bloody battles save with profound admiration for the courage, endurance and supreme devotion to duty of the troops who fought and fell here in such numbers at the far-off post of honor. 1 of 43 26/02/2017 13:19 SEAC SOUVENIR - The Services' Newspaper of South Eas... http://www.cbi-theater.com/seac/seac_souvenir.html Though China's frontier with India stretches for 1,500 miles, the Himalaya Mountains bar all land passage; the only road is through Burma. The reconquest of Burma is essential both to build up bases and a solid front with China's armies for the final assault on Japan. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's Address to the Press, August 1944 SEVEN MONTHS' BATTLE My object in this Press conference is to try to put before the Press of the world that every effort has been and is continuing to be put into the South East Asia campaign; that the Burma battle front is a single unified front; that my plans are made in close consultation with my deputy, General Joseph Stilwell, and we carry them out with a common end in view. Please therefore look upon Burma as one big Allied effort, British, American and Chinese, with the help of the Dutch and the other nations that are with us. It is going extraordinarily well as an Allied effort. We do not want a lot of limelight, in fact we don't want any, but I go round and talk to the men in the Command and what worries them is that their ADMIRAL LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN, wives, their mothers, their daughters, their sweethearts and their sisters GCVO, CB, DSO, ADC. don't seem to know that the war they are fighting is important and worth Supreme Allied Commander, South while, which it most assuredly is. East Asia The South East Asia Command is a long way off; it is apt to be overshadowed in Europe by the climax of the war against Germany, and in the Pacific by the advances of Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur. Therefore, a major effort by Allied forces, doing their duty in inhospitable places, has been somewhat crowded out and the forces have not received their proportion of credit. My purpose this afternoon is to put their achievements before you. Enemy-held territory in the South East Asia theater extends 2,500 miles southwards from the north of Burma. The front on which we are at present fighting in Burma alone extends some 700 miles and is second only in length to the Russian Front. It is the hard land crust which protects the Japanese conquests in China and Indo-China. It is Japan's land route to India and, more important, the Allies' land route to China. Both offensively and defensively Japan has strained and is straining every nerve to 2 of 43 26/02/2017 13:19 SEAC SOUVENIR - The Services' Newspaper of South Eas... http://www.cbi-theater.com/seac/seac_souvenir.html hold Burma. In my appreciation of the achievements of the forces of South East Asia Command it must be borne in mind that the Japanese are fighting from interior lines. They control Burma's rivers, railways and roads and since they are a rice-eating army they live off the fat of the land. We on the other hand, are fighting from the most difficult lines of communication imaginable. Before 1943 there were no roads into Burma from the north, while the lower reaches of the Brahmaputra River are unbridgeable. Assam is, in fact, a logistical nightmare. Moreover, advancing as we are from the west, we are fighting against the grain of the country, for its steep jungle-clad mountains and swift flowing rivers, all running north-south, constitute a barrier instead of a route between India and China. In 1943 the imagination of the world was captured by a small force of British and Indian troops, under Brigadier Wingate, which made the first experiment in long range penetration and proved that we could outfight the Japanese in a kind of war which he had made his own, and under conditions which were to his advantage. It was a harbinger of bigger things, but in itself, of course, the experiment was on a small scale. At Quebec, the British and American Governments decided that the time had come to form an Allied operational command to take over the British Command from GHQ, India, and include the American Command in Burma and India, and be responsible for land, sea and air operations against Japan in South East Asia. In view of my original association with Combined Operations, a lot of people, myself included, jumped to the conclusion that large scale amphibious operations in South East Asia would at once be the order of the day. It need now be no secret that all the landing ships and craft originally allotted had to be withdrawn for more urgent operations in the west, and, in fact, carried the troops that assaulted the Anzio beaches and have subsequently been taking part in the invasion of France. The order to us in Burma was to "carry on with what we had left." Our plans had to be recast on a less ambitious scale but there was one thing we could do and that was to drive the Japanese out of the northeast corner of Burma, to improve our communications with China, and thus increase the supplies which are so badly needed to keep our Chinese Allies in the war, and to enable General Chennault to continue his effective operations with the U.S. 14th Air Force from China. A concerted plan was therefore made for the whole of the Burma Front to enable the forces in the northeast to advance. General Stilwell, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander and the Commanding General of the American forces in the China, Burma and India Theater, with great gallantry himself commanded the forces on the Ledo front. General Stilwell had under his command those Chinese forces which he had originally withdrawn from Burma into India and which had since been augmented. These forces are a good example of Allied collaboration, being equipped and trained by the U.S. and paid and fed by the British. "Merrill's Marauders," of the American Rangers, contributed valiantly to the successful advance of this force down the Hukawng Valley to Myitkyina and Mogaung. An advance in Burma is a different affair from an advance in France or Russia, since it has largely to be carried out along the single axis of your supply line and a relatively small force can thus stop the advance of a much larger force, however resolutely led. It thus became of the utmost importance that the overall plans for Burma should prevent Japanese reinforcements being able to bar the progress of the Chinese-American forces. There were two ways in which the Fourteenth Army could most materially help the advance of the Ledo forces. Firstly by cutting the communications of the veteran Japanese 18 Division who were facing the Ledo front, and secondly, by engaging the greater number of other Japanese divisions elsewhere in Burma.