- 69 - Pacific War - Operation Longcloth, March 14-21, 1943

Last time we spoke a bit about the ongoings of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Mao Zedong’s Fourth Army faced off against the IJA in the western Hubei area causing significant casualties to both sides. The engagement was a mixed one with both sides claiming victory, and it seems it was a tactical draw. Over in the Solomons, Halsey had fixated his eyes on Munda and this prompted him to perform a naval bombardment of it and Vila-Stanmore. Some very unlucky Japanese aboard two destroyers ran right into the Americans enroute to bombard the airstrips and this led to their terrible defeat at the battle of Blackett Strait. The small and short battle showcased the Japanese were being bled and things were only going to continue to get worse for the empire of the rising sun. But today we are venturing back to Burma to talk about the Chindits so grab your onions. 

This episode is 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. 

 

A few weeks ago we began the story about Wingate and the Chindits. The first task given to the Chindits was Operation Longcloth which Wingate did not like as a title because it did not hold the grandiloquence he sought. Now a major rationale for Operation Longcloth was to help relieve some pressure from places like Fort Hertz, the last remaining British outpost left in Burma. Fort Hertz was around 60 miles south of the Chinese border manned by Karen levies and was on the brink of collapse. The fort was maintained as an outpost originally by the Myitkyina Battalion, but after the Japanese pushed the allies out of Burma it began to see many retreating allied troops who would garrison it. The military authorities within India however had no direct contact with the fort during most of the summer of 1942. Luckily for the allies, the Japanese did not continue their advance towards the northern Burmese border, most likely because they did not believe a allied outpost could be maintained in such a remote place. To get a picture of what the hell was going on at the Fort, the 153rd Gurkha Indian Parachute Battalion led by Lt Colonel James Owen Merion Roberts were parachuted into upper burma to investigate the state of the Myitkyina area on July 3rd of 1942. Alongside this on August 12th of 1942, Major Hopkins of the 50th Indian Parachute battalion overflew Fort Hertz and discovered unexpectedly that it was still in British hands. Lt Colonel Roberts had reached the fort some days prior and figured out the landing strip near the fort was still usable. The Fort Hertz airstrip served as an emergency landing strip for aircraft flying over the Hump to get supplies into China. The same airstrip was naturally also a supply line for Fort Hertz. The day after the discovery of the usable airstrip was made, a party led by Captain G.E.C Newland of the 153rd indian parachute battalion dropped into Fort Hertz with engineering supplies and they quickly went to work repairing the airstrip. By the 20th the airstrip was fully functional and Lt Colonel Gamble was sent to be the new commander of the area followed by a company of the 7/9th Jat regiment. A special force was created called the Northern Kachin Levies. They were made up of member of the Kachin people under the command of British officers. Originally Colonel Gamble was their leader and they helped various British Indian army units in the area to engage the Japanese and rally locals to their cause.

Now way back at the beginning of the war, Chiang Kai-shek sought the construction of a road from Ledo to Assam that would cut through the mountains, forests and rivers of northern Burma to link it with the Burma road at Lungling on the Chinese side. This was to be a colossal amount of work, Chiang kai-shek estimated it would be built in 5 months, while Stilwell’s team of experts believed it would take 2.5 years. The British were wary about the Ledo road because it destroyed their private shipping monopoly by allowing the Chinese direct access to India. However washington forced them to accept it, despite Britain trying to obstruct its construction by claiming they would perform a amphibious assault to recapture rangoon to reopen its road to China. Wavell argued that even if the Ledo road was complete it would be too costly to maintain, but washington was adamant about it, so they took full responsibility for its construction and cost. The Ledo road would be agonizingly slow to construct. It would take all of 1943 for the road to be cut from Ledo to assam to Shingbwiyang in Burma, just 103 miles in all. This was not surprising given it consisting of 100,000 cubic feet of earth that had to be removed along a track that ran as high as 4500 feet over the Patka range through thick jungle. The workforce consisted of 15,000 us troops, of which 60% were african-american and 35,000 locals. Churchill famously described the Ledo Road as “a road that would be open only when there was no longer any need for it”.

 

Chennault likewise eager to do anything to increase his funding for the airforces in CHina began argued that the road used up precious resource that would never provide the 65,000 tons of supplies over the Hump that his pilots could deliver. A lot of the allied analysts crunched the numbers and agreed with Chennault, and even General Slim added his agreement to the mater, stating they should better focus on simply retaking burma by military means and thus the road to china would be open. General Slim actually had a lot to say in the matter and wrote this

 

“I agreed with Stilwell that the road could be built. I believed that, properly equipped and efficiently led, Chinese troops could defeat Japanese if, as should be the case with his Ledo force, they had a considerable numerical superiority. On the engineering side I had no doubts. We had built roads over country as difficult, and with much less technical equipment than the Americans would have . . . Thus far Stilwell and I were in complete agreement, but I did not hold two articles of his faith. I doubted the overwhelming war-winning value of this road, and, in any case, I believed it was starting from the wrong place. The American amphibious strategy in the Pacific, of hopping from island to island would, I was sure, bring much quicker results than an overland advance across Asia with a Chinese army yet to be formed. In any case, if the road was to be really effective, its feeder railway should start from Rangoon, not Calcutta.”

 

Regardless the Ledo Road was to be built, all 1072 miles of it . Back in December of 1942, the 45th american engineer regiment and the 823rd aviation battalion, two african-american units arrived to begin the first segment of the colossal project connecting Ledo to Hukawng Valley. To build these 103 miles had the men led by Major General Raymond Wheeler braving the difficult Pangsau Pass of 3727 feet before dropping 700 feet to Shingbwiyang. By January 20th of 1943, construction was being done on a 24 hour basis at a rate of 3 quarters of a mile a day. By February 18th Wheeler was given command of the defense of the Ledo sector and despite Wavell’s engineer in chief giving a skeptical estimate that the next 45 miles of the road would only be done by March 1st, on February 28th they crossed the Burmese border.

 

Meanwhile the 18th division led by General Mutaguchi Renya was given the responsibility of defending northern Burma. General Mutaguchi was a victor of the Singapore campaign. In fact the 18th division was something of an elite division having fought in China, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines and now Burma. The logistics as you can imagine for his forces all the way in Northern Burma were not good. The men were greatly fatigued by the heavy fighting and lack of everything, so Mutaguchi was content simply garrisoning the region. He deployed a single regiment, the 114th in Hukawng Valley, the 55th in the Indaw area and the 56th in Myitkyina. Mutaguchi’s men were plagued by Kachin levies performing guerilla warfare. Soon he was forced to deploy his men to embark on vigorous patrolling north of the area of Myitkyina, leaving his 19th division vulnerable to attrition and without much in terms of replacements for casualties. In the words of Private Fujino Hideo: “Our enemy was not actually British, Chinese, nor Indians but the Kachins. They were quicker than monkeys and talented in shooting … After the eight month occupation, the punitive force at Sumprabum suffered heavy damage and the casualties from the Kachins’ guerrilla tactics … In the course of the campaign, the killed and wounded amounted to a great number.” 

 

By february the situation prompted Mutaguchi to redirect his attention towards the Kachin state where he planned to send the 114th regiment to attack Fort Hertz and Hkalak Ga, one of the important bases for which the Kachin levies operated. This also happened to be a place the Kachin levies screened for the building of the Ledo road. Thus in order to save everything, Wavell had gone along with allowing Wingate to launch operation Longcloth in an effort to prevent the offensive against Fort Hertz, the Ledo Road and the Hump air route.

 

Now the last time we were talking about the Chindits they had scored a success attacking Pinlebu and demolishing major parts of the Bongyaung railway. Wingate 10 miles north of Wuntho had established an HQ in the Bambwe Taung hills and was faced with a large decision, to carry on across the Irrawaddy or to retire back to India. Being Wingate he carried on. However while the Japanese at first were a bit bewildered by the attacks, they soon figured out what kind of force they were facing and set out to search and destroy them. The success of the railway demolition had thus created new perils. The Japanese were gathering in number to the rear of the Chindits. The No 1 column in the southern force that had survived the multiple disasters had blown up the railway bridge at Kyaikthin and crossed the Irrawady at Taguang on their own initiative. By March 10th, they had no time to lose as the Japanese were in hot pursuit. The people of Tigyaing welcomed the British and made boats available for their crossing. Fergusson and the No 5 Column got across by nightfall just before a JApanese column appeared on the westen bank to smash them. Learning the enemy had occupied Tigyaing, Calvert with the No 3 column crossed 5 miles downriver. Then on march 13th they were ambushed. Calvert tried to hold the Japanese off with rearguard actions, while his main body crossed some islands midstream and luckily for the men the Japanese did not press their attack or else the entire column likely would have been annihilated. The Japanese were uncertain of the numbers of this new enemy and were being cautious, again they had been fooled into believing the force facing them might be large. Regardless of getting the majority to safety, 7 of Calverts men were killed with 6 wounded who had to be left on an island. Calvert left a note with the 6 wounded men directed towards the Japanese commander asking him to treat the 6 wounded men in accordance with the code of bushido.

 

Meanwhile Wingate and the main body of the northern force, around 1200 men left Bambwe Taung and came to a major tributary of the Irrawaddy called Shweli on March 17th. Here the river was so wide it made ropes and dinghies useless and the crossing had to be made by boats. The danger was that the approach to the stream was over open paddy fields, where they could easily be spotted. On top of this intelligence had revealed the far shore was held by units of the Burmese Liberation Army. When Wingate sent across an envoy to treat with them, the fearless warrior of the BLA promptly decamped. Wingates men crossed at once, but yet again their mules gave them trouble. 40 mules had to be left behind, while the rest were tethered to boats waddling across. They crossed during the night of March 17th and all got over by sunset. With Calvert and Fergusson well ahead of him, Wingate signaled the forces to march for the Gokteik viaduct so they could demolish it,thus severing the Mandalay-Lashio road. 

 

Calvert turned south towards Mytison, while Fergusson was ordered to rejoin Wingates force. However Calvert was unaware of this order thinking Fergusson was backing him up as he approached Mytison. Without the extra man power, when he got to Mytison he knew he could not hope to take it head on, so he prepared an ambush. He called the RAF in to bomb the town while his men laid a trap along the Nam Mit river. A japanese patrol walked right into the ambush and lost 100 men. Calvert reported ‘We let fly with everything we had and a lot of Japs could never have known what hit them. It was one of the most one-sided actions I have ever fought in.’ For this great feat, the paid with the lives of around 6 Gurkhas. Calvert’s group continued on receiving an airdrop on the 19th, a 10 ton dump of supplies that would be the largest drop of the entire expedition. With their supplies in hand they trekked up the hills to prepare for their assault against Gokteik, but they suddenly received an order to return to India. Calverts force were too far south of the main body and would have to achieve the objective on their own initiative, thus he could not hope to ignore them. Calverts men turned back, but made sure to demolition a railway in their retreat. Wingate sent Calvert word that he should get out as fast as possible in order to bring the most survivors he could for quote ‘we can get new equipment and wireless sets. But it will take twenty five years to get another man. These men have done their job, their experience is at a premium.’ Calvert and the No 3 column reached the Chindwin on april 14th crossing it without opposition and were the first out of Burma. Calvert and his column were the real success story of Operation Longcloth.

 

As for Wingate, according to those in his company he came into a “down period” for his bipolar cycle. Many accounts refer to him at this time as “luth suspendu” highly strung, irritable and irrational. During the crossing of the irrawaddy, an officer had reported to Wingate he had a snag and apparently Wingate reacted by throwing himself to the ground in a cry of exasperation despair. Wingates biographer had this to say about the minor event “it was one among a hundred evidences of his impersonality at continual variance with his egotism’ he left no record of exactly where he crossed the Irrawaddy. He seems to have concentrated on the negative and discounted the amazing run of luck the Chindits had enjoyed so far – crossing the Chindwin, cutting the railway in 70 different places, crossing the Irrawaddy, all without significant losses – suspecting that, in the words of one of his sergeants, ‘there must be a catch somewhere’. It seems Wingate did not know his men were at their limits and he made the cardinal mistake of funneling his columns together, perfect to bring them into a death trap. Instead of spreading them over a wide area, he compressed them within 15 miles of each other in a king of peninsula surrounded by the Shweli and Irrawaddy rivers, making it much easier for their japanese pursuers to find them. The Chindits were also on a terrain mainly made up of paddy fields rather than jungle, thus they were particularly visible to the enemy. A Japanese spotter plane detected the No 5 column at one point and basically all the Japanese needed to do was take the roads from Mytison to Male where they could have encircled them. But suddenly Wingate realized his predicament and ordered his men to break out of the Shweli loop. This was to be easier said than done. The men were slow, due to hunger, their boots were worn out, they had not had a supply drop in many days. No 5 column had gone 48hours without food and it was becoming apparent Wingates force was too large to be supplied by air. 

 

Back over in Imphal the 4th corps whose role was to provide logistical back up for the CHindits were greatly puzzled by Wingates plans once he had crossed the Irrawaddy. The signaled to know what exactly his intentions were and Wingate replied that his destination was the Kachin hills, from where he would launch an attack against the Lashio-Bhamo road. The 4th corps gently reminded Wingate that such a distance meant they would be unable to supply him by air and suggested he try to instead attack Shwebo west of the Irrawaddy. It was clear they wanted him to go there, but Wingate responded the men could not get back across the Irrawaddy as the Japanese had stolen all their boats and were patrolling the access routes. To this the 4th corps ordered him to end his operation and make their withdrawal back to India. It was actually the order that prompted Wingate to sent his message to Calvert when he did, while he also sent word to Fergusson to rendezvous with him at Baw, where Wingate hoped to get all his men a supply drop before making the journey home. Ferguson's column were in really bad shape, they had no water and began sucking the fluid from any green bamboo stems they could find. They butchered their mules for meat and made stews of monkeys, rats, locusts and cockroaches. They were ridden with lice and leeches. The leeches were particularly bad, as when a man pulled one off, the parasite's head would get stuck in the skin creating an infected oozing sore. Fergusson sent word via radio to Wingate stating a bitter bible verse ‘I can count all my bones: they stare and gloat over me. (Psalms 22:17).’

 

It was a mistake to send the bible thumper Wingate such a message as he quickly responded back a quote from St John’s gospel ‘Consider that it is expedient one man should die for the greater good of all people.’. It seems Wingate was overconfident about the supply drops, having success prior by allowing some of his forces to attack Japanese garrisons while other oversaw aerial drops had driven the CHindits to take it all for granted. At Baw disaster struck. Wingate launched an attack hoping the RAF would support him, but the pilots could not make out friend from foe and ended up flying off after only dropping a third of the supplies. Fergusson finally rendezvous with Wingate at Shaukpin Chuang river on march 25th. Wingate told the men he thought the Japanese commander was pressed to do everything he could to annihilate them all just to save face at this point. Wingate held a conference with the officers where Fergusson recounted it as being ‘the last reunion of a very happy band of brothers before setting out on the perilous homeward journey, which many of them did not survive’. Knowing the Japanese would block their passage across the irrawaddy, Wingate decided to try a bluff. He would march back to Inywa and cross at the identical point of the eastward crossing. They would have to kill all their remaining animals to make the traverse lightly armed, and once across they would to split up into small groups to try and sabotage more railway installations on their way back to India. Wingate arranged for the drops to be made south of the Shweli loop in the hopes of persuading the Japanese that was where the brigade was to buy his men time. He sent No 1 column eastwards to the Kachin hills, basically to their doom to save the rest of his brigade.

 

All the columns would endure a terrible march back to Inywa. The mules were slaughtered as they went, and the Japanese were hot on their heels. Colonel Tomotoki Koba had set up 3 defensive lines between the Chindits and the border to India: the first position was at the Irrawaddy, the second along the Mu valley and the third following the line of the Chindwin. Meanwhile the Japanese hot on their trail’s purpose was to drive them into the trap. Wingate tried to toss the enemy off the scene by using feints and decoys, including ordering Fergussons No 5 column to attack the village of Hintha, halfway between Baw and Inywa. The feints it seems worked as the Japanese never caught up to them, missing the opportune chance to trap the Chindits in the Shweli loop. The main body of the Chindits reached Inywa at 4pm on the 28th and their luck had not run out. While the Japanese had stolen their boats over the Irrawaddy, they had neglected to do so on the Shweli. The Chindits gathered the boats they could and crossed the river. No 7 column was first followed by 2 and then 8. 8 was fired upon by the enemy halfway across, fortunately the Japanese force was quite small and lacked heavy machine guns. Even so their mortars, rifles and light automatics was enough to drive many of the CHindits into the jungle as the No 7 column was left on its own to flee. Wingate tried to secure a bivouac 10 mile south east of Inywa and divided his columns into 5 dispersal groups arranged for supply drops. From that point on, they were on their own initiatives. 

 

Fergusson’s No 5 column suffered heavily during their fight at Hintha and having lost his radios equipment they were own their own. Fergusson decided to take his men to the Kachin hills the closest sanctuary it seemed. But when they tried to cross the Shweli it turned into a nightmare. Many of his men were swept away during a flood as were many mules. 46 men were abandoned on a sandbank in the middle of the river as the Japanese began to attack. Fergussons recalled ‘the decision which fell on me there was as cruel as any which could fall on the shoulders of a junior commander’. Fergusson’s group staggered on, starving and dehydrated and would limp to Imphal by april 26. Column 5 had suffered tremendously, only 95 survived the ordeal out of 318 men. Column 7 managed to get 150 of his men to China and flew back to India. All the dispersed groups had terrible tales to tell about atrocities committed by the Japanese, or treachery on the part of Burman villagers. Men spoke of having to struggle to stay away, hiding in caves while the enemy hunted them down like dogs. Rice and buffalo meat were rare luxuries for them, more often than naught they ate python and nettles. But here we have to end to story, for the next time we come back to the Chindits we will conclude Operation longcloth and the daring retreat back to India by the Chindits.

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 onion eating madman Wingate took his men dangerously into the fray and many of the paid dearly for it. Their success brought the anger of the Japanese bearing upon them, how many would survive the trek back to India?