Burma Front

In eastern Burma the British massed troops in a race against time. They wanted to assemble enough strength either to protect the United Nations' supply line to China, or to slash the Jap's supply lines into Malaya. But the Jap threw the first punch and opened a new front.

Riding Thai war elephants, slithering through the upland jungles afoot, backed up by slit-eyed little Siamese soldiers from feckless Thailand, the invaders swarmed through the mountain passes on the Thailand-Burma border. They struck directly at Moulmein, about 170 miles east of Rangoon by the railroad around the Gulf of Martaban. Every Briton, every Colonial in the force that backed up before his advance knew what the enemy was after.

The Jap had three purposes behind his drive. First he wanted Rangoon, unloading point for the supplies that go up the Burma Road to Chiang Kaishek. Second he wanted to dig in there against the day when he could lash out at India. Finally, he wanted to beat the British to the draw in their "must" offensive against the Japanese supply line to Malaya.

The Jap drove decisively through the mountains, and by week's end the head of his thrust lay close to the flat land extending east from Moulmein. The defenders' withdrawal had been orderly. Now they hoped to slice up the Jap in terrain that was more to their liking. Meanwhile, 150 miles south on Burma's slender panhandle, the Jap had grabbed Tavoy. In that position he held a secondary block against any British push to the south, which at the moment was unlikely.

The United Nations were not idle. Down from China marched troops of Chiang Kaishek, tattered, road-worn, weather-beaten and fit. They traveled in the classic Chinese manner--on foot and incredibly fast--covered 1,000 miles before going into position. Probably they were somewhere on the upper Thailand border, from which more Japs might still issue to strike directly at the Burma Road.

By air the Jap was busy, but his experience was mostly unhappy. In one raid the defenders downed 21 planes. In another the Jap lost all seven bombers and nine escorting fighters while admiring Burmese watched American-made Brewster Buffaloes and Curtiss P-40s swirling through a chattering dogfight. Between times an Allied force of 57 bombers and fighters swung into Indo-China, lashed fiercely at a big Jap airdrome at Hanoi. It was the heaviest blow struck in the area delegated to Chiang Kai-shek by the Allied Supreme Command (Thailand and Indo-China). The raiders reported they smashed up 21 aircraft on the ground, fired gasoline stores, burned down hangars. This successful attack from the air may have been a hint of the shape of things to come for the Jap. But the things would have to come fast.

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