Before the Monsoons

In chaotic Burma last week the Jap was in a hurry, but not in too great a hurry. It was two months before the monsoons. The weather was fine now, for the Jap. It was so hot that a soldier could not lay his hand on a tank in the sun. Crashing through tindery bamboo thickets and dry rice paddies, the tanks raised clouds of dust, scaring the paddy birds and parrots. Burma's valleys run north, the direction of the Jap's main advances, but in the hot season the smaller rivers are dry, and detachments could be sent west without much trouble. One force crossed the vein-like little streams that slice up lower Burma and reached Bassein, just over the coastal hills from the Bay of Bengal.

In late May or early June the wet monsoons come from the southwest, heralded by thunderstorms, and torrents run down the hillsides, baring the ribs of the earth. The valleys are quagmires then, and the flooded Irrawaddy rolls great sluggish masses of water through its many mouths to the sea. But not for two months yet. The Jap had time to take Burma, if he was not stopped, and he was not stopped last week.

North of Rangoon the advance was two-pronged. Moving along the rail line to Mandalay and the Burma Road's stump, one army approached the black ruins of Toungoo. Another went forward along a rail spur and highway toward Prome (home of one of Kipling's famed Ladies), an unhealthy town of 30,000 in a bowl of pagoda-topped hills. Beyond Prome were the oil fields of Yenahgyaung. The British were tired. The somber phrase, "delaying actions," popped up in dispatches day after day. One day there was action near Nyaunglebin, south of Toungoo; next day the Japs had Nyaunglebin. One day there was action near Tharrawaddy, south of prome; next day the Japs had Tharrawaddy.

Burmese fifth columnists continued to join the Japs, who paddled up the Irrawaddy in small boats to make contact with traitors on the banks. In southern Burma the Japs were moving supplies on elephant-back-- obviously aided by Burmese mahouts, since the Jap and the elephant are not well acquainted. American Volunteer Group flyers machine-gunned the elephants, and when that failed to drop or even halt the beasts, the flyers dumped fire bombs, hoping to start stampedes.

For the first time the Tokyo radio claimed control of the air in Burma. The Allies' Blenheim bombers had nearly all been shot down, Tokyo gloated, and only Spitfires and U.S. P-4Os were left. Whether or not this was true, heavy Japanese air reinforcements seemed to be flowing in from the conquered East Indies. At week's end a massive Jap force-- 60 bombers and 20 fighters--blasted an Allied airdrome somewhere back of the fighting fronts. First reports had only two Japs shot down.

Stilwell's Business. There was one bright note: the cocky optimism of Lieut.-General Joseph W. Stilwell, hard-bitten, Chinese-speaking U.S. officer sent by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to command Chinese reinforcements in Burma (TIME, March 23). Last week Washington disclosed that General Stilwell was also in command of all U.S. forces in Burma, China and India. Stilwell believes in getting close to his men; he was already referring to the Fifth and Sixth Chinese armies in Burma as "my armies." Those ragged, clean and tough young fighters chewed up a band of 300 queasy Thai troops near the Thailand border, routed a force of 400 Jap foot and horse soldiers south of Toungoo. Said General Stilwell:

"The United States means business, and we won't be satisfied until we see American and Chinese troops in Tokyo together. There is a great deal of work to do and there are mistakes to be repaired. In the United States we were too dumb to see through the Japanese, and now we are paying for it. We realize they are a dangerous and aggressive enemy-- but where they have been met by anything like equal strength, they have been licked."

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