Original subtitles

Monsoon in Burma.

If you can imagine the heaviest rain you'd ever get in this country

going on for six to eight weeks without a break, this was monsoon period.

Five months in every year.

Squashing through mud, living in mud, lying in mud and sleeping in mud

and drinking in mud and eating in mud.

That was the monsoon in Burma, and it's just a nightmare.

War in Burma made up in ferocity what it lacked in scale.

Here, in 1944, in these conditions,

the British were defending the frontiers of India against the Japanese.

The Burmese jungle - a steam bath, closing out the sky.

Dense, imprisoning... and a long way from home.

I'd never seen a jungle. I'd seen a forest, but I hadn't seen a jungle.

We went in there, it was dark, dirty, damp, rain,

there were all sorts of animal noises that we'd never heard before...

In fact, it was really scary.

I liked the jungle.

It did not have the fear it seems to have had for some Allied soldiers.

It was a friendly place - dark, where you could camouflage yourself.

Burma: jagged mountain and fetid swamp,

clothed in jungle and scored by steep river valleys.

Burma: endless green growth spawning every kind of disease -

malaria, dysentery, scrub typhus,

dengue fever, prickly heat-

particularly in monsoon.

Mud. It might have been Flanders in the First World War.

The monsoon in Burma turned camps into swamps, roads into quagmires.

After the rains, the country was just one great bowl of mud.

For the British, Burma was a shield and barrier

protecting their Indian empire.

The Japanese saw they could use Burma

to screen their new territorial gains

in Southeast Asia,

to cut the Allied supply route to China,

and to secure new sources of oil and rice.

In December 1941, they invaded.

They had the advantage of surprise,

and, for this jungle war, they were thoroughly prepared.

I don't think any country

could have been more unprepared for war

than Burma was at this particular time.

The government was unprepared,

the civil organisation and the people were unprepared,

and the defence forces practically didn't exist.

Some of the Gurkha who came along had 400 recruits straight from the depot,

and the British had been milked of reinforcements and officers to Europe

and, you might say, only the dull left behind.

The Japanese from the start swept all before them.

They used the jungle to outmarch and outmanoeuvre

Britain's weak Burma army.

The British retreated in confusion.

It was a crashing disadvantage to me in the 1942 campaign

in that I hadn't got a wireless set

which would contact my air support in Rangoon,

and, therefore, believe it or not,

the only thing I could do was to tap in

onto the railway telephone line,

get the babu in the post office in Rangoon,

and try and persuade him that it was vitally important

for me to be put on to air force headquarters.

And that was really one of the reasons why,

in our withdrawal to the Sittang,

we were terribly badly bombed by the RAF

as well as by the Japanese air force.

The Japanese had heavy air superiority.

They bombed and strafed almost at will,

spreading terror among raw troops and civilians.

Only a small force of American volunteers

and the few RAF planes that were in Burma

challenged their dominance and rose to battle with them.

The damage the Japanese bombers dealt was, as much as anything, psychological.

People couldn't believe this was happening to peaceful Burma.

Resistance, valiant at times, was swept aside.

I was discharged from hospital at Mandalay

having broken three ribs - left absolutely stranded on the roadside.

And a civilian picked me up,

took me home to his house,

and said what did I do? And I said, "I'm catering."

He said, "if you like,

come to our house and cook for us."

We were there two hours,

no more than that,

when the message came through:

"Evacuate, the Japanese are here."

The Japanese march north continued,

leaving a trail of chaos and destruction the length of Burma.

The British retreated.

I had nothing, only what I stood up in.

I raided someone's kit, found a stout pair of boots, and we began to walk.

In the mounting confusion, the wounded were a problem.

We had to leave giving treatment and just bandage up,

do the best we could. Some we had to leave behind.

Others we put on transport to get them on the roads - this was all we could do.

And eventually we had to finally give it up as a bad job

and make our own way out,

as we were only 24 hours in front of the Japanese

through the length and breadth of Burma.

The Japanese took everything in their stride.

Ahead of them, the last recourse of a retreating army: scorched earth.

The invaders seemed to have made the jungle their friend.

They were racing to win the rich prize of Burma's oil -

but found instead a blazing inferno.

At one installation, £11 million worth of oil and plant went up in 70 minutes.

Refugees: Eurasians, Chinese, Indians.

Indians we saw die on the roadside - we could do nothing about it.

We just had to think about ourselves and go on.

The Japanese were driving Burma people -

in their thousands they came through. There were some terrible sights.

Men were left behind,

and it was heart-breaking to see them being separated from their people,

wondering whether they'd meet up again. They were dying in their hundreds.

All you used to do was pile 'em up,

throw petrol over them and set fire to them

and that was the end of those.

We had to hack through virgin jungle practically

to get out of that country, and we had to find our own way to India.

I think the overall impression I had of that horrible trek out of Burma

was that it seemed to bring the best and worst out of people.

Some people who I'd looked up to

and respected

I found I couldn't respect any more

because they became entirely different on that march.

In fact, I felt that it was

a question of survival of the fittest.

British prisoners - 5,000 in one engagement alone.

The Japanese despised those who surrendered.

They believed soldiers should fight to the death.

We felt the British officer was a very good fighter -

all of the ones we captured, they always said to me, "We will win the war."

Now this I couldn't understand, because here is a man who has surrendered

and he still says, "We will win the war."

Through the deserted cities of Burma,

the conquering Japanese marched in triumph.

The Burmese people were now exchanging one set of imperial masters for another.

In five months, by May 1942,

the Japanese chased the British up past Rangoon,

through the Irrawaddy and Chindwin valleys,

to the frontiers of India

and out of Burma altogether.

It was the longest retreat in British history.

The Japanese also drove another army, the Chinese,

up to Mandalay towards China.

The Chinese, at war with Japan since 1931,

were protecting their supply line,

the Burma Road.

China was allied to the western powers.

In command of Chinese forces in Burma was the American, General Stilwell.

Stilwell, chief of staff to the Chinese supreme commander Chiang Kai-shek,

watched America's interests.

The commander-in-chief, India, was General Wavell.

Transferred from the Middle East,

he now faced a formidable foe with scanty resources.

But while his Burma army licked its wounds, he planned a comeback,

a limited offensive for late in 1942.

Wavell chose to mount this offensive in the Arakan,

on the Bay of Bengal, near the Indian Border.

After a hopeful beginning, everything went wrong.

The British were outmanoeuvred and outfought again,

and pushed back to their starting point.

They still had not learned to adapt to the jungle.

In the Burmese jungle, fortunately, there are many bamboo growths,

and in Japan we all eat bamboo shoots,

so there was a lot of natural food in the form of bamboo shoots

all over the place.

Apart from that, we all know that what a monkey can eat, we can eat too.

So if you watch the monkeys and avoid what the monkeys avoid,

you are fairly safe.

Apart from that there are such creatures as bandicoots - a type of rat, you see -

snakes, jungle lizards and tokay - small lizards -

you cut off the head, chop them up and make into curry,

mixed with pepper, can make good curry.

We have our meats and Yorkshire puddings and so forth -

they lived on rice.

You can't get meat and Yorkshire pudding and greens and potatoes out there,

so we had to reorganise ourselves

and lived on the things that the army could produce for us,

like corned beef.

And this is the only place I know

where you could open a tin of corned beef and pour it out like a liquid.

One man who was going to use the jungle:

Orde Wingate, an experienced guerrilla fighter,

supremely unorthodox, with a touch of the fanatic.

Now he planned a raid deep in enemy territory, to be supplied from the air.

He commanded the Chindits, ordinary British and Gurkha troops,

but intensively trained.

The first operation was initially

to accompany a general advance into Burma,

but the general advance was cancelled.

However, Wavell wanted the expedition to go forward.

February 1943: the first Chindit expedition.

The going could not have been worse -

long distances in dense, hilly jungle, and always one more river to cross.

The heat was extreme, drinking water was short,

and malaria was rampant.

But at last the British were fighting as the enemy did,

learning to turn the jungle to their own advantage - but still hating it.

The heat and the smell of the jungle was vile. Very vile.

You couldn't live in the jungle for an eternity - you'd never stand the smell.

Even when you went downhill, you knew you had to go up again,

and we were carrying 60 to 70 pounds on our back,

five days' rations plus arms, ammunition.

You'd think, "Oh, will it ever end?"

It just went on and on and on,

and the rain - and, of course, the fear that you would be ambushed or attacked.

It was absolute hell in the first Wingate expedition,

where the jungle was the friend of the Japanese, but our enemy.

We were wet all the time,

and while we were wet we got the leech onto our bodies.

They were there all the time because of the dampness of it.

They got onto your body, sucked the blood from your body,

and unless you burnt them the right way with the cigarette end,

they fell off and left black spots all over your body.

Once they had their fill of blood, they dropped from your body

and burst inside your clothes, and you were smothered in blood.

The thought that you'd get wounded and be left behind,

that was always in our minds, I think - I'm sure it was in most people's minds.

I saw chaps having to be left behind -

hand grenade, pistol, flask of water,

water bottle, rations -

and propped up against a tree, left.

450 died.

For some, a simple cross in a jungle clearing.

In June, after four months, the first Chindits returned from Burma.

Out of the 3,000 men who had gone in, less than 2,000 came back.

Weary and emaciated, most had marched a thousand jungle miles.

Whatever the expedition's military results,

it did teach valuable lessons in jungle operations,

in air supply, and in morale.

This was a raid. Its tactical and strategical effect was not great.

Its main effect was on the morale of the British and Indian troops.

Our forces were not picked men,

they were ordinary British and Gurkha battalions,

and the rest of the army said, "My God,

if those people can do it, we can."

Very slowly, the British were getting the measure of the jungle.

They loathed its stench, its sticky heat.

It was hard for them to realise that the jungle was neutral.

Hello, Tommy! Where are you?

Hello, Tommy! Where are you?

I have been hit. Come and help me.

The enemy carried on a crude but effective war of nerves.

The troops still thought of the Japanese soldier as master of the jungle,

a man who could go for days on a handful of rice,

didn't seem to know the meaning of fear,

would never surrender, was perhaps unbeatable.

A sort of superman.

The Japanese was a good soldier. He was a good soldier.

If he was told to do a job, he would stop there until he died.

Animals.

But great soldiers, great fighting soldiers.

Their battle drill was fantastic. You couldn't help but admire them.

If they were ambushed, they were at you -

in 20 or 30 seconds they were pounding you with their mortars,

and in frontal attacks nobody could beat them.

They would just come on and on and on.

He hadn't the mentality, I suppose, to think for himself.

He just obeyed orders.

And he came at you with everything he had, even if it meant losing his life.

He just... he didn't care about life.

We were taught from the very beginning

that we must... our life is the emperor's.

For instance, when I left for war duty,

I had to clip my nails and hair

and write a last will and testament,

because from that moment

our lives are in the emperor's hands.

In other words,

my family will put that in the urn

in case my body is not recovered.

So our training is to die for the emperor, you see.

We had what we called officers' clubs, where there were Japanese geishas.

These were mostly for officer grade.

For the other ranks, we had what you might call "comfort girls".

And, of course, in the officers' parties you all drank -

the thing was to get drunk very quickly, sing songs,

and because of the limitation of the girls,

only the high officers got them later.

But the songs would be like...

I think the English have a song called "Roll Me Over in the Clover",

and you go "One, two, three, four..."

Our songs are very similar - it's always "One, two, three," like this.

And similar in content, too.

For the enlisted men, our entertainment...

Because you're entertaining only between battles or on one day's leave,

and you may die next day, we don't have much time for any lengthy entertainment,

we go straight to the comfort girls.

You pay your money and you come out feeling refreshed and like a new man.

Most of the comfort girls for the enlisted men,

many were Koreans,

and I must say I respect all of them very much,

because who else would come to the front line

to give us the last entertainment

for many of us on this earth?

The British had their own, very different, entertainment.

Burma was the furthest point

and very few artists were going there,

so I said, "Right, that's for me."

They thought they were the forgotten army and I think they probably were.

In fact, just for them to see me was quite a lot to them,

because that I had gone to all the trouble

and travelled so far just to see them

made them feel that they weren't a long way from home, you know.

If I could pop on a plane and nip out there,

they weren't too far away and not forgotten.

In this jungle stalemate, the message was certainly welcome.

♪ It's a lovely day tomorrow

♪ Tomorrow is a lovely day

♪ Come and feast your tear-dimmed eyes

♪ On tomorrow's clear blue skies

♪ If today your heart is weary

♪ If every little thing looks grey

♪ Just forget your troubles

♪ And learn to say

♪ Tomorrow is a lovely day

October 1943. Things are looking up.

Lord Louis Mountbatten arrives as supreme commander

of a newly created Southeast Asia Command.

His mission: to end the stalemate and knock out the Japanese.

Mountbatten's immediate aim was to rebuild morale

in an army that felt itself forgotten and wondered why it was there.

"We shall march, fight and fly through the monsoon," he declared.

Another new appointment: General Bill Slim,

commander of the newly formed 14th Army.

He knew Burma, and he knew the Japanese.

Bill Slim was essentially a soldier's general.

Watchful of his troops' well-being,

he wanted them fit and ready to go over to the attack.

♪ Bless 'em all, bless 'em all

♪ The long and the short and the tall...

"The long and the short and the tall" were, in this case,

two-thirds of them Indian troops.

♪ Cos we're saying goodbye to them all

♪ As back to their billets they crawl

♪ You'll get no promotion this side of the ocean

♪ So cheer up, my lads Bless 'em all

Malaria.

At the First Arakan this, and other diseases,

had claimed 120 victims to every battle casualty.

I had malaria 17 times.

The last time they thought I had spinal malaria -

I couldn't walk and I couldn't even move my arms.

And I was getting inoculations all day and every day, three times a day.

To stamp out the scourge at source,

clouds of a new insecticide, DDT,

were sprayed over the swampy breeding grounds.

December 1943: a second offensive at Arakan.

The Japanese counter-attacked.

One enemy force advanced north,

wheeled behind the British,

and turned west to capture Ngakyedauk -

or "Okedoke" - Pass.

Another split the British divisions and encircled one of them.

British and Indian units, trapped in a small enclave, fought for their lives.

Isolated groups fought on, surrounded.

The skeleton force held out against an entire Japanese division

in what came to be known as "The Admin Box".

Clerks, mechanics, drivers, even a general, joined in.

In the first Arakan operation, the troops had withdrawn.

Now, on Slim's express orders, there was no withdrawal.

They were supplied from the air.

By day and night, the planes of Troop Carrier Command flew in

to drop essential stores.

What seemed certain defeat was averted by this tactic of air supply.

Casualties were heavy.

The wounded were tended in improvised dressing stations.

Surgeons performed major operations in sweating heat, plagued by flies.

At one field hospital, doctors, medical orderlies and wounded alike

were butchered by Japanese.

The sufferings of prisoners taken by the Japanese

also stirred the troops to fury.

Thousands of Allied prisoners of war slaved and died

building the Burma Railway.

They captured us, and from then on we were no longer men.

They literally despised us for giving in.

We didn't have the food.

We had to work anything up to 16, 18 hours a day.

If you argued with one, if you hit one,

you automatically got six set about you.

And they thought nothing of beating you until your arm was broke

or your leg was broke.

They'd stand him outside the guard room in the blazing sun,

take a great delight in pricking him with a bayonet point

to make him stand upright.

There were men with terrible ulcers,

and the only treatment they had was dropping maggots onto the ulcers

and letting the maggots eat out the pus and clean the ulcers out.

That's the only treatment we had for them.

To find a chap that was 12 stone down to about five stone

and crawling about trying to beg for food or scrambling for food...

I mean, it took some living with.

At that time I was going to the toilet on all fours

cos my bowels had dropped.

The latrines were concrete -

the top was just one absolute sea of maggots.

This chap in particular was in such a bad way -

I think it was cerebral malaria -

that they found him with his head down there. He'd committed suicide.

A very close friend of mine, in my own regiment,

he'd suffered from everything from beriberi, cholera...

When he died, he was just skin - skin over a skeleton and nothing else.

His legs had been eaten away with ulcers.

And there was just nothing of him. I only just recognised him.

And there were 16,000 died just on the railway.

For every sleeper that was laid, there was a human life given up.

With the proper food, proper treatment, we could have carried on,

built their blasted railway and thought nothing of it.

I could never understand people being like that -

so terrible in things that they'd done,

and the sadistic nature of them.

Thinking of this, I felt sorry for 'em as much as anything.

Japanese troops would die rather than surrender,

dig themselves in, resist to the end.

But now, a change.

At Arakan, some Japanese gave themselves up. They'd had enough.

The superman myth was exploded - these troops were not unbeatable.

But many Japanese wounded still took the traditional way out.

It was almost impossible to take care of the wounded,

and the wounded, knowing this,

would ask their comrades to give them a grenade so they can commit suicide,

and maybe three or four wounded who could not walk

could commit suicide that way.

We picked up a number of Japanese who'd been badly shot up.

It was quite necessary in our field hospitals to tie their hands down,

because if you didn't do that,

they merely tore at their bandages, opened their wounds

and literally tried to commit suicide.

Late in 1943,

from Ledo on the India-Burma border,

Stilwell and the Chinese advanced

to open the way for a new route,

the Ledo Road,

joining the old Burma Road at Bhamo.

The Chinese had to fight to clear the path

which would lead them back to China.

Stilwell's two divisions went ahead, seeking out the enemy.

Edging southeastwards, in three hard months they killed 4,000 Japanese.

Behind them came the engineers, blasting as they went...

and, in their thousands, the labourers who would build the highway.

The Ledo Road, driven hundreds of miles through atrocious country,

was to ensure continued supplies to China.

For Stilwell's troops, conditions were as hard as anywhere in Burma.

From Wingate, too, a new offensive.

Promoted general, he was to lead,

despite opposition from more orthodox colleagues,

a second Chindit expedition to the interior.

They flew in and were again supplied from the air.

March 1944: Operation Thursday.

Air transport for 10,000 men and 1,000 pack animals, with stores,

to jungle sites deep in enemy territory.

Landing so many gliders in rough, hostile country was a formidable hazard.

Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.

In spite of their training, this was a venture into the unknown.

The second Wingate operation was ten times the size of the first.

The object was, in effect, to cut the lines of communication of the Japanese.

North Burma's like a great bowl with mountains all the way round

and communications running to the rim of the bowl.

We fanned out to cut these lines of communication.

The Chindits were on their own, marooned in mid-Burma,

hundreds of miles from their base.

But now it wasn't hit and run. This time they fought pitched battles.

Bombers were called in time and time again to save a tricky situation.

Early on, the leader, Wingate, was killed in an air crash.

The operation went on.

We just marched on our own two feet with muleteers.

If we was taken ill, we were just sort of slung across the pony

till such time as your temperature went down,

and after about two days you was slung off the pony

and another unfortunate got put on.

Any units operating in those circumstances

have to be mobile all the time,

and wounded, of course, immediately bring you to a halt.

Fortunately, Wingate was able to obtain assistance from the United States

and we were given some remarkable aircraft,

which was a very short take-off / landing aircraft

and could get into any little valley or bit of paddy field and so on,

and evacuate our wounded for us.

Long weeks in the jungle -

weeks of dysentery, jaundice, jungle sores and malaria.

Aircraft like this meant rescue for thousands, sick as well as wounded.

The Chindits killed Japanese where they thought they were safe,

and forced them to divert troops from other purposes.

Fighting without respite in these conditions told on the toughest.

Most of the brigades, through casualties and disease -

they'd been behind the lines for four to five months - were finished.

My own brigade had only 300 fit men out of the 4,000 who originally came in.

Meanwhile, pushing down from the north were Merrill's Marauders.

Named after their leader, Brigadier General Merrill,

the Marauders were American volunteers.

Among their targets, the important airfield of Myitkyina.

But the Japanese again had launched an offensive themselves.

In March 1944, three divisions crossed the Chindwin

to attack Kohima and Imphal inside India itself.

One division struck towards Kohima,

two towards Imphal.

They advanced rapidly,

threatening to isolate both objectives.

From the Chindwin river to Michan

there are many precipitous mountains

sticking out like the fingers of the hand.

We advanced, climbing up and down these steep mountains.

On the map, the distance is only about 150 kilometres,

but when the mountains and valleys were taken into consideration

it was about 300 km.

Without rest or sleep, it took us 13 days to reach Michan,

where we cut the road.

For the Japanese, Kohima was a tempting prize.

Its capture would cut the Allies' supply line to the great base at Imphal.

The British air crews flew dangerous sorties to prevent their advance.

But the columns came on.

Steadily, the enemy tightened their circle round Kohima.

They squeezed the small garrison into a tiny central area.

Losses were heavy, reinforcements desperately needed.

I sent the 2nd British Division down to support

the fighting at Kohima, and they went into Kohima.

The front line was on either side

of the district commissioner's tennis court.

They stood shoulder to shoulder.

Where they were killed, they were buried.

Out of three British infantry brigades,

two brigadiers killed, two brigadiers' replacements seriously wounded.

That's what the fighting was like in Kohima.

They attacked us at the tennis courts,

and it was just like playing tennis -

so much so that I believe that the area

from one side of a tennis court to the other

was the positions between the Japanese and the platoon I was with.

The fighting I saw was literally hundreds at a time coming towards us.

The manpower strength just pushed us back

from one trench to a trench ten foot behind us.

Eventually they kept overrunning us due to the manpower.

Kohima was the ordinary soldier's battle.

Small groups of Japanese and British fought hand to hand.

Every one of us was frightened.

If we put our hands up and surrendered, our battalion would have been finished.

We knew that if the Japs had got us, they would have shot us and tortured us,

like they did do to some of our boys.

So we stayed in the holes and prayed to God.

After the first seven or eight days

the ammunition, the food, was running out.

Water was almost non-existent.

Then we was told the 2nd All-British was on their way to get us out.

At last they got there. The British were now struggling

to force the Japanese back from the ridge they had seized,

and a continuous artillery duel went on.

The Japanese had started with a force of 15,000 against a garrison of 3,500.

When the British supplies dwindled,

they were replenished entirely from the air.

I think everyone on the ground

felt just how much they owed to these aircrews

who were going flat throughout the day and sometimes during the night.

And at that time of the war

there weren't that number of spare crews around,

so that each crew had its aircraft and that aircraft had to be kept flying,

and they were going absolutely flat out.

Kohima was relieved after seven weeks.

The troops could now see the suicidal price

the Japanese had paid in their bid to capture it.

They were fanatics.

When I say fanatics, you could be holding a position

and they're about 30 yards away from you,

and all of a sudden they'd come flying at you, shouting and yelling.

It always amazed us - or amazed me, rather -

how anybody could come flying out of the jungle expecting to kill you

who was shouting at you.

I know it unnerves you and all that, but you can get used to this eventually.

And when we did get used to it, we took a great toll of the Japanese.

We just held fire and got aim and said, "You shout on, lad, you come on."

And they came on and they filled up in front of our trenches,

our little weapon pits.

Fighting the Japanese was totally committed war.

There was no question of heroics, mock-heroics or chivalry

in the sense that one read about prior to the war with Biggles.

We were totally committed to killing as many Japanese as possible,

probably prompted by the fact that we knew from bitter experience

that there had been atrocities,

and we were always fearful of the fact

that we didn't wish to be taken prisoner.

I seen one of my lads tied up with Dannert wire.

I don't want to see it no more.

It was impossible to feel sorry or pitiful for 'em,

because we knew what they done to our boys.

They didn't give us a chance, and we didn't give them a chance.

After Kohima, the relief of Imphal.

Fighting there had been as bloody as at Kohima - and as heroic.

The Japanese now had to be cleared from the Kohima-Imphal road.

In July 1944, the Japanese broke off the offensive.

Kohima and Imphal had been the high point of the Japanese effort.

"They will never come back," said General Slim.

On Stilwell's front, the Chinese, with Merrill's Marauders,

had taken Myitkyina airfield -

but with heavy casualties.

Under monsoon skies, more wounds to be dressed.

Mountbatten had said the troops would fight through the monsoon.

Now, in the deluge,

they were driving the Japanese back across the Burmese frontier.

Ahead, the long road they had come two years before:

Mandalay, Rangoon, and much bitter fighting.

There would be no rest

till all the Japanese in Burma were defeated and destroyed.