Tank Tracks to Rangoon (12 page)

Meanwhile, the Japanese had succeeded in occupying the heights above Kalewa, and here on 10th May 7th Armoured Brigade fought its last action of the campaign, C Squadron 7th Hussars supporting 48 Brigade’s attack to clear the enemy away from this commanding position.

There was now not the slightest chance of getting any more tanks across, and both regiments, with great sadness and a tremendous sense of loss, set about wrecking the little Stuarts that had brought them so far and seen so much. This depressing task had to be carried out in such a way that the Japanese could not make up one single tank by cannibalizing other wrecks.

First, the engine sump and radiator drain plugs were removed, and when the oil and water had run away, the engines were run at high revs until they seized completely. In many cases, this took a lot longer than had been expected, as though the tanks did not want to die and could not understand this treatment by their own crews. Inside the vehicles, complex wiring was ripped out, junction boxes smashed, radios shattered, the guns stripped down and their firing mechanisms broken, scattered or buried. Then the sledge hammers set to work, smashing into the now rigid engines, clanging on the 37-mm and Browning barrels until they were distorted, and beating the teeth off the drive sprockets. Optical equipment such as episcopes and telescopic sights were
smashed, and finally the ammunition was taken away and buried. So thorough was the destruction that when Major Younger, 7th Hussars’ second-in-command, passed by the spot more than two years later, not a vehicle had been moved; I suspect that even today, if one were to visit that lonely place, there would be many reminders of what had taken place.

The Brigade then marched to the ferry, each man carrying, in addition to his arms, what he considered to be necessary or precious. Regimental pride found the Hussar officers wearing their distinctive crossbelts, whilst Chaplain Metcalfe burdened himself with sufficient prayer books for a full scale service to be held on arrival in India.

On the other bank, the Brigade alternately marched or were ferried by lorries for a week until they reached the Imphal plain. Here they stayed for the next week on a barren hillside near Milestone 108, with very few tents and inadequate medical services. The rigours of the retreat and of the long march out were taking their toll, and most men, in addition to losing at least a stone in weight, were now in a weakened state which made them vulnerable to disease. By now, the monsoon was beginning to break, and several men, already ill, subsequently died of this additional exposure. No one had expected a hero’s welcome, but the reception of the troops marching out of Burma was woefully inadequate.

The fault lay not with Burma Corps’ generals, and it is not part of this story to establish where it did lie. The generals themselves, Wavell and Alexander, visited 7th Armoured Brigade and paid tribute to the vital part it had played. Wavell, who knew the Desert Rats well from his own period of command in the Middle East, commented that the formation was the finest in any army he had known.

It is no exaggeration to say that without 7th Armoured Brigade, Burma Corps would have ceased to exist long before it reached the Chindwin. By sheer professionalism, it had defeated the many expertly executed Japanese attempts to isolate and overwhelm sections of the army, and it had provided the rearguard all the way from Rangoon, a distance of a thousand miles. It was the mainstay of the Corps, and the steady support of general officers whose plans were often defeated before they had been properly formed. It maintained an exemplary discipline and high morale throughout the campaign, and had quickly attained a moral ascendancy over the Japanese, who had suffered
heavily at its hands. No greater contrast could be found than their own armoured troops, who bungled most of their tasks, and who only succeeded in destroying one of the Brigade’s tanks, and that by the most evil combination of circumstances.

At the end of their dismal stay on what the men called Dysentery Hill, 7th Armoured Brigade entrained in cattle trucks at Manipur Road station, and began their journey to India proper. Here, they leave our story, for apart from a few individuals who remained in India, mostly as instructors at the Indian Armoured Corps Depot at Ahmednagger, both regiments returned to the Middle East by way of Persia, and eventually fought in the later stages of the Italian campaign.

Of all the laurels won by this immortal Brigade, few were as hard or as worthily earned as those won during the Retreat from Burma, February–May 1942.

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This is about the most invidious situation in which any officer can find himself, since he is almost powerless to answer imputations against him. History contains numerous examples of men who became victims of circumstance, the most famous case being that of Lt Jaheel Carey, 98th Regiment, who, during the Zulu War, was lucky enough to escape from an ambush in which the French Prince Imperial was killed. Carey was court-martialled for his trouble, and although found innocent of charges amounting to cowardice, was subjected to months of abuse and personal indignity. A few years earlier, Major Reno and Captain Benteen of the 7th Cavalry had had their careers effectively blighted after fighting desperately but successfully for their lives, whilst elsewhere their flamboyant and egocentric commanding officer led most of their regiment in to a trap from which none emerged.

In this instance 7th Hussars were furious at Palmer’s reception by Cowan and his staff, and duly noted the incident in the Regimental War Diary.

‘March 29th 1942 … Lieut Palmer then got through to Prome, and reported to 17th Indian Division HQ where he was very coldly and casually received, and they would not believe the seriousness of the situation.’

Cowan was a most capable general who later became 14th Army’s senior divisional commander, and his strange behaviour on this occasion is quite inexplicable, since the exhausted and bloody state of Palmer and his crews, and the damage sustained by the tanks, ought to have told heir own story to his Staff, had they chosen to look and listen.

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A glutton for punishment, Patteson later transferred from 7th Hussars to the Special Air Service Regiment, in which he served for the rest of the war.

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There is some evidence that on one or two occasions pleasantries were exchanged on the air by British and Japanese crews.

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A chaung is a peculiarity of the Burmese landscape, and is either a tidal arm of the sea or a tributary of one of the major rivers. In the majority of cases, the course followed by the chaung resembles the wanderings of a demented snake.

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The term ‘hit can mean anything from a glancing strike to full penetration. Even in the latter case, fire does not always ensue, especially in the case of diesel-driven tanks like the Japanese, but so thin was their armour that any AP strike from the Stuarts’ 37-mm guns was a very serious business. They did not use their tanks again in the operations of the next few days, when their presence would have been most valuable, so I think it is fair to say the engagement on 27th April caused them greater loss than they found acceptable.

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Major M. F. S. Rudkin, MC –
An Account of 2nd Royal Tank Regiment in Burma.

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Stripped of its turret, this tank became the command vehicle of 7th Light Cavalry. I am told that the strange name was bestowed by the regiment’s commanding officer, Lt-Colonel J, Barlow, and is a reference to the former Royal House of Scotland, the Stuarts.

‘Not fit to fight in!’

Such was the opinion of one soldier who fought in the Arakan, an opinion shared by anyone who had anything to do with the area.

The Arakan is the coastal area which lies at the southern end of India’s long frontier with Burma. It consists of mangrove swamp and twisting tidal chaungs, and inland the steep-sided ridges which separate the river valleys are clothed in almost impenetrable jungle and rain forest. It is exposed to the violent electrical storms generated by the Bay of Bengal, and between May and September is subject to a rainfall of 200 inches, which can wash out the primitive tracks in a day, although for the rest of the year is very dry and dusty. There is no stone to provide hard standing for tanks and artillery, and this had to be shipped across the Indian Ocean from Madras.

And yet it was into this unpromising environment that Britain’s first limited counter-offensive against the Japanese was launched, largely as a gesture to her allies, and with the object of winning a small victory without committing large forces.

The original objective of the offensive had been the capture of Akyab Island and its airfields concurrently with an advance down the Mayu Peninsula to Foul Point, but demands of other theatres of war left insufficient resources with which to carry out the assault on Akyab, and only the mainland advance was proceeded with.

This was carried out by Major-General Lloyd’s 14th Indian Infantry Division, and for a time all went well, until the advance was halted by an extremely strong Japanese position, constructed in great depth, at Donbaik, only ten miles short of Foul Point. Throughout January 1943 costly attacks failed to break through, and eventually it was decided to try again, using tanks. Accordingly, a half squadron of Valentines from C Squadron 146 Regiment RAC, under the command of Captain da Costa, was landed at the mouth of the Naf River on 30th January, and the following day da Costa and his two troop leaders, Lts J. Carey and P. Thornton, carried out a reconnaissance of the enemy’s position.

5 First and Second Arakan Campaigns

146 Regiment had been formed from a battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and for a time the officers had shared a mess with those of 7th Hussars after the latter’s return from Burma. The Hussars had left 146 Regiment with no doubt that whilst the Japanese were opponents to be respected, they were
by no means supermen, and they did have their failings. Consequently, 146 were eager to prove themselves, and Lt Thornton, who had only recently been released from hospital, had been forced to plead his case to accompany his troop to the Mayu.

The conclusions reached by the three tank officers after their return from their reconnaissances was that the job was too big for eight tanks; someone had badly underestimated the position, which called for nothing less than a regimental attack. However, the regiment was not there, and they would have to do the best they could.

At 1100 the following morning the attack went in, with the support of a Dogra battalion. The plan called for two troops to overrun the enemy position, turn right parallel to the Japanese line and then return along the beach. da Costa’s two headquarters tanks would remain outside the enemy position, and be committed as required.

Thornton’s troop was first through the enemy’s perimeter, doing considerable execution. Reaching the chaung which represented the limit of the advance, the tanks turned right and continued along the Japanese line, firing as they went, until the leading vehicle crashed into an unseen ditch. In succession, the troop’s two remaining tanks also slid into the ditch, and then the scene was hidden as a smoke screen rose around the trapped vehicles.

Carey’s tank had also fallen into a ditch shortly after he had turned right, and whilst the driver was attempting to reverse out an anti-tank gun, ‘by the grace of the devil’, smashed a round through the turret ring, killing the gunner and wounding Carey. By masterly driving, the tank was extricated, and returned to the beach with the rest of the troop, but even here their troubles were by no means over, as one tank broke down, and had to be towed in by da Costa.

At 1215 it was thought that Besa fire could be heard coming from the lost troop’s position, and da Costa took three tanks along the beach in an attempt to rescue Thornton and his men. No sooner had he turned inland than the Japanese artillery reacted with a barrage which denied further progress, and a further attempt by the infantry was similarly thwarted. The fate of Thornton and the crews of No 11 Troop, which had been his pride, will never be known, but their passing and the manner of it was not forgotten by 146 Regiment.

‘When the Mayu was cleared in 1945 a party, including Lt Carey, went forward to examine the tanks. They were found as they had crashed, one lying on the after part of another, with the third close by. The guns were still in position and a shell was found in the breach of one of them; but other equipment, such as wireless sets, had been removed. Remains of five men were found near the tanks, but there were many other such remains lying about and it was not possible to identify them.’
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This minor action represented the full extent of the Armoured Corps’ involvement in the battles of the First Arakan campaign. It had failed because too small a force had been employed to carry out a really formidable task, and the heavy loss incurred arose partly from a design defect in the Valentine tank itself.

The Valentine was an infantry tank, and was thus well armoured; it was also extremely reliable; but the commander’s vision was almost non-existent when closed down, and as the driver relied upon him for direction across difficult going, it was only too easy to drive into unseen obstacles, especially with the turret traversed to the flank and an inexperienced commander concentrating upon killing the enemy. Again, the Valentine was a small vehicle, and did not have the ‘reach’ to cross such obstacles or unditch itself. It was not a suitable tank to employ in Burma, although it performed prodigies in North Africa, and the eight vehicles used at Donbaik were the only gun tank versions to see service in the theatre, although the bridgelayer was widely used.