Stilwell and the Chindits

The Allies Campaign in Northern Burma, 1943–1944

Jon Diamond

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781473838710
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia moderna

This latest book in the highly successful Images of War series covers the dramatic events that saw ultimate Allied victory over the Japanese in remote Northern Burma on the Chinese border. The plan involved two separate but concurrent operations. US Army General Joseph Stilwell was ordered to train up two Chinese divisions and together with a US special force (Merrill's Marauders) advance to seize the key Japanese base at Myitkyina.At the same time Brigadier Orde Wingate and his 77 Brigade (known as the Chindits) penetrated and fought deep behind Japanese lines. While the success of this Operation (LONG STOP) remains debatable, the Chindits' courage and determination destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility. Despite terrible deprivation a second much larger operation (THURSDAY) went ahead.As this highly informative and well illustrated book reveals, the concept was ultimately successful with Myitkyina falling to Stilwell's Chinese/US force in mid 1944. The Chindits and Maranders, now greatly depleted by enemy action, malnutrition and disease were evacuated to India but became legends.

Chapter One

Stillwell, Wingate and the Collapse in Burma, 1942

Stilwell

Joseph Warren Stilwell, born on 19 March 1883, graduated from West Point 32nd in a class of 124 cadets. Commissioned as an Infantry second lieutenant in 1904, he served in the Philippines during the Moro insurrection. In December 1917 Stilwell, fluent in French, was sent to France as chief Intelligence officer for IV Corps in General Pershing’s St Mihiel offensive. In August 1919 he became the Army’s initial Intelligence Division’s Chinese language officer and after promotion to major, he left for Peking. To escape the headquarters boredom, Stilwell joined a road-building project as an engineering advisor several hundred miles to the south of Peking. For several months Stilwell absorbed all aspects of Chinese culture and language, and developed a keen respect for the hard-driving work ethic of the Chinese peasant labourer.

Stilwell had two additional tours in China. In 1924 he commanded a battalion of the 15th Infantry regiment, stationed at Tientsin, where he initially met George C. Marshall. In 1926, when civil strife between Chinese communists, rival warlords and Chiang’s nationalist forces was reaching a crescendo, Major Stilwell was sent into the countryside to gather first-hand information about the extent of the unrest. By 1929 he was on his way to becoming a recognized expert on China in the eyes of his United States Army peers and superiors.

In July 1929, newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Stilwell was asked to teach infantry tactics at Fort Benning, serving as second-in-command under the direction of his superior and mentor, George C. Marshall, then the post’s assistant commandant. Stilwell taught his younger officers the art of solving problems on the field during the heat of modern battle. Marshall wrote of him that he was qualified for any command in peace and war, which was monumental language for Marshall. Stilwell’s tour at Fort Benning ended in May 1933 and, while there, he earned the moniker ‘Vinegar Joe’ for his acerbic commentary. In January 1935, Stilwell received an appointment as Military Attache to China and was promoted to Colonel on 7 July 1935.

From June 1939 through to December 1941, Stilwell commanded a brigade, then a division and finally III Corps in California. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Stilwell was ordered to Washington expecting a command to invade North Africa. However, with the United States declaration of war on Japan, China and the United States moved from being only Lend-Lease partners to active co-belligerents against Japan, with Chiang receiving supplies again via the Burma Road after it was re-opened by Britain. US Army Chief of Staff Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson knew that any American theatre commander for China needed to be fluent in Chinese as well as the personification of strategic vision, tactical inventiveness and, above all, an excellent trainer of men, whether they be American soldiers or Chinese infantry from that country’s peasantry. Both Marshall and Stimson sought out Stilwell, an ‘old China hand’, to be that commander. Stilwell was sent off to CBI to command primarily an air-and-supply theatre, with a principal client being General Claire Chennault and his ‘Flying Tigers’ (as part of the US Fourteenth Air Force), although he yearned to lead an American Expeditionary Force on the Asian mainland.

Wingate

Orde Charles Wingate was born on 26 February 1903 in India and raised by his parents among the highly pious, scripture-reciting Plymouth Brethren sect. Throughout his childhood, like his siblings, Wingate was insulated from other children his age and this may help to explain his irascible, often anti-social behaviour toward both peers and superiors. At public school he feared no one and was able to endure both ridicule and hazing. Wingate’s strict adherence to the Plymouth Brethren’s credo was at odds with the Anglican majority at school and, coupled with his exclusion from mainstream school, life placed him in the same predicament as the Jewish boys who attended there, so creating an affinity early on with the ‘sons of David’ and later on with Palestine’s Zionist movement.

On 3 February 1921, Wingate passed his examination for the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and entered that august institution for ‘gunners and engineers’. In July 1923, Wingate passed-out fifty-ninth out of seventy relegating him to the Royal Garrison Artillery with the 18th Medium Battery on Salisbury Plain and was promoted to full lieutenant in 1925. Wingate enrolled at the University of London as an Arabic language student in 1926, to qualify as an interpreter for a Middle East posting. Later that year Wingate wrote Strategy in Three Campaigns, examining the Russo-Japanese War, the Schlieffen Plan and Allenby’s Palestine victory, the latter of which he lauded the British First World War Field Marshal for his skilful tactics and fleetness of mobility to overcome an opponent’s numerical advantage in the Middle Eastern theatre.

Wingate served as an acting major leading an infantry company (ldara) of 375 men in the Sudan Defense Force’s (SDF) East Arab Corps (EAC) in Kassala Province for his entire tenure from 1928–33. The EAC was headquartered in Gedaref, with Wingate’s Idara stationed in Kassala near the Eritrean border. This isolated backwater allowed Wingate to exhibit command initiative and develop military principles about small groups of soldiers surviving in a desolate, inhospitable environment, which would have been almost impossible for his rank in the regular British Army. Training, fitness and field craft became his credos, which would enable his troops to remain afar from their garrison without LOC. Marching his company 500 miles into remote areas of eastern Sudan, Wingate experimented with ground-to-air control with RAF Squadron 47 (B), heralding this emerging tactic for future commands.

In early 1931 Wingate led a patrol against Ethiopian poachers and slave-traders (shifta) in the Dinder and Gallegu river border country of eastern Sudan. On 11 April Wingate departed Singa, on the Blue Nile, with the widely dispersed announcement to reach Roseires due south. He soon deviated east to the Dinder river region as to deceive any spies who might be monitoring his course. This mode of deception would be standard Wingate fare for the rest of his career. In pursuit of the poachers, Wingate was impressed by their ability to scatter and re-form under the threat of attack, thus cementing the tactics of dispersal and rendezvous, which would be later employed with the Chindits in Burma during Operation Longcloth in 1943. Since Wingate knew that the Shifta could elude his patrol in the Dinder’s brush if alerted, he devised tactics that depended on deception, surprise and selection of the best areas for ambushes. Throughout his career, Wingate would stress all of these tactical points. Furthermore, missions such as these emboldened Wingate further that he could lead men and survive in an unforgiving environment.

In 1935 Wingate was promoted to captain in the 9th Field Brigade stationed in Wiltshire and started studying for the staff college. Later that year he was posted to Sheffield as the adjutant to a Territorial Army formation, the 71st (West Riding) Field Brigade, Royal Artillery, again giving him a good deal of responsibility for his rank. In September 1936 Wingate was posted as an intelligence officer (GSO ‘I’) with the 5th Division in Palestine. This was not a tranquil assignment since an Arab revolt had started five months earlier and the British 5th and 8th Divisions had been sent into Palestine to restore order. After a peaceful interlude, on 27 September 1937 the Arab revolt was rekindled and within weeks the Arab insurrection literally blazed anew as the Iraq Petroleum Company’s pipeline to Haifa was set on fire by saboteurs with regularity. General Archibald Wavell, the GOC, Palestine, now with only two infantry brigades to enforce order, relied on his own unorthodoxy to overcome the numerical odds and began to use the Jewish Supernumerary Police (JSP) to fight the Arab terrorists. Coincident with this, Wingate also advocated the formation of small units of soldiers to be used offensively against the Arab insurgents. From these seminal thoughts emerged the Special Night Squads (SNS) composed of Jewish paramilitary volunteers reinforced by small numbers of British troops led by British officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Wavell needed a new tactical and operative paradigm and Wingate presented it to him as the SNS force. A patron-protegee relationship was forged between Wavell and Wingate, the latter receiving the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his nocturnal ambushes throughout the summer of 1938, which dramatically reduce...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Stilwell, Wingate and the Collapse in Burma, 1942
• Chapter Two: Burmese Terrain
• Chapter Three: Stilwell’s Chinese Troop-Training at Ramgarh and Allied Weaponry for Burma
• Chapter Four: The Chindits and Operation Longcloth, 1943
• Chapter Five: Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Detachment 101 and Kachin Rangers
• Chapter Six: Fighting in the Hukawng Valley, 1943–1944
• Chapter Seven: Merrill’s Marauders and Stilwell’s Envelopments
• Chapter Eight: The Chindits, Airborne Invasion, Operation Thursday and Mogaung
• Chapter Nine: On To Myitkyina
• Epilogue