The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten by John Terraine

Author:John Terraine [Terraine, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Autobiography, Military, Historical, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781448211302
Google: JhrB5Mu6R0gC
Amazon: B00C1BEB38
Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader
Published: 2013-05-08T23:00:00+00:00

6

The Imperial Enemy

The Imperial forces of Japan completed their conquests with astonishing and alarming speed. One after another, British possessions in the Far East were overrun.

The island of Hong Kong was bombed on the same day as Pearl Harbour: December 7th 1941. Eleven days later Japanese troops landed. On Christmas Day Hong Kong surrendered.

On the day after Pearl Harbour, Malaya was attacked. By the end of December, the Japanese reached Singapore. On February 15th 1942 Britain’s great Far Eastern base capitulated. The Japanese took 85,000 prisoners in Singapore; this was the greatest disaster ever inflicted on British arms.

Already the Japanese were in Burma. By March 10th Rangoon was in their hands, and from Rangoon they advanced into Upper Burma. In six months they had destroyed the British Empire in the Far East: they stood at the gates of India, and there they remained.

On October 7th 1943 the newly appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, arrived in Delhi. Mountbatten was forty-three years old. His task was to dispel the despondency of defeat and stagnation; to impart a youthful impulse to willing but tired men; to grip the British war against Japan.

So now I was a Supreme Allied Commander—a very grand title indeed. What is more, it was a very grand job: there were not many of us about!

No two Supreme Commands were quite alike. Mine, I think, was the most diverse: the bulk of my forces were Indian, British and Gurkhas; I had a considerable number of Americans in the Command, and a lot of Chinese—not to mention East and West Africans. There were Burmese, there were Australians, and there were French and Dutch. Somehow, all these elements had to be welded into one force.

The first man to meet this problem was Lord Wavell. He was made Supreme Commander of the A.B.D.A. Command (American, British, Dutch and Australian) at the beginning of 1942. I was now inheriting a part of his area of responsibility.

Now, in the war against Japan, there were four of us: Admiral Nimitz in the Central Pacific, holding the Japanese Navy in check and guarding the life-lines; General MacArthur, in the South West Pacific, based on Australia; myself in South East Asia, based on India; and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in China. We four formed the ring around Japan, and it was our job, in 1944, to tighten it into a noose.

For the time being, only the Air Forces of South East Asia Command could strike the enemy. While the bombers harassed the extended Japanese communications, the Navy awaited reinforcements, the Army was undergoing the familiar process of regrouping and building up for a new offensive—and Mountbatten was organising his new Command from scratch.

I set up my Command Headquarters in New Delhi, in what is now the Ministry of Education. Running the Command—SEAC, as it was called—involved a whole series of relationships with key people.

First there was Field Marshal Lord Wavell; he was now Viceroy of India—and India was my base. He was also my official political link with the Government at home.

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