THE BURMA CAMPAIGN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25673, 23 October 1944, Page 4

THE BURMA CAMPAIGN

The battle of Burma bears comparison with only one other campaign in the present war, that in New Guinea which, in its earlier stages, confronted armies with almost insuperable natural obstacles to their progress. The despatches from the Burma theatre of war have to be read with an understanding of what even a short advance entails in effort and hardship. Occasionally a sharp, glimpse is afforded of the difficulties experienced by the British troops. The dramatic appearance of tanks in the Tiddim area, at the top of the famous “Chocolate Staircase,” furnished an illustration —they “ wound up a series of hairpin bends through cloud to emerge oh the crest at a height of 5600 feet, in .bright sunshine.” At an earlier stage of the campaign on the Manipur front a British armoured brigade was deployed after tanks had been dragged up a dangerous incline in heavy rain by means of a bulldozer “ anchored ” on a rock ledge. Burma is a country without communications in the understood European sense. Its land frontiers are mountain ranges up to 7000 feet in height, covered with tropical jungle. It is in the‘Westernmost of the ranges, in the Chin Hills, that the Japanese are now being slowly driven back from India, while in the easternmost, where Burma merges into China, the struggle for position may now flare up again at any time, when the torrential rains and monsoons allow General Stilwell, in the Myitkyina area, and the Chinese forces across the Salween River, to resume offensive operations. The only active front at the present time is that in the west, and here progress by the British, though it has been slow, has been by no means inconsiderable. Tiddim, which has fallen to the Fifth Indian Division, has been a bastion in the Japanese offensive-defensive strategy. Its loss spells the abandonment of Japan’s last hope of challenging the British for Indian territory, and it also clears the way for future operations. Already the Fifth Army has been reported to be well beyond Tiddim, and, as a result, it will be hastening the enemy withdrawal through the Chin Hills. There have been recent accounts of a deterioration in the morale of the Japanese in this inhospitable area, in which the supply position is always a precarious one for them and their escape routes are equally so. The slow campaigning of recent months has certainly in its remorseless progress given them reason to wonder what their future in the Burmese

jungle can be. The accumulation of Allied force in India, ready to strike into Burma when seasonal conditions improve and the country, in a literal sense, dries out, leaves no doubt that action in this theatre is henceforth to be seen on an ascending scale. The recent appointment of Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory, who was the air commander in the invasion of Europe, to the South-East Asian theatre, provides yet another assurance that the offensive against Japan will now be developed strongly from India in conjunction with the American drive in the Pacific.