Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45. Max Hastings
Читать онлайн книгу.
Burma frontier? ‘It is indeed a disgrace, that so feeble an army is the most that can be produced from the enormous expense entailed.’ In truth, an embarrassing number of Indian Army units were deployed on internal security duties. Churchill wanted Britain’s eastern army to be profitably employed, but deplored the fact that ‘we are about to plunge about in the jungles of Burma, engaging the Japanese under conditions…still unfavourable to us, with the objective of building a pipeline or increasing the discharge over the “hump” [the Himalayan route to China]’.
Allied operations in South-East Asia were nominally subordinate to the supreme commander of South-East Asia Command (SEAC), Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. ‘The interests in this theatre are overwhelmingly British,’ growled Churchill to the combined chiefs of staff when he imposed his protégé’s appointment in September 1943. Mountbatten’s meteoric elevation, from destroyer flotilla commander in 1941 to British Chief of Combined Operations and then to SEAC at the age of forty-two, reflected the prime minister’s enthusiasm for officers who looked the part of heroes. ‘A remarkable and complex character,’ Gen. Henry Pownall, Mountbatten’s chief of staff, wrote of his boss. ‘There are so many paradoxes…his charm of manner…is one of his greatest assets; many is the time that I have gone in to him to have a really good showdown…he would apologise, promise to mend his ways—and then soon afterwards go and do the same thing again! [He] has great drive and initiative…He is however apt to leap before he looks…His meetings are overlong because he likes talking…And he likes a good big audience to hear what he has to say.’
Mountbatten’s many critics, who included Britain’s service chiefs, regarded him as a poseur with a streak of vulgarity, promoted far beyond his talents on the strength of fluency, film-star good looks, and his relationship to the royal family. He was King George VI’s cousin, and never for long allowed anyone to be unaware of it. Famously thickskinned save where his own interests were at stake, of boundless ambition and limited intellect, his grand title as supreme commander meant little, for he was denied executive direction of either armies or fleets. The extravagant staffing of his headquarters in the sublime setting of the botanical gardens at Kandy, Ceylon, promoted derision.
Mountbatten was prone to follies. There was a 1943 episode in Quebec, where he fired a revolver at a chiefs of staffs’ meeting to demonstrate the strength of ‘pycrete’ as a material for a fanciful plan to build artificial iceberg aircraft carriers. The bullet ricocheted, narrowly missing the top brass of the Grand Alliance. Brooke fumed when Mountbatten solicited each of the commanders present for a souvenir tunic button: ‘I only quote this story, as an example of the trivial matters…that were apt to occupy Dicky’s thoughts at times when the heart of the problem facing him should have absorbed him entirely.’ Mountbatten, however, endured endless disappointments and changes of strategy without losing heart. Once, when a scheme which he favoured was briefly approved, though it was evident to his staff that it would never be executed, Pownall wrote pityingly: ‘Mountbatten is in the seventh heaven of delight. He is so very simple-minded.’ ‘Dicky’ was not a great man, but like many prominent actors in the dramas of the Second World War, he strove manfully to do his part in great events. He possessed two virtues which justified his appointment. First, he was a considerable diplomat. He liked Americans, as so many British officers did not, and had a sincere respect for Asians and their aspirations. And the glamour of his presence, in a theatre where so many British soldiers felt neglected by their own nation, did wonders for morale. Almost every man who saw Mountbatten descend from a plane to visit them, in dazzling naval whites or jungle greens, was cheered by the experience.
As supreme commander, Mountbatten floundered when he sought to exercise authority, but distinguished himself as an ambassador and figurehead. Both he and his wife Edwina had a gift for regal informality. Peter d’Cunha of the Royal Indian Navy was once at his post in the wireless office of a patrol boat anchored in a creek off the Arakan, immersed in music from Radio Ceylon. Suddenly a pair of hands removed his headset. He turned in astonishment to perceive Mountbatten, who held it to his own ears for a moment. He then asked the operator’s name, and said: ‘You seem to be very fond of English music.’ The supreme commander replaced the phones on d’Cunha’s head and departed, saying: ‘Enjoy yourself; but just be a little bit alert. You never know who’s coming!’ The young man loved it, of course.
Yet Mountbatten could do nothing to undo his Command’s absolute dependence upon an American vision. Pownall wrote bitterly in his diary in February 1944: ‘If…we are relegated to mucking about in Burma, they may as well wind up this unlucky SE Asia Command, leave here if you like a few figureheads, a good deception staff and plenty of press men to write it up.’ If we recall Slim’s scepticism about Stilwell’s hopes for the Chinese—the British general’s declared belief that the American advance across the Pacific would defeat Japan without an Asian land campaign—these strictures applied with equal force to anything which a British army might do in South-East Asia. Britain’s field commander understood as clearly as her prime minister that the new Burma campaign would be launched to restore imperial prestige and to indulge American fantasies about China, not because British action could contribute substantially to victory over Japan.
In 1944, however, before the British could launch their grand offensive, the Japanese had one more throw to make. With extraordinary boldness, Tokyo’s commanders embarked on an operation to seize the positions of Imphal and Kohima in north-east India. Even the Japanese at their most optimistic did not at this juncture suppose that they could conquer the country. Rather, they sought to frustrate the British advance into Burma. More fancifully, they hoped to precipitate a popular revolt against the Raj by showcasing during their advance units of the so-called Indian National Army, recruited from prisoners-of-war.
The Japanese high command’s approach to the Imphal assault was recklessly insouciant. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi of 15th Army, whose concept it was, sacked his chief of staff for suggesting that the operation was impossible, mainly because of the difficulties of moving men and supplies in Assam, the wettest place on earth, with an annual rainfall that sometimes attained eight hundred inches. Mutaguchi, fifty-six years old, was a scion of an old but now somewhat diminished southern family. Like many Japanese generals self-consciously virile, he never wearied of proclaiming his enthusiasm for women and combat. He was an ambitious political soldier, prominent among those who had precipitated war in China. Belligerence, together with connections in high places, won him promotion to army command.
Mutaguchi found himself largely dependent on bullocks to move stores and munitions across some of the worst terrain in the world. Experiment showed that a laden beast could travel just eight miles a day. The Japanese army’s supply line into Assam would be extraordinarily tenuous. A staff colonel was dispatched to Tokyo to secure endorsement for the operation from prime minister Tojo. A preposterous discussion took place while Tojo splashed in his bath. ‘Imphal…yes,’ said the prime minister, who had never displayed much interest in Mutaguchi’s front. Japanese generals had a droll saying: ‘I’ve upset Tojo—it’s probably Burma for me.’ They called the place ‘jigoku’—‘hell’. Now, the prime minister demanded: ‘How about communications? Have they been properly thought out? Eh? Eh? It’s difficult country towards India, you know. What about air cover? We can’t help him much. Does he realise that? Are you sure it will make things better rather than worse? What’ll happen if the Allies land on the Arakan coast? Has anyone thought of that? Eh? Eh?’ Mutaguchi’s staff colonel outlined the plan while Tojo stood naked before him. At last, the prime minister said: ‘Tell Kawabe’—commander of the Burma Area Army and Mutaguchi’s superior—‘not to be too ambitious.’ Then he signed the Imphal operation order.
The battle which ensued became one of the British and Indian armies’ proudest memories of the war, and decided the fate of Japanese arms in South-East Asia. Slim had expected an attack, but was caught off-balance by its speed and energy. Japanese forces first hit the British in the Arakan coastal belt in February 1944, then moved the following month against Imphal and Kohima. The early weeks of the struggle were touch and go. ‘The whole time I had been in the theatre,’ wrote a cynical British officer, ‘the campaign had been conducted in an extremely leisurely manner by both sides. The only time I [saw] either protagonist hurry [was] when the Japs were heading for Imphal.’ Mutaguchi risked everything to move men fast