THE 2nd BN SOUTH LANCASHIRE REGIMENT CROSS THE IRRAWADDY:

The following is an extract from ' Burma - The Longest War 1941 -1945' by Louis Allen and tells of the crossing:- 

.....Facing them, along fifty miles of the (Irrawaddy) river bank, the Japanese had spread out four battalions of 72 Independent Mixed Brigade, 2 INA Division reported vaguely as being between 5000 and 10,000 strong, between Chauk and Nyaungu, with 214 Regiment around Pakokku on the west bank. 72 1MB was under the command of 28 Army (Sakurai) whose zone of operations had hitherto been in Arakan. Now it was responsible for an area of the lower Irrawaddy , and its Army boundary with 15 Army ran close to the village of Nyaungu , a fact which turned out to be of some importance for the crossing. Nyaungu was the narrowest point of the Irrawaddy in the area and Evans and his staff had made a particularly thorough study of aerial photographs to choose the best crossing point. Maps were not too reliable, since the position of sandbanks changed from year to year, and the presence of fresh sandbanks across the direct route meant that oblique instead of direct courses would have to be taken, thus producing what Slim called ‘the longest opposed river crossing in any theatre of the Second World War’.² Two or three miles downstream lay the old capital of Burma, Pagan, a dramatic sight with its 1200 red and white pagodas and temples silhouetted against the sky. Neither Pagan nor Nyaungu offered the shortest route to Meiktila from the Irrawaddy . That was undoubtedly at Pakokku, which had the extra advantage of a metalled road leading directly to it from Pauk where the Gangaw Valley debouched on to the plain. But this made it, precisely, too obvious a choice, though 7 Division intended to put pressure on it, to keep the Japanese guessing. In addition, the narrowest crossing, at Nyaungu — three-quarters of a mile —meant that there would be a more rapid turn-round of boats and rafts, and Evans’s men could be across sooner.³ The crossing could be easily ob­served. Along the east bank of the Irrawaddy ran 100-foot high cliffs, and if anyone wanted a higher observation point, it was easy enough to climb one of the many pagodas. The Japanese also carried out one of their rare aerial reconnaissances over the Gangaw Valley at the end of January, and re­ported a long line of vehicles between Thin and Pauk. Tanaka saw the report, but, since it was not repeated, decided that the sighting was not of much importance.

Evans intended to use 33 Brigade for the crossing, and as a result it had been kept in the rear and not involved in the fighting on the flanks of the divisional advance like 89 or 114 Brigades; and from the latter brigade he took the newly arrived 2 Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment which had experience in seaborne landings and had taken part in the seizure of Madagascar from the Vichy French. The South Lancashires would provide his assault battalion. The dates he had thought of were 12 or 13 February, but he was dismayed to find the assault craft in such bad shape when they reached Pauk that he was forced to postpone until the 14th.’

To find out about the opposite bank, Evans used a Sea Reconnaissance Unit to test the river conditions, and a Special Boat Section, with frogmen, to cross over in the darkness and reconnoitre. One officer was killed in Nyaungu village on such a patrol, but the event did not seem to arouse Japanese suspicions. Nor did the clearing of the village of Myitche by 1/11 Sikhs or the battle for the crossroads at Kanhia which cleared the ground between Pakokku and Myitche. The Sikhs also put a small patrol across the river at Pagan, and reported that the southern edge of the village was empty of Japanese.

On the morning of 14 February, not all the knowledge acquired and past experience could avert accidents in such a massive operation. The very battalion selected for its experience of such actions, the South Lancashires , went hideously amiss. They were to be the dawn embarkation, and in the half-light there was chaos. The first flight was to be silent, so the men were not to start their outboard motors until well out into the river. When they got there, some failed to start, and some of the boats sprang leaks. Desperate to get at least part of his force across, the commanding officer ordered the boats to move, whether they were in sequence or not. As a result the reserve company found itself in the lead, but the current bore it downstream, and the rest, thinking this was the right course, tried to follow. As they came level with the enemy positions, machine guns opened up on them and in a matter of minutes two company commanders had been killed and several boats sunk. The defenders on the far bank were not Japanese, but INA troops under Captain Chander Bhan of Major Dhillon’s 4 Guerrilla Regiment (Nehru Brigade), made up largely of Tamils who had been recruited in Malaya. At this time, the INA Comman­der-in-Chief, Subhas Chandra Bose, was at Meiktila. Only the arrival of cab-rank aircraft, keeping the machine-gunners’ heads down, enabled the survivors to be brought back. But that landing— C Beach — was a fiasco.

The Corps Commander spotted the mêlée of sinking boats and struggling men. He went over the crossing-point in a light plane and took it into Division Headquarters at 6.30 am , two-and-a-half hours after the crossings began. ‘What’s happening?’, he asked Evans. ‘All our boats are going the wrong way — they’re coming back, and there’s a good deal of firing going on.’ This was the first intimation Evans had that things were not going according to plan — odd enough in itself. He took off to have a look. His plane was walloped in the air by the explosions of tank guns firing just 200 feet below him, but it stayed up.’ Light planes did, in fact, save many of the wounded from the catastrophe into which the boats had led them. Americans piloting L5s picked them up off the sandbanks and brought them to safety, while USAAF Mustangs, Mitchells and Thunderbolts pasted the Japanese guns and machine-gun nests, the RAF providing cover for the bombers and reconnaissance.

At 9.45 am, 4/15 Punjab (Conroy) were sent across, took command of the isolated South Lancashire company which had crossed successfully in the small hours before the main body, and stayed to guard the beaches. The next day the South Lancashires made a successful crossing into the beachhead. 89 Brigade crossed over and began to deploy south towards Pagan, and Indian Engineers were ferrying mules across the river on rafts powered by outboard motors. The fiasco of the previous day was forgotten. 1 Burma Regiment attacked a system of tunnels and catacombs which the Japanese were using on the river bank covering Nyaungu. An air-strike was summoned, the guns and tanks opened up, and even napalm bombs were used, which set the town ablaze but left the Japanese as they were. In the end, the decision was taken simply to seal up the entrances to the tunnels, burying the Japanese alive. The town was reported clear on 16 February.