CHAPTER XXVIII

 MEIKTILA
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 MARCH 1945

 MEIKTILA, eighty miles south of Mandalay on the main road and railway to Rangoon , was a vital centre of communi­cations for Central Burma . It was, too, an area devoted to Japanese supply depots, base hospitals and maintenance units. The town was of the utmost importance to the Japanese in their battles to prevent Slim’s Fourteenth Army from crossing the Irrawaddy , and in the defence of the Mandalay front. To capture Meiktila would for us be a fruitful blow in the enemy’s rear. We should sit astride his lines of communication, his lines of supply, and, perhaps, too, his eventual lines of retreat from the north.

And so, having once crossed the Irrawaddy, by the bridge­head secured and held by Evans’ Seventh Indian Division, the 17th Indian Division (Major-General D. T. Cowan), supported by 255 Tank Brigade, moved east from Pakokku, captured Taungtha on February 24 in the face of determined resistance, brushed aside opposition down the road leading through Mahlaing, seized an important airfield, to which the Division’s airborne brigade was flown, and assaulted Meiktila itself.

The Japanese, surprised by this invasion of what they thought to be a back area, hurriedly mustered their forces, which were larger than we had anticipated. To defend the town they fought with tenacity and fanatical recklessness. Hand-to-hand fighting lasted for a week. Enemy posts had to be evicted from one house after another. Many quarters of Meiktila were reduced to ruin. It was a battle in which the Japanese held out in small groups in their cellars and dugouts. The defence was unco-ordinated if savage, and by March 4 the men of Cowan’s Division had captured the larger part of the town.

If our thrust had been rapid and decisive, the reactions of a

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startled enemy were no less swift and vigorous. This enemy had to regain the town at all costs. And he spared no effort to do so. The roads were cut, Taungtha was recaptured, the 5000 soft vehicles of the Division and Tank Brigade blocked from reaching Meiktila. Above all, the Japanese sought to gain the airstrip on which all our supplies were landed, two miles north-east of the town. The pressure increased for the enemy outnumbered our troops in Meiktila. General Slim’s nearest reserves were the Fifth Indian Division, still at Jo rhat; but Jo rhat was seven hundred miles away. And so it was that Salomons’ Nine Brigade, which had trained for an airborne role, was ordered to be flown in to reinforce the defenders of Meiktila. This was no passive defence. Its very nature was offensive, for, daily, strong columns of tanks and infantry sallied out to break up enemy troop concentrations before these could attack the town.

Dakotas began to fly in the Brigade on March 15. Brigadier Salomons has recorded how he attended the briefing of the American pilots who were to fly in part of the Brigade next day. “Half an hour after the briefing conference was due to start some of the pilots had still not returned from that day’s sorties. But the briefing officer said he could not wait for them and indicated that those present would just have to pass on the orders later to the others. Occasionally the briefing officer said casually that it might help to take a note of this (this being a bearing to fly on after crossing a certain line, or the altitude to be adhered to on certain stretches of the run). As the pilots jotted these figures down on the backs of envelopes and other scraps of paper, those of us listening all hoped that our own pilot would be one of those receiving this information at first hand and not from a pal some hours later.”

On the first day fifty-four sorties were made from Palel airstrip. Salomon’s Tactical Headquarters and the 3/2nd Punjab (Lieutenant-Colonel Lakhinder Singh) were the first to arrive. The flight was uneventful across the Irrawaddy and the dusty, hot-looking plain of Central Burma. How sharp a contrast this buff landscape presented with the green, jungle-clad Mayu Range and Chin Hills ! Gone were the cool and clouded summits, the awe-inspiring panoramas. From now on the men would see a country of slender white pagodas.

The planes started banking and, there below, the passengers saw Meiktila and its lakes. From the air these lakes appeared vividly

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blue, fringed with a luxurious green that quickly gave way to the vast outer belt of brown—the hot, scrubby plain. As the planes came in to land on the airfield some two miles out of the centre of the town towards the north-east, Japanese anti-aircraft guns fired. The troops could hear the sounds of battle on the ground above the roar of the planes’ engines. They looked down at bursts of smoke on or around the airfield. And these sights and sounds surprised the men, who had expected that at least the landing would be easy. As the Dakotas touched down and roared across the airfield, their wheels put up clouds of dust. The American pilots shouted to our men to “get out quick, for God’s sake !“ They leaped to the ground.

The equipment was thrown out hurriedly. A fortunate lull in the firing occurred while the doors were open and the aircraft were being emptied. But the shelling was renewed while our troops were waiting to be told where to go. The pilots were splendid the way they helped to unload the planes and yet found time to photograph some of the dead Japanese lying round the airstrip, or to inquire if there were any enemy swords available. They did not waste a second, but turned round their planes and flew off.

Nine Brigade, or that part of it which arrived on the first day, went into what was known as ‘D’ Box—the main defence position outside the area held by the 17th Indian Division. The western edge of the airfield formed one side of the perimeter of this box. Here the ground was bare, flat as the Desert, studded with occasional bushes and trees. Leaving two companies in ‘D’ Box, the 3/2nd Punjab moved across to ‘B’ Box, lying due north of Meiktila beside the main road. On its own the battalion held an exposed ridge.

The entire Divisional artillery, concentrated as it was in a central position in Meiktila, could support all our defensive boxes. The tanks, too, were held centrally in the town area and sent out as they were needed.

During the next three days ,the rest of Nine Brigade arrived safely on the airstrip. The flying in had been speeded up because of the Japanese who were milling round the airstrip. Every day snipers were active and the enemy shelled both boxes. On the first day none of our aircraft had been hit, but one Dakota was

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destroyed by fire on March 6 and six men were wounded while escaping from the plane.

In ‘D’ Box, apart from Nine Brigade Headquarters, Bailey’s 2nd West Yorkshires and two companies of the 3/2nd Punjab, there were certain miscellaneous units of the 17th Indian Division, some R.A.F. ground staff, a large hospital, various stores dumps, and many vehicles.

The whole Box was crowded. Each of the many little bivouac tents, which were far too close together for safety, had a slit trench beside it into which the occupant could roll or jump when the shelling started. In between the mass of tents stood the vehicles: these had been dug down forward so that their engines were to some extent protected by the ground from intermittent shelling.

On the second night after the arrival of Nine Brigade a party of Japanese came on to the airfield. Lack of troops prevented us from holding a perimeter round the landing ground, although the enemy thought at first that we were doing so. Next morning the Japanese patrol was driven off so that our aircraft could continue to land, but during the next night a platoon arrived, and it took a West Yorkshire company more than an hour and a half to drive off the enemy. The Dakotas were held up. During daylight standing patrols guarded the airstrip. Then, on the fourth night, a whole Japanese company, supported by one gun, established itself on the airfield, having good cover in the low scrub between the runways. Two British companies, aided by tanks, fought until midday to remove the enemy. And so it went on, each day the situation growing worse, until it would take half a battalion, with tanks, to evict the Japanese, before our Dakotas could land with further units of Nine Brigade.

The Japanese guns approached nearer, and their gunners shot at the aircraft. They hit none, but the planes had to unload at very great speed, the American pilots helping to lift out the stores on to the dusty ground. When the Dakotas took off again straight away, using the very runway they had landed on, the Japanese fired from the north end of the airfield.

On March 23, the last day on which our planes were able to land, they had to be turned back in mid-air because the airfield was not cleared until two o’clock . This left only three hours for the

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planes to come in. As many as possible landed, for it was now realized that next day it would be impossible to clear off the Japanese. Most of our wounded were evacuated on these last few planes.

Brigade Headquarters was situated right on the edge of the Box. The command post was dug down in the shelter of earth walls that had been built previously to protect aircraft. A bamboo matting roof shielded the men from the sun. The signal office, the officers’ mess, and the command post of the West Yorkshires , had also been dug underground. Inside it was pitch dark and stuffy, and lights from wireless batteries had to be kept on all day.

On March 22, to everyone’s regret, Brigadier Salomons had left Meiktila, after a disagreement with General Cowan over the employment of Nine Brigade.  He was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel K. Bailey, commanding the 2nd West Yorkshires . On the following day Bailey was standing in the approach trench to the Brigade command post with his Brigade Major, W. S. Armour. The Intelligence Officer, Captain Leslie-Smith, was standing between them. All three were studying a map. Suddenly a shell landed, outside the command post: the Brigadier’s batman was killed, and Armour was wounded in the arm and back. Bailey, a heavy man, being wounded in the back, aggravated his condition by falling backwards down the twelve steps that led into the command post. Leslie-Smith, too surprised to duck, was unscathed. Shell fragments that wounded his two companions passed on either side of him.

Armour was taken to the dressing station, and when this was shelled soon afterwards, he received a further slight wound. Then he was sent to the airstrip to be evacuated with the other wounded. As the last Dakota with wounded on board was warming up ready to take off, a Japanese anti-tank gun fired straight down the runway and set the plane alight. Some R.A.M.C. orderlies unloaded the burning aircraft. Armour had again been hit, badly this time, in the head, When all the wounded except him had been unloaded and the plane was blazing fiercely, the orderlies said “He’s had it!” and discussed the need for removing the dead body from inside the Dakota. One of them said “Anyhow, you can’t let the so-and-so burn. Let’s take the body out.”  Billy Armour heard this, but could not speak. On being taken

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outside, however, he indicated that he ‘was still alive. That night he slept in a dressing station near the light aircraft strip, and was to be evacuated the following day in a light plane. As this strip had also been shelled, Armour was, not unnaturally, chary of lying about waiting his turn to be loaded. So he insisted on being placed in a small hole, and only when the other men were on board and the engine was running did he get off his stretcher and totter to the aircraft.

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At six-thirty on the evening of March 24 the occupants. of ‘A’ Box heard enemy tracked vehicles moving from west to east across their front. The same noise was then heard by ‘B’ Box away to the north-east of their position. When, at eight o ‘clock, a Japanese tank rumbled down the western runway, toured the airstrip twice and halted, our troops thought that it was a British tank and did not fire until too late. The tank made off towards the north-west. Soon after this several more tanks, supported by Japanese infantry and heralded by a heavy bombardment from six guns, pressed close towards the east side of ‘B’ Box. By clanking squeakily up and down the airfield for half an hour only fifty yards outside our wire, the first tank made some of the defenders uneasy. Later, it appeared near one of the Box’s back exits which had been wired up for the night, and stopped within fifteen yards of the only two Bofors guns held in ‘B’ Box. An officer opene4 the turret and said something in very plain Japanese. Still no one fired. In the silence he realized that he had come to the wrong place and he and the tank dashed away untouched. No one fired even a parting shot at him. It was now clear that the tank’s movements up and down the airfield, far from being aggressive, had merely indicated that the Japanese officer had lost his way.

Though enemy tanks knocked down a portion of the perimeter wire to prepare for an advance, the infantry supporting the tanks were held off by accurate artillery shelling and by machine-gun and rifle fire from the 3/2nd Punjab. The attack was continued in vain until dawn by the Japanese, and next day over twenty bodies were recovered. During the same night ‘D’ Box was attacked by jitter parties, who maintained their harassing activities until dawn, accompanied by shelling. Our men repulsed all these attacks

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without loss. Daylight revealed blood and equipment all over the place. But it also revealed the unpleasant fact that some thirty Japanese had dug themselves and an anti-tank gun into the aircraft bays. And this gun soon opened fire on ‘D’ Box, wounding a number of Indians as the day wore on. Our own mortars and field artillery were unable to damage the gun owing to its deep pit.

During the same day Brigadier H. G. L. Brain arrived to take over command of Nine Brigade from Colonel Younger, who had stepped into the breach when Brigadier Bailey was wounded. To replace Armour as Brigade Major came Major P. P. Steele, who had been Adjutant to the 2nd West Yorkshires for a consider­able period. A further change occurred when Major J. A. E. Newell was promoted to command the 3/2nd Punjab in place of Lieutenant-Colonel Lakhinder Singh. Command of the West Yorkshires devolved upon Major P. W. P. Green.

The next two days were fairly quiet except for intermittent shelling of ‘B’ and ‘D’ Boxes and occasional jitter parties and patrolling during the night. But after dark on March 27 the Japanese were extremely active along the whole Brigade front. They started at ten-thirty by attacking Newell’s 3/2nd Punjab in ‘B’ Box with a platoon of infantry. They charged up to the wire, firing their every weapon. The attack was beaten off. A West Yorkshire patrol moving towards Milestone 340 on the Mandalay Road was fired on by rifles and drew back, but was then mortared in the light of flares and had to scatter. Some returned to ‘D’ Box, others to ‘B’ Box; there were six casualties in all.

At midnight , sixty Japanese attacked ‘B’ Company of the Jammu and Kashmir Infantry, holding a position out at Milestone 342. For some days past our tanks and supply columns had been trying in vain to fight their way through to relieve this company, commanded by Major Harnam Singh. Now the men, already reduced to half-scale rations, were bombarded by three tanks which stood off a thousand yards away, firing into our positions with machine-guns and grenade dischargers. Then at two o’clock in the morning the Japanese tanks and infantry both closed in towards the company area, but did not press their attacks. Next day a sweep by our own tanks and a company of the West Yorkshires and another from the 3/2nd Punjab was made towards Milestone 342. But again this column failed to reach the Jammu and Kashmir

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company, being held up by extremely heavy fire from the village of Wathit, in which there were at least two hundred Japanese troops.

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Each day the 17th Indian Division sent out a Gurkha battalion with guns and tanks to clear the villages outside Meiktila. These villages were often a mile in length, stretched out in a belt of trees. And it would take the greater part of a day to comb such villages. But these tactics brought good results, and the average number of Japanese killed during these sweeps approached two hundred. As there were comparatively few Japanese to the north and north­west of the town, most of these daily sweeps, which involved considerable fighting on a fierce scale, took place to the south and east of Meiktila. Nine Brigade itself had not enough troops to do more than hold on to its positions.

On the whole the Japanese were heavily damaged by the offensive sweeps and were kept away from Meiktila as a result. But on one night the Japanese did put in a heavy attack against a brigade of the 17th Division astride the road south of the town. It was a very strong wired position. About three hundred yards in front, on a lone mound the top of which was a cemetery, a platoon of the Jammu and Kashmir infantry was holding an isolated position. The hillock overlooked the approaches from the south. Its defenders, who had dug their trenches all along the ravestones, would be able to warn the main brigade position if any enemy troops bumped against them during the night.

On this particular night they heard the sound of approaching troops. Though they did not know it at the time, this was a Japanese battalion moving to attack and occupy the airfield. The battalion, having lost its way, now arrived on the southern front. Part of the leading sections ran straight into the Indian platoon position. The attack was a mistake, and surprised the Japanese. While their left-hand party attacked the Jammu and Kashmir sepoys on their hillock, the remainder of the battalion charged forward in a mass and ran into the main 17th Division position. In pitch darkness the Japanese troops charged with screams and yells. Defensive fire by the divisional artillery and by local mortars was put down in front of the perimeter wire. The Japanese battalion was stopped. It suffered huge losses Caught

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in the fire of artillery, mortars and crisscrossing medium machine-guns, the enemy soldiers were cut to pieces.

Until morning nobody knew quite what had happened, but with daylight the ground was seen to be littered with dead. Some two hundred and thirty bodies were counted; others had no doubt been carried away by the Japanese under the cloak of darkness. The bodies lay in swathes, you could see where five sections of eight or nine men marching in file had been caught by a machine-gun and had fallen in line. The wounded and the dead had been rewounded and terribly mutilated by the heavy fire which continued for more than forty minutes. Never had our troops seen dead who were so very dead. The bravest of all the enemy, perhaps, were a small party who heaved forward the battalion gun. When the firing first broke out they did not, as might have been expected, put the gun into position and fire hopefully ahead. Instead, the Japanese gunners started to run forward, carrying the ammunition and tugging their gun alongside the infantry. Into the terrifying inferno they went; they reached a point ten yards from the wire, stopped there, and attempted to fire their gun. How many of the crew were still living at that moment will never be known, but during the next few seconds the Japanese gunners, without protection, were wiped out to a man. The gun was never fired. And at daybreak there lay the muzzle towards the British position, with its crew heaped about it.

Those who had attacked the cemetery mound had been repulsed and decimated with their companions. Several Japanese soldiers were found sprawling across the wire; while some had actually penetrated the Jammu and Kashmir defences and lay slumped across the tombstones. The few who still lived—and most of them had been wounded_stayed where they were, and sniped at our positions, until they were killed, one by one.

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On March 30 an operation order was issued by the 17th Indian Division. 48 Brigade, having cleared a number of villages, was to operate eastwards along the road to Thazj as far as the seventh milestone, 99 Brigade would occupy the area of Nyaungbintha and Tamongan, while 63 Brigade with tanks operated north and east of the town to contact the advancing troops of the 20th Indian

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Division. Nine Brigade, meanwhile, became responsible for the defence of Meiktila town north of the railway.

That night the airstrip was found to be clear. Next day, the last of the month, patrols all round the Nine Brigade area had nothing to report. For the first time in a week planes were able to land on the airstrip where previously the supply dropping zone had been. It appeared that the Japanese, realizing they had no chance of recapturing Meiktila, had decided to withdraw eastwards towards Thazi and southwards towards Pyawbwe.

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