The Battle for Burma: Wild Green Earth

Bernard Fergusson

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473827158
• eBook ISBN: 9781473878426
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Bernard Fergusson was one of Orde Wingate's Column Commanders in the heroic but battered Chindit expedition behind Japanese lines in Burma in 1943. By 1944 Wingate had persuaded Churchill and Roosevelt that a bigger force, on the same unorthodox lines, could make a strategic difference. Aged 32, Fergusson returned to Burma as part of this, as a Brigadier, leading the only Brigade in the new force which entered Burma on foot. It was one of four Brigades which established well-defended strongholds within Japanese-occupied Burma. Fergusson also reflects candidly, and often humorously, on different aspects of the campaign. These include the ingenuity and sheer courage of the US Army Air Force pilots who flew in supplies and evacuated wounded. One glider pilot whom Fergusson saw making a particularly bad landing turned out to be Jackie Coogan, child star of Chaplin's The Kid, and later known as Uncle Fenster of the Addams Family. In apparently light hearted, but often profound sections, he analyses the management of a large and diverse force, up against physical extremes far from normal amenities and command structures; the importance of maintaining morale and of medical management; and, not least, an immediate portrait of Wingate himself, whose death at a crucial stage of the campaign and the conflicting or at least confusing orders he left behind directly affected Fergusson's men and the fate of the campaign.The Wild Green Earth follows the author's account of the 1943 campaign, Beyond the Chindwin. Both were written with the events, and reactions even the smells fresh in the author's mind, and vividly but sensitively conveyed. The excitement of the narrative remains today. And the reflections are timeless, fascinating for those with an interest in leadership and motivation as much as for readers of military history.

PART ONE

I

LEDO

I THINK it was originally John Fraser’s1 idea that we should go in from Ledo. The easiest routes to the Chindwin were all closely watched by the Japanese, mindful of our exploits in 1943; and although we might have fought our way across, we could not have done so without giving ample notice of our coming. General Stilwell’s so-called “Ledo Road” had crossed the Patkai Hills at their lowest pass, and had already reached the Chindwin in the Hukawng Valley. It might be possible to go so far over his road, and then to swing away on one flank or the other. By so doing, we should by-pass the battle which he was fighting, and, thus avoiding entanglement, be free to march southward the three or four hundred miles to our old stamping-ground near Indaw. Two other Brigades, under Mike Calvert and Joe Lentaigne, were to be flown into the same approximate area, and were scheduled to arrive there at much the same time as my own. Their detailed tasks were not yet settled, whereas mine was: to capture the two airfields of Indaw, and to hold them while one and possibly two ordinary (non-Chindit) divisions were flown in to exploit.

So Katie Cave of the Rifle Brigade, my splendid second-in-command, went off to Ledo to make contact with the Americans. Katie was a good deal older than I, but a friend of ten years’ standing, who since 1937 had been my brother’s commanding officer in the jungles of the southern Sudan. In order to come to grips with the war, he had, after much pleading, been allowed to relinquish his command of the Equatorial Corps, to step down in rank and to come to Burma. It was a good day for us when he did.

The Brigade was moving up by train. John Marriott, my Brigade Major, and I arrived by air on the 22nd of January, and met Colonel Cave at the Headquarters of General Boatner, General Stilwell’s Chief of Staff. Colonel Cave had two patrols out looking for possible routes over the hills, and both of them had so far failed to find any. Stilwell’s Hukawng Valley forces were heavily engaged in what constituted a defile, and it was clearly not practicable to cross in the same area and still avoid contact with the enemy. The Dalu Valley, the next along to the westward, had only one exit south of the Chindwin, which might be worth looking at, but which would probably be held. The weather was atrocious, the hills huge, the jungle hideous, topographical knowledge nil, maps bad, and outlook distinctly gloomy.

Stilwell was, as usual, forward with his troops, and I resolved to go and see him. His “ Road” was a mass of mud and boulders, narrow and constantly blocked with land-slides. At best it took thirty-six hours to reach his advanced headquarters over the hills at Shingbwiyang (familiarly known as “ Shing”). So I borrowed a couple of light aircraft off the genial Boatner, and set off with John Marriott in one and me in the other.

It was certainly big country, and my heart sank as I peered at it from the little aircraft. The map on my knees, at which little draughts of air kept twitching, boldly marked a track here, another there; but none were visible in the tangled jungle five hundred feet below us. I could not help feeling that the anonymous cartographer had assumed, with some excuse, that nobody would ever come here to check his work. Nobody with any sense ever would; and yet I was proposing to march a Brigade of close on four thousand men and six hundred animals over this hairy land.

Wreaths of cloud drifted round the mountain tops, while the aircraft dodged between. A few miles to the eastward I could see the brown scar of the Ledo Road, twisting and straggling through the forests and over the watersheds, scrambling painfully up to the crests, clinging there precariously for a few hundred yards, and slipping off again down to some preposterous mountain torrent, which it crossed gingerly on a fairy-tale bridge belonging rather to Willow-Pattern Land. Far beyond it were the huge hills towards Fort Hertz, across which the Chaukkan Pass was the only route. To the south was the thin ribbon of the Chindwin, bearing here some unfamiliar name; attenuated, but still a landmark and an obstacle. Across it at this very moment Stilwell’s Chinese were forcing a hotly disputed passage, away in the eastern mists.

“Tagap . . . Nathkaw. . . .”

Through my headphones came from time to time the voice of the pilot, pointing out such landmarks as he knew. Away from the Road he was as lost as I. I kept him turning and weaving in accordance with my efforts to orientate myself, and to trace the alleged tracks in the forests below me. Sometimes I caught sight of a Naga village in its tiny clearing, and could see for a few hundred yards its domestic tracks, leading down to the water-point, or up to the patch of hill-cultivation. I could picture well the village life below me, remembering the loyal Kachin villages which had sheltered us from the hunting Japanese the previous year, on our original expedition. Although in the same moment my eyes could see both the Road and the village, one knew that the busy life on the one had not affected the primitive way of living of the other; that the village below had in all probability never seen a European, and was hardly aware of the alien races at war with each other ten minutes’ air flight away.

But although I could see the domestic footpaths, and recognise them for what they were, I could see no sign of the “through” tracks of the optimistic cartographer. The jungle lay over all like a cauliflower. The high trees, the long feathery arms of the bamboos and plantains, the dark patches of monsoon jungle that lay in the bottoms and betrayed the hidden streams; the occasional escarpments many hundreds of feet high; now and again the lost village, with the upturned faces and the panicking pigs: there was nothing to be seen but these. And behind me, sixty miles to the north, at the ragged terminus of the long and laggard railway, would soon be piling up, night by night, the brigade which somehow I had to get over this nightmare country.

To land on the newly completed Dakota strip at Shing, we had to circle over the very Chindwin. When at last we were down, we were able to admire the strip and the amazing American genius for mechanical equipment which had made its construction possible. I once read in an old copy of the Listener a talk given by some American woman who had obviously a profound knowledge of our people as well as of hers. “I shall always think of England,” she had said, “as a country where somebody is forever bringing you a cup of tea up six flights of stairs. The British cope; we fix.” It is a sound observation; and I have never had brought to my mind so forcibly as on that first view of the jungle airfield at Shing the American determination never to use a man where you can more profitably use a machine. Their bull-dozers had torn up the jungle by its roots, dragged away the stumps, and smoothed out an airfield of fourteen hundred yards, ruthlessly stripping the skin from the earth, and laying bare what no man had ever before seen. But the earth is strong, and the jungle quick to reclaim its own; two or three years of neglect, and all will be green and impenetrable as before.

General Stilwell was away that day, and I did not meet him until a subsequent visit, when General Wingate was with me. Then the two of them talked in Stilwell’s hut, while I gossiped with the American Colonel Willy a few yards up the hill. When at last I was summoned, I sat for ten minutes and discussed our plans with those two very forceful characters. Wingate, heavy-browed, broad and powerful; Stilwell, with his steel-rimmed spectacles, tallish, wiry and gaunt. Both had determined faces, with deep furrows about their mouths; both could display atrocious manners, and were not prepared to be thwarted by anybody. Both looked like prophets, and both had many of the characteristics of prophets: vision, intolerance, energy, ruthlessness, courage and powers of denunciation to scorch like a forest fire. I stifled a desire to hear them quarrel, and listened attentively to the terms of the bargain which they had struck.

General Stilwell had agreed to give me facilities up his Road as far as Tagap Ga: thereafter I was to strike into the hills to the westward, and to cross the Chindwin downstream of his battle at a point to be chosen by myself in the light of whatever knowledge came my way. In return, I was to seize on his behalf the town of Lonkin, a Shan city in the heart of the Kachin Hills. Lonkin lay twenty miles west of Kamaing, an important town on the main line of communication of the Japanese 18th Division, who were the backbone of the troops opposing Stilwell’s advance. Kamaing itself was only twenty miles from Mogaung on the railway, the advanced base from which the Japs were being supplied. If I could seize and hold Lonkin, Stilwell would try to relieve me there with some of his own Chinese while I pushed on towards my real task in the south. The loss of Lonkin would seriously threaten the Jap lines of communication, and loosen their hold on the passes south of the Chindwin.

I could sense that Stilwell was sizing me up: he looked horribly like Amos, Hosea or some other of the less matey figures of the Old Testament. I have the misfortune to wear an eyeglass, and its effect on Americans at first acquaintance is sometimes unhappy. At last he asked me how I felt about the plan. I replied that I liked it very much, and thought I should be able to do what he wanted.

“I like the sound of that,” he said. “I’ll give you a letter to Boatner.”

A year later, I heard the contents of that letter. Apparently it read as follows:—

“Help this guy. He looks like a dude, but I think he’s a soldier.”

On the whole, I think I like it.

Wingate went back to the Headquarters which he had set up at Imphal in Manipur State, while I, in the Scots legal phrase, took avizandum as to the best route over the Patkais, down to the Chindwin, across it and south away beyond. Katie Cave, John Fraser and I raked Assam for people who knew or were alleged to know the country. Every now and then we would hear of some new potential source of advice, and one or other would make pilgrimage to see him, and to pick his brains. All these enquiries had to be carried out with the utmost discretion, for it was imperative that the enemy should not know of our presence in the area, nor of our intentions. It was now necessary also to learn something of Lonkin; and we actually found an Englishman who had been there at one time as a missionary. I asked him to come with us, and at first he agreed; but soon he began to make excuses, and it was evident that he had no stomach for the adventure, so I let him off.

Even after I had made up my mind roughly where I proposed to cross the Chindwin, we had made little progress towards finding a route to the crossing-place. We interviewed every sort and condition of man, in our quest for information: a Chinese general, who was supposed to have led his division out of Burma through Taro in 1942; two more missionaries; an Assistant District Commissioner, whom we submitted to cross-examination between two cross-examinations of his own, on the morning of his weekly assize; a police officer; two tea-planters who in 1942 had led parties of coolies into the hills to seek and succour refugees with food and elephants and litters; two young American officers, Quackenbush and Mac-Somebody, who had lately taken patrols into unknown country to investigate rumours of Jap penetration; Kachin refugees from the Hukawng Valley and beyond; opium-smugglers, big with trade secrets and coy beyond belief; Naga coolies, doing odd jobs on the Road in hopes of opium: the knowledge and ignorance of all were pressed into service.

While it was possible to disguise our real object from most of those whom we questioned, a few had to be taken into our confidence. And of all those to whom we put the straight question, “Is it possible to get a Brigade, complete with loaded mules, over that country?” only one, an American veterinary serjeant called Stahl, who had forsaken vetting for more exciting employment with a body of scouts, said “Yes.” And even he added, “But it’s gonna be goddam tough.” Goddam tough was precisely what it proved to be.

Meanwhile, I was lent a medium bomber, a B25 (anglicé, a Mitchell), with which to reconnoitre. The Ledo strip was only capable of accepting light planes, and so I had to fly over to the big airfield at Dinjan, by the Brahmaputra, whenever I wanted to use the Mitchell. A month before, Phil Cochrane, the commander of No. 1 Air Commando, had flown Orde Wingate, myself and Brigadier Derek Tulloch (Orde’s Chief of Staff) up and down the Chindwin between Homalin and Singkaling Hkamti, and eastward as far as the Indawgyi Lake. This time I took with me two of my commanding officers, John Metcalf and Dick Cumberlege, and determined to examine possible crossings of the Chindwin above Hkamti; the passes through the hills south of the River; and the approaches to Lonkin. I sat beside the pilot in the copilot’s seat, Colonel John Metcalf stood behind me and looked over my shoulder, Colonel Dick Cumberlege was somewhere in the waist of the aircraft. Mitchells are far from ideal for reconnaissance, cruising as they do at two hundred miles an hour: but with their armament they give you a reasonable chance in the event of interception. I had intended to have a look at Indaw, which was frequently visited by allied marauding planes, and which could be visited once more without betraying our interest in the place; but this was forbidden by the over-cautious officer in command at Dinjan. I wanted to look at Lonkin too, in order to add a flesh-and-blood impression to what I had already gained from a study of maps and air photographs.

LEDO TO THE UYU RIVER.

The north side of the mountains was shrouded in rain, as it often was; and I had difficulty in persuading the pilot, from my previous experience in twice visiting Shingbwiyang, that we should find sunshine beyond. We crossed the hills at fourteen thousand feet and burst through the cloud to see the whole land of Burma, as it seemed, spread out before us. I indicated to the pilot where I wanted to go by using the dual control whenever I wished to gain or lose height, or to change direction; and as we reached the Chindwin near Shingbwiyang, we turned downstream towards Taro.

The Hukawng Valley and the Dalu Valley are both rather misleading names. The Hukawng proper (said to be derived from a Kachin word meaning “funeral pyre,” and to record a great slaughter of Shans centuries ago) is taken to mean the flat lands on either side of the Chindwin through which runs the track from Ledo via Shingbwiyang, over the River, through Maingkwan and Kamaing to Mogaung. Stilwell had built his road along this track as far as Shing, and the Japs had built theirs from Mogaung to Maingkwan: there remained a short stretch in the middle which neither side had yet built. Over this track came many refugees in 1942, and on it many thousands died; it was the last remaining route out of Burma, save only the supposedly impassable Chaukkan (over which a few brave spirits, among them John Fraser, managed to struggle with infinite hardship).

West of the Hukawng, the Chindwin bursts through a deep gorge, marked on the map as the Patio Gorge, for some twenty-five miles, until it emerges in the Dalu or Taro Valley. The range which, on the south bank, separates the Hukawng from the Dalu Valley is known as the Waktung Bum. No track is marked on the map along this range, although a dotted one (signifying “impassable for animals”) is marked across it; and it must have been traversed by somebody some time, because at one point beside a stream occurs the suggestive legend “Camp site.”

I had some hopes that we might struggle along the watershed of the Waktung Bum, since game tracks are often found on crests such as these. I thought that if we could cross the Chindwin in the Patio Gorge, and scramble up the backbone and along the crest, we might emerge in Kansi and Lonkin unbeknown to the Japs. (We knew there was a garrison in Taro.) Failing that we might somehow by-pass Taro, and either work along a track that was marked as climbing gradually on to the range farther south, or march up the bed of a small river called the Tagum Hka, which enters the Chindwin a few miles below Taro. The third and last possible course was to cross the Chindwin between the Japs in Taro and the Japs in Singkaling Hkamti. Between these two points the Chindwin again ran through a gorge, in which the ominous word “Rapids” occurred three times on the map.

The tracks leading southwards were therefore very few; and all ran through defiles where a Jap company might easily hold up a force many times its strength. This was an argument in favour of trying the Waktung watershed or the Tagum Hka river-bed. I resolved to look at both of these. Meanwhile, I was beginning to wonder just how good John Fraser’s idea of coming via Ledo had been. As long as it looked a good idea, I was prepared to take the credit for it; but the more it looked like slumping, the more I was inclined to remind people that the idea had been John’s in the first instance.

We flew low through the Patio Gorge. The pilot wanted to shoot up a raft at its northern entrance, but I hastily stopped him: I knew that some of Stilwell’s men were trying to force a passage through, and the raft was as likely to be Chinese as Jap. We circled Taro, but saw no signs of enemy; and then bore away southward between the Waktung Bum and the Tagum Hka, looking at both. The Tagum (Hka is merely Kachin for stream) started well, with a broad sandy bed; but it soon shrank into a nasty narrow overgrown affair, and then took to having waterfalls in a big way. The Waktung didn’t even start well; and as we skimmed along, climbing gradually, fifty feet above the trees, I could feel my face growing longer and longer. The watershed was punctuated by high peaks and escarpments; and although one didn’t expect to see signs of a game-track through the trees, one had no difficulty in deducing that it would be mighty funny game that tackled the Waktung Bum. It was no place to which to lead a Brigade that was in a hurry to keep an engagement near Indaw; I could not risk having to give the order “About turn.”

We flew on south, gaining height so as not to tempt beyond endurance the Jap garrison in Lonkin. The country and the day were both beautiful, and it was tempting to forget what one had come there to do. Perhaps that is why I missed Lonkin. I saw a typical Kachin settlement on a hill, which I thought I could identify; but I looked in vain for the big village, standing in a paddy area several miles long, which I should recognise as Lonkin. I suddenly found that we were approaching a broad, shallow river that I knew must be the Uyu; and I swung the aircraft away, westward and downstream, until I recognised Haungpa, which I had seen from the air the previous month with Phil. South of it I saw my old friend, that fine hill Taungthonlon. Why one should get so fond of places which one can only associate with weariness, discomfort and a certain measure of fear, I cannot tell; but both Taungthonlon and the Uyu River, with its serpentine curves, have a strong hold on my affections.

At first I thought to go back and have another look for Lonkin, and actually turned the aircraft in that direction; and then I bethought me that, if we did, it would be obvious that we were on a reconnaissance, and the Japs would make deductions accordingly. So we turned north, and followed up the course of a stream to Singkaling Hkamti, keeping the hills on our starboard hand close aboard, and flying at a height of two or three hundred feet above the trees. The jungle was thick, but not comparably with what we had seen earlier; and the gradients were reasonable. It was the best line of approach that I had so far seen; and it looked as if the easiest way to tackle Lonkin would be to come well to the westward of it, and then to assault up the Uyu from Haungpa. Provided we could find a crossing place near Singkaling Hkamti, and provided that we could find a way from Tagap Ga, on the Road to Singkaling Hkamti, on the River, we might manage yet.

We came out over the River near Hkamti, and noted several places just below the exit from the gorge, where we might be able to cross. The River broadened here, altho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• MAPS
• TOWARDS THE EAST
• INTRODUCTION
• Part One
• Part two
• RETURN TO BURMA
• APPENDIX A
• APPENDIX B