Vietnam and the Unravelling of Empire

General Gracey in Asia 1942-1951

T. Smith

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137448699
• eBook ISBN: 9781137448712
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Vietnam War and Indian independence devastated British policy towards Asia. The Labour Government failed to understand its commitments. Yet some senior British officers were prepared to work alongside Asian nationalism in order to secure British interests. This created a radical local fusion of imperial, diplomatic and humanitarian policies.

1

The Prelude: Burma 1942–1945

In many respects, Douglas David Gracey epitomised the high-Victorian ideals of the British Empire. He was born in Gorakhpur in India in 1894. The progeny of a civil servant, Gracey was, as one would have expected, sent to England for his education. First of all he attended Blundell’s independent boarding school in Devon. From there Gracey progressed to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, in Berkshire. Upon graduating from Sandhurst in 1914, he was commissioned to the 1st King George’s Own Gurkha Rifles in the Indian Army. It was a natural appointment. Gracey was fluent in the Gorkhali language, and he could therefore easily converse with his Gurkha troops in their native tongue.

During the First World War, Gracey initially fought in France with the Royal Munster Fusiliers. But from 1916 onwards, he saw action in Palestine and Syria with the Gurkha Rifles. Wounded twice, Gracey was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in 1917, to which was later added a bar. He was also mentioned in dispatches.

After the First World War, Gracey was appointed as an instructor back at his alma mater, the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. However, after two years he was transferred from the college to India. Once in India, Gracey served in a variety of training instructor, staff officer and front-line commands. As a new war in Europe materialised in 1939, Gracey took charge of the 2/3rd Gurkha Rifles on the Northwest Frontier. In 1940, he was appointed as the Assistant Commandant of the Indian Army Staff College in Quetta (modern Pakistan). He married in 1931.

In 1941, Gracey experienced his first action of the Second World War when he led the 17th Infantry Brigade in Iraq and Syria. During this campaign, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. In the Middle East, despite acute supply issues, Gracey and the 17th Infantry Brigade successfully secured northeast Syria against Vichy-French forces, including the all-important Mosul to Aleppo railway. It was intended that Gracey’s brigade would also assist in the greater defence of the region if the German armies smashed their way through the Caucasus region and threatened British interest in the wider Middle East.¹

The war in the Far East

In the meantime, the Second World War in South and Southeast Asia had not gone at all well for the western colonial powers. During 1941 and 1942, the Japanese Army forced its way into: French Indo-China; British Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore; the American-led Philippines; and the Dutch East Indies. Old school western colonialism had been routed by a new, modern and dynamic Asian imperialism. A blend of formal and informal Japanese control emerged from the ashes of western empires to hold sway over Southeast Asia.

The denouement of the British colonial administration and the defence of Singapore were particularly gruesome for Britain. In Singapore, a force of 85,000 British and Commonwealth troops was defeated by 30,000 Japanese.² The speed and size of the British capitulation surprised everyone including the Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill, who was ‘stupefied’ with the magnitude of the defeat and the nature of the British ‘disgrace’. Britain had lost its most prestigious base in the Far East.³ Furthermore, in order to protect the acquisition of their new assets and to take full advantage of the disintegration of the British Empire in the Far East, the Japanese Army also turned its attention towards other targets. This led to the invasion of Burma and subsequently India.

During the invasion of Burma, the Japanese Army replayed the similar devastating success of the campaign against British forces in Malaya. British rule was rapidly swept aside in an Asian Blitzkrieg, and Japanese imperial control was established in Burma in its stead. Nonetheless, with the commencement of the Burmese monsoon season, the Japanese advance eventually came to a standstill in May 1942. This enabled the Japanese Army to consolidate its hold upon Burma even further, but it also permitted the British Empire a respite to organise its colonial resources for the defence of India.⁴ Thus, it was against this worsening geopolitical background to the war in the Far East that Gracey was recalled from Syria to assist in the vital defence of the most important component of the British Empire, India.

The triumph of Gracey’s 20th Indian Division

On 1 April 1942, Gracey took command of the newly established 20th Indian Division.⁵ Gracey believed passionately that his new division should receive thorough preparation and training for undertaking arduous jungle operations. He therefore set about creating a specialist educational programme for the instruction of the 20th Indian Division in jungle warfare. Gracey took a special interest in the development of the teaching course. This reflected his own deep-seated desire to educate his troops to the best of his ability in order that they performed at their optimal levels upon the battlefield. It also indicated an inner passion to oversee and improve the well-being of his men in the field. Thus, on 13 April, Gracey personally began to draw up a comprehensive training manual for the 20th Indian Division in jungle battle-craft.⁶ In doing so Gracey, surprisingly, created the only division in Slim’s 14th Army that had been specifically trained for warfare in Burma.⁷ It was a far-sighted decision that later reaped huge dividends for both Gracey and Slim.

It was remarkable that up until this point in the Second World War the British Army in India had developed so few specialist units for undertaking jungle operations. The leadership of the British Army in India was not ignorant of the terrain in which it expected its units to operate. Indeed, the repeated failure of the British to stem the Japanese advance into South and Southeast Asia revealed the necessity of developing new jungle tactics to halt the seemingly relentless march of the Japanese Army towards India.

The British Army in India had decided that there were three degrees of jungle density, which British forces would face in the field. These received the uninspiring names of – dense, thick and thin.

Dense: so thick that a man on foot could not get through without cutting his way.

Thick: in which a man could force his way through with the aid of a stick but without having to cut.

Thin: in which a man could move at a fair pace, without cutting or damaging his clothes, picking his way.

The types of foliage within such jungle densities could be most varied. For example, they might include ‘bamboo, tree, palm, forest and scrubmangrove swamp’.⁸

In contrast to a widely held belief within the British Army in India, Gracey advocated that jungle terrain and foliage were both in actual fact the soldiers’ friend. It was his deeply held conviction that units under his command could be highly mobile even in the densest of jungle foliage, and that they should certainly not under any circumstances become merely ‘lorry bound’.⁹ Gracey appreciated the need for both speed and surprise. With limited logistical infrastructure in jungle warfare, road based units would quickly become highly predictable in their movements and thus be a relatively straightforward enemy target. Similarly, during a major Japanese offensive, it was also possible for a non-road based foe to easily circumnavigate its lorry bound opponent, thus rendering motorised units operationally impotent. Furthermore, motorised units on unpaved jungle roads were frequently at the mercy of the weather. Torrential rain often made motorised transport slow and slippery. Moreover, the weather sometimes made it impossible for motorised transport to move forward at all. This was certainly the case if, for example, a sudden storm had either produced a large rockslide or simply turned an innocuous road into a fast flowing stream.

Gracey therefore developed transportation for the 20th Indian Division using both animal and motorised sources. This meant that the division was no longer solely reliant upon road transportation. This benefited the British defence of India in two ways. First, it enabled Gracey to move his units with intense speed and surprise across difficult terrain. Second, it freed up a large number of vehicles that could be transferred to other divisions within the British Army in India. This made it possible for a number of under-resourced units to become highly mobile.¹⁰ It was an intuitive decision that greatly impacted the operational capabilities on a wider scale than just his division. Brigadier E.C.J. Woodford, who commanded the 32nd Indian Infantry Brigade within the 20th Division during the Burma Campaign, later noted that two of Gracey’s greatest leadership strengths were his ability to undertake ‘clear thinking’ and his aptitude for making ‘decisive’ management decisions.¹¹

The training manual that Gracey drew up naturally bore the imprint of its author. It was full of ‘practical common sense’. Indeed, it eventually proved to be so comprehensive and successful that it did not require any updating as the Burma Campaign progressed. Gracey’s vision for jungle warfare reflected his style of leadership. He was not a great orator but he was a ‘highly capable and respected’ leader in the field. Yet his leadership skills went far deeper than merely a new and specialist approach to jungle training. Gracey was not just interested in the educational endeavours of his troops or the strategic machinations involved in the specialist study of jungle warfare. He also took a deep and personal interest in the general welfare of his troops.¹² Major Malins, who served under Gracey in Burma, noted that his commanding officer at all times regarded his men as ‘though he was personally responsible for the lives of every single man under his command’. As was clearly evident to Malins, Gracey had never forgotten the needless human slaughter and suffering he had witnessed during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. Indeed, Gracey readily informed Malins and the other officers within his division that ‘men are the most important and precious thing we’ve got’. He therefore instructed his officers always to use their men ‘with the greatest care’.¹³

In mentoring his officers and training them to highly appreciate their men, Gracey introduced what he later modestly called a strong ‘team spirit’ into the 20th Indian Division.¹⁴ Gracey’s self-effacing admission camouflaged a zealous concern and a passionate regard for the well-being of his troops. It was worth the investment: Brigadier Woodford noted that ‘his [Gracey’s] constant concern for his men and their trust in him were responsible for the exceptional standard of discipline and efficiency it [the 20th Indian Division] always maintained’.¹⁵ This was certainly aided by the strong interpersonal bond and deep-seated self-worth that Gracey shared with his officers. Major Bickersteth, for example, was convinced that deep down at heart his commanding officer remained, like him, a company commander. Thus, Gracey’s lectures to his officers did not consist of dull military theory or dry academic rhetoric. But rather, Gracey’s briefings were always full of what Bickersteth called ‘immense practical value’. In return, Gracey’s officers greatly valued their divisional commander due to his experience of, and his intense empathy with, the characteristics of their roles.¹⁶ In doing so, Gracey aimed to create a large interconnected family within the 20th Indian Division. Just as Gracey appreciated his company and platoon commanders, they in turn were expected to be familiar with their men, and their families, and indeed their problems. The 20th Indian Division thus became a very personal division ‘instilled with Gracey’s own spirit’.

In addition to Gracey’s concern for the well-being of the troops under his command, he was also worried about the treatment of any civilians upon the battlefield. He particularly despised the Japanese Army for its maltreatment of civilians during the Burma Campaign.¹⁷ Nevertheless, Gracey did not let this hatred, concerning Japanese humanitarian atrocities, cloud his operational judgement. He had a healthy respect for his Japanese foe. Gracey regarded the Japanese Army as a formidable enemy whose military achievements one could not fail to acknowledge.¹⁸ Again, reflecting his deep-seated commitment to education, Gracey exhorted his officers to study and apprise themselves of Japanese Army tactics.¹⁹ In doing so, Gracey certainly demonstrated due respect for the Japanese Army, but he always maintained a profound self-assurance in the justice of an ultimate British victory.²⁰ This without doubt rubbed off on his officers and men. Indeed, Slim later noted how ‘confident’ the 20th Indian Division had become under Gracey’s leadership.²¹ Slim’s unswerving trust in Gracey’s leadership abilities was not without just cause. Gracey had taken time to develop a highly mobile and welltrained division, who had eagerly become specialists in Southeast Asian warfare. To illustrate this point, at the end of 1942, the 20th Indian Division took part in an intra-division jungle warfare exercise on the island of Ceylon; following the successful completion of the war games Gracey’s division was deemed ready for deployment to the war in the Far East.²²

Hence the 20th Indian Division was moved from the tranquillity of Ceylon to Ranchi in eastern India. Once located at Ranchi, Gracey’s division was rapidly absorbed into the hustle and bustle of Slim’s XV Corps. Slim previously knew Gracey from the Syria Command of 1941, and Slim already held Gracey in high regard as being ‘full of energy and ideas’.²³ Gracey now quickly became part of Slim’s inner circle.²⁴ Gracey’s motivational and man-management skills within the 20th Indian Division were evident for all to see. Slim openly commented that Gracey possessed a ‘great hold’ over his men. In addition, he regarded Gracey’s leadership of the 20th Indian Division as an exemplary tour de force.²⁵ While based at Ranchi, Gracey continued to train and educate the 20th Indian Division in jungle warfare techniques. Extensive patrols were sent out. Forward positions were established and then dismantled. Live firing practice and firing discipline became critical training exercises. Above all, the division was repeatedly drilled in the necessity of producing proper and accurate reports that could be rapidly dispatched to Grace...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Prelude: Burma 1942–1945
• 2. The Power Vacuum: Vietnam 1945
• 3. The Sideshow: Cambodia 1945
• 4. The Enforcement: Indo-China 1945–1946
• 5. The Aftermath: Bengal and Kashmir 1946–1951
• Conclusion
• Select Chronology
• Select Personalia
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index