MANDALAY AND AFTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25800, 22 March 1945, Page 4

MANDALAY AND AFTER

The fall of Mandalay is a major triumph for British arms in Burma, and a new attestation of the prizes in some of the world’s most difficult campaigning terrain that have been gained through wholehearted Allied co-operation. The actual campaign for Mandalay, like that on the Arakan coast, has been predominantly a British affair, with United Kingdom and Indian divisions fightirig side by side. It has been directly assisted, however, by the Chinese thrust westward from the ChiriaBurma frontier, which helped to endanger the Japanese positions in the Mandalay area; and it was made practicable in its wide aspects, as a vital part of the strategy for the recovery of Burma, by Allied actions both north and north-east, in which American and Chinese forces have on occasion combined. The attack on Mandalay was an operation which had to be planned upon a long-term basis, but in its final stages it was pressed on with a sense of urgency while possible campaigning weather endured. The Irrawaddy is one of the most formidable water barriers in the world. It could not be approached until suitable equipment to enable crossings to be made had been assembled, and the troops then had to contend with a river at least as wide as the Rhine at the point of the American crossing. Yet the three British forces in the drive on Mandalay all effected crossings of the Irrawaddy and have been able to advance in order upon the city. At Singu, forty miles to the north, at Myinu, thirty-five miles to the west, and at Pagan, about a hundred miles down the river, the converging forces each made its separate crossing. In all cases the bridgeheads were established without the aid of bridges, even of a makeshift nature. The deficiencies in certain types of equipment have caused losses by drowning among the British forces. But the task was, unavoidably, one that could not be planned, supplied, and supervised with the close efficiency that has marked the invasion in Western Europe. The transportation of material—most of it first brought from Great Britain and the United States—from India into Burma along jungle roads and trails

over hundreds of miles from the rail-head has made the Burma campaign as much a trial of strength in the realm of logistics as in that of human endurance. With the capture of Mandalay a better system of communications will be available as the war of recovery proceeds to its critical phases in the south, where the Japanese still cling to the strategical coastal area, and the southeast. The struggle may yet be grim, but it will from this stage be better supplied than formerly, and directed against an enemy whose hopes and resources both must be running low.