Kyunsalai Pass 1944

May 21st 1944

 

Rather than give a general background to this incident, when there is a bibliography of some 60 publications covering Operation Thursday, (the second 1944 Chindit Campaign) let it just be said to set the scene, that the Kyunsalai pass was an unremarkable but no less strategic feature cutting through a small mountain range to the south-east of Indawgi Lake, in Northern Burma.

 

This area, through which ran the only railway to supply the Japanese engaging the British on the Indian border, was the theatre of the majority of battles, skirmishes and ambushes between the Japanese rear echelons and the Chindit columns which Orde Wingate had inserted behind and often amongst them.

 

We were harassing and being harassed by General Takeda’s 128th Infantry Regiment, and occasional strafing from Zero fighters. He had been lately reinforced by a battalion of the 114th Regiment, plus field artillery rushed up in only eleven days from Rangoon, bringing also anti-aircraft guns intended to destroy our vital air supply. This was parachuted into our impromptu jungle dropping zones both by day and night under all conditions by No 1 Air Commando (USAAF).

 

After our 14 Brigade columns had taken over from 77 Brigade’s legendary fortress of ‘White City’, prior to Mike Calvert taking them north for what was to be the Chindits’ last battle at Mogaung, we too were ordered northwards. Our time in ‘White City’ was comparatively peaceful apart from a daily strafing from Zero fighters, but we were well dug in thanks to the industry of our predecessors. Worst was the stench from the contorted bodies of shot or burnt Japanese infantry slowly rotting yards from us where in their suicidal charges they had been caught in the defending barbed wire. So we were glad to leave the famous battleground.

 

Most of us were now fairly exhausted as we worked our way through the drenching jungle in the early monsoon for a general link-up with the Chinese Army coming down from the North. The cumulative effects of humidity, illness, insects, the leeches and the appalling conditions underfoot had taken their toll of our numbers probably as much if not more than our skirmishes, ambushes and actual combat with our redoubtable enemy, for the monsoon had already begun, and hitherto it had always been said, as far back as the days of the Raj, that lighting in the jungle during the monsoon was not merely “not done old boy”, it was simply impossible.

 

During stand-to on the evening of May 21, our signallers decoded a message that Japanese were moving more or less parallel to us, but on the eastern side of the ridge which we were intending to traverse, at the Kyunsalai Pass. They would be making use of what passed for a main road in these remote regions, and would certainly have some transport. By now they would have known that Chindits were inserted in the guts of their rear echelons so they would probably drive cautiously, at walking-pace behind their fighting patrols.

 

I was a platoon commander in 74 Column (7th Leicesters, not then ‘Royal’). We had been moving in isolation as was the ingrained technique of Wingate’s training, and after a forced march we were about seven miles from the south shore of Indawgi Lake when darkness fell.

 

At stand-to there was a hurried order group, after which I found I had drawn the short straw for the next project. I was to press on with my platoon, now down to about twenty scruffy warriors, to race the Japanese and seize the Pass in the darkness. If successful the rest of the column would follow us up, pass through and lay an ambush for the Japanese. Naturally if they reached the Pass first, we could anticipate the same tactics, in reverse. Who would be first? The fact that it was slaughter or be slaughtered spurred us, tired as we were, to make a hurried meal and after a final briefing, leaving our packs to be brought on, we set off into the night.

 

We soon found the dirt road that led to the Pass, and I sent two scouts about fifty yards ahead, varying the distance according to the visibility, one on each side of the road in the jungle edge. There had been some subdued muttering from the men, conscious that the rest of the column had meanwhile bedded down for the night as best they could, under better conditions than usual, for there was a brief respite from the relentless tropical rain. They would be some three miles from the objective, and so on instant call to follow up and support me if they heard any firing, which would tell them that we had been ambushed.

 

Half an hour into our cautious advance, the rising moon began to shed weak light on the sandy road, and filter through the surrounding teak forest. Normally eerily beautiful; to us that night it was a betrayal, making a deceptive and unnerving chiaroscuro as we progressed, and providing any Japanese ambush with a tactical gift, for with the moon facing us it would disclose our slightest movement in the night, whereas it would leave them concealed in deep shadow.

 

We were of course, thanks to our indoctrination, particularly wary of any existing tracks and roads. We moved much as a submarine slides hidden in its element, only ours was the friendly jungle. Each depended on compass and calculation, and a sudden lethal strike.

 

For choice and by day I would have kept the road just visible from one side, using the open jungle floor which characterises the tall teak forest, its canopy restricting the light where as now it was mostly dense above us so that little underbrush had been able to survive.

 

On this occasion, two factors impeded that plan. The first was time. We were in a race, and each contestant had to assume the summit was still unoccupied. It was a race in which whoever came in second met with ambush and obliteration. To move tactically, Chindit-fashion, through the teak forest would be slower normally, but doubly so now, because of the second factor. This was noise. High teak forest lays a carpet of huge crisp dead leaves on the jungle floor. They are pleasant to walk upon, but doing so creates a noisy rustle. For that reason throughout the campaign, whilst marching, we saw little wildlife in teak jungle, since it would have melted away on hearing our approach. On this night any enemy positioned ahead of us, already assisted in seeing us by the patches of moonlight where there were gaps in the forest canopy, would also be able to hear our approach. By the same token, our own noise would destroy our ability to hear any warning sounds ahead of us.

 

So we moved on, comparatively silently by the swiftest means available, which was the most vulnerable. Knowing the particular strain put on my two leading scouts, my plan was to change these over at about ten minute intervals.

 

Shortly after we had reached the road it began to climb. I estimated we were some two miles from the pass. I decided to give the men a last brief halt and gave as best I could a whispered pep-talk. It made little impression, and I sensed there was something unusual in their response. I discovered what it was when I signalled for the relieving scouts to go forward, and the march to be resumed.

 

No one moved. They lay there, only glancing at me and whispering to one another. In the instant I knew that quite suddenly the weeks and months of endurance had come to a head in the tension of the situation. It was technically a mutiny. The unheard of sin. There was no time for dramatic exhortations, and dire threats of terrible retribution to follow would count for much less than the ambush we were now probably walking into in the moonlight. I risked speaking aloud and ignored the significance of the fact that this was mutiny, simply telling them quietly words to the effect that every second counted, and that if they would not resume the march immediately and the scouts go forward, I would have to go on myself. I then picked up my carbine and moved on up the roadside, gesturing with an arm signal for them to follow, and then went on without looking back, as though taking it for granted that they would be following.

 

I dare not look back. Absurdly. I realised I might have to reach the Pass alone. Then I remember the faint sound, a scuff, a footfall, and silently the two scouts overtook me. One gave me a grin. I gave a thumbs up sign to them. And behind me the others were there again just as before. This time it was I who felt suddenly a wave of emotion. I longed to shout and cheer these poor devils; I wanted to hug the pair of them, and each of the shadowy figures now following silently behind.

 

I felt that we all now had to race on, reckless, kamikaze-fashion to the top. The jungle at the roadside was thinning as we neared the summit. I felt that at any second and every second it would all vanish, for me with a bullet in the brain, if not one of the scouts beside me. Like all repetition of thought, its familiarity weakens it, and so it becomes meaningless, and dulled, and bearable, and so one carries on.

 

I remember now a moment some weeks later when the soldier walking beside me did in fact suddenly drop as we were talking, shot through the head by an outstandingly brave Japanese sniper just off the track. If I had been wearing any distinguishing marks no doubt I would have been dead instead of my companion.

 

There comes a point where terror, because of its familiarity scales down to fear, and fear down to indifference, even carelessness. It is then that casualties are invited.

 

I did not change the scouts again. I felt they too just wanted to get to the Pass, or to whatever lay round the next twist in the road, now changing into gentle s-bends.

 

Then suddenly we were there, with the road ahead dropping down out of sight. We had won the race. We had seized the Pass! It seemed deserted, an area of thinner jungle, and largely of bamboo again. The platoon fanned out and I rapidly adjusted positions, knowing we only had finger-tip hold on the Pass, if the Japanese assaulted up the other side. There was no time for digging in, so I went round selecting the best lines of sight, for effective ambush.

 

Now it was our enemy who would be having the nerve-jangling tension from which we were now released. We felt cheerful, elated, and savagely aggressive. I sent the scouts back down to alert the Column to follow us up and urgently to bring up a couple of Piats.*

 

Shortly afterwards we heard the distinct sound of revving engines coming up the Pass towards us. Certainly they would have patrols ahead of them, which might come into sight at any moment. We could only wait, hoping that John Baggeley, with his reserve Platoon, would arrive soon, pass through us, and set up a deadly ambush.

 

Suddenly there was a scurrying in the undergrowth to the left, about ten yards clear of the road, followed by a single rifle-shot and a yell. My senior Corporal had flushed out a single Japanese soldier, who had been hiding in a small dugout. Later I found a few of his small personal possessions in a small wicker box. He fled back down the hill after loosing off the one shot at the Corporal, who was walking slowly towards me, white-faced, holding up his left arm from which blood was welling up round what I could see in the moonlight was a ragged blueish chunk of his bicep erupting from the skin. He suppressed his agony to a whimper and we rested him behind a bamboo clump with an emergency swab from my batman’s pack, gave him a jab of morphine, and ensured our South African M.O. was alerted. We were of course on radio silence at the time.

 

Lockett brought up the Column sooner than I expected and John Baggely threaded his men through my positions to set up our main ambush. It was growing light as John’s men were settling their sightlines. Then, incredibly, almost as though on ceremonial parade, the Japanese came marching round the bend below, en masse. When some fifty had rounded the shoulder where the road turned, we cut them down in swathes. Some fell or jumped to their deaths down the precipice beside the road. Others fled back out of sight. Later we needed to clear the road of bodies, pitching them down over the precipice. I suppose due to over-kill I remember no living wounded. The faces of the dead were already encrusted, grayish white, with eggs from the swarms of buzzing blow-flies.

 

As stated in Bidwell’s “The Chindit War”, Geoffrey Lockett’s seizing of the Kyunsalai Pass contributed to the Brigade’s sweep towards Myitkina and the linkup with U.S. General Stillwell’s Chinese coming down from the North. I think it added to Lockett’s success in the 1943 Campaign, justifying his award now of the DSO. He had of course been sensibly asleep or resting back with the Column when we actually took the Pass; that is often the way in war. After all, he did give me the chance to race for it, and must have recommended me for my subsequent Mention in Dispatches.

RLP

 

*PIAT = Projector Infantry Anti-Tank