NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 74, 28 March 1944, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

BURMA'S CASSINO

THE ARAKAN "TORTOISE" The two land campaigns in which Britain and America are engaged, the campaigns m Burma and Italy, have, as suggested in earlier notes, much in common. Both are being fought in some of the world's toughest country for soldiers and Burma has even its Cassino in .the Maungdaw-Buthidaung tunnels of the so-called Arakan "Tortoise." , • . ! Just as Cassino, with its underground communications, regarding which surprise may be expressed in passing that the Allies seem to have had so little foreknowledge, is the hardest nut to crack on the Italian front, ,so the "tunnels," mentioned so often in the news of the Burma fighting are giving the troops of the Fourteenth Army in Arakan a lot of trouble. What is this obstacle to the advance on Akyab, only fifty miles away to the south, which defeated the Arakan expedition this time last year and is holding us up now? After dealing with the serious counter-offensive of the Japanese last month, designed to split the Allied forces and isolate one section as a preliminary to an invasion of Assam, the Allied forces themselves, says Tillman Durdin in a dispatch to the "New York Times," are now "squarely up against a rugged enemy bastion of tunnels, entrenchments, bunkers, minefields, and barbed wire that constitutes a position of great strength." Story of the Tunnels. Here is the set-up described by Durdin:— "The present Arakan front is about fifty miles north of Akyab. The main part of the front spans Mayu Peninsula, a finger of land lying along the Burma coast, bounded by the broad Mayu River on the east and by the Bay of Bengal and the Nef River on the west. Along a highway, running eighteen miles through the backbone of the steep 2000-foot hills from Maungdaw v on the Nef River to Buthidaung and beyond on the Kalapanzin (the upper Mayu) the Japanese have established their forts. "Early in this century a railway was built between Maungdaw and Buthidaung to bring rice of the Mayu .Valley to steamers at Maungdaw for transport to Calcutta. Two tunnels were cut through the' hills, one 250 yards long, the other somewhat shorter. In 1914 the tracks were torn up and the railway was made into the highway that is now the axis of the Japanese positions. The tunnels, about a mile apart, are the core of the enemy defences. In them the Japanese for the last eight months have stored ammunition , and supplies and around them have constructed a maze of supporting fortifications, roughly paralleling the road several miles in depth all the way from Maungdaw to Buthidaung. Tunnels and chambers impregnable to artillery and bombing have been scooped into the crests of the hills and these hilltop strongpoints are in turn flanked by connecting trenches, bunkers, machine-gun nests, and tree-top snipers' posts. Trenches or chains of foxholes link strongpoint to 'strongpoint." I After the capture of Maungdaw at the beginning of the campaign this year the Japanese withdrew to a fortified area which the British call "The Tortoise." The tunnel core is now protected by the "Tortoise" and a particularly strong fortified "hedgehog" on the other side of the tunnels taking in several miles round Buthidaung. In addition there are outlying strong points in the steep hill country for several miles in. ail directions. "The Tortoise" controls the intersection of the Mayu Peninsula' road with the Maungdaw-Buthidaung road. Across forty miles of uncontested mountans other Allied forces are working their way down the Kaladan River, which enters the sea behind Akyab, the goal of the Allied offensive. Tiddim to Shaduzup. The Arakan campaign is only one part, though an important one, of the struggle in north-west Burma. In the centre of the front, about 200 miles north of Akyab, the Japanese are trying to reach Imphal, the capital and road centre of the State of Manipur, itself connected by road with the main Allied supply railway through Assam, less than 100 miles away. They are working via Tiddim in the Chin Hills, and from the Kabaw Valley, part of the Chindwin- River system, along the road from Tamu to Imphal. This is the chief Japanese counter-thrust meant to upset the whole Allied offensive. A hundred to two hundred miles further north from Ledo, a railhead of the Assam rail system, General Stilwell's American and Chinese forces .have worked their way east across the headwaters of the Chindwin in the Hukawng Valley into the headwaters of the Irrawaddy river system at Sumprabum, Walawbum and Jambubum, queer names paralleled by Shaduzup, a neighbouring village, mentioned in the news. Somewhere in the forests of Northern Burma is General Wingate with his air-borne air-supplied force threatening the rear of the Japanese to the north and west. Further to the east and north-east, on the border of Burma and China, are the Chungking armies of Chiang Kaishek, waiting on the Salween for an Allied landing in force in Lower Burma to give them a signal for an advance along the old Burma Road. Thus the parallel with Italy is to be extended to an eastern Anzio, with, it may be hoped, more striking success.