BURMA’S MAQUIS .

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25848, 19 May 1945, Page 7

BURMA’S MAQUIS .

SECRET ARMY FORMED VALUABLE WORK FOR ALLIES (Rec. 9 p.m.J RUGBY, May 17. While Allied troops were lighting througn the mountains ana jungles or Burma a secret army was operating rar anead of them hcnind the Japanese lines, writes a corresponaeni in uurma. This army was lea Dy British and American officers wno lanaea Dy parachute, and was composed mainly of men from Burma hill tribes. According to the officers who led them, these people remained steadfastly loyal, notwithstanding frequent Japanese reprisals. Some of them had marched out with the retreating Burma Army in 1942, and were secretly trained in India and returned to Burma by parachute.

Their intelligence system was especially valuable. A British major who operated with them in Arakan said the intelligence system there was organised by a young Arakanese who is still in his early twenties. It was “ a masterpiece which could not be improved upon.” When General Orde C. Wingate led the ghost army into Burma early in 1943 it received much of its intelligence from the secret army. On the withdrawal of the ghost army the Japanese tortured villagers and burned villages as reprisals. The villagers, however, carried on undaunted. The secret army did valuable work in destroying Japanese communications and ambushing convoys. They killed several thousand Japanese, while their own casualties were negligible. The loyalty of these people is surprising, as many had never seen a white man before. Some of them were erroneously believed to be headhunters. Burma’s Maquis were so well organised that, although the Japanese used all their resources to combat them, they were unable to do so effectively, and the force has played an important and decisive part in shortening the Burma campaign. The existence of the secret force which has waged war upon the Japanese far in advance of our official front line since early in 1942 has just been revealed, says the Australian Associated Press special correspondent. Many New Zealand airmen, who must remain for the time being anonymous shared the hazards of the enterprise, dropping the leaders and organisers. The force is not to be confused with the Wingate expedition. It was composed of loyal guerrillas recruited by British officers. The recruits were frontier tribesmen of 1 the Burman mountain regions. The least co-operative were the Burmans from the plain country, who repeatedly gave away to the Japanese the whereabouts of the officers and greeted them with knives and spears. The main fruit of the campaign was intelligence collected by Kachin officers who were secretly trained in India and parachuted back into Burma. Next came actual losses to the Japanese through ambushes and swift attacks on communications—railways were cut in dozens of places and hundreds of Japanese silently killed. Even after the Wingate expedition withdrew and the Japanese took a terrible toll of revenge on the Burmese tribesmen who had helped, these hillmen remained I'nval. The Chin villagers welcomed the British with ceremonial dances, drinking’feats, theatrical performances, and even a boat race and a garden party.