BURMA FRONT

SOUTHWARD, from the towering mountain mass of Central Asia that men have called the Roof of the World sprawl the ranges of Burma. For 50 centuries they have been part of the defence of India, guarding the eastern frontier. Invasion across these tangled jungle hills is an operation brimful with peril. India’s conquer­ors have nearly always come in by the narrow gateways of the North West Passage, west from Afghanistan. 

The Japs poured into Burma from the south and flooding up to the head of the valleys, established their forward units on the eastern bank of the Upper Chindwin. Thus they came to within striking distance of the last great mountain barrier of the frontier itself. Running laterally across their rear they had river and road communication and Burma’s one big railway in this they were much better served than the British on the other side of these ranges. 

The British also had a railway which ran roughly parallel with the front, but so far away from it that it could only be tapped effectively at one point, Dimapur. itself a hundred miles distant from the combat zone. From this point to its advance outposts on the India-Burma border the British had to construct metalled roads through virgin forest, around pre­cipices, winding 8000 feet into the clouds, and continuing along the full length of the Central Front. These solid roads, built largely by hand, remain marvels of military engineering. 

No roads, however, run back towards India from this front. Between the army on the Assam-Burma border and their main bases in Bengal (and lying exactly athwart the direct line of communication) are scores more ridges and streams. If the Supreme Commander had not been already versed in three-dimensional operations and only too eager to seize on all its possibilities, the develop­ment of air transport to supply this far-off front would have been forced upon him as a military necessity. For shorter haul were 50,000 motor vehicles, the mule, the ox-wagon, the elephant, hordes of coolies and the eternal, indomitable infantryman hum­ping his own pack.

The Japs had also threaded their way from Rangoon up the coastal belt to Arakan, where they had set up a line north of Akyab. From the Allied point of view communications on this Southern Front were rather better. From the north there were both rail and road links with Chittagong, which also had its port. But the railway died 18 miles south, at Dohazari, and the road shortly afterwards. The last hundred miles to the front via Bawli Bazar was mere track. The sappers were summoned again. 

Arakan itself is a’ country of mountain, jungle and paddy fields, with a few scrubby foothills and a  network of tidal chaungs.  There are few places where artillery can be easily deployed, and fewer still where tanks can manoeuvre. 

Between the Central Front and the Southern Front lies the huge mountain jungle area of the Chin Hills, Lushai Hills and Arakan Tracts. No formal line has ever been drawn across this wilderness. For close on two hundred miles long, and about as deep it has remained No Man’s Land, where roving groups of both armies patrol, ambush and vanish again. 

The third sector of the Burma Front is the Northern, which is based on Ledo. Here was the chief concentration of the American power. Even in the worst days the Japs never tried to climb into India over this wall or the Ledo mountains. The Allies. however, proposed to climb back into Burma over this wail. For two years the Americans steadily built up along the Upper Brahmaputra a chain of airfields to service their Flying Eridge over the Hump to China.  In the face of every obstacle they hacked their famous Ledo Road out of the mountain, and by the end of 1943 General “Uncle Joe” Stilwell, with his US-trained Chinese divisions, was already embattled on the Burma side and preparing to march up the Hukawng Valley on his drive to Myitkyina and the old Burma Road. 

With the exception of the comparatively low-lying Arakan sector most of the Burma fighting took place on mountains or in valleys nearly as high. The gun duels on 9.000-foot Kennedy Peak, between Tiddim and Fort White, were for long one of the most famous “front line noises.” Nine-tenths of the face of the entire land is covered with the matted beard of the jungle. Such is the Burma Front. From the corner of the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal it measures ‘100 miles of the wildest and most impenetrable tracts in the world. 

The Supreme Commander’s directives to. the Fourteenth Army for the 1944 Campaign were to hold the Cen­tral and Southern Fronts, and on the Northern Front to advance to the line Mogaung-Myitkyina. These orders were fulfilled to the letter. Two major Japanese attempts to invade India were smashed. Five Japanese divisions were annihilated in the process, and our own objectives were reached ahead of schedule. 

The advance continues.