"We Took a Hell of a Beating": General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell in Burma

Infantry Magazine, May-August, 2000 by Gordon Browne

In the early days of World War II, the United States government was faced with the difficult problem of finding someone to send into the China-Burma theater, someone who could deal with the complex social and political aspects of that area and who could also put together a military command that would successfully fight the Japanese. This thankless task was given to a Chinese-speaking brigadier general named Joseph W. Stilwell. This 60-year-old general knew the difficulty that would face an American commander who was caught between the colonialist British Army of India/Burma and the nationalist (actually ineffective fascist) Chinese government forces under the inept dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek.

There were a couple of problems in assigning Joe Stilwell to this position. He was only a one-star general and to be equal in rank with the British and Chinese officers in the area, he was quickly promoted two grades, making him a lieutenant general. Besides the promotion, however, there was the fact that Stilwell got his nickname, "Vinegar Joe", from his rather caustic and extremely cynical personality. He had the habit of saying what he thought, which in the political world of the Far East, was not a very wise policy.

He was constitutionally incapable of remaining silent when confronted with either a political fool or a military buffoon, and it was this characteristic that probably found him only a brigadier general at the beginning of the war. It was suggested that he was a misanthrope, but his disgust with humans did not encompass all of mankind--it was generally directed at those in authority who seemed to revel in their ignorance and pomposity. Stilwell was different from most of the high-ranking American military officers, and even those close to him had to admit they never completely understood the man and considered him at times a strangely elusive character who never really showed all of himself to anyone.

Lieutenant General Stilwell, along with his small staff, flew out of Florida in early February 1942. Due to war conditions, it took two weeks to get from the United States to India. In the Indian capitol, Stilwell had lengthy conferences with the British, who expressed their extreme dislike and distrust of the Chinese. Then he flew on to China for discussions with the Chinese, who expressed their hatred and suspicion of the British. By this time the Japanese invasion of Burma was well under way.

Chiang Kai-shek informed General Stilwell that he was now the overall commander of all the Chinese armies still fighting in Burma. This was done to assure the U.S. government that the Chinese were serious in their commitment to fight the Japanese. Historically, Stilwell was the first non-Chinese ever given command of Chinese forces. When he finally arrived in Burma on 11 March to take command, the Japanese Army had already taken the port city of Rangoon and was moving quickly northward up country toward the city of Mandalay (see map).

The man who was expected to bring a coherence to the coordination between the Chinese and the British armed forces informed the British commanders that he, Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, would henceforth be commanding the Chinese armies in Burma at the instruction of Chiang Kai-shek. He announced that his immediate intention was to attack the Japanese as soon as possible and hold the line in Burma so that the land route between India and China, known as the Burma Road, would remain open to supply the Chinese in their continuing fight against the Japanese.

Unknown to Stilwell, shortly after he had left the British headquarters, the commander of the Chinese 5th Army came in and informed the British headquarters staff that General Stilwell was not the new commander of the Chinese forces but only thought he was. The Chinese general informed the British that the Chinese wanted to keep the Americans in the war and the only way to do this was to give them a few commands on paper.

The military situation was quickly deteriorating. The numerous defeats the British had suffered at the hands of the Japanese throughout the Pacific rim had thrown their command into disarray, and the idea of defending Burma became less a question of how to save it than of why they should. Burma was the most poorly run colony of the British Empire, and the native population had become extremely hostile.

Unlike colonial India, the infrastructure that had been imposed on Burmese came in the form of high-ranking British officials backed up by Indian civil servants who took most of the administrative and the management jobs of actually running the country, shunting the Burmese population aside into a situation that was very close to slavery.

Along with this British political problem was the fact that the Chinese were exceedingly reluctant to place their army in any sort of danger. From Chiang Kai-shek down through his general officer ranks, the feeling was that they had already done enough over the past four and a half years fighting the Japanese, and it was time for the Americans and the British to take on the task. When General Stilwell gave an order to one of the Chinese generals under his command to move forward and engage the Japanese, nothing happened. Excuses were made, delay followed delay, and nothing moved.