Burma 1943

The Allies Strike Back

The previous page was: "Operation Claret"

In Burma the British, Indian and American forces were engaged in some of the most fiercest and most difficult fighting of World War II.

From the beginning of 1942, the Allies and the British in particular, had suffered the bitterness of defeat, which could not be repaired immediately because of the needs of war in Europe.

The area could not be neglected because immense British interests were at stake; plus the Japanese threat to India was perilously dangerous and, if carried out could have effected the whole issue of the war.

Burma and Malaya were the richest and most valuable of the British dependencies; they had to be liberated. What forces could be spared had to be given with as lavish a hand as possible. They were little enough for the task they faced, for the Japanese forces were the largest fighting force engaged in fighting on land throughout the war.

Operation Claret

Louis Mountbatten's Task

In the autumn of 1943, South-East Asia Command under Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten was created. The Allies were now ready to strike back. In February 1944, General Slim and his famous Fourteenth-Army won their first victory over the Japanese.

The Americans gave invaluable help, especially in the air, mainly because Burma was largely regarded as the gateway through to China. From the British point of view the campaign was fought, to frustrate a Japanese invasion of India and to prepare the way for the liberation of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, the islands of Indonesia.

The terrain and climate were as formidable foes as were the human enemy. Success could only be assured by brilliant leadership; the miracles of supply and transport; mainly by air, and not least by the courage and skill of the individual with his finger on the trigger.

The soldier would have to adapt himself using remarkable improvisation to overcome the eerie terrors of jungle warfare. The British, American, Indian and African, they lived up to the motto which General Slim had given his Army: "God helps those who help themselves."

Royal Marines Commandos

The Royal Marines who were engaged in the Burma campaign, although small in numbers proved to be most effective in their actions. They were present in the Fleet, in Commandos and in those special raiding parties which made it their business to enter enemy territory in small boats or by swimming, to harass him by day and night, and to bring back valuable informastion for the intelligence departments.

After the departure of Force Viper in 1942, the Royal Marines did not re-appear in Burma until the autumn of 1943, when 42 and 44 Commandos were transferred to the East as part of the 3rd Commando Brigade under Brigadier W. I. Nonweiler, R.M., who later commanded the 117th Infantry Brigade Royal Marines, in Germany.

Their first engagement was on 11th March 1944, when 44 Commando was ordered to attack the village of Alethangyaw on the coast of the Arakan. This jungle raid was on a small scale, for landing craft were very scarce.

Its objective was to harass enemy communications, to kill the enemy in the neigbourhood, and to prevent Japanese reinforcements being sent north during the main assault on the Maungdaw-Buthidung road.

The Commando was the first Royal Marine unit to do battle with the Japanese on land since the departure of Force Viper, although it had undergone special training in jungle warfare, this was its first experience of the real thing.

Landing From Boats

The landing, which was carried out in three waves half-an-hour before midnight, was unopposed; in the heavy surf the men had to scramble ashore up to their shoulders in water.

Their first objective was the village. Then if all went well, the Commando was to move into the hills behind and then they were to attack the enemies lines of communication.

The village was so strongly defended that the advance to the hills could not be completed before daylight. Lieutenant-Colonel Horton decided to concentrate his troops in three areas on the north-west of the village and defer the move into the hills until the following night.

The Marines dug in, and with the break of daylight their positions were subjected to almost continuous fire from machine-guns and snipers. Fortunately, the Japanese shooting was very poor.

Further Up Country

At five o'clock that morning an attack was made from British lines to the north, where two bridgeheads were successfully pushed across the 'Ton Chaung' (stream) at Dodan and Kanyindan, while motor launches carried out bombardments about ten miles farther south.

The diversion was blessed with good fortune, for 44 Commando's position lay across the line of retreat of the Japanese and enabled the Marines to inflict many casualties on the enemy.

After the village had fallen the advance to the hills demanded guile as well as courage and during day-two, bogus messages were put out by radio to convince the Japanese that the Commando intended to remain at Alethangyaw for the following night.

The deception was successful, ten hours after the Commandos had slipped away, the Japanese launched a heavy attack on the vacated positions.

Advancing Into The Foothills

After crossing the 'Taundo Chaung', the Commando made its way into the foothills. Here they found that the jungle was almost impenetrable, the troops could advance only by going back into the stream and wading forward.

With the water thigh deep, progress in the humid heat was slow and exhausting, but by half-past three in the morning of day-three, the Commando reached a point suitable to form a defensive box; pickets were established on such dominating heights as were accessible.

Confused fighting took place for two days in which the Marines inflicted a great number of casualties with insignificant losses to themselves. During the night's advanve through the stream three sub-units under Captain P. S. B. Baxter, became detached from the main body.

They were able make their way to a high point north of the 'chaung'. Here they had excellent observation over-looking the strongest Japanese position in the neighbourhood and were able tp pass-on valuable information on enemy troop movements to the main body.

Later they succeeded in joining up with the main body, because in the deadly game of hide-and-seek they had been discovered and were ordered to withdraw on the fifth day.

If the results of this typical jungle raid were comparatively small, the experience gained was of great value. As Lieutenant-Colonel Horton said in his comments, the fog of war is nowhere more dense than in the jungle; the greatest difficulty of a commander in this type of country is to find out what is happening.

Tricks And Deception

The Commandos soon found he Japs weaknesses; among other things; they didn't like moving about in the jungle at night; they didn't like close hand-to-hand combat with the Commandos and they didn't like the cold steel of the bayonet.

Their preferences were trickery, deception and booby-traps; the Japanese were adept in all of the tricks of deception; they too could send bogus radio messages in perfect English; had snipers tied in tree-tops.

They did not hesitate to move a wounded soldier into an open field to tempt the Marines to come and get him, and they were astute in shouting in English and making a noise in one direction while attacking in another.

They neither gave or expected any quarter. Had the Japanese fire been more accurate, The Marines would have suffered badly. There was one almost unbelievable instance of their inaccuracy.

A Commando patrol had been sent out to reconnoitre the route for the night move into the hills; it fell into an ambush and came under close-range fire; the patrol leader and one of his men were wounded. The leader managed to crawl away to safety, but the Marine's body was siezed.

The Marine who appeared to be dead was dragged away and put into the middle of an open paddy-field by the Japs. Realising no-one was going to collect him they started to play games; they opened fire on his body. When the Japanese withdrew the local natives carried the Marine who was still alive to safety.

After this raid 44 Commando moved up-country where it had under its command a battalion of the Maharatta Light Infantry, one of the Nepalese State Troops, and for the first time in their history, a company of fifty elephants.

All Royal Marines; and perhaps the hero himself; will regret that Brigadier "Jumbo" Leicester R.M., the victor of Walcheren, was not there to command the elephants from a howdah.

Fleet Royal Marines

The Royal Marines in the big ships of the Fleet had not been inactive. As far back as January 1944, capital ships had arrived in Trimcomalee, and, as the general situation improved, the Commander-in-Chief was eager to use his Fleet Marines for the capture of Cheduba, one of the islands off the Burma coast, south of Akyab.

In November 1944, all available Marines from the Fleet were landed for a month's intensive training including special courses in jungle warfare. Morale was high, but there was great dissapointment when at the end of the month the Marines were dispersed to their ships; because the operation was called-off. By the beginning of 1945, the Operation was back "on", the first wave of Marines was unopposed; the others followed. Then came the anti-climax the Japanese had vacated the island; the natives were terrified not knowing what to expect from the invaders.

After elaborate precautions, and checking for booby-traps the Marines who were dissapointed at not meeting the enemy, took part in the occupation of Cheduba, an experience they were not likely to forget.

The natives having recovered from their initial panic, became very friendly, and who knows how to make friends in any country so well as the Marine?

Food and fraternisation were the order of the day, and to celebrate the departure of the Japanese the natives gave a huge party at which, if not exactly "hand in hand, on the edge of the sand", they certainly danced in the light of the moon, to the music supplied by the Marines Bandsmen; "Yes We Have No Bananas".

42 And 44 R.M. Commandos

January 1945, was a month of the most strenuous fighting for the Marines. To enable the Burma campaign to be completed successfully, they needed to secure the airfields; and the Japanese army in the Arakan corridor had to be destroyed.

The task was assigned to Lieutenant-General Christison's 15th Corps, and the first step was to capture the island of Akyab, the birth-place of that gallant soldier-author of the First World War, Hector Munro, whose place in English literature is secure under the name of Saki.

With Akyab secured and its airfields in the Allies hands, on 12th January, the 3rd Commando Brigade waded ashore to launch an attack on Myebon. The operation was designed to cut the lines of the enemy's withdrawal down the coast.

The fiercest fighting took place at the village of Kanguaw, which commanded the coastal road and was the enemy's most direct escape route. Here the Commandos, landing on a mud bank, had to approach the village across the thickest of mangrove swamps.

Blocking their way too, was a heavily wooded ridge which was given the name Hill 170. Two days of the bitterest hand-to-hand fighting was necessary to dislodge the Japanese so they could be driven from the ridge, and no sooner were they dislodged than they covered it with heavy artillery fire.

Several days later the Japanese launched a counter-attack at dawn on 31st January. It began with a charge of Japanese sappers who attacked the northern end of the ridge with explosives. They were followed by the infantry who fought with frenzied fury.

Attack and counter-attack succeeded each other at grenade range, the Commandos matching oriental fanaticism with desprate courage, while dead lay thick around them.

Towards evening the enemy attack slackened, but although their main body withdrew, small parties of Japs dug themselves in close to the British positions. They were not dislodged until the following morning, when the 2nd Punjab artillery, coming up at dawn blew them out of their fox-holes.

The two Commandos who bore the brunt of the fighting on Hill 170 were No.1 Army Commando and 42 R.M. Commando. Both showed not only heroic courage but also the skill and enterprise which they had acquired from their intensive training. It was on Hill 170 that Lieutenant G. A. Knowland of 1 Army Commando won the Victoria Cross.

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Royal Marine Engineers

In Burma an R.M. Engineer Commando was attached to the 3rd Commando Brigade. At the Myebon landing an alarming situation arose. Between "Able" beach and "Charlie" beach where there was a series of impassable rocks. And unless a road or a causeway could be made with almost superhuman speed, the lorries with the ammunition and stores for the 3rd Commando Brigade could not be moved.

Company Sergeant-Major Hocking and forty men of R.M. Engineer Commando were ordered to deal with the emergency. With a few shovels and some explosives they performed their task of levelling the ground in under seven hours.

It was at the kanguaw landing that the Engineers won their greatest credit. Here, again at short notice, C.S,M. Hocking and his men had to build a bridge across a deep chaung. The only materials available were empty ammunition boxes.

Their only tools were axes and a broken saw, and they still managed to built the bridge in record time, and it carried safely twenty-five-ton lorries loaded to the brim.

These exploits of this small R.M. engineering unit deservedly received an honourable mention in General Slim's despatch.

After the Myebon and Kanguaw operations, a whole series of landings were made all along the difficult Arakan coast, and all of these tasks were performed by the Royal Marines with remarkable ingenuity and complete success.

As amphibian specialists Marines were also employed in a force known as the Small Operations Group, which was engaged in every imaginable kind of subversive warfare.

Royal Marines made a contribution to the "human fish", the Group composed of crack swimmers who, equipped with fins, waterproof watches and waterproof weapons, swam under water, attacked enemy small craft, and reconnoitred and recorded the depths of the inlets.

It was not until the capture of Taungup at the end of April that the Arakan was completely cleared of the enemy. But before all of this. Because the Arakan airfields had become available, the Allies had made invaluable use of them, they supplied the armies in the field, a use which will rank as one of the most remarkable achievements of airpower at that time.

Rangoon was re-occupied on 2nd May 1945, and the Royal Marines, who had been the last to leave in 1942, Played a part in its liberation. Nine hundred of them manned the landing craft for the sea-borne assault which took the Army back.

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