- 65 - Pacific War - First Chindits expedition and Operation Longcloth, February 14-21, 1943

Last time we spoke about the successful execution of operation KE and the battle of Wau. Operation KE was a success and the Japanese had managed to evacuate 10652 men. Simultaneously while Operation KE was going on, the Japanese had refocused on New Guinea and sought to secure their important bases at Lae and Salamaua. In order to secure them the Japanese commenced a new offensive, this time aimed at Wau which held a significant airfield that could be used to threaten Lae and Salamaua. The Japanese managed to land significant forces to hit Wau, but the Australians tenaciously held them back long enough to get reinforcements to Wau to push the Japanese back. The Japanese offensive turned into a catastrophic failure, yet despite being pushed back the Japanese would regroup and plan another offensive to take Wau. But for today we are diving back into the CBI theater.

This episode is the First Chindits Expedition: Operation Longcloth 

Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

 

The story of Operation Longcloth and the actions that will take place in Burma require us to talk about some notable figures, one who is to put it frankly, a very bizarre but fascinating man. Orde Wingate was born into a military family in February of 1903, his father was a religious fundamentalist who became a member of the Plymouth Brethren. Wingate and his 6 siblings experienced a very repressed childhood and were kept away from other children for fear of spiritual contamination and would endure a regime of religious mania spending entire days reading and memorizing the Old Testament. For Orde, the religious indoctrination was accompanied by a spirit-shrinking spartan regime, something like a secular boot camp. When his family moved to Godalming, in 1916, Orde was sent to a Charterhouse school. He was very much an outsider there and did not mix with the other children nor participated in any sports. Then in 1921 he was accepted into the Royal Military academy at Woolwich, training as an officer in the Royal Artillery. At this point he suffered a salient trauma, Wingate began breaking all the rules and underwent a ritual known as “running”. The other military students summoned Wingate from his room, stripped him naked and had him run between lines of senior students who whacked him with knotted towels before he was tossed into a tank of icy water, it was the good old running the gauntlet. Wingate would stare the other boys right in the eyes and define them to do their worst to him. Many were intimidated by this and ceased hitting him as a result. Then Wingate would toss himself into the icy water tank. Wingate had thus shown himself to be a student of note at an early age. 

By 1923 Wingate received his commission as a gunnery officer and a post at Salisbury Plain where he soon gained a reputation for being a skilled horseman and particularly good at the fox hunt.  But many who knew of him described him to have a dark side, yet again he always broke the rules and conventions. This became more of an issue by 1926 when he took a post at the military school of Equitation where he became very alienated by his peers and superiors by his arrogant insubordination. But Wingate enjoyed a powerful patronage for at this point in his life his fathers first cousin, “Cousin Rex”, Sir Reginald Wingate, the former Governor-General of Sudan and High commissioner in Egypt took him under his wing. Wingate took leave and began studying Arabic at the London School of Oriental and African Studies and then served in Sudan and Ethiopia. He also carried on a 5 year affair with a woman named Enid Peggy Jelley, to whom he got secretly engaged. But after 6 years after boarding the liner Cathay at Port Said, returning for his marriage to Peggy, he fell in love with a 16 year old girl named Lorna Paterson who was traveling home from Australia. As soon as he got home to Peggy he notified her he was in love with another. 

 

Wingate married Lorna in 1935, a woman 13 years younger. In 1936 Wingate became an intelligence officer with the British Mandate in Palestine and almost immediately became an ardent Zionist, though he was not himself Jewish. Palestine at this time had an enormous Jewish population since the end of the first world war and a large influx of those fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The Arab population saw them as a future threat and guerilla groups sprang up. Archibald Wavell the newly arrived commander in chief in Palestine had Wingate form the Special Night Squads (SNS) to combat Arab terrorism. Wingate was an early proponent of using paramilitary actions at night to induce a unique and singular terror in his enemies. He got the SNS to use slavering dogs, a very calculated piece of cruelty since the animals were regarded as unclean by Muslims. The SNS were basically legitimizing Zionist counterterrorism, using Jewish thugs to strike back at Arab thugs. 

Wingate performed war crimes and horrible atrocities while leading the SNS and was recalled. This should have been the end to his career, but Wavell and Sir Edmund Ironside kept making up excuses to cover for criticisms against him. These two men managed to get Wingate back into the game by 1941 where he was brought over to Ethiopia to help fight against the Italians. Backed by Wavell, he attempted another go at the SNS, this time named the Gideon Force, a band of irregulars made up of British, Sudanese, Ethiopians and some ex SNS. Wingates force proved spectacularly successful and this time with no controversy. But still because of his tactlessness and insubordination, Wingate ended up getting whisked out of Ethiopia at the end of hostilities. 

Wingate found himself in Cairo in a major depression, he tried to kill himself with a Ethiopian knife but was saved by a man who drove him to the hospital. There is considerable evidence to suggest Wingate was bipolar and had experienced an acute episode of downswing for his manic-depression. Wingates enemies and critiques were delighted at the news of his downfall and hoped he would be court-martialed and tossed into an asylum, but Wingates backers prompted him up yet again. His suicide attempt was attributed to delirium induced by malaria, but as Churchill’s personal physician Lord Moran would write in his diary about Wingate ‘Wingate seemed to be hardly sane . . . in medical jargon a borderline case.’ 

Wingate was certainly a bizarre person, he was also an exhibitionist and extremely eccentric as many sources put it. He was careless in dress, always unkempt, had zero respect for military convention and hierarchy and expected his superiors to satisfy his every whim. When General Auchinlack succeeded Wavell as commander in chief in the middle east he met Wingate who came to his office in shorts, with a dirty solar topi and a greasy blue jacket. Wingate loved to go around camps naked, often appearing out of a shower nude to bark orders at other men. He liked to wear an alarm clock around his wrist that would go off on odd occasions for no particular reason that anyone could figure out. He was rarely seen with his trademark Wolseley helmet and fly whisk. He carried on a string around his neck a raw onion which he occasional snacked upon, cant make that one up people. He had a lot of food fads which he imposed upon his subordinates, such as vegetarianism. He rarely changed his clothes and thought doing laundry was unnecessary. 

Wingate went through a limbo period until 1942 where Wavell asked for his services to help in South-East Asia. Originally Wingate was told he would be training Chiang kai-sheks forces guerrilla warfare and he was quite unenthusiastic for 2 reasons. 1) such an endeavor he deemed to be like teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs. 2) he wondered what the point was of sending a Middle East expert to the CBI theater? Yet as of February the 27th Wingate found himself departing to be the liberator of Delhi with the rank of major. It would take 3 weeks for him to get over to Wavell and by that time Rangoon had fallen. Wavell told him that his job had thus changed, now he would be in charge of all guerilla operations against the Japanese within Burma.Wingate was sent to Maymyo east of Mandalay to take over the Bush Warfare School being run by another colorful character named Michael Mad Mike Calvert. Calvert was coming back to Maymyo, returning from a failed operation and found Wingate sitting at his desk. Calvert glared at him and asked who he was and calmly Wingate simply stated his name. And would you know it, they got on perfectly fine and even became friends.

The two men both decided their first task should be to go down to see Slim at Prome. Slim had met Wingate back in East Africa in 1940, both men serving under Wavell against the Italians. Upon discussing the matters of organized guerilla groups, Slim agreed to some of Wingates ideas but doubted his Ethiopian experience would be relevant for the task. As Slim was becoming very aware, jungle warfare in Burma was a special type of beast. Wingate was very impressed by Slim and said of the man ‘There is only one soldier worthy of the name East of Suez. He is a bad-tempered little terrier by the name of Slim.’ When Chiang Kai-shek was departing back to China after a visit in March, Wingate managed to take a seat on the plan alongside him, hoping to learn about warfare in Burma from the generalissimo. However their aircraft was chased by Japanese fighters, ruining times for conversation. Wingate was informed at Chongqing that he would not be receiving Chinese fighters for his programs as they were now going to Stillwell as a result of the catastrophe in Burma. When he returned to Burma he was informed by Calvert they had sent 100 Bush warfare people into the Irrawaddy and only 11 survived, things were chaotic to say the least.

Wingate then took Calvert for a week long car tour of the Burmese frontier making careful notes of animals, insects, reptiles, and terrain details. In Delhi on april 24th, Wingate announced he no longer had any interest on training a guerrilla group, but instead wanted to create a more proactive long-range penetration (LRP0 group. He had 3 major motifs for this, 1) the Japanese troops behind the lines had to be inferior to those as the front, thus the British should get behind. 2) They needed to use communications based on radio and supplied by air. 3) They had to cut the Japanese supply lines and destroy their arms dumps, thus typing up disproportionate numbers of the enemy. He continuously made his case to his superiors and many thought him nuts to think he could train men for jungle warfare in just 8 weeks time. But Wingate kept pushing for it, insisting also that all the men must be volunteers and that he needed at minimum 3000 men. 

The finer points of his idea brought up the need to supply special units with airdrops, not a particularly new idea, but certainly a gung-ho one. His superiors wanted to outright reject his ideas, but Wavell yet again was championing his cause. Wingate won out the day and it was agreed to allocate men to his project. The 77th Indian brigade was formed and it was certainly a motley collection. The main British component was the 13th battalion of the King’s liverpool regiment raised in Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool in 1941. These were older, married men with no dreams of martial glory, typically employed in the coastal defense of Britain then suddenly shipped to India after the Japanese went supernova in the east. They displayed a lack of enthusiasm for Wingates ideas, many of them were also too old for jungle combat. Wingate rejected 250 of them off the bat and Wavell gave permission to fill the gaps with other units. The rest would come from two oriental units,the first being the 2nd battalion Burma rifles. These were mainly warriors from anti-Japanese hill tribes, the Kachins, Chins, Karens and such, those personally affected by Japans aggression and eager for payback. They were eager and better yet, they taught Wingate a lot about jungle warfare. The other were Gurkhas whom always held high regard amongst the British, though Wingate thought them arrogant, ill-disciplined and overrated. I find that truly bizarre, because all literature i have ever read about Gurkha’s troops has been nothing, but praise and something out of a Rambo film. One historian of the Gurkhas said of Wingate ‘Wingate was the only officer in 130 years of service ever to criticise the performance of Gurkha soldiers, characterising them as mentally unsuited for their role as Chindits. Of course the same might be said of Wingate.’ Likewise the Gurkhas found Wingate arrogant, overly domineering and someone who paid little heed to them who had vastly more experience fighting in Burma. They also really did not like him because of his rude and autocratic treatment of them. 

Wingate divided his force into 8 columns each commanded by a major and each given 15 horses and 100 mules. The columns would be sustained by airdrops, thus an RAF signaling section was attached to each. They trained in the central provinces of India and in the Saugur jungle due south of Gwalior. Within the jungle training the idea was to hit the men with every possible scenario they might face, to push them to the absolute limit. They endured hell. Encounters with giant snakes, mosquitoes, leeches, days filled with half rations deliberately to simulate living off airdrops. Men collapsed from heat, marching with full packs through vegetation. When the monsoons hit, they were marching through mud, rivers and torrential rain. Many days began at 6am with half an hours bayonet drill, followed by unarmed combat. After breakfast they learnt woodcraft, map reading, compass reading, how to forage and distinguish poisonous plants. They learnt how to blow up bridges, lay ambushes, how to storm airfields, how to properly clear paths in jungles, it was grueling. 

From the beginning of the training programme there were sickness levels allegedly as high as 70%. Wingate was ruthless, in the case of those saying they were suffering from dysentery, he ordered his officers into the bathrooms to inspect the mens stools to prove if they were lying. Amongst many of his enemies, the Medical Corps would be a large one. Wingate continued to alienate himself and made more and more enemies. At one point Wingate misunderstood the Burmese word for Lion “chinthe” as Chindit and declared it to be the name of his LRP group henceforth, thus they became known as the Chindits. His Burmese aide, Sao Man Hpa told him the word made no sense in Burmese, to which Wingate told the man Chinthe made no sense in English. 

Wingate defeated the 70 percent rate of illness, bringing down to a 3 percent, via brutal methodology, most genuinely ill men simply carried on too afraid to be punished. Wingates eccentric qualities spread amongst the men, like his necessity to wear shorts in the rain, to eat raw onions, and to keep a bunch of buffalo to milk because he believed their milk had salubrious qualities. Wingate should have been sacked at countless times, but the rubicon had been crossed and he was expected to lead his men by 1943. By December of 1942, the Chindits and Wingate were ready for action. They had been trained to carry 70 pounds on a march, were equipped with tropical uniform: army bots, mosquito nets, mess tins, sterilizing kits, each man had a rifle or Bren gun plus 50 rounds of .303 ammunition and 6 days worth of rations. The rations were 12 wholemeal biscuits, 2 ounces of nuts and raisins, 2 ounces of cheese, 4 ounces of dates, 2 ounces of chocolate, 20 cigarettes (which greatly annoyed Wingate as he deemed smoking a major hinderance), tea, sugar, powdered milk, salt and vitamin C tablets. The mules of his forces carried 3 inch mortars, ammunition, wireless radio sets and batteries. His force of 8000 were divided into 8 columns of around 400 men each: consisting of 3 rifle platoons, a support platoon with 2-3 inch mortars, 2 Vickers medium machine guns, a mule transport platoon and an RAF air liaison detachment. In addition he had 10 platoons for reconnaissance, scouting and sabotage operations.

Now originally Wingates force was supposed to be part of a 3 pronged offensive, utilizing conventional British forces attacking Akyab and the ARakan while the Ledo and Yunnan forces led by Stilwell would secure northern Burma and reopen the land route to China. As we all know during this series, Burma was a colossal mess. Originally 4 Corps would assault Sitang and Kalewa while 15 Corps attacked Akyab and Arakan, but shortages in labour, transport and lack of skilled hands led to the cancellation of the major project. Even worse, Chiang Kai-Shek, greatly pissed off by the decisions made during the Casablanca conference, refused to sanction a Chinese expedition from Yunnan. With all hopes for the great 1943 offensive dashed, Wavell had to consider whether the Chindits were even relevant anymore. Wavell arrived to Wingates HQ on February 7th after countlessly telling the man things were simply postponed. In a 2 hour meeting Wingate fought bitterly to send his men into the fray, but Wavell stated he could not be party to the pointless waste of lives.

Wingate made multiple arguments for sending his boys in, 1) cancellation would boost defeatism in the Indian army: 2) it was essential for the British to overcome their current ignorance of Japanese jungle fighting: 3) Fort Hertz, the remaining British outpost in Burma was in desperate need of relief: 4) without a Chindit crossing, the Japanese would dominate the jungle on either side of the Chindwin river: 5) the 77th brigade was not pitch perfect and any delay would be catastrophic to morale: 6) An attack by the 77th brigade would impair and set back Japanese preparations for an offensive. Wavell apparently impressed by Wingates enthusiasm agreed to let the Chindits have their day. The Chindits were not directed south-east to help with the Arakan operation, instead their assignments were to be to cut two railways, one between Myitkyina and Mandalay in northern Burma and the other, the Mandalay-Lashio line. The codename of the operation was Longcloth, which annoyed Wingate because it held no grandiloquence he sought. 

In early february the 7 Chindit columns marched south east from Imphal to Moreh on the Assam/Burma border. Once across the border they split into 2 groups, the southern group consisting of columns 1 and 2, around 1000 men and 250 mules which was a feint to throw off the Japanese and the Northern group consisting of columns 3,4,5,7 and 8, around 2000 men and 850 mules who would destroy the railways. Small patrols were sent across the Chindwin marching some 30 miles into enemy territory and coming back without any incident, however doing that with 3000 men was another matter entirely. On February 13th, an advance party of the Northern group crossed at Tonhe around 50 miles north to act as a a doubled bluff to cover for the southern groups feint. Meanwhile a disinformation party with the southern group marched south and ordered a huge quantity of supplies from a village known to be aiding the Japanese, providing a great ruse. The second wave of 2000 men from the Northern group crossed the Chindwin unopposed on the 14th. 

Crossing the Chindwin was not easy, while elephants and bullocks swam across with ease, the pack mules proved very skittish, most likely fearing crocodiles. Getting them to the far bank was a nightmare. The southern group also had its problems with their mule. They had the first task of ambushing a 250 strong Japanese garrison at Maingnyaung on the 18th, but ran into a skirmish with a Japanese patrol before they made it there. The enemy was thus alerted and bombarded them with mortars, this spooked the mules and the caused a stampede. Many mules were lost in the jungle, the element of surprise with it and the fiasco cost the southern group a delay of 3 days. The southern group slowly pulled away from the hill country east of the Chindwin, making for the Mandalay-Myitkyina railway. By the night of the 3rd of March they were ambushed in the Mu valley. It was a utter disaster. Radios, ciphers and most of their equipment were lost. Column 2 was almost annihilated, column 1 limped on to the banks of the Irrawady awaiting final orders from Wingate, who instead kept blaming their commander, Major Burnett. As for column 2 he said “the disaster to No. 2 Column, was easily avoidable and would never have taken place had the commander concerned understood the doctrines of penetration”. 

Meanwhile Wingate and the Northern group rendezvoused 5 miles inland from the Chindwin and received their parachute drops. Wingate then pondered his options, he could make for Tonmakeng where intelligence reported no enemy presence and wait for the next supply drop and attack the 200 strong Japanese garrison at Sinlamaung or they could bypass it and head into the Mu valley. He kept the men marching and some of his scouts reported a Japanese garrison was at a gold mining village called Metkalet 15 miles east of the Chindwin near Tonmakeng. He ordered columns 3 and 5 under Calvert and Fergusson to attack at once. Then another disaster struck. Fergusson’s column got stuck in a swamp and scouts returned again with a new report that no Japanese garrison was in Matkalet after all. So Wingate and Calvert directed the columns to Tonmakeng. Wingates thinking was it was better to strike at an enemy strength he knew, rather than the Mu valley which was an unknown.

They reached Tonmakeng without further incident by february 22nd and learnt a Japanese garrison was at Sinlamaung, 10 miles away so WIngate dispatched 3 columns to attack it while the rest of the men waiting for a supply drop expected 3 days away. Disaster struck. The 3 columns were unable to locate Sinlamaung after 3 days and when they finally found it on the 25th, the Japanese garrison had just pulled out. Wingate met with his officers and they decided to march to Zibyutaungdan with Calverts column 3 in the lead. On March 1st they made it to Zibyutaungdan and then proceeded to descend into the Mu Valley. Wingate then ordered the Northern group to disperse into its columns and rendezvous later at the Irrawaddy or beyond. He also dispatched an advance party across the Irrawaddy to the Kachin highlands northeast of Mandalay to try and raise a guerrilla force among the pro-british people there. 

By the night of March 3rd disaster struck. At the very same time the southern group was being ambushed, column 4 walked into an ambush, 2 miles west of Pinbon. Major R.B Bromhead, a descendant of the Bromhead famous for fighting the Zulu at Rorke’s drift in 1879, did his best to get his panicked mules with their Gurkha handlers to disperse and regroup at a rendezvous point hoping to get help from columns 7 and 8, but while trying to do so, the men were attacked again and by the time they reached the rallying point columns 7 and 8 had moved on. With no food or radios and just a handful of mules left, the column had no choice but to retreat back to India. Within a days time, columns 2 and 4 were broken and on their way back to India. Wingate was livid, his credibility was at stake, but fortunately for him and his men the Japanese assumed when they whipped out Column 2 they had destroyed the entire invasion effort.

By March 6th, Calvert and Fergussons columns were within striking distance of the Wuntho-Indaw railway. Calvert and Fergusson hatched a bold and daring plan to assault what was a 800 strong garrison at Pinlebu. They spoke with Major Walter Scott leading Column 8 and told him to attack Punlebu while they supervised a massive supply drop north-east of the town. The idea was that the attackers and supply collectors would support another. Doing so they would set up roadblocks to the north and east of Pinlebu and call upon the RAF to bombard the town, making the Japanese believe they were facing a huge force. The attack turned into an amazing success. The Japanese were quickly confused as Calvert and Fergusson had the railway line demolished. It was a bloody fight, but the line was blown up in several places. The Japanese counterattacked in force trying to stop the demolition. Calverts men also mined 2 railway bridges, one of them a 3-span 120 footer. In the bloody mayhem, Calvert and Fergussons men killed about a third of the Pinlebu defenders and cut railway lines in 70 separate places. During the evening Fergussons column no 5 blew up the 40 foot rail bridge at Bongyaung gorge, leading also to hundreds of rock and rubble going over railway lines around the gorge.

Now 10 mites north of Wuntho, Wingate established his HQ in the Babwe Taung hills. He had a tough decision to make, should he retreat back to India or press further and cross the Irrawaddy? Wingate even considered turning his HQ into a new fort like Fort Hertz, to try and push the Japanese to give up the Irrawaddy towns. Wingate as you probably have guessed went with option number 2, despite how unbelievably dangerous it was. The Japanese were hard on their tail as the Chindits made their way trying to cross the Irrawady river. This is where I have to leave our story of the Chindits, but they will come back throughout the war. 

We need to make a small detour to speak about the Casablanca conference that took place from January 14 to the 24th. Chiang Kai-Shek had been begging the Americans and British for more aid. FDR told Chiang Kai-shek he would champion his demands to Churchill at the Casablanca Conference, but Churchill brushed this all aside. The conference ended with two large decisions, the first being the controversial doctrine of unconditional surrender. The allies were now confident after the success of operation Torch, the victories at Alamein and at Stalingrad that the Germans were on the run. But over in southeast asia, the Japanese looked impregnable. Thus the 2nd decision made was basically to keep the Europe First course steaming ahead, the Pacific was simply second banana. But for America, the situation in the Pacific had distinctly changed, they had won the initiative and now sought to consolidate their conquests in the east. Admiral King applied considerable pressure to the matter, in private he began urging that if the Pacific did not get 30% of allied resource quote “it would necessitate the US regretfully withdrawing from the commitments in the European theater”. Admiral King wanted to continue the momentum in the Pacific by seizing the Solomones, the eastern New Guinea-Rabaul area, capture back Kiska and the Attu islands in the Aleutians begin operations in the Gilberts, Marshalls, Carolines, take Truk and extend the occupation of New Guinea to the Dutch borders. The British opposed this as they continued to argue the best course was to defeat Germany first then devote all resources against Japan.

Now as for the CBI theater, plans were continuing for Operation Anakim and the Burma offensive, but the British were not looking to extend their commitments in the theater very much. They argued that the depleted condition of the eastern fleet prevented them from carrying on a naval supremacy campaign in the Bay of Bengal, and this led Chiang Kai-shek to refuse to support an offensive through northern burma, because of the lack of British naval forces at hand. Thus operation Anakim looked like it was only going to get off in late 1943. For all the failures of the conference, FDR did try to remedy the situation as best as he could with their Chinese allies. FDR made it known he wanted to treat China as a great power that the allies would help build up for the current war and postwar. He also acknowledged the dramatic need to keep supply routes to China open. Stilwell advised 5000 tons of supplies be sent over the Hump per month as a goal to hit by February of 1943, this would require 140 aircraft during good weather and 300 aircraft during monsoon seasons. But Washington at this time could only spare 75 aircraft, another disappointment to Chiang Kai-shek.

Another important side aspect to the Casablanca conference was brought forward by Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud who were vying to become recognized partners to the allies with their Free French Forces. Until this point, the Japanese had a pretty awkward relationship with their technical ally, Vichy France. This awkward situation led them to simply ignore the Free French forces and by proxy they decided to not touch the French concession of Guangzhouwan which had declared itself part of Free France. French Indochina of course was fully invaded prior to 1941 and remained under nominal Vichy French control, but Guangzhouwan was beginning to stick out like a sore thumb. Chiang Kai-shek recognized Free France’s authority over Guangzhouwan and many Chinese forces of the 4th Area Army led by General Zhang Fukui fled into the concession to escape the Japanese. This drew Tokyo’s attention and they finally decided to put an end to the Free French presence in China. The 23rd army of General Sakai lent 2 battalions of the 23rd independent mixed brigade from Hong Kong to go over to the Luichow Peninsula. They landed at the village of Peichatsun on February 17th and began skirmishing with some Chinese defenders. They soon overwhelmed the defenders and seized the towns of Hsinlaitsun and Haikang, forcing the Chinese to withdraw towards Suichi. From there the Japanese continued north, seizing Suichi and Chihkan. After these seizures, the Japanese had fully encircled the French concession of Guangzhouwan. The Japanese and representatives of Guangzhouwan soon fell into negotiations and the Free French were forced to declare the concession an open city, allowing the Japanese to occupy it without a fight.

 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The eccentric or better said madman Wingate got his wish to send the Chindits into the fray, despite just about no one other than Wavell wanting him to do so. With Onions wrapped around their necks they made their first strike against a Japanese railway and it was a surprising mixed success.