Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45. Max Hastings

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СКАЧАТЬ quote this story, as an example of the trivial matters…that were apt to occupy Dicky’s thoughts at times when the heart of the problem facing him should have absorbed him entirely.’ Mountbatten, however, endured endless disappointments and changes of strategy without losing heart. Once, when a scheme which he favoured was briefly approved, though it was evident to his staff that it would never be executed, Pownall wrote pityingly: ‘Mountbatten is in the seventh heaven of delight. He is so very simple-minded.’ ‘Dicky’ was not a great man, but like many prominent actors in the dramas of the Second World War, he strove manfully to do his part in great events. He possessed two virtues which justified his appointment. First, he was a considerable diplomat. He liked Americans, as so many British officers did not, and had a sincere respect for Asians and their aspirations. And the glamour of his presence, in a theatre where so many British soldiers felt neglected by their own nation, did wonders for morale. Almost every man who saw Mountbatten descend from a plane to visit them, in dazzling naval whites or jungle greens, was cheered by the experience.

      As supreme commander, Mountbatten floundered when he sought to exercise authority, but distinguished himself as an ambassador and figurehead. Both he and his wife Edwina had a gift for regal informality. Peter d’Cunha of the Royal Indian Navy was once at his post in the wireless office of a patrol boat anchored in a creek off the Arakan, immersed in music from Radio Ceylon. Suddenly a pair of hands removed his headset. He turned in astonishment to perceive Mountbatten, who held it to his own ears for a moment. He then asked the operator’s name, and said: ‘You seem to be very fond of English music.’ The supreme commander replaced the phones on d’Cunha’s head and departed, saying: ‘Enjoy yourself; but just be a little bit alert. You never know who’s coming!’ The young man loved it, of course.

      Yet Mountbatten could do nothing to undo his Command’s absolute dependence upon an American vision. Pownall wrote bitterly in his diary in February 1944: ‘If…we are relegated to mucking about in Burma, they may as well wind up this unlucky SE Asia Command, leave here if you like a few figureheads, a good deception staff and plenty of press men to write it up.’ If we recall Slim’s scepticism about Stilwell’s hopes for the Chinese—the British general’s declared belief that the American advance across the Pacific would defeat Japan without an Asian land campaign—these strictures applied with equal force to anything which a British army might do in South-East Asia. Britain’s field commander understood as clearly as her prime minister that the new Burma campaign would be launched to restore imperial prestige and to indulge American fantasies about China, not because British action could contribute substantially to victory over Japan.

      In 1944, however, before the British could launch their grand offensive, the Japanese had one more throw to make. With extraordinary boldness, Tokyo’s commanders embarked on an operation to seize the positions of Imphal and Kohima in north-east India. Even the Japanese at their most optimistic did not at this juncture suppose that they could conquer the country. Rather, they sought to frustrate the British advance into Burma. More fancifully, they hoped to precipitate a popular revolt against the Raj by showcasing during their advance units of the so-called Indian National Army, recruited from prisoners-of-war.

      The Japanese high command’s approach to the Imphal assault was recklessly insouciant. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi of 15th Army, whose concept it was, sacked his chief of staff for suggesting that the operation was impossible, mainly because of the difficulties of moving men and supplies in Assam, the wettest place on earth, with an annual rainfall that sometimes attained eight hundred inches. Mutaguchi, fifty-six years old, was a scion of an old but now somewhat diminished southern family. Like many Japanese generals self-consciously virile, he never wearied of proclaiming his enthusiasm for women and combat. He was an ambitious political soldier, prominent among those who had precipitated war in China. Belligerence, together with connections in high places, won him promotion to army command.

      Mutaguchi found himself largely dependent on bullocks to move stores and munitions across some of the worst terrain in the world. Experiment showed that a laden beast could travel just eight miles a day. The Japanese army’s supply line into Assam would be extraordinarily tenuous. A staff colonel was dispatched to Tokyo to secure endorsement for the operation from prime minister Tojo. A preposterous discussion took place while Tojo splashed in his bath. ‘Imphal…yes,’ said the prime minister, who had never displayed much interest in Mutaguchi’s front. Japanese generals had a droll saying: ‘I’ve upset Tojo—it’s probably Burma for me.’ They called the place ‘jigoku’—‘hell’. Now, the prime minister demanded: ‘How about communications? Have they been properly thought out? Eh? Eh? It’s difficult country towards India, you know. What about air cover? We can’t help him much. Does he realise that? Are you sure it will make things better rather than worse? What’ll happen if the Allies land on the Arakan coast? Has anyone thought of that? Eh? Eh?’ Mutaguchi’s staff colonel outlined the plan while Tojo stood naked before him. At last, the prime minister said: ‘Tell Kawabe’—commander of the Burma Area Army and Mutaguchi’s superior—‘not to be too ambitious.’ Then he signed the Imphal operation order.

      The battle which ensued became one of the British and Indian armies’ proudest memories of the war, and decided the fate of Japanese arms in South-East Asia. Slim had expected an attack, but was caught off-balance by its speed and energy. Japanese forces first hit the British in the Arakan coastal belt in February 1944, then moved the following month against Imphal and Kohima. The early weeks of the struggle were touch and go. ‘The whole time I had been in the theatre,’ wrote a cynical British officer, ‘the campaign had been conducted in an extremely leisurely manner by both sides. The only time I [saw] either protagonist hurry [was] when the Japs were heading for Imphal.’ Mutaguchi risked everything to move men fast through heavy country to gain surprise, and almost cut off an Indian division. The Japanese were successful in breaking land links to the British positions.

      However, though the British faced Japanese troops on every side, the besiegers were in far more precarious condition than the besieged. Through the months of desperate fighting which followed, Slim’s men held almost all the cards. Their numbers were much superior—albeit not locally at Kohima—and supported by tanks and artillery such as the Japanese were unable to deploy. They possessed command of the skies, and sufficient transport planes to achieve a feat unthinkable earlier in the campaign—the air supply of Imphal and Kohima. British and Indian troops were notably better trained and equipped for jungle warfare than in the past. They defeated the Japanese Arakan thrust so quickly that Slim, with the help of American aircraft secured by Mountbatten’s intercession, was able to shift two divisions from that front to reinforce Imphal and Kohima.

      Finally, the British were led by their ablest field commander of the war. Bill Slim—no one called him William—was born in Bristol in 1888, younger son of a hardware wholesaler whose business failed. The boy grew up in difficult circumstances. He always wanted to be a soldier, but spent the years before the First World War first as a pupil teacher, then as a clerk in a steel business. He wangled his way into Birmingham University Officers’ Training Corps, and thence to a commission in 1914. He survived the bloodbath of Gallipoli, which killed or wounded more than half his battalion. Slim transferred to the Gurkhas and was serving with them when hit in the lung. In Mesopotamia he was wounded again by shrapnel and won a Military Cross. He finished the war as an Indian Army major.

      Broad and burly, with a heavy jaw and much solid common sense, between the wars he advanced steadily in rank, assuaging financial embarrassment by the somewhat unexpected means of writing magazine stories under the pseudonym of Anthony Mills. It was Slim’s misfortune to command Burcorps, the British force in Burma, during the disastrous retreat of 1942. It was generally acknowledged that he bore no personal responsibility for that defeat, but he himself liked to tell a story of his later return to Burma. One night he slipped unnoticed into Fourteenth Army’s operations room, to perceive two staff officers standing before the map, one pointing confidently and proclaiming: ‘Uncle Bill will fight a battle there.’ The other figure demanded why. ‘Because he always fights a battle going in where he took a licking coming out!’

      In СКАЧАТЬ