The Fourteenth Army advanced to the Chindwin River, and the Chinese and Mars Task Force, including the revived Marauders, pushed on Bhamo and Lashio.
In October, the Allies resumed their offensive. Worn down by casualties and disease, they and the Chinese could not take the city, which held out until 3 August. Meanwhile, the Marauders seized the airfield at Myitkyina in a surprise attack on 17 May. Slim's British Fourteenth Army badly defeated the Japanese at Imphal. To the south, a drive by three Japanese divisions into Assam threatened Stilwell's communications but in June, Lt. By mid‐April 1944, Stilwell's forces had advanced to sixty‐five miles from Myitkyina, a key transportation center and air base in North Burma. Determined to proceed with his three U.S.‐trained Chinese divisions and “Merrill's Marauders”-3,000 air‐supplied, American light infantrymen originally assigned to Wingate-Stilwell sent the Marauders on deep flanking marches into the rear of the Japanese 18th Division while the Chinese attacked in front. The able but acerbic Stilwell was American theater commander, Mountbatten's deputy, Chiang's chief of staff, and commander of the Chinese Army in India. Lord Louis Mountbatten's new Southeast Asia Command, but Lt. Wingate's “Chindits.”Īt the Cairo Conference in November and December 1943, Allied leaders could not agree on a major 1944 offensive into Burma by Adm. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and deep raids by British Brig. The Allies also tied intelligence gathering to Kachin guerrillas rescuing downed Allied fliers by Detachment 101 of the U.S. Claire Chennault's extravagant promise that with 150 planes and priority on “Hump” tonnage, he could defeat Japan. Searching for alternatives, Roosevelt and Chiang were drawn to Maj.
Army Corps of Engineers took over construction of a road from Ledo to join the Burma Road. From airbases near Dinjan in Assam Province (northeastern Indian), C‐46 and C‐47 transport planes flew supplies 500 miles through the Himalayas over “the Hump” to Kunming, China. Consequently, the Americans built up their logistical structure and examined alternative strategies. The Nationalist leader Chiang Kai‐shek, anxious to conserve his forces for the postwar showdown with Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists, was wary of major commitments. Although the British wanted to recover Burma and their other Far Eastern colonies, they shared little of the American sense of urgency for aiding China. Given the “Germany First” strategy, the CBI theater lay far down the Allies' list of priorities. Vast distances, rugged terrain, few roads, heavy rainfall, and diseases made Burma a horrendous place for a campaign. Once the United States entered the war, American strategy called for building up China as a source of manpower, as a base for bombers and the eventual invasion of Japan, and as a pro‐American regional power in the postwar era.Īfter Japanese occupation of Burma and the April 1942 closure of the Burma Road, China's last overland link with its allies, two years passed before the Allies could make a major effort to reopen the route. China‐ Burma‐ India Theater (1941–45).The China‐Burma‐India (CBI) theater has been dubbed “the forgotten theater” of World War II.
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