Imperial War Museums' Book of War Behind Enemy Lines by Julian Thompson

Author:Julian Thompson [Thompson, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II
ISBN: 9781526724083
Google: 8rPNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2018-04-30T22:25:30+00:00

WHITE CITY STADIUM, GREYHOUND RACING TONIGHT

From Mawlu, Graves-Morris watched the final evacuation of the White City with 84 Column which was responsible for protecting the southern approaches to the block:

There was considerable [Allied] air activity during the day, and it was of great interest to watch the direct air support trying to tempt the Japanese AA gun in the neighbourhood to open up so that it could be spotted and destroyed [so that it would not threaten the fly-out that night].

It will remain a mystery why the Japanese took no steps to interfere with the air evacuation of the White City. A theory is that they interpreted the activity as reinforcements being flown in, and satisfied themselves by continuing their plans for a large-scale attack a few days later.

It was an eerie night. The sight of Dakotas landing and taking off in the moonlight was fascinating, and there was always the expectancy that at any moment a different sound would interrupt, but eventually in the peace of a summer’s night, troops, 25-pounder guns, and a quantity of other weapons and stores were ferried back to India. A heavily mined and booby-trapped fortress was left for the inquisitive Jap to investigate. On the morning of 10 May the codeword ‘Strawberry’ was received indicating that the evacuation had been successfully completed.

Graves-Morris along with the rest of 14th Brigade marched north to assist in the establishment of the Blackpool block. Now began the most testing time for the Chindits, operating under Stilwell’s direct command. His unconcealed loathing of the ‘effete Limeys’, whose fighting qualities he denigrated, filtered down to his incompetent staff. They were examples of the worst type of staff officer, totally unsympathetic to the problems of the troops, bullying pushers of paper, who appeared to be unable to read a map. Major J. F. F. Barnes, a British liaison officer with Stilwell in a secret report on 26 July 1944, commented that the staff work in his headquarters:

compared with the staff work of an equivalent British formation, was not good. There was a lamentable lack of co-ordination between the various branches of the staff who seemed to work very much in water-tight compartments....

Their method of issuing orders was, to me, queer. On one occasion it was decided that a Chinese battalion should put in an attack. This order was transmitted to the American officer with the Chinese by telephone by the equivalent of a GSO 1 (Operations) in the following manner. ‘Listen Wilkie, the heats on, has that percolated?’

Stilwell and his staff shared the view of the majority of their countrymen at that time: any problem could be solved by throwing men and matériel at it, regardless of the cost. Only two decades later, in Vietnam, would they learn that this was not always the right answer.

When the Japanese discovered that the White City had been abandoned, the newly arrived 53rd Division was placed under command of Lieutenant General Honda’s 33rd Army, and sent north up the railway to pursue the Chindit columns towards Blackpool, and destroy the block.

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