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Defeat Into Victory

Viscount Slim

Slim is reassigned from Iraq to Burma and leaves the 10th Indian division he commanded:

“We could move, we could fight, and we had begun to build up that most valuable of all assets, a tradition of success.”
On joined up command:

“Sixteen months before, in the Sudan, I had learnt a sharp lesson on the necessity for the headquarters of the land forces and of the air forces supporting them to be together. I was, therefore, rather dismayed to find that for the Burma campaign Air Headquarters at Calcutta and Army Headquarters at Maymyo, near Mandalay, were to be five hundred miles apart by air and unconnected by land.”
“Army Headquarters, Burma, was moving in, after its hazardous escape from Rangoon, and it was quite evident that some of it had been considerably shaken by that experience. To begin with, Army Headquarters, Burma, was neither organized, manned, nor trained as a mobile headquarters to command fighting formations in the field. It was, in fact, a miniature peacetime War Office”
“In Burma our unpreparedness when the blow fell was extreme, and we paid for it. The basic error was that not only did few people in Burma, and no one outside it, expect that it would be attacked, but there was no clear or continuous decision as to who would be responsible for defence preparations or for its actual defence if it were attacked.”
“in November 1940, operational control was transferred to the recently formed Far Eastern Command in Singapore, while administrative responsibility was divided between the Burma Government and the War Office in London, which now contributed substantially to the defence budget of Burma. Both Singapore and London had more urgent matters on their doorsteps than the needs of distant Burma, and to separate operational from administrative responsibility is to break a rule that I have never seen violated without someone paying a heavy penalty.”
“A moment ago, I wrote that General Alexander had escaped from Rangoon by sheer luck. And it was that. The whole British force from Rangoon, and with it General Alexander and his head-quarters, would have been destroyed had it not been for the typically rigid adherence to the letter of his orders by a japanese divisional commander.”
“The people of the country were quite unprepared for invasion and, as the British suffered defeat after defeat and the Japanese swept forward, they were stunned at the collapse of a Power they had always thought, if they thought about it at all, invincible and part of nature.”
“Japanese, confident in their own prowess, frequently attacked on a very small administrative margin of safety. He estimated that a Japanese force would usually not have more than nine days’ supplies available. If you could hold the Japanese for that time, prevent them capturing your supplies, and then counter-attack them, you would destroy them.”
“There, immediately after breakfast on the day of my arrival, in the gloomy and, I suspect, insanitary Government House, I was sent for by General Wavell. He was standing in one of the visitors’ sitting rooms, in his usual firmly planted attitude. He had seen swept away, in overwhelming disaster, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and Allied sea and air power in the Far East. He held at that moment the most difficult command in the world - India and Burma. Yet it gave one confidence to look at him. I had seen him at the height of dazzling success, and he had stood and looked calmly and thoughtfully at me in the same way as he looked at me now.”
On working with people you can trust:

“I could not have found two men in whom I had more confidence or with whom I would rather have worked. The fact that we were on these terms was more than a help in the tough times ahead. It meant that we understood one another, that each knew how the others would react and that the most searching tests would still find us a team.”
Taffy Davies:
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“But he got - and kept - that scratch headquarters working. From nothing and almost with nothing, he formed, organized, and infused it with his own spirit.
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It never reached one-fifth the size of any other corps headquarters I have seen, or had one-tenth of its equipment but, possibly because we could not issue or keep much paper, it was I believe really efficient.”
“I had that feeling of unease that comes first at such times, a sinking of the heart as the gloomy facts crowd in; then the glow of exhilaration as the brain grapples with problem after problem; lastly the tingling of the nerves and the lightening of the spirit, as the urge to get out and tackle the job takes hold. Experience had taught me, however, that before rushing into action it is advisable to get quite clearly fixed in mind what the object of it all is.”
“Business, too, seemed among all grades in Burma to have been a better training than government service for initiative.”
“Clearly I must get about among the troops and see and be seen. Luckily there was no public relations department at my headquarters to greet my arrival with the clumsy beating of the big drum. A commander, if he is wise, will see that his own troops know him before the press and other cymbal-clashers get busy with his publicity. All that can be most helpful afterwards.”
“A staff officer, seeing from a distance our own troops making a traffic-control barrier across the road, and hearing at the same time the noise of a Japanese fighter strafe in the neighbourhood, had in his tired imagination combined the two into an enemy roadblock. The troops were turned about, and, muttering curses on generals who disturbed them without cause, went back to their broken rest. I sent for the officer responsible for the alarm and told him what I thought about him in a way which, I fear, showed that my nerves were little better than his.”
“On the last day of that nine-hundred-mile retreat I stood on a bank beside the road and watched the rearguard march into India. All of them, British, Indian, and Gurkha, were gaunt and ragged as scarecrows. Yet, as they trudged behind their surviving officers in groups pitifully small, they still carried their arms and kept their ranks, they were still recognizable as fighting units. They might look like scarecrows, but they looked like soldiers too.”
On the treatment Burma corps’ by wider Indian army following defeat:

“Yet the attitude adopted towards them by certain commanders and their staffs was that they were only to be dragooned into some show of soldierly spirit by hectoring and sarcasm. Apart from its lack of comradely feeling, this was profoundly bad psychology. How much wiser was the treatment of the troops who escaped from Dunkirk. Their hardihood in the face of great material odds was generously recognized, their courage in retreat and defeat acclaimed; at once they were received as if they had won a great victory, not suffered a disaster.”
“Our casualties had been some 13,000 men killed, wounded, and missing, besides, of course, those evacuated sick. The Japanese losses had been only a third of this - 4,600 killed and wounded. I kept a record of all we had lost in men, guns, tanks, and vehicles. Some day I hoped to balance the account with perhaps a little interest added.”
Reasons for the defeat:

“There were certain basic causes for our defeat. The first and overriding one was lack of preparation. Until a few weeks before it happened, no higher authority, civil or military, had expected an invasion of Burma. They were all grievously pressed in other quarters, and what was held to be the comparatively minor responsibility of the defence of Burma was tossed from one to another, so that no one held it long enough to plan and provide over an adequate period. The two great errors that grew from this were the military separation of Burma from India and the division of operational from administrative control. An army whose plan of campaign is founded on fundamental errors in organization cannot hope for success unless it has vast superiority over the enemy in numbers and material. Another fatal omission, springing from the same cause, was that until too late no serious attempt was made to connect India and Burma by road, so that when Rangoon fell the army in Burma was for all practical purposes isolated.”
“almost the only members of my staff to escape hospital were these presumably well-salted veterans. We tried to pretend it was because we were a tougher generation, but it was actually due, I think, to the greater care we took of ourselves, and the greater docility with which we obeyed medical instructions.”
“If the families of Indians, Anglo-Indians, and Anglo-Burmese in government employ could have been evacuated to India at the start of the campaign it might have caused some despondency among the local population, but it would have increased the reliability of the Burmese military and civil services very considerably.”
“To me, thinking it all over, the most distressing aspect of the whole disastrous campaign had been the contrast between our generalship and the enemy’s. The Japanese leadership was confi-dent, bold to the point of foolhardiness, and so aggressive that never for one day did they lose the initiative. True, they had a perfect instrument for the type of operation they intended, but their use of it was unhesitating and accurate. Their object, clear and definite, was the destruction of our forces; ours a rather nebulous idea of retaining territory. This led to the initial dispersion of our forces over wide areas, an error which we continued to commit, and worse still it led to a defensive attitude of mind.”
“For myself, I had little to be proud of; I could not rate my generalship high. The only test of generalship is success, and I had succeeded in nothing I had attempted. Time and again I had tried to pass to the offensive and to regain the initiative and every time I had seen my house of cards fall down as I tried to add its crowning storey. I had not realized how the Japanese, formidable as long as they are allowed to follow undisturbed their daring projects, are thrown into confusion by the unexpected. I should have subordinated all else to the vital need to strike at them and thus to disrupt their plans, but I ought, in spite of everything and at all risks, to have collected the whole strength of my corps before attempted any counter-offensive. Thus I might have risked disas-ter, but I was more likely to have achieved success. When in doubt as to two courses of action, a general should choose the bolder. I reproached myself now that I had not.”
“Other British commanders have devoted energy and resources, badly needed for what would have been more profitable enterprises, to preparations against invasions that never came, yer who knows to what extent rumours of those preparations, exagger ated probably, caused the enemy to hesitate? There can be no doubt that the preparations themselves, and the determination they bred, did much to raise our morale. It is a simple rule that the worse the situation the more the troops should be kept fully and actively employed.”
“It had been vividly impressed on me during the Retreat from Burma that in the jungle there are no non-combatants, so, with this physical toughening, we introduced weapon training for everybody. The whole headquarters from the Corps Commander downwards went through qualifying courses in rifle, pistol, Bren gun, bayonet, mortar, and grenade.”
“Having got the individuals mobile, it remained to achieve the mobility of the headquarters as a unit. The first step towards this was to limit the number of lorries allotted to each section for its baggage, tentage, office equipment, and messes, to an essential minimum. Heart-rending appeals to increase these allotments were sternly refused. The next step was to order everything to be packed in yakdans’, those leather-covered boxes, fitted with rings and chains, that can be slung one on each side of a pack saddle. This ensured that, not only was no superfluous equipment carried, but that all the impedimenta of Corps Headquarters could, without repacking, be loaded at once on to either trucks, boats, aeroplanes, or even mule transport. We were, I knew, likely to use all these, and change rapidly from one to the other. The accumulation of paper at any headquarters has to be seen to be realized. Every fortnight each section was ordered to sort its papers and destroy everything not essential. My order, rigidly enforced, was When in doubt, burn.’ We constantly practised moving until the drill for it was thoroughly mastered; we could pack in a couple of hours and open up a properly camouflaged working headquarters in the bush in less. A large part of headquarters I kept permanently in tents and we frequently moved out into the jungle for several days at a time. At last, even Tony Scott was compelled to admit we were mobile. If we were, it was largely thanks to him.”
“Admission to the War Room was, of course, restricted to the principal staff officers and heads of branches, who could at any time bring themselves completely up to date on the situation and the activities of other departments from the signals and the marked maps. The Information Room, on the other hand, was open to all ranks. It was divided into two sections, one dealing with the operations of the corps, and its immediate neighbours, the other with more distant fronts and the war in general. It played a large part in keeping even the most subordinate in touch with events. I had long ago decided that any risk of leakage from such a source was more than outweighed by the increased keenness and intelligence developed by this feeling of being in the know.”
On Jungle warfare:

“(i) The individual soldier must learn, by living, moving, and exercising in it, that the jungle is neither impenetrable nor unfriendly. When he has once learned to move and live in it, he can use it for concealment, covered movement, and surprise.

(ii) Patrolling is the master key to jungle fighting. All units, not only infantry battalions, must learn to patrol in the jungle, boldly, widely, cunningly, and offensively.

(iii) All units must get used to having Japanese parties in their rear, and, when this happens, regard not themselves, but the Japanese, as ‘surrounded.’

(iv) In defence, no attempt should be made to hold long continuous lines. Avenues of approach must be covered and enemy penetration between our posts dealt with at once by mobile local reserves who have completely reconnoitred the country.

(v) There should rarely be frontal attacks and never frontal attacks on narrow fronts. Attacks should follow hooks and come in from flank or rear, while pressure holds the enemy in front.

(vi) Tanks can be used in almost any country except swamp. In close country they must always have infantry with them to defend and reconnoitre for them. They should always be used in the maximum numbers available and capable of being deployed. Whenever possible penny packets must be avoided. ‘The more you use, the fewer you lose.’

(vii) There are no non-combatants in jungle warfare. Every unit and sub-unit, including medical ones, is responsible for its own all-round protection, including patrolling, at all times.

(viii) If the Japanese are allowed to hold the initiative they are formidable. When we have it, they are confused and easy to kill. By mobility away from roads, surprise, and offensive action we must regain and keep the initiative.”
On Joseph Stilwell: “Everywhere was Stilwell, urging, leading, driving.”
“But there was much more to General Giffard than good taste, good manners, and unselfishness. He understood the fundamentals of war - that soldiers must be trained before they can fight, fed before they can march, and relieved before they are worn out.”
A great example of ‘can-do’:

“The Arakan road had its own difficulties to overcome. It did not cross the great mountains of the others, but it encountered innumerable chaungs, tidal creeks running up inland from the sea. It went through a country that produced no stone for road metal, and it was impossible to bring in the thousands and thousands of tons that would be required. My engineers proved equal to the need. They built the road with bricks, millions and millions of them. Every twenty miles or so was a great brick kiln, looking in the distance rather like a two-funnelled ship. We imported skilled brickmakers from India, brought the necessary coal by rail, boat, and lorry, and baked our bricks. A brick road is terribly apt in rain to sink into the earth, but, constantly having fresh bricks relaid, it held, a monument to ingenuity and determination.”
“Slowly, but with increasing rapidity, as all of us, commanders, doctors, regimental officers, staff officers, and NCOs, united in the drive against sickness, results began to appear. On the chart that hung on my wall the curves of admissions to hospitals and Malaria Forward Treatment Units sank lower and lower, until in 1945 the sickness rate for the whole Fourteenth Army was one per thousand per day. But at the end of 1943 that was a long way off.”
“Morale is a state of mind. It is that intangible force which will move a whole group of men to give their last ounce to achieve something, without counting the cost to themselves; that makes them feel they are part of something greater than themselves. If they are to feel that, their morale must, if it is to endure - and the essence of morale is that it should endure - have certain founda-tions. These foundations are spiritual, intellectual, and material, and that is the order of their importance. Spiritual first, because only spiritual foundations can stand real strain. Next intellectual, because men are swayed by reason as well as feeling. Material least important, but least - because the very highest kinds of morale are often met when material conditions are lowest.”
Types of morale in more detail:
- Spiritual (a) There must be a great and noble object. (b) Its achievement must be vital. (c) The method of achievement must be active, aggressive. (d) The man must feel that what he is and what he does matters directly towards the attainment of the object.
- Intellectual (a) He must be convinced that the object can be attained; that it is not out of reach. (b) He must see, too, that the organization to which he belongs and which is striving to attain the object is an efficient one. (c) He must have confidence in his leaders and know that whatever dangers and hardships he is called upon to suffer, his life will not be lightly flung away.
- Material (a) The man must feel that he will get a fair deal from his commanders and from the army generally. (b) He must, as far as humanly possible, be given the best weapons and equipment for his task. (c) His living and working conditions must be made as good as they can be.
“I learnt, too, that one did not need to be an orator to be effective. Two things only were necessary: first to know what you were talking about, and, second and most important, to believe it yourself.”
“We were helped, too, by a very cheering piece of news that now reached us, and of which, as a morale raiser, I made great use.

In August and September 1942, Australian troops had, at Milne Bay in New Guinea, inflicted on the Japanese their first undoubted defeat on land. If the Australians, in conditions very like ours, had done it, so could we. Some of us may forget that of all the Allies it was Australian soldiers who first broke the spell of the invincibility of the Japanese Army; those of us who were in Burma have cause to remember.”
“In my experience it is not so much asking men to fight or work with inadequate or obsolete equipment that lowers morale but the belief that those responsible are accepting such a state of affairs. If men realize that everyone above them and behind them is flat out to get the things required for them, they will do wonders, as my men did, with the meagre resources they have instead of sitting down moaning for better.”
“ I was frequently asked as the campaign went on, Which is your crack division?’ I always replied, ‘All my divisions are crack divisions!’ This was true in the sense that at some time or other every division I ever had in the Fourteenth Army achieved some outstanding feat of arms, and it might be any division that at any given period was leading the pack. The men of each division believed that their division was the best in the whole army, and it was right they should, but it is very unwise to let any formation, however good, be publicly recognized as better than the others. The same thing applies to units, and this was especially important where we had fighting together battalions with tremendous names handed down from the past, newly raised ones with their traditions yet to make, men of recognized martial races. and others drawn from sources that had up to now no military record. They all got the same treatment and they were all judged by results. Sometimes the results were by no means in accordance with accepted tables of precedence.”
“I found Supreme Headquarters a fascinating place to wander through. It was full of interesting people, not least persuasive young men interested in selling short cuts to victory, of which they held the rights of way. These racketeers’, as I called them, were of two kinds, those whose acquaintance with war was confined to large non-fighting staffs where they had had time and opportunity to develop their theories, and tough, cheerful fellows who might be first-class landed on a beach at night with orders to scupper a sentry post, but whose experience was about the range of a tommy gun. I liked talking to them and they were very willing to oblige me. Few of them had anything really new to say, and the few that had, usually forgot that a new idea should have something to recommend it besides just breaking up normal organization.”
“commanders will, as they quite easily can by altering the emphasis within the organization, produce a headquarters which responds to their personality. It is not that one system is so much better than another, but that a wise commander chooses the one that enables him best to instil his will into every part of his force. The real danger is that generals may slavishly model their personal behaviour and their organization on those of some outstandingly successful commander, when they are quite unlike him in character, mental qualities, and perhaps physical appearance. Imitations are never masterpieces.”
“At this stage I usually discussed with the intelligence officer whom I had selected to represent the Japanese command at my headquarters - a key appointment - what the enemy’s reactions to this plan were likely to be.”
“dozens of operation orders have gone out in my name, but I never, throughout the war, actually wrote one myself. I always had someone who could do that better than I could. One part of the order I did, however, draft myself - the intention. It is usually the shortest of all paragraphs, but it is always the most important, because it states - or it should - just what the commander intends to achieve. It is the one overriding expression of will by which everything in the order and every action by every commander and soldier in the army must be dominated. It should, therefore, be worded by the commander himself.”
“I was in bed by ten. If, between then and six-thirty, when my faithful Gurkha orderly, Bajbir, roused me, anyone disturbed me for anything short of a real crisis, he did so at his peril. I had seen too many of my colleagues crack under the immense strain of command in the field not to realize that, if I were to continue, I must have ample leisure in which to think, and unbroken sleep. Generals would do well to remember that, even in war, ‘the wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure’. Generals who are terribly busy all day and half the night, who fuss round, posting platoons and writing march tables, wear out not only their subordinates but themselves. Nor have they, when the real emergency comes, the reserve of vigour that will then enable them, for days if necessary, to do with little rest or sleep.”
On the ‘can-do’ of sourcing Jute parachutes:

“It would have been risky to drop a man in a parajute, or a particularly valuable or fragile load such as a wireless set, but for ordinary supplies it worked admirably. It had in addition another advantage. The cost of a parajute was just over £1; that of a standard parachute over £20. As we used several hundreds of thousands of parajutes we saved the British taxpayer some millions of pounds, and, more important even than that, our operations went on. My reward was a ponderous rebuke from above for not obtaining the supply through the proper channels! I replied that I never wanted to find a more proper channel for help when in need than those Calcutta jute men.”
On clearing bunkers:

“It was the old problem of the First World War - how to get the infantryman on to his enemy without a pause in the covering fire that kept his enemy’s head down. It was solved in Arakan - and copied throughout the Fourteenth Army - by the tanks firing, first, surface-burst high explosive to clear the jungle, then delay-action high explosive to break up the faces of the bunkers thus exposed, and lastly solid armour-piercing shot as the infantry closed in. With no explosion, the last few yards were safe, if you had first-class tank gunners and infantrymen with steady nerves, who let the shot whistle past their heads and strike a few feet beyond or to one side of them.”
On tactics to retake a section of Burma:

“there were not wanting senior visiting officers who urged me to ‘fling two divisions across the Chindwin’. I am afraid they left my headquarters thinking I was sadly lacking in the offensive spirit, but somehow I have never had great confidence in generals who talk of ‘flinging’ divisions about. ‘Fling’ is a term for amateurs, not professionals. Besides, I noticed that the farther back these generals came from, the keener they were on my ‘flinging’.”
“he quoted from a saying in frequent use in the Fourteenth Amy, and added with a grin, ‘For miracles we like a month’s notice! “You’re lucky,’ I answered, “You’ve got two!’
“I walked once more among my soldiers, and I, who should have inspired them, not for the first or last time, drew courage from them. Men like these could not fail. God helps those who help themselves. He would help us.”
“Yet I confess that, while this uncertainty lasted, I was hard put to it to maintain before my own staff, commanders, and troops that appearance of freedom from anxiety so essential in an army commander. Luckily, I was not kept under this strain too long.”
“No Japanese soldier who had seen his general march up and hand over his sword would ever doubt that the Invincible Army was invincible no longer. We did not want a repetition of the German First War legend of an unconquered army.”
“Generals have often been reproached with preparing for the last war instead of for the next - an easy jibe when their fellow countrymen and their political leaders, too frequently, have prepared for no war at all. Preparation for war is an expensive, burdensome business, yet there is one important part of it that costs little - study.”
“A study of such campaigns points emphatically to the almost inevitable disaster that must follow. Commanders in the field, in fairness to them and their troops, must be clearly and definitely told what is the object they are locally to attain.”
“It is true that in war determination by itself may achieve results, while flexibility, without determination in reserve, cannot, but it is only the blending of the two that brings final success. The hardest test of generalship is to hold this balance between determination and flexibility. In this the Japanese failed. They scored highly by determination; they paid heavily for lack of flexibility.”
“As we removed vehicles from units and formations which joined us on European establishments, they found to their surprise that they could move farther and faster without them. The fewer vehicles on the roads or tracks, the quicker they travelled, and an enforced ingenuity in combining ferrying by lorry with marching covered long distances in remarkably short time. This relation between tactical mobility and numbers of vehicles, between the size of staffs and effective control, will increase in importance in any future war. Unless they are constantly watched and ruthlessly cut down, vehicles and staffs will multiply until they bog down movement.”
“The more modern war becomes, the more essential appear the basic qualities that from the beginning of history have distinguished armies from mobs. The first of these is discipline. We very soon learnt in Burma that strict discipline in battle and in bivouac was vital, not only for success, but for survival. Nothing is easier in jungle or dispersed fighting than for a man to shirk. If he has no stomach for advancing, all he has to do is to flop into the under-growth; in retreat, he can slink out of the rearguard, join up later, and swear he was the last to leave. A patrol leader can take his men a mile into the jungle, hide there, and return with any report he fancies. Only discipline - not punishment - can stop that sort of thing; the real discipline that a man holds to because it is a refusal to betray his comrades.”
On special forces:

“The result of these methods was undoubtedly to lower the quality of the rest of the Army, especially of the infantry, not only by skimming the cream off it, but by encouraging the idea that certain of the normal operations of war were so difficult that only specially equipped corps d’elite could be expected to undertake them. Armies do not win wars by means of a few bodies of super-soldiers but by the average quality of their standard units. Anything, whatever short cuts to victory it may promise, which thus weakens the Army spirit is dangerous.”
On “Jason Bourne” types:

“There is, however, one kind of special unit which should be retained - that designed to be employed in small parties, usually behind the enemy, on tasks beyond the normal scope of warfare in the field. There will be an increasing need for highly qualified and individually trained men - and women - to sabotage vital installations, to spread rumours, to misdirect the enemy, to transmit intelligence, to kill or kidnap individuals, and to inspire resistance movements. They will be troops, though they will require many qualities and skills not to be expected of the ordinary soldier and they will use many methods beyond his capacity. Each small party would study and train intensively for a particular exploit and should operate under the direct control of the Higher Command. They should rarely work within our own lines. Not costly in manpower, they may, if handled with imaginative ruth-lessness, achieve strategic results.”
“In unlimited war, after the first shock of mutual devastation had been survived, victory would go, as it did in our other jungle, to the tougher, more resourceful infantryman. The easier and more gadget-filled our daily life becomes, the harder will it be to produce him. It took us some time to do so in Burma. It can be done in peace; in war there will no longer be so much time.”