IMPERIAL FORCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 100, 30 April 1942, Page 5

IMPERIAL FORCE

HEROISM IN RETREAT

LONDON, April 29. A tribute to the courage and ten-acity-of the Imperial troops who in three months, in the face of overwhelming odds, carried out the fighting retreat from the Tenasserim, crossed the Sifctang, broke out from Pegu, crashed through the Shwedaung road block, and finally battled their way from Magwe is paid by the British United Press correspondent on the Irrawaddy front. When they were ultimately relieved at Yenangyaung, he said the Imperial troops had not slept for a week, while for days on end they had suffered severely from hunger and thirst. Large Japanese forces had trapped the Imperial troops in the waterless, treeless hills to the east of Yenangyaung, and the men, with very scanty supplies and almost no water, fought unceasingly for three days and nights till the Chinese behind the British tank corps broke through the Japanese ring and relieved the exhausted division. The Imperial troops included the Scottish ; ;Cameronsr the Irinisliniinis, West Yorkshires, Gloucesters, Punjabis, Sikhs, Rajputs, Gurkhas, and also some Kachins and Chins from north Burma.