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

Infantry Magazine, May-August, 2000 by Gordon Browne

A Chinese pack train appeared from nowhere with 20 tiny mules and two drivers; they were immediately hired along with 60 local Burmese to carry the packs and bedrolls. Then Stilwell radioed to headquarters in India that they were getting ready to walk out. The message read, "I'm with a party of one hundred, including Headquarters, Seagrave's surgical unit and strays. We are armed, have food and a map. Last message for a while. Cheerio, Stilwell." Then he had the 200-pound radio destroyed.

Stilwell, with a Thompson submachinegun slung over his shoulder and his watch in hand, moved off at 115 steps a minute into the jungle. Stilwell, normally skinny with gray showing in his hair and the oldest officer in the column, set a grueling pace through the jungle heat. Unknown to most, the general had been a long-distance runner for most of his military life, and during his time in China had participated in a number of arduous long marches that helped keep him in top physical condition. The same could not be said of most of the other American officers who were following behind him into the jungle.

At noon on the first day 51-year-old Colonel William Holcombe, who had not been well for some time, collapsed. The column came to a halt while arrangements were made to have Holcombe carried at the end of the column, along with one of Seagrave's nurses who had recently had surgery. They were being carried on makeshift stretchers by the Quakers from the ambulance unit. The column started up again. An hour later, 39-year-old Major Frank Merrill passed out from heat stroke and a possible heart condition, and was added to the group at the end of the column. He was unconscious and irrational, and there was some question whether he would survive. Because the trail followed along side stream, the Quaker Friends and the nurses were able to acquire two inflatable mattresses that belonged to the Americans and used them to drag the sick through the stream.

Then two more American officers passed out from sunstroke. Captain Tommy Lee and Major Felix Nowakowski collapsed, unconscious, and were placed with the others who were being dragged and carried along at the end of the column. Stilwell couldn't believe that these strapping young Americans were in such bad shape. In his diary entry for that day he wrote, "Christ but we are a poor lot." He reduced the weight of the packs they were carrying to ten pounds for fear that more of the Americans would fall by the wayside.

Dr. Seagrave's 16 tiny nurses ministered to and helped in carrying the sick Americans while singing Christian hymns such as "Onward Christian Soldiers." Nothing was said about the fact that these were some of the same American officers who had proposed abandoning the nurses for fear they would slow down the escape into India. By the second day, Colonel Holcombe, Major Merrill, and Captain Lee were back on their feet, but Major Nowakowski was still unable to walk. Stilwell was disgusted with them. Addressing Colonel Williams, the army doctor who was in his early fifties, Stilwell demanded to know, "Dammit, Williams, you and I can stand it. We're both older than any of them. Why can't they take it ?"