ESCAPE FROM BURMA

Southland Times, Issue 24755, 28 May 1942, Page 5

ESCAPE FROM BURMA

GENERAL LEADS PARTY (Rec. 10.20 p.m.) LONDON, May 26 Lieutenant-General Joseph W. Stilwell, the American officer who commanded the Chinese troops in Burma, personally led a nightmare march of 117 refugees through jungle and across rivers and mountains from Shewebo to Imphal.

Revealing this, The Daily Mail s Calcutta correspondent says:— The strange march of so small a mixed body led by so high an. officer is probably unparalleled in recent military history. General Stilwell rejected all contrary advice and managed to find us almost the only safe route from Burma a few days ahead of the Japanese moving up the Chindwin Valley. The trek took 25 days. “General Stilwell headed a line ot weary, hungry and sick British, American and Chinese Army officers, rankers, Burmese nurses, Shan tribes-

men and a devil’s brew of Indian and Malayan mechanics, railwaymen, cooks and clerks and a dozen mixed breeds from South Asia. More than half were civilians and about 20 were women. Most of the party were suffering from malaria, dysentery and jungle skin infections. The very sick were borne on stretchers fashioned from bamboo trees. We were drenched with tropical rain and slept on muddy trails alive with ants, leeches and malaria mosquitos. We ate berries and jungle vegetables. Sometimes we used the main roads, where progress was blocked by a leaderless, directionless stream of helpless, pleading, begging and cursing refugees seeking food, comfort and aid to reach India.

GENERAL’S ENDURANCE “General Stilwell, who is 59 years of age, stood the rigours better than the youngest private. He performed every task that any other person performed and somehow he squeezed 15 miles daily from 1 us and whipped a polyglot mob into a disciplined force, willing to follow him anywhere.” How the British Army finished its retreat from Burma into Assam before the monsoon rains washed out the road through the mountains is told today by a war correspondent of a London newspaper. The retreat is described as a race against the deluge, which was certain to destroy the only road through the precipitous wilderness. As the troops covered the last few miles of the road it was already crumbling anti dissolving in landslides. Up to the last moment drivers carried troops, wounded, supplies and refugees on a route through the mountains which is now impassable. General Sir Harold Alexander has brought the last of his gallant little British Army from Burma, says The Daily Mail’s correspondent in Assam. The evacuation was a miracle on a smaller scale, like the miraculous Dunkirk evacuation. Not until the last weary band of British soldiers was being driven along the last stretch did the rains begin. Before the rains began the relieving forces from India were brought into position on the mountain line barring the Japanese road to India. Some of General Alexander’s men from Burma are with this relief army. FIGHTING SPIRIT No greater tribute could be paid to their courage and endurance and their tremendous fighting spirit at the end of the long retreat than this—that they are fit to take their place in a fighting army. Their presence will be invaluable because they know the Japanese and his methods. The New York Times says three reasons largely brought about the Burma disaster:— (1) The Australians from the Middle East were sent home instead of into the Burma fighting. (2) Not enough Chinese troops were brought in. (3) Planes and anti-aircraft defences were lacking. Armchair strategists should be slow to condemn blunderers acting under strain, but it is right to condemn a policy of withholding unnecessarily the disastrous truth and encouraging false hopes by prematurely cheerful predictions.