Burma '45: The Empire Strikes Back

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We were first ashore and we negotiated the mangrove swamp, which wasn't easy.

We got to the paddy and we could see Ill-170 in front of us.

The Japs opened up on us, but we took the hill fairly easily.

But halfway up the hill, there was a young Burmese girl, about 17 or 18, and her baby a few months old, lying in a pool of blood, her stomach torn open.

I thought, was it our Shanning of the Hill that did that?

Or was it when we were attacking, or when the Japs mortared us?

And it occurred to me that it didn't matter very much.

She was in her homeland.

And here were two foreign powers fighting each other.

And she and her baby had died because of that.

And that was Private Victor Ralph of 4-Troop 1 Commando.

Well, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, our series on Burma, part two.

And Jim, in the last episode...

Burma 45, I just want to point out.

In the last episode, we talked an awful lot about Burma 44.

Yeah, we're now very much in 45.

But you can't do 45 without 44.

So we set the scene and we offered the possibility that we will be going to the Arakan.

And that's where we find ourselves now.

We do, with that rather disturbing image.

But of course, you know, Burma is a highly populated nation,

particularly in, you know, some of these eras in which the fighting's taking place.

Yeah.

And of course, as we know, the Second World War, you know, it was the civilians that suffered the most.

And the other thing that I think is really, really interesting about the Allied forces in Burma, in 14th Army and in 1940...

15 Corps who were doing the fighting in the Arakan is the sort of, you know, multinational nature of it.

And actually, I think it would be interesting to begin this second episode with the story of Havodar Umreo Singh, who is a Indian soldier.

And on the night of the 15th of December, 1944, he's in the Kaladan Valley, where the 81st West African Division are pushing south.

And the Kaladan is east of the admin box that we discussed in Burma 44 last year.

So it's a little way inland from the Arakan coast, sort of, you know, 15, 20 miles as a crow flies, that kind of stuff.

Umreo Singh at this time, he's 24 he's from the punjab um and he's joined the indian army back in 1939 so he's a professional soldier he's a professional soldier in the pre-war indian army that's very much the area where the punjabis and the batans and all this sort of stuff and seeks of course this is the kind of absolute beating heart of old school interwar indian army but he's done well and he's now a sergeant so a havildar and he's in the 33rd mountain battery of the 30th mountain regiment indian artillery and he's attached to his unit is attached to the 81st West African Division.

So Singh has volunteered to take two mountain howitzers forward to an advanced position on a jungle-clad hill overlooking the River Calnadan to support the 8th Gold Coast Regiment.

So how international do you want it?

I mean, this really illustrates that this is a war of empires, the British Empire versus the Japanese Empire, and the British are using elements from all over the empire to do it.

While in Northwest Europe, the British Army is recognisably the British Army.

This is a British Imperial force.

Yes.

Yeah, so this with all those things that imply.

So people who are essentially, people who are mercenaries, people who couldn't locate Great Britain on a map if they had to, people from parts of Africa where how do you recruit Africans to fight in Burma?

Well, God alone knows, but they've done it.

And then how do you motivate them and how do you equip them and how do you train them?

All the problems that flow from that,

language questions.

You know, in the last episode, we looked at that fellow who was doing everything in Hindi and he was the only person who could speak English, so he had to operate the radio.

Yes, yes, yes, John Shipster.

John Shipster.

So this is the interesting texture of it.

The British Empire's fighting.

Now this was the Japanese have a complete inability, really, or a problem with accommodating people from the land.

Totally, they have a total inability.

Well, they can use them as slave language.

There's the INA.

Who they treat in rather the same way that the Germans treat their allies.

It's fascinating that you have this completely, you know, multifaceted army and operating at the highest level.

Because the thing about, and this is post-Chindit, there are outfits that are being supplied in the jungle by air in a way that Lord Wingate could only sort of dream of, really, with an efficiency and and a battle efficiency and able to maintain critical mass in the combat situation in a way that he actually was unable to pull off because things have caught up with where they're trying to execute things.

So he's moving forward with these two guns.

So he's got like a half troop of these 75 millimetre kind of mountain howitzers.

Well, that's the little pack howitzer that the airborne people use, which is a mountain gun.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's exactly the same thing.

You break it down into its parts and the mules carry the parts.

for you.

So he's volunteered to do this.

You know, the infantry are pushing forward on this hill, they need a little bit of fast support, off you go.

So he goes and does this.

But getting there is really difficult.

It's incredibly, incredibly dense.

And he says, you know, it was very difficult terrain.

The bamboo was so thick, you couldn't actually see anyone.

And eventually they set up their guns.

No sooner have they done so than they come under heavy artillery fire from the Japanese 74mm gun, so the equivalent of their own.

And after an hour and a half of this, they're then attacked by two companies of Japanese infantry.

And most of the infantry around them are either the Gold Coast guys are either killed in action or run away or fall back or whatever.

But his troop, gun crews on on these two and on his half troop stay with him and they keep firing the hiatus straight at the attacking enemy infantry and sing is wounded twice by grenade splinters in this action but they beat off the first attack and this gives them a brief respite But the situation is obviously pretty critical.

They're isolated on this bamboo jungle clad hill.

You know, they've obviously got a bit of visibility.

Now they can see the enemy coming towards them.

The infantry's gone.

A number of his men have been killed and wounded and they're very isolated and out of ammunition.

So the inevitable second attack comes in and he says, you know, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded.

So I told my troop to withdraw.

They said they wouldn't go without me.

So I started to withdraw with them.

Suddenly I thought to myself, a gunner never leaves his gun.

So I went back again and started firing at the enemy with his Bren gun, which was all I had.

This went on for five hours, firing when someone came within five yards of me.

And eventually he runs out of Bren ammunition too.

but continues to attack the Japanese as they close with a claw hammer.

And he kills three of them this way before being knocked down.

But just at this moment, Allied aircraft flow over and sort of strafe the whole area and the Japanese kind of fall backwards.

When the infantry then retake this position, they find him there by his gun, lying prostrate on the ground, but still alive.

And so he's rescued, you know, six hours later and he's discovered with seven wounds and ten dead Japanese around him and his gun still in working order.

So he's then whisked off to hospital.

And while he's recovering, he's told he's one of VC.

He's never heard of this.

Hasn't got the faintest idea what it was.

He's then told it's for bravery and he says, I thought to myself, I don't know what bravery is.

I joined the artillery to fight and I thought that was just my job.

Well, I mean as an encapsulation of what the fighting's like, what the stakes are, what's motivating people, I joined to fight.

But the thing that strikes me over and over again, and particularly with this story of the Arakan, is this is an area which is seriously remote.

This is absolutely the backass of nowhere.

This is small little villages, you know, bamboo huts and the like.

You know, this is incredibly difficult to get to.

It's an absolute labyrinth of little rivers, mangrove swamps, shape-shifting over the years.

So, you know, you look at your Google Earth map and the kind of the rivers to compare to the 1945 maps are kind of approximate, but quite often quite changed.

This is coastal area, then you've got hills and jungle-clad hills.

You know, this is incredibly difficult to get to.

There are no asphalted roads or anything like that.

This is just sort of dirt tracks and little watercourses.

And everything happens by sea, you know, from little vessels and boats and little rafts and, you know, and all the rest of it.

And what a place to be fighting.

And what a place to potentially have to give up your life in a sort of festering kind of malaria-ridden from all over the British Empire.

It's extraordinary.

Absolutely extraordinary.

But I think we need a little bit of a sit-rep, don't we?

A situation report.

The end of 1944.

So we have promised you 1945 and trust me.

So 14th Army has pursued Japanese 15th 15th Army across Burma.

It's been costly.

So Stotford's 33 Corps have led the pursuit up to Tidim, taken on the 6th of October and then onto Kalemyo.

This is hard going.

Casualties from July to November amount to 80%.

5th Indian Division have only had 88 killed in action, 293 wounded in action, 22 missing, but all the rest is illness.

And we talked about malaria in the last episode and Slim himself having caught malaria, having broken his own rule about bathing after dark.

Total casualties in 33 Corps, 4 Corps, are 50,300, but 47,000 of this is disease, is people getting sick.

20,000 of those are malaria cases.

But it's everything else, though.

It's chiggers, it's gonorrhea, which you can, you know, which is in the jungle.

It's bad, bad stuff is absolutely everywhere.

Yeah.

And jungle swords, as we talked about, you know, which can go bad very easily.

Slim knows that he's got to stay ahead of the disease.

And actually, they do.

They really, really cracked malaria by...

the spring of 1945, but that in December 1944 is still sort of in the future.

And it's absolutely clear that there's a slight pause is needed.

You know, they've got across Burma, they've got across the Burmese border.

And he also knows that, you know, he now needs to retrain them because once they're across the mighty River Chindwin in that Dust Bowl flat area between the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy, which is the main populated corridor of Burma, it's very different terrain and that requires a very different type of fighting.

It's an all-arms combined mobile warfare kind of fighting and that that needs training.

Plus, you know, they need training in river crossings.

And it's not just any old river crossing these are you know the chindu is like a mile yeah

i mean the ira one is four miles makes the rhine rhine look piffling yes like an absolute piece of cake yeah um but but he's also not you know slim is very anxious not to lose the initiative so he tells general gifford who's up until november is still in in position as 11th army group commander that capital could start as early as november the 15th 1944 but only with the help from air transports to resupply the leading units and that's all in hand and leading the way down into burma has been 5th 5th Indian Division, which I think, if I remember rightly, has been going down the Titim Road and 11th East African Division, again, another Imperial force unit, which has been going down the Tamu Road, which is to the sort of southeast of Imphal.

On the 13th of November, both divisions join hands in Burma, which is a kind of, you know, it's a big moment.

So the northern town of Kalua and Kabor in the Kabor Valley is taken on the 2nd of December.

So these are towns, little, you know, you call them towns, but they're kind of sort of shanty towns.

They're not a a town as in.

It's not Leighton Buzzard.

No, it's not Leighton Buzzard.

I think that's a fair way to say it.

And these are in the north.

These are sort of, you know, Chin Hills, countryside, little rivers, chongs, all over the place.

And they're running down to the, from those hills, down to the flat plain around the Chin Dwin.

And then there's a further plain beyond that, which leads to the Irrawaddy.

So you're still in the hills at this point.

Yeah, I mean, it's not unlike looking at a leaf, really, is it?

With the river as the sort of what's left of the stem and everything running down to it.

It's all very, very extreme landscape isn't it so by the 10th of december uh sappers have erected the world's largest bailey bridge i mean that's quite something isn't it yeah for the time across the chindwin it's 1154 feet long yeah so what's that that's like 300 and something meters that's incredible yeah yeah uh a 300 meter bailey bridge yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well and and you've had to get it there always the thing to remember with bailey bridges is is how many trucks does that take how many moving how many parts does that involve mind-boggling yeah but it means that they've got across so that belly bridge

but anyway it's shipped there to calcutta then it's put on a train has to go all along the train then it then it has to be shipped across the barmapucha river then onto a different gauge narrower gauge railway then taken down to dimipore then transferred onto trucks and taken down from dimipore through kohima infal and down and that's about 300 and zombie miles so that means that the japanese are in this in the sweibo plain there's a little town of shwebo in the north there and this is that stretch of land this dusty land of pagodas and low-lying areas and paddy fields and all the rest.

It's dusty.

It's not forested.

There are trees, of course, but it's not jungle.

It's not hills.

And this is where he wants them.

What he's hoping to do is force a single battle on the northwestern side of the Irrawaddy.

He's assuming that the General Kimura, who's taken over as a Burma Armor Area Commander, will want to fight that side of the Irrawaddy.

Because to do otherwise is too dangerous.

That's what he's banking on.

It doesn't quite turn out as planned, and we'll get to that.

But a second operation is taking place in Burma, and one that is considered to be very, very important for the outcome of Slim's 14th Army effort with his two corps, 4th Corps and 33 Corps, in the Sherebo Plain or wherever it's going to be.

And Gifford has earlier suggested to Slim that 15th Corps be taken away from his responsibility.

And actually, this makes sense, and Slim is completely happy with this.

Because Arakan is separated by, you know, it's quite a stretch from this central bit.

And what you've got between this central narrow corridor, which if you think of Burma as sort of long, sort of, you know, fairly long and thin, it runs basically from the kind of northeast down towards the southwest.

So at a sort of slight angle, and that's the sort of big flat central area.

Then you've got hills and ridges that are, again, running in a kind of roughly north-south direction, interspersed with rivers, which are also running in a kind of roughly north-south direction.

And then you've got the coastal bit of the Arakan, which is this sort of area of Chong, these rivers, these absolute networks, sort of delta of river outlets and mangrove swamps and all the rest of it.

So it's quite a stretch away from the central bit.

And so logistically, trying to command what's going on in the Arakan and be fully focused on what's going on in the central bit, which after all is the main event,

is asking quite a lot.

In the same way that it was asking quite a lot to Mark Clark to be commanding Anzio at the same time as the Gustav line.

But there you're talking about a difference of kind of 30, 40 miles.

Here you're talking about hundreds of miles and you're talking about jungle-clad ridges and rivers in between.

So it makes perfect sense.

Well, and also that the experience in the Arakan is that it's a thing in itself as a battlefront and that the British have experienced one disaster there so they want to get they want to be making sure they're getting this absolutely right and be and they want to be on balance for it basically rather than off balance because if they try and pull the two things off as a combined as a single operation it's not going to work the thing to remember is that the bloody nose that that's been sustained in the arakan previously under noel irwin is something no one wants to repeat no absolutely but they've they've got someone of different caliber here now he's philip christensen he's really good and actually funny enough last week I was up in Melrose at the Borders Book Festival, which is a brilliant event.

And while I was there, someone stood up in the audience and said, did you know that Philip Christensen is buried here in Melrose?

So I went, okay, fine.

So Ned, Daisy, they were with me.

I was like, guess where we're going?

Damn.

We didn't find his grave, but we did find a plaque in the church tomb.

Anyway, so that's where Philip Christensen bent out his A's.

He was a very keen member of that particular parish church and used to sing in the choir and he lived to 100.

So he's in charge there.

And the key is to get three islands, of the all fairly large islands, Akyab, Ramri and Cheduba and these are all just off the Arakan coast and the idea is to drive down in a double pincer movement.

So you've got 81st West African Division going down the Kaladan Valley which is sort of run roughly running north-south.

And that's about, I mean it's hard sometimes to say where the where the land ends and the coast begins.

But if you sort of think 15, 20 miles inland as a crow flies, that's sort of roughly what you're talking about.

And they're going down the only kind of sort of main sort of Jeep track there is, which is connecting the kind of sort of north to the south part of Arakan.

Meanwhile, a series of amphibious operations are going to be taking place at the same time.

So this is very much a sort of anvil and hammer kind of idea.

So the idea is you do these amphibious operations, get behind the Japanese.

The 81st, 2nd are coming from, and then subsequently the 82nd West African Division.

These two West African divisions are coming down from the north.

So they're the hammer.

And then these amphibious operations allow for little blocking positions.

So the Japanese got nowhere to retreat to.

It's island hopping, leapfrogging, all this kind of stuff.

But the key thing about these islands is they've either got an airfield, which Akyab has, or they've got the possibility to have airfields.

And that's a game changer because it means instead of going all the way up to the Brahmaputra and Dimipore, you can go by ship from the Bay of Bengal or fly it from the Bay of Bengal from Calcutta straight across that open bit of sea, land at Akyab, and then from there it's a hop and a skip across

the hills to get to that central area and support the main thrust of 14th Army.

Which tidies up your logistic situation

do everything by parachute and which is how they've been subsisting up to this point.

Yeah exactly and what you're what it means is you've got multiple sources of routes for your air power and it also means then you've got more room because you've got more airfields.

So this is seen as absolutely key to the success of any future operation in the central plains.

Right.

Now we talked about the Burmese caught in the crossfire.

We haven't talked about the Burmese really much.

Where do they fit into this picture?

What's really interesting is the area of the Arakon, as it is to this day, the Rohingya, tend to be Muslim Burmese who have emigrated south from what is now Bangladesh.

So from Chittagong, Cox's Bazaar, all those kind of places.

So they've moved down in there.

And the British have used these muscle men, as they call them, very, very effectively.

In the back end of 1943 and into 1944, this is the V-force that we talked about a bit.

in the last last series in Burma 44.

But on paper, the rest of Burma has been behind the Japanese because they want to get rid of the British.

But of course, the Japanese have talked loftily about sort of a greater Asian co-prosperity sphere as a sort of anti-Western, anti-imperial concept where they're all going to be sort of Southeast Asian brothers together.

But of course, the reality is that Imperial Japan is significantly more cruel than the British and much worse.

And so they haven't really harnessed the Burmese very effectively.

There are people, you know, Burmese people who are supporting the Japanese on paper, but this is absolutely flittering away as they realize that the Japanese are increasingly beaten here.

They're kind of thinking, well, maybe the British weren't quite so bad compared to this mob.

And, you know, maybe if we support them, then they'll be more open to giving us our independence later in the same way that the kind of free India campaign has been taking from.

And it's not unlike people in Ukraine looking one way and then the other when the Germans first arrive.

And it's not unlike lots of people in France.

I mean, this is it's as standard a reaction to, you know, the new power shows up and offers you stuff.

While the British looked beaten in 1942 in Burma, no two ways about it.

So you've got to pick a side, haven't you?

Yeah.

But the sham of sort of Burmese independence has really been made absolutely clear.

I mean, most of the people working on the Thai Burma Railway is not...

are not British and Australians and so on.

It's actually been Burmese and Filipinos and other people that have been brought in, other prisoners of war.

I mean, you know, Malayans and Singaporeans.

And they've been treated absolutely appallingly.

In fact, actually, even worse than the white imperialists.

So they've had a terrible time and they don't want to return to the British Empire, but they don't want the Japanese either, who are even worse.

So back in 1942, there's a Burmese politician called Thakin Te P Mint.

He's crossed into India to ask for British help.

And he says, you know, we hated the English, but disliked and mistrusted the Japanese even more.

Burmese irregulars are now increasingly helping the British.

You know, they've got the V-force, which, you know, we mentioned a minute ago, made of the Burmese Muslims, but also the Karens and the Chins up in the northern part have been absolutely invaluable, as were the Nagas at Kohima.

SOE are super involved in Burma.

Yes, and they're just better at dealing with this.

Not least, of course, because they've had long years of operating in Burma.

They speak the lingo and they know how to deal with these people, understand the culture, so they, you know, they know how to kind of treat them a bit better and tell them things that they want to hear.

Yes, grisly stories of people with heads in bags showing up, having, you know, Japanese heads in bags.

And also, I mean, the mood in, I don't think anyone's saying it out loud by this point, that basically once the Japanese are gone, the British will leave.

There is essentially that, that's the sort of the plum that's being, the political plum that's being dangled for Burmese people, isn't it?

It's we get past this and then, believe us, we'll go.

Well, that is certainly what the SOE types are saying.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what they're saying to it.

But there is consternation a bit at the Civil Affairs Bureau Burma, which was the kind of pre-war British government or the means of government, which has debunked to Simla up in the hills and is headed by Sir Reginald Dorman Smith, who was a pre-war governor of Burma.

And if ever you wanted a kind of interwar British Empire type, it's him.

The point is, is they need the help of the Burmese.

So, SOE are going to make some promises and

they may exceed their bounds.

And they've been doing that in France anyway.

You know, this is how you get people on side.

You say after the war, everything will be rosy.

But

one of the people that was dropped in was Tom Carew, who's a sort of Irish-Englishman in SOE who was dropped into France with the Jebbers and then came back and then was sent into Burma.

And he's the guy that turns Aung San Aung Sang Su Chi's father.

Father.

And who was, you know, very anti-British and fighting on the side of the Japanese.

And he comes in and he's absolutely all for it.

You know, he's very anti-imperialist, sort of intellectual Irish kind of gung-ho warrior in the jungle type with his straggly beard and floppy hat and all the rest of it.

So I think we've pretty much set the scene.

As you said, 81st West African Division is leading the march down the Caladan.

Yes, we should just say that it's Force 136 is the name of SOE in Burma.

They're commanded by Major General Frederick Loftus Tottenham, who took over in August of 44 and it's short of NCOs.

There's no British reinforcements, so he promotes Africans because he's got to keep his show on the road.

Hasn't got time to wait.

And he's told that at the beginning of October, 1st of October, they're going to be supplied entirely by air.

And that underlines how much you need these airfields.

And

they're going to advance in bounds.

Infantry.

supported by hand carried the little three-inch mortar and they take Maldock on the 18th of October to clear it of the Japanese and by the end of the month three columns are pushing back the Japanese outposts by the beginning of December they're pulling up parallel inland but parallel with the with Akyab this key objective and that's really the jump-off point for this renewed campaign so this is just sort of preliminary pushing getting rid of outposts sort of establishing the battle lines to come I mean the Japanese know perfectly well that Akyab is what they want and indeed Ramri and Shaduba yeah it's obvious isn't it there's this extraordinary diary found on a Japanese soldier soldier who says the enemy soldiers are not from Britain, but from Africa because of their belief.

They are not afraid to die.

So even if their comrades have fallen, they keep advancing as if nothing happened.

They have excellent physique and are very brave.

So fighting against these soldiers is somewhat troublesome.

And we've touched on it, how racism characterizes a great deal of the Japanese approach, the people around them.

God knows what it must have been like for them losing to Indian and African soldiers.

What that must do to their worldview, like having it shattered in front of them.

But there's a pause in December.

Yeah, I love this story.

And obviously, I I was going to put it in.

Of course, you were going to put it in.

Of course, I was going to put it in.

So Lieutenant Colonel C.E.B.

Walwyn of the 4th Nigeria Regiment challenges Lieutenant Colonel Philip von Straubenzee.

Sounds a bit dodge.

Of the 1st Sierra Leone even regiment to a cricket match in a clearing in the jungle as 81st West African Division are pausing.

And Straubenzee's 11 make 157 for seven wickets thanks to a fine 88 by Lieutenant L C Smith.

And then they bowl out Walwyn's 11 for 109 to win by 48 runs.

And literally no sooner have they done this and stumps are are drawn in the evening.

And the Japanese then counter-attack.

Think God.

And there's a series of Japanese counter-attacks at this time, you know, mid-December.

And this is when Umreo Singh wins his VC.

But interestingly, it's not the only one either.

Because Sepoy Bandari Ram of the 16th, 10th Balook Regiment also won a VC at the office in Verted Comics, which is, you know, a series of Japanese tunnels.

I mean, it's such a feature, isn't it?

The sort of network of tunnels, you know, whether it be Iwojima, the Arakon, or Okinawa, or whatever.

But Bandari Rum attacks a bunker mouth despite multiple wounds and he crawls to within 15 yards and throws grenades into the embouchure of the of the bunker, killing the enemy and destroying them at the MG.

I love the VC citation speaks of his superhuman courage and determination.

And I think that word superhuman is well used because it's the word that they all started to describe, the Japanese in 1942, 43.

I hope sincerely that he knows what a Victoria Cross is.

They're part of the 16th 10th Balooks are part of 51st Indian Brigade, which also includes 8th 19th Hyderabad Regiment, which is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel K.S.

Timmy Timaya, who Phil Craig's book about the end of the war is about.

He features very heavily in that.

Very heavily in that, because he ends up a major player later on in Indian

history.

But

that is the first battalion in the Indian Army to be commanded by an Indian.

And obviously is a sign of the substantial progress which is being made on this front.

Well, and also the necessity of war, is that you're churning, you're going to churn through officers, so you're just going to have to draw them from somewhere else.

And if it's the Indian Army, where else are you going to draw?

You're going to have to draw them from India.

And that then feeds into what happens post-war in India with the Indian Army to be and so on.

And I think it's important that

this is going on, that, you know, one portion of 15th Corps is going down the coast, another's going down inland, you know, the West Africans.

It talions are leapfrogging one another, so that you go forward, you fight, you hold that bit of land, then the next one goes through you, goes on to the next hill or the next bit of valley or whatever, and so on and so forth.

The pace is set not by the speed at which they can cover the ground, but the speed at which the sappers can operate.

Because, you know, obviously they've got to do bridging, they've got to do clear roads, they've got to clear bits of jungle.

You know, this is a war of engineers as much as it is anything else.

You said that about Italy, but that is certainly the case here in the Arakan.

And all the way by now, because the monsoon is over, the skies are clear or much clearer, which means you can bring to bear your superiority in air power.

Massive superiority in air power by this stage, by the way.

And that means that the RAF and the the USAAF, you know, are now using bullets, cannon shells, bombs, and, of course, napalm as well to support these operations and hammer the Japanese deep into their supply lines, but also at the front as well.

You know, for example, on the 21st, 22nd of December, the 6th Battalion of the Ox and Bucks, that's another of those sort of DLI-style regiments that seems to get absolutely everywhere, makes a night march of over 20 miles.

I mean, that's exactly

in these conditions.

That's a hell of a pace.

That's a hell of a pace.

And it seizes Dombike, which is at the very end of the spur north of Yakyab and at the mouth of the Mayu River and when they enter the village they find remains of Valentine tanks from two years earlier and for those who were listening to our Burma 44 series and the Battle of the Admin Box you may remember the Mayu Range and the Mayu River so you've got the coast the Mayu River the Mayu range of hills through which the Nyakyadau pass wove its way through to get to the admin box this area beyond that that north-south ridge line so this is the mouth of the Mai River, and it comes down to a very sharp, it's like a sort of incisor tooth, like the very tip of a sword or something.

And that's just to the north of Akiab.

These Valentines are from the fighting in the Arakan the first time around, where they've been, well, but delivered in penny packets and not used with effective enough force for bunker busting.

We'll take a quick break while contemplating the relics of previous failures, and we'll be back with the Chong War.

Welcome back to We Have Ways to Make You Talk with Meow Murray and James Holland.

We're in the thick of it in Burma here with basically two coordinated and coordinating thrusts to take out this stretch of the sort of front but just unspeakably difficult area in which to operate.

It's difficult for the Japanese as well, to be fair.

Which is after all the conditions are as militate against everybody.

And what I think is really, really interesting is what you see by kind of the very end of 1944, beginning of 1945, is this new professionalism within Southeast Asia command.

Greater cooperation between air, land, and sea.

You've got huge sophistication in the use of ground controllers, radar for your air forces, all this sort of stuff.

But you've also got unbelievable kind of make-do and mend on.

Parachutes.

You can't get silk parachutes so they make them out of juice.

By the way, in the break, I looked up the bridge over the Chindween.

It's single carriageway.

Sigh of logistic relief.

But also, the classic case, I think, of the kind of make-do and mend mentality is the Inland Water transport group which is set up in just sort of classic British Burma on the hoof manner.

You know this is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alastair Macrae who's a formerly a pre-war Irawadi flotilla company captain but now in the Royal Engineers and Chittagong is McRae's headquarters but he runs a bevy of coastal lighters, steamers, river craft, rafts and so on.

So the Royal Navy's coastal force are hammering any Japanese vessels they can.

Hundreds of Japanese vessels are destroyed by the Royal Navy because there's no Imperial Japanese Navy there at all worth talking about.

So they are destroying and denying the enemy their ability to resupply, but also ensuring they can support their own groups.

And McRae and his Marine Staff officer, who's Captain Stuart Knowles, who's formerly a Huli River pilot, you know, operating out of Calcutta on the other side of the Bay of Bengal, you know,

they're using locally built landing craft maintenance vessels, which have the grand acronym of LCMs, which makes them sound like they're sort of sophisticated, but they're not at all.

Plus a further sort of 600 boats of various kinds.

And it is absolutely not easy to navigate around here because everything's quite low-lying at this point.

And it's just you see some land, it's jungle, and the river sort of disappears.

Everything looks the same.

And everything looks the same.

And, you know, it's incredibly difficult to navigate, but they kind of somehow manage.

And that's why you need people like Alastair McRae and Stuart Knowles, because these guys have been living this life for the last couple of decades before the war.

And they're kind of, you know, they're old river salts.

You know, they know how to manhandle a crocodile and how to kind of you know get through the mangrove swamp and you know negotiate the mud flats and all the rest of it so you've now got this twin approach you've got 26th indian division on the coast and you've got you know going down in in in leapfrogging but with the inland water transport group ferrying them around and then you've got 81st west africa division which is then overtaken by the 82nd west african division yeah don't get confused you've also got the uh interesting you've got the arakhan defence force which had been fighting for the Japanese, but on the 1st of January, they rise up and think, sod this for a game of whatever, kill all their Japanese instructors, go underground and become the Patriotic Army of Burma instead, Arakan Division.

And they join up with the West African divisions on the 4th of January and go, okay, well, we know where the Japanese are because we just come from there.

I mean, I've hedged some bets in my time, but that's an ultimate.

I mean, as New Year's resolutions go, rising up, killing your Japanese instructors and going...

Helping the British, but at the same time calling yourself the patriotic army of Burma tells you what they're kind of.

Well, tells you what they've been told and what they're being enticed with as well, doesn't it?

No doubt, but also what they're intending.

Yeah.

There's a major operation planned for the capture of Akiyab.

Fans of the Royal Navy, we're growing in number on this podcast.

Definitely.

HMS Queen Elizabeth, which is a battleship with 15-inch guns that have not been used since 1915.

And that kind of characterises how a lot of this campaign's been done.

Make do with what you've got.

Three cruisers, destroyers, gunships, etc.

Air support from 10 B-25 Mitchells, five Liberator squadrons, lots and lots of air, and 21 fighter squadrons.

So tons and tons of air there.

That's 36 squadrons.

Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?

And D-Day is going to be the 18th of February, but...

They're getting well ahead of themselves.

They are massively ahead of that.

So the 18th of February is what's sort of plotted in November.

Because do you remember that Slim says he can start this whole operation on the 15th of November?

And in the Arakan, Christensen has been moving down since October.

But they're imagining, because of the conditions, because it's the end of the monsoon, even as they merge out of the monsoon in kind of sort of November-ish, they're still expecting this to be incredibly difficult and slow and ponderous and lots of Japanese sort of getting in the way of their little bunkers and all the rest of it.

But actually, they're well ahead of schedule.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so Operation Romulus, which is the whole Arakong offensive, is going way better.

And so a new plan, Operation Lightning, which is very appropriate, is hastily planned for an attack on Akyab on the 3rd of January.

But before this, and this is just absolutely brilliant, a recycling noticed that the locals are showing absolutely no anxiety whatsoever.

So on the 2nd of January, they drop messages in Urdu and Burmese asking locals to sit on the ground if the island's still occupied or stand with their hands in the air if the enemy is gone.

So basically every time you see an aircraft, wave your hands if the Japs have gone.

And it's the latter.

There's lots of Burmese people on Akyab waving every time the plane comes over.

So Captain Jimmy Jarrett of Sea Flight of 656th Air Observation Post Squadron, which is actually Army Air Corps, lands to a rousing reception the same day, 3rd of the 2nd of January, and discovers that the Japanese have actually quit on the 31st of December.

Oh, so all those gun crews on HMS Queen Elizabeth, they're gun drill and for nothing.

Yeah, but they've been expecting an incredibly tough fight, and it's a cakewalk, and not only is it cakewalk, because 18th of February is the expected time of invasion, followed by a kind of three-week campaign.

They're well ahead of the game, and this is a game changer because this means before

they've crossed to Irrawaddy or got into those central plains up in 14th Army, you know, STEM's main event, they've already got Akyab and the airfield.

So a beachhead is then seized by 42nd Royal Marine Commando with 44th Marine Commando following, although they land too far out straight into thick mud.

Just sort of underlying that you've got two enemies here.

One's the Japanese and one is just the kind of terrain and location and unknown hazards.

There's an Australian journalist called Roy McKee who's there to watch this and calls it a sabu, which is a self-adjusting bulls-up.

Atkyab was a wilderness.

Trees grew inside wrecked buildings.

Vines covered roofs.

Signboards hung on rusty nails in empty streets.

So there's a sort of sense of a sort of desolate place that no one's been very interested in for the last few years.

Sabu didn't catch on.

Snafu has cleaned up on the

Sabu.

Do you?

Sabu.

A self-adjusting bulls up.

It doesn't sound American.

It sounds very British, I think.

It does.

It's a self-adjusting bulls up.

It sounds much more Duke.

So Christensen, because he's ahead of schedule, he's got to figure out what to do next.

He's going to move quickly, and they've got to keep their momentum up.

They've got to outflank the enemy, block the enemy's line of retreat and set up their own blocking positions.

So on the 6th of January the 9th Yorks and Lancasters move by boat to establish a block on the Yeo River which is to the east of Akyab and the Japanese are still there, Ponagyun, but with the 14th 4th 18th Royal Garwal rifles they clear the area and the Japanese pull back with I mean they do what you're not meant to do which is they try and retreat while engaged with the enemy, the Japanese and they get smashed up by the Garwal rifles.

So then it's this going been going a second take over on the 18th of January.

So it's this permanent leapfrog the moving.

If you're walking a dog you can't do anything about it while you're listening to this but if you are sat in front of your desk or whatever or you get a chance to have a look on Google Earth I really would you know what you want to do is put in Akyab and you'll start to see exactly what we're talking about here.

Because a lot of the names on Akyab are obviously in Burmese rather than in English and it's quite hard to kind of follow what's going on.

But you know, I'm conscious there's a lot of Burmese names and they all sound unfamiliar and it's very sort of hard to sort of get a grip.

It was of course very hard for people to get a grip of what was going on at the time as well.

I mean you know this is really really hard, very very difficult place to navigate, to manoeuvre around and about as remote as you could ever not want to be.

Yeah.

There's some quite peculiar characters involved in this though because 82nd West African Division who've taken over from 81st, they're commanded by Major General Hugh Stockwell, who served with the 4th Nigerian Regiment in the 1930s and he's sort of done a new broom thing and sacked the people who think it's useless and he's brought an RSM with him who's from the 3rd Nigerian regiment but who's a German and who fought for the Germans in West Africa during the First World War.

It's quite incredible this.

Sorko wrote, he stayed with me as a personal RSM for a year and a half.

He advised me on the Africans and through him I could find out what they thought of their British officers.

He was tremendous.

Fine.

You know, this is my point.

You know, it takes all sorts.

Whatever works.

It whatever works.

Now, we haven't mentioned Mountbatten in this episode so far, and we talked about him an awful lot in the last one.

What's he doing?

Because if the situation's moving and changing fast, he's going to have a say-so, isn't he?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So

he conceives Operation Passport and issues instructions to Christerson to get on with this.

And this is an idea, an amphibious assault by the 25th Infantry Division, which are taking over from the 26th and 3rd Commando Brigade behind the Japanese retreat on the Maibon River, which is near the town of...

Kangor.

And Maibon, again, is kind of just sort of east of the sort of lower half of Akyap on the sort of mainland, I suppose.

But again, it's sort of riven by lots of rivers and chongs and all the rest of it.

And at the same time, the 26th Indian Division would be landed on the next major island, Ramri Island, a stretch further south.

So the idea is to try and sort of smother the Japanese.

So they have no idea where they're coming from.

They're coming left, right, and centre, all over the place.

And their information is that Kangor is only lightly held.

So Passport is Operation Passport is hurriedly planned and then launched on the 12th of January, which I think, you know, is impressive.

When you think about the men you've got to organise, the shipping you've got to organize, you know, the McCraze lot, the inland water transport people, you know, you've got to get them organized and supplies and ammunition and food and all the rest of it.

And they pull it off.

The Japanese have planted stakes on the beaches around the river mouth of the Maibon River, but coppists who are also there, remember them, combined operations pilotage parties, they're on D-Day and in Sicily and so on.

They're out here as well, part of the SBS.

They plant delayed charges on these the night before, so they're not alerting the enemy.

And they all go off in the morning, clearing paths and and it's all done you know fantastically yeah um efficiently so the commandos and 25th infantry division the or the leading elements of that managed to get a get ashore no problem at all and with pretty light opposition tanks and guns are also swiftly landed um as well as artillery from zcraft which is another of these innovations so these are lcms with 25 pounders on amazing so four 25 pounders on these craft all just going boom boom boom you've immediately got firepower because what they realized is the one thing the japanese the the japanese can squirrel into hills and they've got swords and they've got machine guns and they've got a few little sort of mountain pack howitzers but their firepower the heavy firepower is absolutely minimal so suddenly the tank and the and the offshore 25 pounder become absolutely invaluable as does the three inch mortar of course but if you can outdo them in terms of firepower you you've got a much easier job for the infantry which in this terrible location is exactly what you want but as they go inland it gets more difficult doesn't it the commandos have a difficult time on pagoda hill and taking my bon village They push on, though, and with tanks, if the other side haven't got tanks, tanks are absolutely fantastic asset.

Yes, because again, the Maibon River comes down as this little sort of narrow finger of a peninsula.

So that's what they're doing.

When we say pushing on, they're pushing up this little narrow peninsula.

Hold your hand up in front of you and space your fingers a little.

It's that.

That's exactly like that.

The Z craft can come up because they can go up the Chong, up the river, the sort of Saltwater River, and support them as they're moving up on land.

Point 262 is taken on the 17th of January.

The Japanese mount a series of counter-attacks, but they're seen off.

But the big fight is about to come.

And this is for Hill 170 and Kangor, the town of, well, rather village, really, it's a village.

Let's not kid ourselves.

And again, this is inland down another chong, and you go around a corner, and then it sort of goes roughly parallel to the coast, and there's two more rivers coming into it.

And in the middle of that is a sort of chunk of land with these series of little low ridges on them.

The first one runs across it.

So again, if you sort of, if you think of a sort of little rectangle, you've got the big chong at the bottom of the rectangle, the sort of the narrower bit, then you've got roughly two parallel bits either side of it.

And running across the width of the rectangle in this low sort of 700 yard, 900 yard long ridge line is Hill 170.

And of course the 170 is the height.

But obviously they're on sea level.

So 170 meters is not insignificant.

You know, that's best about 500 feet.

Yeah, I mean we are talking a completely remote place.

I mean mean this is one of the strange things about a lot of this fighting is it's scrapping over places no one would ever think to go least of all any of the people involved in the fighting.

It's not it's it's not you can see it really really clearly if you look on land somehow what we'll do is we'll try and find a sort of I don't know maybe give you a kind of Google Maps image of it or something link to it.

So what we'll do is we'll put up a Google Maps link when we get the chance.

And the plan is 3 Commando Brigade will land and secure Hill 170, then 51st Indian Brigade will pass through and take Kangor itself.

And they're given this four days' rest, there's a pause after Maibon, and then they attack on the 22nd of January.

I mean, it's amazing this, they land at one o'clock in the afternoon and achieve complete tactical surprise.

Well, how could the Japanese possibly guess where they're going to land when you look at Google Earth?

I mean, how can they possibly know?

Yes, but it is broad daylight.

Yeah, I know, but even so, I mean, look at this.

I mean, you can't see anyone coming because it's just a mass of foliage and mangrove swamps and trees and all the rest of it.

It's absolutely hopeless.

Anyway, they land at 1 p.m.

But the Japanese are actually stronger in this neck of the woods than anticipated.

And they begin a series of furious counter-attacks against the commandos throughout the night that follows.

So this is the night of the 22nd, 21st of January.

And we talked about this with Lucy Petrich Dyson.

We did, yeah.

Whose grandfather was there.

Exactly that.

And had been back.

And the stories of the Japanese wearing berets and green berets and stuff and fighting very, very sort of, well, trying anything, basically, trying absolutely anything to disrupt the commandos.

I mean, the 28th of January, Timmy Timayer, who we talked about, his 8th, 19th Hyderabads, they attempt to seize...

Well, yes, 51st Indian Infantry Brigade has landed plus the 19th Lancer, so they've now got some Lees.

You know, these are the sort of early model Shermans before they become Shermans.

Yeah.

Perfectly good in this terrain.

Well, they're really, they're a great weapon, incredibly effective.

So this is really tough fighting.

And there's a series of other hills beyond Dunhill, there's Milford, Pinna, Berwick, Melrose, you know all with sort of classic kind of British Army, Indian Army names and you know this fighting continues over the best part of the next week and into February but on the 3am on the 28th of January the the aforementioned Colonel Timmy Timayers 8th 19th Hyderabads attempt to seize Dun Hill but they meet heavy opposition 19 killed in action 61 wounded but with then the subsequent support of the 16th 10th Balooks they did secure the other Kangor hills, Milford, Pinna and Berwick and they get a foothold on Melrose which is to the east of Kangor.

And they think they've captured it, but of course it's one of these false crests and the Japanese do a furious counter-attack, push them off again.

And that day, the 28th of January, the Japanese artillery fire 800 shells into the bridgehead, which is the heaviest concentration fired by the Japanese artillery in one place in the entire Burma campaign.

Which actually tells you everything you need to know about how poorly supplied the Japanese are.

You know, you think about the 196,000 rounds.

that are fired on Casino Town on the 19th.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, on the 16th of March or whatever it was, 1944.

I mean, this is obviously absolutely child's play, but

one has to appreciate that you can only fit as many people as you can into a very small area.

And this is very constrained, tight area where you simply can't, no one can have a huge number of troops because there isn't the space or the wherewithal or the logistics to support any more than that.

You have to see it in the context of where they're fighting, I think.

So what is absolutely clear now is Yes, they've got ashore on this little tiny kind of isolated corner of the Arakan

you know comparatively safely but but in the days that follow the Japanese resistance has stiffened and this is very much like the fighting in the admin box it's it's trying to hold the little bits of high ground in amongst the sort of paddy fields and and low ground and villages below and this is already turning into a slogging match you know here we are you know they landed on the 22nd and now it's the 28th so six days have gone um there's need for a pause and new orders so they hold the ground that they've got but the Japanese are kind of fighting back it's It's all very sort of bitty and all over the place.

The 2nd, 2nd Punjabis are then ordered to secure Melrose Hill, which is where Timmy Tamaya's 88th, 19th Hyderabads have been trying to take, and for the 16th, 10th Balouk to take Kangor Village.

But the Punjabis are attacking behind a smokescreen, but the last 50 feet to the crest involves a mad charge up the slope, culminating in bitter hand-to-hand fighting.

In the battalion report, it says the Japanese asked for no quarter and gave none.

And in this desperate struggle, it must be said they fought magnificently you know so there is this absolute sort of do or die kind of scenario and again you know you just think about how remote they are with these people trying to sort of kill each other no quarter given it's absolutely extraordinary and after this a hundred dead Japanese are found strewn all over the hill and the Balooks themselves suffer 80 casualties although fortunately most of them are wounded rather than killed Lieutenant Colonel S.

P.

Thorett, the commanding officer of the Punjabi, says, the Battle of Melrose was an acid test of our caliber.

We fought the jap on equal terms with the odds perhaps in his favour and we beat him and beat him we shall whenever we come to grips and again you get this sense of this sort of this shift they're no longer beatable the japanese you know we're not only their equal they're we're their better and and and improving morale despite the kind of difficulties of the environment and which well because they find themselves well if you're winning If you're winning and you're beating this enemy who you thought was other people,

it's going to make you feel good.

I mean, it is very, very interesting this, though, isn't it?

Because it demonstrates this big shift.

The Japanese have decided to give no quarter and ask for none.

That means you've got to.

Yeah, you've got to do that.

You've got to do this.

You've got to steal yourself to that task.

And when you consider this is a, you know, again, the Indian Army is a volunteer army.

And your enemies are ones that aren't going to surrender.

Yeah, exactly.

So you're just going to have to grasp the nettle this way.

And yes, the Allies have more firepower at their disposal, but

you've still got to winkle the bastard out.

Yes, and I think there's a sense from the Japanese point of view that, okay, they've lost Akyab, but Ramri and Chiduba are also in danger.

And also they're in danger of being cut off from behind because they've got the 82nd West African Division bearing down on them from the north.

They're faced with being encircled suddenly.

So the best way to rectify the situation, they think, is to is to recapture Hill 170, split the Allied bridgehead around Kangor, defeat that, and then they can easily, more easily withdraw further south before the West Africans reach them.

So this is why Hill 170 turns into this terrible slogging match because suddenly they launch a heavy bombardment again on the 31st of January and then they launched 154th Infantry Regiment in one of the most desperate counter-attacks of the entire Burma campaign and nothing has changed for the Japanese.

You know, when confronted with a problem, they just go for it.

The bans I charge, the swords being wheeled, you know, shooting from the hip, screaming as they come through the jungle.

You know, and it's, it's to terrify your enemy, overwhelm them by the speed of which you're running through the jungle, but it's also obviously incredibly costly.

And they also send forward engineer assault parties on the sly ahead of the infantry assault to try and neutralize the Allied tanks.

So, an engineer assault party blows off the tracks of one Sherman, sets fire to a second, but a third Sherman tank remains unharmed.

And we're supporting platoon of the 2nd, 4th Bombay Grenadiers, destroys the Japanese assault party, which means kills a whole lot of them.

And then there is the famous VC action, which is Lieutenant George Noland of 1st Commando winning his VC at the cost of his life, it has to be said, on Hill 170.

And this is, I mean, again, superhuman.

Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely hysterical.

So he has 24 guys and they're being attacked by 300 enemy soldiers.

He's doing what infantry subalterns do.

He's moving around between his men.

He's distributing ammunition.

He's making sure their positions are okay.

He's contributing with rifle fire.

He's throwing grenades at the enemy.

He's leading.

He's showing the way.

This is incredibly dangerous.

So when one of the Bren gunners who's positioned forward is wounded, he rushes forward to man it himself.

These ranges, the enemy's 10 yards away, but they're below the level of the trench.

So he has to stand up to find them.

out the hill, they've got the ridge, yeah, and he carries on firing until his casualties have been evacuated.

And a replacement gun team that's been sent for, they're injured while they're moving up, so he stays on the gun.

I mean, this is just incredible.

Then he takes over a two-inch water, yeah, which is firing from the hip directly into the enemy.

So basically, he's holding it up and just going

like that, fire at them, yeah, absolutely incredible.

Then this packs up, he switches to his rifle, he hasn't got time to reload his rifle, they're that close.

Grabs a Tommy gun, usually.

He's disguarded.

Yeah.

More of the enemy are killed.

But at this point, he receives mortal wounds.

Although half his platoon are lost, the remainder hold on.

And by the time they're relieved, they've held the ground for 12 hours.

They've prevented the enemy from assaulting.

24 men.

Yeah, against two companies, essentially.

They prevented the enemy from advancing further on the hill.

And the commandos, with relentless mortar and artillery fire, so firepower, break up the enemy assaults and stop it.

But I mean, that's the lot of the infantry subaltern, isn't it, in this situation?

Yeah, it's absolutely amazing.

Then overnight, the 7th, 16th Punjabis move onto hill 170, take over from the commandos in the morning, carry out a sweep of the mangrove swamps.

And for two more days, the Japanese are sort of continuing to fire and taking pot shots and stuff.

But by the 2nd of February, 700 Japanese dead found on and around the hill.

I mean, just imagine what that's like in that temperature, that humidity.

I mean, it's just, oh my God, it just doesn't even bear thinking about.

And the fighting then continues to two more weeks.

You know, this is proper attritional stuff.

13th of February, our old friends, the Hyderabad Regiment, attack Perth Hill.

And Lieutenant Colonel Tamaya has asked one of his best NCOs, a Nike called Jagmal, to lead a patrol to learn about the enemy on the feature.

And Jagmal tells him he doesn't want to lead a patrol, but rather take the entire hill.

So Tamaya goes, go for it then.

And he watches him as Jagmal with 20 men creeps forward, then springs into action.

And Jagmal leads three assaults on successive enemy positions.

He's wounded a number of times and eventually collapses from loss of blood.

But the hill is in their hands.

He's taken it with his patrol.

They've taken the hill and he's brought back down and he's still conscious on a stretcher when Tamaya sees him and hysterical with delight that he'd captured the hill.

And he says, I took it.

I made the Japs run.

And a further sort of 25 Japanese are found, you know, dead are found around the hill.

So the fighting continues on and around Hill 170.

The, you know, the epic battle there lasts 22 days, while at the same time, you've got these other hill features sort of further inland are also being folded.

So this is, it's a very sort of asymmetric kind of battle, I would say.

Yeah, no, but the whole battle cost 2,000 men to the Japanese.

So, you know, it's got a vibe of the admin box battle, I think, where superior staying power, holding your ground, superior firepower, kind of, you know, the willingness not to cut and run, but stand your ground, and better supplies just wins the day.

But, you know, in comparison, the Allies lose 210 killed in action, 70 wounded in action.

But, you know, that's a tenth of the 2,000 men that the Japanese are.

And that's an echo of what we've been talking about in Northwest Europe, is that the Allies are better at this.

They're taking less casualties and they're inflicting more.

And that suggests that...

Because the Japanese,

you know, it's interesting, because compared to Okinawa, where they're fighting, they're boxing really clever, they're still in the band's eye charge thing, we're coming to get you, Tommy, see you in a minute, all that stuff, which yes, it might be terrifying, but it also gives the game away, rather, as to what your intentions are,

makes things easier for the British.

Yeah, and I just I just cannot stress enough the privations that these men are experiencing.

Whether you be Japanese, whether you be from West Africa, whether you be from Melrose or wherever you're from, I mean, this is about as tough and hard and remote as you can ever expect it to be with all the lurgies and mosquitoes and insects and bugs and snakes.

And if you're wounded

and crocodiles...

Well, and if you're wounded, there's no hop across the channel.

Well, this is one of the problems there.

You know, we're now in sort of, you know, well, middle of February.

So there's this great opportunity for the Allies to push on, but supplies and transport are the issue because it's just so flipping remote.

And there's shortages of everything, not at least water.

You know, 4,000 gallons per day of water has to be brought in by these LCMs.

You know, wheeled vehicles just don't work here.

You know, there's no room for that.

Apart from a track tank's just about.

You know, there's not enough Indian...

Pioneer Corps to do all the all the supplies that they need or would feel comfortable with.

There's Casavac and everything has to be done by manpower.

You know, the wounded have to be taken down by stretcher by foot to a waiting LCM, put on the LCM, taken away, whisked away, transferred to a bigger ship out at sea.

I mean, you can imagine, can't you?

So that's Hill 170.

And, you know, frankly, it deserves a whole series all on its own.

And maybe one day we'll do that, which Darren Little will be very happy about.

But I hope we've done it justice enough, Darren, this series.

We've given it a flavour.

We've given it a flavour, done our best.

So, fighting in the Arakan continues in our next episode because we have attempted to stuff a lot of meat into this particular sausage and failed.

Regular listeners are familiar with this situation.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, basically, in this instance.

So, join us for more fighting on Arakan and our continued dive into Burma 45.

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