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

Infantry Magazine, May-August, 2000 by Gordon Browne

Stilwell wrote in his diary, "The Chinese commanders are up and down, highly optimistic one minute, in the depths of gloom the next. I can't shoot them. I can't relieve them. And just talking to them does no good. So the upshot is that I am the stooge who does the dirty work and takes the rap." To one newspaper reporter, he pointed out that he was supposed to be in command of all the Chinese troops in Burma, "You don't know what that means?" he asked the man, "I don't either!"

Amid this confusion, the Japanese opened a three-pronged offensive up the two river valleys and behind the mountain range that separated Burma from Thailand. The British were defending the valley closest to India on the Irrawaddy River, leaving the Central Valley that straddled the Sittang River to the Chinese army. Within the Burmese population a Fifth Column had sprung up and was assisting the Japanese in their attacks on the allied command. The Japanese had taken advantage of the anti-British, anti-colonial sentiment by propagandizing the Burmese with the motto "Asia for the Asians." Using back trails and dirt roads, the Burmese led the Japanese around and into the rear of both the British and the Chinese forces, creating havoc.

Stilwell moved back up through Burma along with the Chinese forces as the situation worsened. The British, losing their desire to fight in Burma, were showing signs of getting ready to retreat into India. The final blow came when the Japanese attacked the Chinese 55th Division guarding the eastern flank facing Thailand. One moment there was a Chinese army division and the next moment there was none. Stilwell told Captain Fred Eldridge, his public relations officer, "That is the...damnedest thing I ever saw. Last night I had a division and today there isn't any." Under heavy attack by the Japanese, the division simply broke up. The officers fled, and the peasant Chinese soldiers left the front in twos and threes and headed back toward China.

At the same time, the Japanese Army quickly went north, got in behind the retreating allies, and closed off the Burma Road. A cargo plane was flown in specifically to take General Stilwell, along with the members of his staff, out of Burma to India. But the idea of flying out of Burma in defeat was something that Stilwell couldn't accept. During the previous months, the British had suffered numerous defeats at the hands of the Japanese, and the Americans had taken a severe beating at Pearl Harbor, on Wake Island, and in the Philippines, but Stilwell had not yet been given a chance to fight the Japanese, and he had no intention of turning tail and running away. It was not part of his character.

Fully aware of the fact that Chiang Kai-shek was sending secret communiques to the Chinese commanders telling them not to follow his orders, Stilwell felt that he couldn't be blamed for something that wasn't under his control. He was a three-star general in command of an army that didn't listen to him. He gave commands that no one followed, and now it was being suggested that he jump on an airplane, abandon his command, and escape into India. Turning away from the plane, he sent a message to the world at large that Vinegar Joe Stilwell, the American commander of the China-Burma front, was still in command and was still fighting. He wasn't going to let the Japanese run him out. To the Chinese, his decision to stay with the troops was a simple gesture known as saving face.