Burma '45: Killer Jungle

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From Ukral, a track had been used before the rains as a main supply route by the Japanese.

This narrow road wound along hillsides, dropped into valleys, and climbed pretty steeply up through forests.

Never wider than a single vehicle, it had been transformed by the rain into a glissade of mud.

Bridges were washed away, and under the weight of abandoned Japanese vehicles, the road collapsed in places in a slither of mud and shale down the hillsides.

Everywhere, the ravages of disease and starvation were apparent.

From the large jungle camps lining the road, from mullers and valleys lived in by the Japanese, rose the stench of putrefaction.

At the side of the road, or full on down the hillside, lay vehicles, drivers dead at the wheel or lying beside their vehicles.

Embedded in the foot-deep mud of the road were dead Japanese and the carcasses of mules worked to death in the frantic endeavor to escape.

Equipment lay everywhere as evidence of a rout.

And that was Major John Shipster, who I imagined spoke a little like that, 7th, 2nd Punjab Regiment of the 7th Indian Infantry Division.

And welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, and our series about Burma 45.

The Unforgotten Army, Jim, right?

The Unforgotten Army, we haven't forgotten them.

They're very much at the forefront.

And in time-honoured fashion, this is about Burma 45, but obviously we're starting in 1944.

Well, you know, you've got to have a bit of context.

And I think one of the things that I really, really hope comes across particularly strongly in these first two episodes in this series, well, throughout the series, to be fair, is that anyone operating in Burma has got two enemies.

You know, one enemy is the actual enemy, the Japanese, or in the Japanese case, the Anglo-Indian Army, but also the conditions and the weather.

I mean, this is just an unbelievably remote part of the world in 1944 into 1945.

It's unbelievably brutal.

It's absolutely just ringing with disease and horrible snakes and insects and all sorts of other kind of horrors.

And of course, it is subject to the most torrential monsoon for kind of half the year, basically from sort of May to November every year.

And we left the last series, Burma 44, at the end of the Battle of Imphal and Kahima in July 1944.

But those who know have a sort of vague understanding of what happens in Burma is retreat out of Burma in 1942, then attack again at the end of 1942, into the beginning of 1943 in Arakan, that goes horribly wrong.

Then triddle their thumbs while the monsoon's going on.

Slim comes in, revolutionizes things a bit.

Then there's the Battle of the Admin Box in February 1944.

Then there's the big Japanese attack into northeast India, the Manipur State, and Nagaland, which culminates in the Battle of Infal and Kohima, which Slim's 14th Army win spectacularly.

Then nothing really happens again until early part of 1945.

Again, you've got another strike in Tierra Khan.

You've got the sort of crossing of the River Chindwin and the River Irwawadi.

Then you've got Mandalay and McTeed and for finally getting to Rangoon.

But of course, it's nothing like as simple as that.

And Kohima Infal ends in July 1944.

So what the heck are they doing between July and the beginning of January 1945?

The thing is, there's only so much they can do, as you said, because of the monsoon.

I mean, this is what's really peculiar about the Burmese.

The campaigning season isn't like in Northwest Europe or in Italy, that they fight through the traditional campaigning season.

So you never used to fight in the winter.

The Second World War, there's major offensives and stuff going on in the winter in Europe.

But here, the climate, the weather is actually much more restrictive.

And it creates a kind of campaigning season that everyone's really bound to.

That in the heavy rain, it's extremely difficult to do anything meaningful, isn't it?

Which doesn't mean that they don't do things and they are doing things because, you know, Imphal is quite a way into into northeast India, into Manipur State.

You know, it's another kind of sort of hundred miles or so to, you know, towards Tidim, which is just over the other side of the

border with Burma to the south, and to Tamu, which is again the other side of the border in Burma, but, you know, is southeast of Imphal in the plain of Imphal, through the hills, through the Chin Hills.

And, you know, they're all exhausted.

You know, they've been at it since March.

So this has been a long battle.

The rain's been coming down since May.

You know, everyone needs a bit of a breather, but at the same time, they do need to still press on.

And one of the units which is doing the pressing on is the 7th Indian Division.

So I thought, just to start off with, let's stick with Major John Shipster because, you know, he's part of the 7th Indian Division, which don't forget, that's the division which has been at the App In Box.

So not only have they been at the Appin box fighting that one, they've then been involved in the Battle of Kohima.

So they've had a terrible time of it.

Shipster himself, immediately after the Battle of Infal, is given some leave in Calcutta and he stays in a large hotel requisitioned for officers, which is sort of, this is one of the sort of constant problems.

It's sort of notable for lack of any kind of female company whatsoever.

You know, requisition hotels, really the only option for these sort of places of leave.

So, you know, it's all about the mess and clubs and drinking and sport and all the rest of it.

But, you know, be that as it may, there's convivial company and refreshment and chance to sort of, you know, to recharge yourself a little bit.

So he has his little bit of leave and then he returns to his battalion, the 7th, 2nd Punjabs, and they're pulled back for a bit.

So they're retraining.

And it's no longer for jungle training that they're doing.

And more of this in a future episode.

But what they're really doing is readying for all-arms combat in the open plains of central Burma.

You know, so it's farewell, jungle, hello, pagoda, and rivers.

That's what it's about.

And this is about all-arms combat.

This is artillery, infantry, and armor and motorized vehicles.

You know, this is in how do you cooperate together?

And of course, you know, they've all been training about jungles and how to make the the jungle your friend and all the rest of it.

So this is quite a departure and that's needed.

And this is something that Slim has recognized.

But he's back in action from mid-December.

So new rows have been constructed into Burma for the first time in a long while.

They're transported south to Tamu on a newly resurfaced road in trucks.

And this is just incredible,

how they do all this.

And again, more of that in a in a bit.

Yes, the sappering effort's amazing, isn't it?

Absolutely incredible, yeah.

And they're now operating in independent company groups.

So they're protecting the left flank of the division.

So what this means is, you know, they're sort of split up into platoons and they're operating on foot with mules, but they're completely self-sufficient.

So they're scouting and clearing the area ahead of them of any Japanese rearguards.

So they're just sort of combing their way through the hills.

But Schiffs is loving it.

You know, he feels fit, well, morale sky high.

They're beating the Japanese.

You know, he's enjoying this new role.

You know, as he points out in his memoir, the only blight is the ulcers on his legs.

You know, these are sort of the perennial jungle sores.

I mean, I've got to say, that would drive me absolutely do lally.

And I don't think I'd be feeling fit and well and with high morale if I had jungle sores, but you know.

Yes, it's just as well as morale's good, isn't it?

They're on the front foot, because that would very easily get you down.

And this can be anything.

This is basically a cut on your leg, and it's so humid and so hot that it becomes infected.

And this is a thing that basically

everyone suffers with.

Jungle sores one way or another.

You've got to be careful.

You cut or graze yourself it'll go bad is the simple business of it isn't it it's a horrible horrible notion isn't it horrible absolutely horrible and again i'll go back to my earlier point you know this is you're fighting two enemies here they'd move on they'd sort of clear the uh the hills occasionally run into some japanese rear guards they'd sort of disappear off into the into the jungle because we're not in the open plains of the the shuibo plain at this point and so they're still in the jungle and every night he and his company would take shelter near a small stream or river so they've got water and stuff before the sun goes down, they would hear the unmistakable cry of this bird, which sounded like Baku, buck you, you know, in the evening air.

And so they called it the fuck you bird.

It was always heard every evening, but never seen.

And so one night, you know, and this starts to sort of grate on his nerves.

So one evening, after his O group, which is the orders group, which where they're sort of discussing what they're going to do the next day with his senior NCOs and officers, Shipster offers 15 rupees, about quid, for anyone who could locate this bird and get rid of it.

And eventually, a young Punjabi returns saying, I got him, Saab.

And Shipster goes, Shabosh, but where is it?

And the soldier explains it wasn't a bird at all, but a large lizard.

Amazing, isn't it?

Yeah, really good.

I think what's remarkable about this is that two years previously, the British and the Indian armies have got no answer to the Japanese at all in this theater.

You say that the jungle's another enemy.

What they've actually come to understand, isn't it, is that the Japanese are also dealing with the jungle, that it's, in essence, the jungle has a vote and has picked neither side in the way that the weather gets a vote, but this is like on another level completely.

But the fact that they're operating so confidently and so competently, I mean, it's a rout in Burma in 1942, isn't it?

There's no other way of looking at it.

That whole catalogue of chaos as they're withdrawing, Alex turning up and sort of trying to rally people, Slim making sure his men march in in good order with their heads held high so they don't come home feeling defeated, all that stuff.

It's miles behind them.

And the way they've put that behind them.

And as you say, 7th India Division have had a hard year's fighting.

What they've discovered in 1942 is that they are not equipped, trained, or in any way supplied for the battle which is confronting them.

So they've got to learn those lessons.

And, you know, that's obviously instigated to a very large extent by Slim, you know, when he's acting Eastern Army Commander in the second half of...

you know, in the late summer and early autumn of 1943.

And, you know, he, with Mountbatten's support, manages to turn that around in pretty quick order.

And, you know, but there are other factors.

There's air power, which is completely dominated by the Allies now to an overwhelming amount, which means you can do all sorts of complicated things which you couldn't do in 1942, such as supply John Shipster and his men by airdrop.

And what they've discovered also is that the Japanese can only move fast when they can steal it from them.

So if you deny it to them, that you know, they start to get in trouble pretty quickly.

And the kind of superhuman jab, you know, that myth has been well and truly punctured.

And the Japanese are now having all the problems that the British had coming out of Burma, which is poor supplies, running out of everything, no air power, and not having the equipment and supplies to be able to resist

what the Anglo-Indian army is bringing.

And the enemy being inside your decision loop, because that's the other thing is that the Japanese in 42 completely get inside the British way of thinking.

They get completely inside.

They're making decisions days ahead of the British response to those decisions.

It's completely the other way around now.

It's completely reverse.

It is quite extraordinary.

And one of those things that what Slim's able to do is sort of boil off the people who are no good and draw clever people to him and draw people with jungle experience and pool thinking with the Australians, with the, you know, with anyone who's talking about jungle warfare.

They're all drawn in together to put the jungle book together.

But as you say, he's also looking beyond that now to combined arms operations in the Burmese plains, which is, I think, that he's thinking a campaign ahead.

The Japanese can't think about what happened to them yesterday.

And he's thinking into next year is quite remarkable.

There's a lot of forward thinking here.

But just to get back to Shipster, so he's in an Indian regiment.

And so how these, just a reminder, how these Indian divisions work is you have three brigades.

Each of those brigades have three infantry battalions of sort of, you know, 870 men each.

You would have, of those battalions, one would be British, one would be Indian Army, you know, or Indian, and one would be Gurkha.

So this is Shipster's is the Indian version.

So what that means is, you know, they're being supplied by the air.

He's a British officer.

He has to speak to all his men in Hindi.

There is no English spoken whatsoever.

None of his men, only his fellow officers speak English.

So it's all Hindi, and that's how they speak, and that's how they communicate.

You know, obviously, different rations as well.

Hindus have no tin meat, so that's got to be different.

They also need fodder for the mules.

You know, really, the only time Shipsters speaking English is on the Rear Link radio.

I mean, it's just amazing.

And only once do they run into a Japanese ambush.

They temporarily lose some of their mules and a few of his men are wounded, and these are evacuated by light aircraft in a jungle clearing, which again is another sign of how the, you know, they're really getting their act together.

You know, because Kazavak casualty evacuation is really, really important.

At one point, even his mail reaches him, including a box of golf balls from his mother.

Because he said, you know, I quite like to play some golf when I'm on leave.

And obviously, it's come too late, but you know, he just throws him away.

One night, he pauses and enjoys an especially good mug of tea using water from the stream, only later to discover a rotting elephant in the water a little bit further on.

And in this way, Shipster and his his company march 325 miles from Tamu to Pakoku on the Irrawaddy.

You know, we're jumping ahead of here because that doesn't happen until a little bit later until February.

But each day, they're moving forward in silence.

They stop at dask, they prepare food, dig defensive positions, and then repeat over and over and over again.

And by early 1945, the 7th, 2nd Punjabis are part of a far, far bigger enterprise for the reconquest of Burma.

And this is all part of a daring plan, which, as you were mentioning, has been hatched by General Bill Slim, but which had taken a heck of a lot longer to get authorised and signed off at the highest level than you frankly might have expected after the amazing and emphatic victory at Infal.

But as ever with these things, nothing is quite as straightforward and very often not quite what it seems.

And always the thing to bear in mind is that what makes this all the more remarkable is that they're at the back of the queue in terms of materiel, logistics.

They're doing all this, not with one hand behind their back.

I don't want to give that impression this campaign isn't the priority and in fact when the infal kohima campaign you know it you know successfully concluded london don't really know the penny doesn't really drop with them as to what he's actually achieved and what he's set out to do and what he's achieved brooke doesn't quite get it which is quite fascinating you know obviously brooke's looking at northwest europe that's where his that's where his eye is they don't quite understand it in london do they no What's interesting is Slim is actually order combat in July during the height of the monsoon, isn't he?

Because he's broken his own rules and taken a bath after sunset.

And he's got malaria.

Slim's view on malaria is he'll fire battalion officers if they, battalion commanders if they don't abide by his malaria rules.

You know, he only has to sack three of them.

But here he's broken his own rule and as a result, he's laid up.

And the weather at that time of year, I mean, and he notes the weather, the weather's made it very, very difficult to pursue trying to chase Japanese 15th Army down, but it's difficult.

It's just a nightmare.

And also, you know, he's got to rotate his troops out.

He's got to rotate them out.

A, to give them a rest, B, to retrain them.

So that's going to kind of necessarily slow them down.

And, you know, just the conditions, the non-existent tracks, the non-existent roads, all these sort of things.

I mean, you know, it's just, it's just very difficult.

It's a sort of slow business.

But it's also important to be methodical because you really, really do need to clear India completely of Japanese troops.

And you also need to clear those hills, the Chin Hills in the north of Burma, as you're crossing over sort of Tidim and Tamu.

That area

of northern Burma,

you need to make sure that that is also clear so that you've got you absolutely know where you are.

You've got no surprises.

No one's going to come up and sort of sneak out of the jungle and suddenly sort of blow up

a supply train or something like that.

All of this is important.

He writes, Hill tracks in a terrible state.

He's from Birmingham, Jim.

They want him to brumhy, come on.

Hill tracks in a terrible state.

Five are so slippery that men can hardly walk or knee deep in mud.

I don't feel we can pull that off.

JR has just put a note in the psycho.

We've lost Bourneville.

Okay, I'm going to go back and do it in how I imagine Slim talks.

Hill tracks in a terrible state.

Either so slippery that men can hardly walk or knee-deep in mud.

Administrative difficulties considerable.

Half a company took 10 hours to carry two stretcher cases four miles.

A party of men without packs took seven hours to cover five miles.

I know what I prefer.

But, I mean, the crucial thing is, it's all about sickness, isn't it?

9th Brigade of 5th India Division,

they lose nine killed in action, 85 wounded in action, but 507 to sickness and disease.

Yeah, that's just in July 1944.

Yeah, essentially everyone at some point has malaria, basically.

They have to completely rejig how they deal with it.

And I think what's really interesting is it sort of echoes how they deal with combat fatigue, is that they do it as close to the front as they possibly can, that you're not on a train sent all the way back to India.

You're dosed up, you're given the rest you need, and then you're turned around and sent back.

Because

the other thing they don't want is the impression that malaria is your ticket out.

The people don't think, well, you know, Jack got malaria.

He's gone now.

He won't be back for six months.

That's a big part of the way they decide to deal with it.

But it's interesting, isn't it, what Slim says about when they do capture Tamu.

And it's 11th East African Division.

So this is a completely Duke effort.

That's the other thing to bear in mind.

He says, it's always a disappointment in the Burma campaign to enter a town that had been a name on the map and a goal for which men fought and died.

My soldiers walked warily, alert for booby traps and snipers, through a tangle of burnt beams, twisted corrugated iron, with here and there rising among the squalid ruins the massive chipped and stained pagodas and chintis of a Buddhist temple.

In Tamu, the place was a charnel house of a macabre eeriness hard to describe.

550 Japanese corpses lay unburied in its streets and houses, many grouped grotesquely around stone Buddhas, which looked blandly out over the sacrifices huddled at their feet.

Dozens more, over a hundred, lay in indescribable filth, dying of disease and starvation amongst the corpses.

Everywhere they go, the Japanese army is in this state.

And this is the

famed Japanese army that can advance through the jungle

on a pocket full of rice or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

They've been completely eviscerated by Slim's campaign, and their method has failed them.

And their method is to move forward, capture supplies, restage, move forward, capture more supplies, and to live not off the land, but off the British.

And it's failed.

And so they've got nothing left, have they?

But I mean, it's all about disease isn't it yeah and I mean you can't help it I mean it's great it's great that Shipster and his men are so are so you know gung-ho and full of morale high morale but you know I mean imagine you've just done this amazing victory and it's kind of all right then so shall I put the kettle on I mean you know I mean there's there's no there's no victory march there's no triumph there's no kind of people patting them on the back there's nothing whatever kind of sort of cheer you might have felt in the summer by the end of this sort of long period if you haven't had sufficient time out of the line you know, people are starting to suffer from bad diet and exhaustion and illness, as we've already talked about.

But, you know, one of the things they've discovered is that because of the stress of combat, food passes through the system, the body, body system, quicker than normal.

And that's making the body increasingly inefficient at extracting the necessary vitamins and minerals.

So, in other words, the sort of bodies are becoming sort of traumatized by battling conditions.

You know, and in the first six months of 1944, so this is up to the summer, you know, up to the end of the battle, Southeast Asia Command lost 40,000 killed in action and wounded in action, but but 282,000 to disease.

I mean, that's a problem.

This is how it goes.

This is how it goes.

I mean, it's the same for both sides, to be fair.

And actually, it's worse for the Japanese because they've got less of the medication that the Allies have.

This saps speed and energy and efficiency.

Everything that is achieved in this time and going forward into 1945, which is obviously what we're mainly talking about, you have to put it in the context of the debilitating conditions, which I think makes the achievements all the more remarkable.

But there are other people with big plans in Burma, though, aren't there?

Yes, and Mitt Keener is a name that kind of sort of crops up time and time again in the narrative of the Burma campaign.

And although this is a predominantly, not entirely, by industry's imagination, American command does need to be kind of mentioned, I think, because it has an enormous impact on the decision-making for the Burma campaign.

Yeah.

So this is Vinegar Joe's still well.

Well, because I was going to say, if the Forgotten Army are forgotten, the Chinese army fighting in Burma is even more completely forgotten.

This is the thing that doesn't get talked about at all, really.

And this is an American equipped, trained, and organized, commanded Chinese army, isn't it?

Yes, so it's the Northern Combat Area Command, which is a sort of, is an area rather than an organisation as such.

And, you know, the northern part of Burma, you've got part of the border is with Manipur, what is now Manipur State in India, but the other part of the border is with China.

This is so important because from the Burma Road, going from Rangoon up through sort of Mectida and then Mandalay and on into China was the supply route for Chiang Kai-check's nationalists against the Japanese.

But obviously that was then blocked when the Japanese overran Burma in 1942.

So they've then been trying to build another road, which is the Lido Road, which is sort of led by Stilwell's engineers.

And that is created.

And that is literally a long, straight road straight through jungle.

It's just, you know, it's an extraordinary engineering feat.

So they're just about in there.

But the whole point about this operation south is to improve.

You know, Stilwell is very against the notion of the hump.

The hump is the kind of the air supply to the Chang's nationalists, which is going over the Himalayas from airfields in Assam.

And this is something that the Americans are very keen on, particularly Roosevelt.

And also, you know, Stillwell, based at Chunking, has constant battles with Claire Chenno, who is the American Air Force commander there, who is very much kind of, you know, air power is it.

And he's also battling Chang, who is unspeakably corrupt and is just squirreling away money and funds and all the rest of it.

And And add that together, the ineffectiveness of air power

to be able to kind of defeat the Japanese on its own, combined with the grotesque corruption of Chang's nationalists and Chang himself, makes Stilwell very against this sort of costly in terms of aircraft, air crew, and of course, you know, economically in terms of the supplies that are being brought.

Thinks it's like a waste of time.

This is not the way to do it.

Thinks the way to do it is to try and open up Burma and create that route, put pressure on the Japanese that way and open a land route again.

So he's all in favor of this and is constant, you know, it's just a constant struggle, you know, because even where he is, he's he's very remote from the seat of power in Washington and all the rest of it.

And not many people are coming there.

So, you know, and Sheno is saying one thing, Chang is saying something else.

You know, Stilwell is saying something completely different.

And everyone knows that Stilwell might be a brilliant commander, but he's, you know, he's rough and ready and calls a spade a spade and not necessarily the most diplomatic.

And so his judgment on a diplomatic, political level is not quite taken at face value.

So anyway, that's the background to all of this.

And so, what he's trying to do is trying to sort of open up the Lido Road and open up a route into that kind of northern area of Burma and put greater pressure on the Japanese from the northeast of Burma.

So, he's got the Chinese Expeditionary Force, which is commanded by General Wai Lai Hong, with the new, new developed, new equipped, newly retrained First Army, First Chinese Army.

But because of the corruption of the nationalists, it's still under-trained, underequipped.

But they do have now mostly British and American kits.

So US helmets, British small arms, American small arms, British 25 pounders, and so on.

And this operation is also supported by Merrill's Marauders, which is a commando group, I suppose, for want of a better term, under Stilwell's command.

And also the Chindits, now commanded by Mike Calvert, who later becomes a sort of SAS legend.

post-war in Malaya.

The operation begins with the Chinese First Army starting its march from China on the 15th of March and they're pushing back the Japanese all the way.

But of course, you know, as we know, in May, the monsoon begins and it all all starts to sort of slightly peak around.

On the 17th of May, with the rain absolutely hoofing down, First Army with Merrill's marauders supporting them.

You know, they attack the airfield at Mitkina, and the Japanese are completely caught out by surprise.

They manage to take it swiftly and largely and intact.

And the United States Army Air Force Skytrains then fly in 89th Regiment of the Chinese 30th Division.

So they're starting to get pretty used to this and are pretty good at flying in infantry units.

They then attack the town, but two Chinese units mistakenly start fighting each other.

And the Japanese kind of hold up one part of the time, and a sort of stalemate follows.

And June sees the town of McKina besieged.

But at the end of June, Calvert's Chindits, who are attacking independently from the First Chinese Army from the southwest, they capture a small village called Magong, which is 30 miles west of McKina.

And that means the Chinese and the Japanese are now isolated because they've no longer got that.

That's cut off their supply line from, you know, Mandalay Mictila further to the south.

But the Chindits are also struggling with supplies and disease.

So Stilwell then sends the British 36th Division to take the railway corridor between Magong and Indore on the right flank from Mictkina.

And pressure sort of gradually, slowly but surely, builds on the Japanese defenders.

And on the 3rd of August, General Genzo Mizukami, who's holding Mictina, orders his troops to abandon the town.

And of course, in time on a fashion, takes his own life at the same time.

So it's been this sort of, you know, it's, you know, we're now August and so it's it's five months of pretty tough fighting.

We've sort of broken down into a sort of three-minute summary.

And interesting that the chindits are involved, because after all this is Calvert's Chindits, Audwingates killed in a plane crash at the beginning of this Chindit insertion operation.

So it's already taking a different shape, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because there is some, there's considerable grumbling about them having to do what Stilwell wants, but actually it's all, it's successful and it's not proof of the original concept, but proof that these guys can be very, very effective if they're tied into something else, actually.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So what that means is that they now have McTina with another airfield, which again, it's this sort of plus one, minus one.

You're getting the benefit of yourself and you're denying it to the enemy.

It basically means you've got that.

important chunk of northeast Burma is now in allied hands.

The Lido Road is still not entirely open.

It's sort of, you know, you've taken a big step in the right direction.

So that does sort of change things.

But I think it's also fair to say that the absolutely enormous victory in FAL is just not really appreciated back in London and Washington.

They don't really understand what it means because it's just so freaking remote.

So the combined chiefs of staff are, you know, they're still pretty in the dark, really.

You know, and at this point, you know, his diary, you know, General Alan Brooke, who's the chief of the Imperial General Staff, is still sort of sweating about the threat to Assam.

But, you know, that had gone back in April.

Yeah.

What's also happening is Brooke's fixated on using shipping, assault shipping and doing an amphibious landing to sort of get around the Japanese, isn't he?

But actually, there's going to be no need for that if Slim can do things the way he wants to.

You can only really understand the kind of fighting in this terrain if you're out there.

You can be of a mind that is open and aggressive and, you know, and keen to absorb new ideas, but you've got to get out there and see for yourself.

And I think what, you know, back in London, you know, Brooke is visiting, you know, North Africa.

He's visiting the battlefields of Sicily.

He's, you know, eventually he goes into Italy and looks around and sees for himself, but he's not getting out to Burma.

You know, he's not coming there.

You know, if the bigwigs need to discuss with the chiefs of staff, they go to the bigwigs.

They fly to London or they fly to Quebec or wherever it might be.

There's no kind of reverse trip.

And so they're just looking at maps and pictures and looking at the kind of terrible terrain and lack of roads and jungle and hills and just thinking, well, it can't be done.

But that's because they don't understand the evolution, the revolution almost that's been taken in 14th Army under Slim's stewardship and under Mountbatten's overseeing and facilitation.

You know, that just means that they're not really in the best position to make the right decisions.

Well, and if you're in London with V2s and V1s falling in London, you've got a more immediate fish to fry, haven't you?

Right.

Is really what's concentrating minds back in the UK.

Right, we'll take a quick break and we'll come back to see what Slim's plan is.

Because needless to say, he's got one.

Of course he has, and how he's going to do this without maybe resorting to a great big amphibious spectacular, for which there isn't a shipping anyway.

We'll see you in a second.

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Welcome back to Weird Ways of of Make Your Talk.

We left you dangling there with the prospect of Slim's plan to retake Burma.

But before that, let's dangle another prospect in front of you.

We have Ways Fest.

Wait, it's three months away now, Jim, isn't it?

In September, the 12th to the 14th at Black Pit Brewery.

Go to wehavewaysfest.co.uk to look for tickets.

You can get day tickets, weekend tickets.

There's camping, there's beer, there's war waffle of the highest order.

Under 16s are free.

Come and say hello.

We'd love to see you there.

That's that enticing prospect.

But now, now jim slim's plan is to not just pursue the japanese well into burma because after all as you pointed out in fukahima that's in india right we're now looking to actually retaking burma completely and maybe even rangoon and rangoon is quite is on the coast is on the west coast of burma and quite a long way to the south so you know that that's why this this seems like a big word whereas mandalay is on the irrawadi and it's and it's kind of further up to the sort of northeast of the of the country yeah but basically everything's changed they know they can beat the Japanese,

how they've revolutionized training, but the training's worked.

It's one thing revolutionizing the training.

It's the training then works.

And that's how you create confidence.

It's that Mobius strip.

Yes, you improve the training, but if the training's no good, you know, there's no benefit in it, is there?

But there's this feeling of growing confidence because they have changed their way of doing things and it's delivered.

That's why, you know, people are feeling, even with jungle sores, that's why John Shipster's feeling good about things, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, and all these things you sort of get used to your environment I mean that's that's the truth of it and actually you harden to this stuff pretty quickly I mean you know what seems absolutely intolerable to us now you just you just do you you you adapt and I think the other thing is of course is is air power is the really big game chamber it's such an enabler of ground operations because you know you're you're you can attack ahead you can shoot up enemy positions, you know, with combination of bombs, bullets and cannon shells, and also now napalm as well.

You get reconnaissance, but also you can hide yourself.

You can can hide your ground operations because you control the sky.

So, you know, anytime a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft comes over, it gets zapped.

You know, they've got radar now.

They've got ground controllers.

They've got all sorts of stuff.

You know, they really know what they're doing and they've got a way of winning.

And I think the other thing is, is that Slim...

you know, he understands what he can do with what he can do and that you can make, do, and mend, and that you can't rely on, you know, Washington and London to give you all the kind of supplies that you could want.

So you just have to kind of get on with it.

But on the other hand, there's an advantage to that because you're out of the spotlight and you can get on with things without people meddling from high above.

So, this is why he, you know, he starts thinking about a plan, which he knows he's pretty sure he's going to be able to implement.

Um, it just takes quite a long time to sort of get that.

Do not underestimate the huge scale we're talking about here, you know, but because to supply 14th army at this point, supplies still have to be flown or sent by rail to Assam, you know, which is way to the north.

This is north of Nagaland, north of Manipur States, well into India.

This is, you know, we're talking about kind of, you know, by the time you get to Indian border, you know, the Burma border, kind of sort of several, a number of, you know, 300 miles away or something like that.

And as you get further into Burma, even more than that, you know, so it has to cross the Brahmaputra River to the railhead at Dimapur, then south via one road, or then it has to be flown to Assam and then on to Imphal and then on by the very sort of limited road network, which of course is in a bit of a state during the monsoon anyway.

And along the Indian-Burma border, you know, as we've already sort of intimated, there are hundreds of miles of jungle-clad hills.

And these run that then run down to the river Chindwin, which is huge.

I mean, huge, huge, huge.

I mean, this is like a thousand yards wide.

So, what's that?

A kilometer wide.

Then, beyond that is the central plain of Burma, which runs, which is more or less flat, which runs roughly north-south and is bordered on the eastern side by the even larger river, which is, of course, the famous Irrawaddy, which in places is kind of several miles wide.

So, Mandalay lays beyond that, and the Irrawaddy then runs roughly south-southwest until it reaches Rangoon right on the coast.

And this area between the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy is open, dusty.

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

It's where most of the habitation of, you know, most of the settlements, largest, biggest settlements in Burma, this is where they are.

This is the area of, you know, Hindu temples and Buddhas and all the rest of it.

It's kind of much more like the plain of Imphal, but you're clear of jungle.

But any advance they do has to be along extremely limited lines of supply and covering huge distances, or it has to be provided by air power.

And so this is why the kind of the gestation of the plan takes a long time to come to fruition, because although Slim knows what he's got to do, he's got to persuade

the people higher up the chain that this is the way forward.

So as early as May 1944, Mountbatten, who is the Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia Command, has been badgering the Combined Chiefs of Staff for a decision about what to do after their victory in northeast india and by obviously by may 1944 it's only it's a matter of of when not if that's going to happen you know they've the the the turning point has happened in in the third week of april 1944 when kahima has been saved and the answer doesn't come until june 1944 and even then it's a bit of a fudge well because because there's the political business of keeping nationalist china on board isn't there oh which after all again we tend to not to think of that as a moving part in the the thinking around this theatre and that you know, getting aircraft, supply aircraft over the Himalayas.

I mean, just that, just that in itself in the 1940s is absolutely incredible.

But FDR is doing his thing of saying yes to people, isn't he?

And then that includes the Chinese.

Well,

the Chinese strategy has always been driven by him.

You know, this is something that he's very, very keen on.

You know, and I think he's a bit sort of myopic about this.

Yeah.

Yes, I mean, I suppose because it didn't work out for the Americans, maybe he's being myopic, but if it had worked out, he'd be a visionary.

Well, yes, I suppose so.

That's fair enough.

But I think the sign, the signs are there earlier, and there's no kind of sort of, okay, this hasn't worked, let's back down.

You know, they've committed to it and they're going to see it through.

And I think that's the point.

Whereas, you know, a shift of emphasis, you know, you can still make huge use of all those airfields in Assam and all that, those transports by supporting a much more sort of consolidated campaign in Burma and clearing it.

But of course, there's other stuff going on here, which is, you know, FDR being anti-imperialist anti-imperialist and worrying that, you know, all the Americans to do is supporting the British reconquering, you know, one of their imperial assets.

SIAC, save empire at all costs, is what the American joke about

Southeast Asia command is, isn't it?

And after all, Stilworth's thinking in terms of the Burma Road.

He's not thinking in terms of Burma.

He's thinking in terms of his strategic picture involving China.

If in the tumult of that, then Burma's reconquered for the British Empire.

He's not going to pat himself on the back for that.

He's thinking purely in terms of America's own strategic picture.

That's clouding the issue in the decision-making, isn't it?

But then, of course, the other thing is, as you touched on with Slim, is actually they're a long way from London.

Mountbatten can really, as long as he's Slim knows what he wants and they know what they can do, he's going to back him, isn't he?

And they have a kind of freedom of movement.

It's not like chafe internal politics breathing down the general's necks in Normandy, is it?

It's not on that level at all.

No.

So anyway, so so eventually they get there, they get an answer in June, which is a little bit kind of wishy-washy.

And Mountbatten is ordered to press advantages against the enemy by exerting maximum effort ground and air, particularly during current monsoon season.

So, you know, it's clear that Siaka, you know, 14th Army is not going to get an awful lot more in terms of resources.

You know, at the same time,

that kind of woolly message is giving them a comparatively free hand, I think.

You know, the orders don't tell Mountbatten to invade Burma, but they don't say don't invade Burma either.

Yeah.

And again, they're a long way from London, so they could get on with it, can't they?

Yeah, so on the 9th of June, Mountbatten orders General Gifford, who let's not forget him.

He is the 11th Army Group Commander, who is senior to Slim.

So, there's Mountbatten at the top, then there's service, there's three service chiefs: there's Somerville, Admiral Somerville, who's the naval guy, there's Pierce, who is the airman, and there's Gifford, who's the 11th Army Group Commander.

And 14th Army is within 11th Army Group.

And so, Mountbatten orders Gifford to exploit across the river Chindwin after the monsoon.

So from around November onwards.

In other words, this is not an emphatic chase to destroy General Mutaguchi's remnants of his 15th Army, but merely a requirement at this stage to just clear all the areas north of the Chindwin.

But on the 2nd of July, Slim meets with Mountbatten and not Gifford and tells him that the 15 Army could mount a full-blooded defensive into Burma.

And he could do so with no more resources than those already allocated for the defense of India.

And he also tells him he could launch an offensive by the 1st of November, 1944.

And so, this is catnip to Mountbatten, who's all for kind of you know, being gung-ho and driving the enemy clear and getting greater glory than anyone expects.

You know, that reflects well on him.

I don't think he's just doing it for his own vanity, but it plays a part, I would say.

Mountbatten becomes convinced after this that 14th Army could reach the

Shweibo, which is a town, and as well as the name of a plane, or of Mandalay, which are two key towns.

But Gifford is way more cautious and he doesn't think that a largely land-based offensive is possible logistically.

And Mountbatten is very annoyed by Gifford's negativity.

And actually, Mountbatten has already sacked Gifford.

He sacks him in May, but he hasn't got a replacement at this point.

So Gifford is staying on.

But obviously, that's not particularly good grounds from which to kind of forge a good ongoing relationship.

Oh, that's eggy, isn't it?

So what tends to happen is, you know, you know, Gifford, to a certain extent, is just sort of kept out of the decision-making cycle.

And Slim is definitely disappointed by Gifford's negativity.

But he likes him and gets on with him.

And Gifford does back him to the hilt.

But also, Slim knows that Gifford is on his way out.

So he thinks, well, sort of, I'll just go ahead and plan anyway.

Yeah.

Well, and you need to make plans, don't you?

Regardless.

While all this is going on, this sort of, you know, there's a start of a shape of something to come.

You know, Slim is suggesting that they can get into northern northern burma without any extra resources man batten's keen to back it so he then presses the combined chiefs of staff for more concrete plans for the for the recapture of all of burma and on the 23rd of july he submits two separate plans to london and both are designed to be conducted on their own or independently or together so the first one is operation capital this is to take slim's 14th armies south across the irrawaddy to mandalay and there link up with the u.s stillwells northern Combat Area Command troops coming down from Lashio in the northeast and coming down from, you know, the Mitkina direction.

And the second one is Operation Dracula.

Yeah.

Which is a set piece, amphibious assault, paratroopers as well and everything, the whole, the whole nine yards.

But next year.

And of course, that means you've got to get the shipping and all that sort of stuff, haven't you?

Yeah, yeah.

So

that's an assault on Rangoon.

But then from Rangoon, you then drive north eastwards towards Mandalay rather than coming Mandalay from the north.

That means you've got to ship your entire force.

Presumably, all of 14th Army.

Yeah, exactly.

So that sounds like La La Land to me.

Yes, exactly.

You're not starting from where you are with that, are you?

That's the problem, isn't it?

Whereas Slim is at least talking about starting from where they are on the ground rather than completely reconfiguring things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Manbatten, he gets a pretty kind of poor response.

You know, they're not very enthusiastic about either.

And again, they haven't really understood the scale of the victory in FAL and they're wary of going back into a country where they had such a terrible defeat in 1942 and failed Arakan campaign of late 42, early 43, etc.

But then the capture of McKina kind of changes things a bit.

And Mountbatten, because they're not going to come to him, he goes to them and he flies to London on the 5th of August.

There's a big conference on the 7th of August, in which Brooke agrees.

You know, Brooke is convinced now that actually a land campaign in Burma is worth doing and that opening the Lido Road is a game changer.

So he now supports Mountbatten's

ambitious plans to take Rangoon.

And so then a further all-day conference on the 8th of August, which is also attended by Churchill, Eden and the US General Wadermare.

And Eden is also there.

And Eden is a big supporter of Mountbatten's plans to capture Rangoon.

But the problem is that Churchill is very keen on a sideshow, which is an attack on Sumatra, which is just complete non-starter.

But he's got it in his head and he keeps banging this drum.

So then Manbatten flies back to Ceylon,

to Candy, which is his headquarters on what is now Sri Lanka.

And the Chiefs of Staff then sail to Quebec for a second conference.

And at the second Quebec conference, the US are predictably lukewarm about Dracula.

kind of go, okay, but it's predicated on Germany being beaten by the end of 1944.

So Dracula is sort of approved in principle, but kind of left hanging subject to.

A number of historians have been quite critical about Mount Batten that he's so keen on Rangoon because, you know, then he can get the glory rather than 14th Army.

But I've got to say, I think that is really not the case.

I think that Mount Batten has been brought in there as a combined operations man, you know, with his naval power, with his understanding of amphibious assaults and all the rest of it.

And this is a way of doing it without all the hassle of having to kind of slog your way through central Burma.

I don't think it's really about glory.

I think it's about what is the most sensible way to do this.

And unquestionably, if they have the assault shipping, Dracula is an absolute slam dunk.

But the truth is they don't have the shipping.

And Slim is pretty sure this is going to be the case, which is why he's continuing his own plans for an overland invasion of northern Burma, which, of course, is Operation Capital.

Yeah.

He knows what 14th Army are capable of in Burma.

They've tackled the challenges rather than take on a whole new set of challenges.

And

he also knows that what you've got to do is beat the Japanese Japanese emphatically, that it's, that this is a different, that they're not going to surrender, so you've got to beat them, you've got to destroy them.

So he basically, Slim, you know, is going to interpret the orders he's been given.

He knows that Dracula is unlikely to happen, and even if it does happen, it's a long way off.

So what he decides to do is essentially, with a new directive on the 16th of September from Mountbatten, recapture Burma at the earliest date.

I mean, that's wonderfully open-ended, isn't it?

Just whenever you can.

Just whenever you can.

As long as you don't prejudice the security of the air supply to China.

I mean, and that's an interesting point, because after all, air supply is key to this entire thing.

So he can carry on and essentially his continuance will merge into the capital plan.

For those of you who listened to us when we were talking about Italy, we were talking about the Anzio operations and we were saying that, you know, when Alexander backs Anzio, he does so knowing that if it gets sticky, they will find the assault craft for him because they've got these other plans, which are...

you know, for Operation Anvil, which is going to become Dragoon.

Invasion of southern France.

So there are going to be some landing assault craft there, and if they need to be used in the case of disaster, they will.

And I think Slim is thinking the same thing.

If they're suddenly on a ride in Burma and it's looking good and he urgently needs some air transports, Mount Batten will do that job for him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, he's got his back, basically.

He's got his back, and that's what he's backing on.

That's the other thing.

They want to get it done.

This sort of idea that, oh, we'll wait until the circumstances are ready.

Well, you want to get it, actually, you want to get the war over with, don't you?

This is the way to do it.

There's also a very good argument for having a separate operation in the Arakan as well.

And this is a third operation, which is called Operation Romulus.

And the key for this is capturing the island of Akyab.

It's got a separate operation all of its end called Operation Talon.

And a further couple of other islands, not least Ramri, because they have airfields.

And again, you're denying them to the Japanese.

You're getting the benefit of them for yourselves.

And the further you can push south, the further pressure you're putting on the Japanese, the further space you're gaining for yourself.

and you can use them as bases to support Operation Capital.

So this is actually really, really key.

And 15th Corps is still in the Arakan.

This is under General Philip Christensen.

And, you know, the idea is that as front lines are pulled out for retraining, spearheads are pushing southwards.

monsoons pushing, you know, absolutely pounding down.

Slim in those final months of 1944 is once again finding himself furiously planning.

And in this case, for an operation which is far more ambitious than anyone in london or india for that matter has been considering you know he he is always prepared to kind of push things as hard as he possibly can but with this separate operation in arakan happening at the same time yeah but there's um because what we've talked about here is a sort of cooperative command uh setup where you know the guy at the top is giving leeway to his subordinates and even if they have their differences they chime along mount batten and slim they get on fantastic slim and gifford Gifford have a good working relationship, even though Mount Batten doesn't really rate Gifford.

He thinks he's too, as we said earlier, too negative.

There's plenty of anti-Mount Batten feeling as well.

He doesn't want belly acres in the Monty tradition.

There's enough naval grumbling about Mount Batten because, after all, Mountbatten, you could argue, is coming out of nowhere and is connected, and that's how he's got these jobs.

You could, if you're a long-serving Admiral of the Royal Navy, you might feel that, like Admiral James Somerville and Richard Pierce, Sir Richard Pierce.

But basically, then what happens?

So he, you've, as you said, he sacked Gifford.

There's been no one to replace him.

Back in May.

I know.

But incoming

is Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Lease,

who's come from Italy.

Where he's just made an arse of things, basically.

Yeah, he's been kicked upstairs.

He doesn't know about the war in Southeast Asia.

You're like, so many don't.

What's truly incredible about the British Army is the stuff it has to take on.

Wildly differing campaigns that it takes on.

You know, this is nothing like the desert.

This is nothing like Italy.

And he's appointed on the 14th of september has to finish his fur his current battle in italy before he can come arrives in november and it's not 11th army group

it's allied land forces southeast asia alphse

and slim does not like lease there's a great thing where he says they've all got lease's people have all got too much sand in their boots doesn't like them and lease wants to show who's boss Well, he just thinks he knows it all.

He comes in there.

I'm the kind of the big guy.

I'm from the main campaign.

You know, so I'm superior to you.

You've just been fighting this little jungle campaign.

I'm I'm going to show you the sort of latest modern way of doing things from our very modern mechanized war over in Europe.

And it doesn't occur to him that Slim actually is far better than he's giving him credit for.

And it doesn't occur to him that Slim knows exactly what he's doing.

In fact, quite the opposite.

Because on the 15th of December, he writes to General Brooke.

He goes, There's a good deal of ignorance and senior officers in the 14th Army about the employment of modern arms and equipment.

It is for this reason that I'm so anxious to get officers with experience in Europe.

Otherwise, when we come to a fight on the beaches and in the plains of By Mandalay, Mandalay, we may get in unnecessary tangles.

I mean, you're just going, ah, no.

I mean, this is just, you know, he's got it all wrong.

He's just an absolute disaster.

Now, at the same time, Pierce is replaced by another person that we hold in high regard.

Air Chief Marshal Trafford Lee Mallory.

I mean, I wouldn't say fortunately, but he's killed immediately and then replaced by Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park.

Always waiting in the wings, Keith.

He's always waiting in the wings, isn't he?

Somerville's replaced by Admiral Bruce Fraser, but then Fraser's quickly moved on again to command the british pacific fleet so pownall is also retired as chief of staff you know he of dunkirk fame as well so a new chief of staff needed and that's boy browning i mean can you believe it so it's a completely new team and at a very crucial moment but that's not all because stillwell has also been fired you know having been made a full general on the fourth of august you know everyone think he's done really really well his increasing criticism of chang is starting to work against him you know he he writes that Chiang has stolen the $380 million from the Americans, which I'm sure is absolutely right.

You know, Stilwell is still in favor of taking Burma as quickly as possible and gets on well with Slim, so that's all good.

But of course, you know, he's still fighting with Sheno and, of course, with Chang.

And the situation is made worse by the Japanese Operation Ichigo, which we discussed in an earlier episode, which is their offensive that they do in 1944.

Enormous...

link up the coast with what is french indochina now vietnam and china and fdr is that you know, Roosevelt decided to see the light and sends a humiliating reprimand to Chang, but he also sends an envoy who's called Patrick J.

Hurley.

And Stillwell thinks, yes, thank goodness, I've finally got my way with Chang.

He's completely triumphant.

But Hurley recognizes that Stilwell's not a diplomat, recognizes the Americans are wedded to this supporting the Chinese and the nationalists, and thinks that for that reason, you know, Stilwell has to be replaced.

So he's recalled on the 19th of October.

I mean, he's absolutely devastated by this.

He just can't believe it.

And he's replaced by General Albert C.

Wiedemauer, who is very quickly finding Chang no easier to deal with than Stilwell had.

He's very pro-Chinese and it's disabused of his view very, very quickly.

Very quickly.

But Stilwell's one role is now converted into two because you've got Wiedemaire, who's doing the diplomatic kind of chief of staff bit with Chang.

But the Northern Combat Area Command is now being commanded by Lieutenant General Daniel Sultan.

I mean, that's big musical chairs with lots to come, isn't it?

With another phase of the campaign to come.

That's an awful lot of changes, isn't it?

But what of the Japanese?

Because we've heard about this big reshuffle.

I mean, this is the thing, is the Japanese are engaged in this gigantic offensive in China, Ichi Go.

And at the same time, it's obvious that Mutaguchi's attempt to get into northeastern India, which results in the Infokohima battles and then destruction of the Japanese 50th Army, it's obvious that that's been a disaster, but they're still present in Burma and they want to, you know, they don't like letting go of the things they've taken, do they?

No.

So Mutaguchi, I mean,

this is interesting.

He sacks his three divisional commanders, and then he's himself sacked.

So, you know, at least they've got that right.

And he's sent to the general staff in Tokyo at the end of August in 44.

And he's replaced by Lieutenant General Shihachi Katamura, who's previously the OC of the 54th Division in Arakan, where the Japanese did well in Arakan.

So it might be that he has some answers to fighting the British, is what they're thinking, right?

Yeah, so Katamura is now commander of the 15th Army, the Japanese 15th Army.

What's left of it?

What's left of it?

The GOC of the Burma Army area, General Kawabe, he's also been sacked and sent home.

He's gone back to Tokyo.

He's replaced by Lieutenant General Hayotara Kimura, who's previously head of the Ordnance Administration in Tokyo.

So basically a staff officer.

Well, yes, but he's a supply man.

The point is, you know, in an area where you've got comparatively small supplies, this guy knows what he's doing.

That's the idea.

Yeah, and he's a part of the

politically active bit of the army as well, isn't he?

He's clearly been sent as a sort of political stiffener, hasn't he, by the army command.

And then Lieutenant General Shinichi Tanaka is now his chief of staff.

So they've had a similar command reboot, but they're on the back foot.

So they've gone from Motoguchi's grand plans that seem to involve seizing all India to hanging on, keeping what they've got, Burma, Thailand, the Malayan Peninsula.

It's interesting that the Burma's role now for them is to block the Burma Road.

So the thing Stilwell was bothered about.

Yeah, and then the fact is, so Stillwell's absolutely spot on, because the thing that's really bothering the Japanese is the thing that Stillwell had wanted to exploit, and quite rightly too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, what's the most effective, what's going to be the most encumbrance to your enemy?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, everything's about supply.

The fact they've sent supply people, everything's about supply.

Kamura is told that he's got to cut the India to China link, Dekiru Kagiri, as far as possible.

That's not dissimilar to Slim's orders, isn't it?

That symmetry, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

Exactry, yes.

But he's on his own.

He's got to plan for Jikotsu Jinsu Jisen.

So basically, he's got to be self-sufficient.

There's going to be no help from Japan.

There's going to be no help from the army in China.

His armies are going to have to live off the land where they were.

And as we've seen, that's been a disaster.

That policy has not worked for 15th Army before.

They're really bad at it because the British stand and fight and don't, there will be no withdrawal.

Their seaborne supplies into Rangoon are being strangled.

Allied bombing is also disrupting the Burma-Siam railway.

So their own logistic problems are multiplying at the precisely the moment they don't want them to.

And of course, Burma's so important to the British.

The rice from Burma that it needs to feed India, actually.

That's its strategic significance within the British Empire.

But it's not an industrialized country.

They can't build tanks or rifles or whatever with bits of Burma they've got, can they?

And, you know, and with the problems of the jungle, the jungle, the terrain, the climate having its own vote, which are much more difficult for the Japanese because, you know, their medicine isn't where it is in allied terms.

What's their actual strength there, Jim?

Well, you know, they've got three armies, which on the face of it sounds like quite a lot.

So they've got the 15th, which is, you know, Mutaguchi's old patch, the 28th and the 33rd, but they're all really badly understrength.

So they've got 10 divisions in all, which is not very many, plus one badly reduced tank regiment, two mixed independent brigades.

They've also then got lines of communication and admin troops.

And they've got Subhas Chandra Bose's INA, Indian National Army.

But there's a sort of already a feeling that these probably can't really be relied on anymore.

In all, they've got about 100,000 troops, you know, so it's not a lot.

They've also got seven battalions of the Burma National Army under Aung San, and but huge doubts about them too.

Only 30,000 fresh troops have arrived between June and October 1944.

So most divisions have received about 2,000 fresh troops.

But this means that pretty much all those divisions are well under 10,000 men rather than the kind of 16,000 they should be.

Supplies are a massive problem, shortages of absolutely everything, and they're really sort of scratching their heads about how they're going to just sort of make this all work.

So the stage is set for the final part of the Burma wartime drama with, it has to be said, huge amounts of stake for both sides.

Yeah.

So that's it for episode one.

And I think we both thought it was kind of important to set the scene, set the stage, do the backdrop because I've always been slightly bemused by this sort of missing five months between July and 1944 and December, you know, what is going on.

So I hope that's provided an explanation for that.

But actually, in episode two, we're going to be looking at how Slim's strategy is evolving, but also mainly turning our attention back to the Arakan.

Yeah.

Basically, there's a score to be settled.

There most certainly is.

Well, thanks for listening, everyone.

Don't forget, you can subscribe to our Apple channel as Officer Class and get these without adverts and all in one go.

Or join our Patreon for live casts, ticket offers, and much else.

Besides, my great-uncle fought with the 10th Gloucesters at Pinway in part of this, alongside the Northern Combat Area Command.

They were flown into Mytakinia as part of 72nd Division.

And that's all part of this tumble of stuff that I think in people's imaginations it goes: if it's Dunkirk D-Day Arnhem in people's sort of sketch version of Northwest Europe, it's, I don't know, what is it?

Infal Kohima, admin box, yeah, and then the war ends the following August.

Yeah,

yeah, so we need to fill in some of the blanks, I think, a bit.

But thanks, everyone, for listening.

We will see you all again very soon.

Cheerio, cheerio.

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