SLOW WITHDRAWAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1944, Page 4

SLOW WITHDRAWAL

JAPS IN NORTHERN BURMA

LONDON, December 5. There are indications, slight as yet, but significant, that the. Japanese in northern Burma have decided to make a slow withdrawal, leaving behind small suicide parties at selected points along the whole 250-mile front, according to a statement frem the headquarters of the South-east Asia Command. Before the start of the Allies' current drives in northern Burma the Japanese held a line running roughly in an arc from Tengchung on their right flank through Myitkyina to Homalin, on the Chindwin River. Today, leading from the east to the west, the Allied advance on the Japanese right flank is being carried out by Chinese troops. These forces, having crossed the Salween River, are pushing down the old Burma Road and have reached the Chefang area, 40 miles south-west of Lungling. Other Chinese elements, branching off from Hopin in the railway corridor, have advanced on Bhamo from the i west and south. Bhamo is tightly ringed round on three sides and, with all the escape roads to the south cut, is being stubbornly defended. The garrison represents a considerable concentration of enemy troops, and it seems possible that the Japanese are prepared to sacrifice these in order to gain time for a withdrawal of men and stores to the south and postpone as long as possible a link-up between the two Chinese forces and the consequent reopening of the land route to China. The latest reports suggest that these aims will not be achieved. SYNCHRONISED MOVES. A little further west, in the so-called "railway corridor," the British Thirtysixth Division, having been held up for nearly three weeks just north of Pinwe, is on the move again, pushing down the Myitkyina-Mandalay railway towards Naba junction. From here a 15-mile branch line runs southeast to Katha. The British, having started from Mogaung, at the end of July, have advanced some 90 miles by way of Hopin, Mohnwin, Mawlu, and Pinwe supplied almost entirely by air. The advance, though fast by jungle standards, has been halted every so often by tactically-sited, fanatically-held defensive positions, of which that at Pinwe was typical. Here the British division encountered some of the thickest jungle in northern Burma, which "made defence comparatively easy and attack exceedingly difficult. West of the railway corridor in the upper Chindwin sector on the Japanese left flank the enemy appears to be withdrawing in the Paungbvwin area. Here Fourteenth Army troops are pushing eastward. Thus synchronised Allied drives are going on from the east and northwest.