Serving the Empire: The Karen of Burma
I’m delighted to say that Dr Richard Duckett has published a new oral history of the Karen people. Its very good. It is a compilation of oral histories, gathered from various sources, into a single volume that brings to life something of Karen history and especially of the Karen contribution to the Allied war effort between 1942 and 1945.
If folk know anything of the Karen today its usually through the legacy of the remarkable Major Hugh ‘Stookey’ Seagrim MBE DSO GC (‘Grandfather Longlegs’), but there is much more to their story than this, as Duckett’s book demonstrates. One is the story of Operation Character. This was an operation in which large numbers of Karen ‘irregulars’ were raised, trained and deployed by SOE during the early months of 1945, designed to enable Slim’s armoured and air-lifted troops to get to Rangoon before the monsoon rains arrived in May. I’ve described this in both A War of Empires and Burma, 1945. The story can be briefly told here, though the detail is in Duckett’s excellent book on SOE.
Following the retreat to India in 1942 little immediate effort had been made to retain contact with those of the hill tribes in the north and east of the country – the Kachins, Shans and Karens respectively – who would be interested in continuing resistance to the Japanese during the occupation and might be willing to support more conventional operations if and when a reconquest of Burma became possible. In 1942, Karen members of the Burma Rifles had been sent home with their weapons and urged to await the return of the British. Unable to make his own escape, one officer – Major Hugh Seagrim – remained with the Karens, although because of his lack of a radio, contact wasn’t made with him by India Command until October 1943. When an SOE team finally reached him he reported that the Karens were awaiting their liberation and would be prepared to help fight for it. The Japanese, however, had got wind of Seagrim’s presence and in a ruthless campaign against the Karens forced him to surrender. He was executed in Rangoon in September 1944.
Nevertheless, the potential of a Karenni-based resistance raised the possibility, long argued by old Burma hands, of a British armed and trained fifth column operating behind Japanese lines for the purpose of gathering battlefield intelligence and undertaking limited guerrilla action of the type that had developed in occupied Europe. Slim had long complained about the poor quality of the battlefield intelligence (as opposed to signals intelligence, about which he was well provided) that he and his Corps commanders received. He was concerned, among other things, about knowing ‘what was on the other side of the hill’, the product of information provided – where it existed – by effective combat (ground and air) reconnaissance. There was no shortage of organisations attempting to assist in this task – at least twelve – but their coordination was poor and most reported to SEAC or parts of India Command, rather than to 14 Army. Slim dismissed most of these as ‘private armies’ which offered no real help to the task of defeating the enemy on the battlefield. One of the groups, part of Force 136 (i.e. Special Operations Executive, or SOE), which had operated in front of 20 Indian Division along the Chindwin between 1943 and early 1944 under Major Edgar Peacock (and thus known as ‘P Force’) did sterling work with local Burmese and Karen agents reporting on Japanese activity facing IV Corps.
Persuaded that similar groups working among the Karens in Burma’s eastern hills – an area known as the Karenni States – could achieve significant support for a land offensive in Burma, Slim (to whom Mountbatten transferred responsibility for Force 136 in late 1944 for this purpose) authorised an operation to the Karens. Its task was not merely to undertake intelligence missions watching the road and railways between Mandalay and Rangoon, but to determine whether the Karens would fight. If they were prepared to do so, SOE would be responsible for training and organising them as armed groups able to deliver battlefield intelligence directly in support of the advancing 14 Army. The resulting operation – Character – was so spectacularly successful it outweighed what had been achieved by the Chindit Operation Thursday the previous year in terms of its impact on the course of military operations to defeat the Japanese in Burma. It has been strangely forgotten, or ignored, by most historians ever since, drowned out perhaps by the noise made by the drama and heroism of Thursday. Over the course of Operation Extended Capital - Slim’s reconquest of Burma - some 2,000 British, Indian and Burmese officers and soldiers, along with 1,430 tons of supplies, were dropped into Burma for the purpose of providing intelligence about the Japanese that would be useful for the fighting formations of 14 Army, as well as undertaking limited guerrilla operations. As Richard Duckett has observed, this found SOE operating not merely as intelligence gatherers in the traditional sense, but as Special Forces with a defined military mission fully integrated into Slim’s overall battle plan.
For Operation Character specifically, about 110 British officers and NCOs and over 100 men of all Burmese ethnicities, dominated interestingly by Burmans (by now also including 3-man Jedburgh Teams) mobilised as many as 12,000 Karens over an area of 7,000 square miles to the anti-Japanese cause. 3,000 weapons were dropped into the Karenni States. Operating in five distinct groups (‘Walrus’, ‘Ferret’, ‘Otter’, Walrus’ and ‘Hyena’) the Karen irregulars trained and led by Force 136, waited for the moment when 14 Army instructed them to attack.
Despite his failure to stop the advancing 14 Army at Mandalay and Meiktila in February and early March 1945, General Kimura, commander of the Japanese Burma Area Army, was far from defeated. Although his attempt to defend Southern Burma by holding Slim at bay along the Irrawaddy had been a miserable failure, his divisions were still capable to fighting to a coherent plan and fighting savagely for every inch of ground. The whole of 14 Army knew that the Japanese, even when other armies would consider themselves beaten, would fight ferociously unto death. But strangely, in a mirror of the failed British efforts to stem the victorious Japanese advance through Burma in 1942 – by building largely fictitious defensive ‘lines’ on a map rather than by creating a defence in depth – Kimura now attempted the same, ordering his troops to reform on a line from Yenangyaung on the Irrawaddy through to Pyawbwe, south of Meiktila, in the east. Sakurai’s 28 Army and its two divisions, together with remnants of the INA, would hold the Irrawaddy at Yenangyaung (and hence access to Burma from Arakan) while Honda’s 33 Army and its three divisions would hold the eastern pivot of this line at Pyawbwe, an otherwise insignificant village that nevertheless straddled the road and railway south to Toungoo. What was left of Katamura’s mangled 15 Army would be reconstituted as Kimura’s reserve.
Between 30 March and 10 April 1945, Pyawbwe saw the first battle of 14 Army’s drive to Rangoon, and it proved as decisive in 1945 as the Japanese attack on Prome had been in 1942. Otherwise strong Japanese defensive positions around the town with limited capability for counter attack meant that the Japanese were sitting targets for Allied tanks, artillery and airpower. Messervy’s plan was simple: to bypass the defended points that lay before Pyawbwe, allowing them to be dealt with by subsequent attack from the air, and surround Pyawbwe from all points of the compass by Major General ‘Punch’ Cowan’s 17 Indian Division before squeezing it like a lemon with his tanks and artillery. With nowhere to go, and with no effective counter-attack potential, the Japanese were exterminated bunker by bunker by the Shermans of 255 Tank Brigade, now slick with the experience of battle gained at Meiktila. Infantry, armour and aircraft cleared Honda’s primary blocking point before Toungoo with coordinated precision. This single battle, which killed over 1,000 Japanese, entirely removed Honda’s ability to prevent IV Corps from exploiting the road to Toungoo. Messervy grasped the opportunity, leapfrogging 5 Indian Division (the vanguard of the advance comprising an armoured regiment and armoured reconnaissance group from 255 Tank Brigade, now commanded by Major General Robert Mansergh) southwards, capturing Shwemyo on 16 April, Pyinmana on 19 April and Lewe on 21 April. Toungoo was the immediate target, attractive because it boasted three airfields, from where No 224 Group could provide air support to Operation Dracula. Messervy drove his armour on, reaching Toungoo, much to the surprise of the Japanese, the following day. 5 Indian Division had advanced 211 miles in 14-days, reaching Toungoo three days before even the most optimistic forecasts. After three days of fighting, supported by heavy attack from the air by B24 Liberators, the town and its airfields fell to Messervy. On the very day of its capture, 100 C47s and C46 Commando transports landed the air transportable elements of 17 Indian Division to join their armoured comrades. They now took the lead from 5 Indian Division, accompanied by 255 Tank Brigade, for whom rations in their supporting vehicles had been substituted for petrol, pressing on via Pegu to Rangoon.
The bold attack in depth that IV Corps advance represented, the tip of 14 Army’s spear, was remarkable. Armour, infantry and tracked artillery worked in combined teams with intimate support provided in the air by continuous fighter-ground attack patrols linked by radio to the leading tanks. Each stage of the attack was undertaken to confuse Kimura; to act before he could respond to the previous threat, resulting in the Burma Area Army remaining in a state of command confusion for much of 1945. The single operational objective – to get to Rangoon before the rains fell – was prioritised before all else. Aerial resupply was a strategic function of SEAC, organised by Mountbatten in a single Air and Ground Supply Committee in March 1945 that prioritised air transport strictly in accordance with strategic priorities across the whole theatre. An additional strategic consideration needs to be recalled. Slim recognised that if the Japanese were able to hold Toungoo, and thus prevent 14 Army making its way beyond this point, Kimura would not need to evacuate Rangoon. If Rangoon were defended, Operation Dracula would be opposed, with serious consequences in terms of casualties. Defeating the Japanese at Toungoo would, it was hoped, force Kimura to evacuate Rangoon beyond the Sittang to avoid being caught in a 14 Army/Operation Dracula pincer.
The contribution of Operation Character to the advance by IV Corps to Toungoo and beyond was battle winning. By April 1945 the Karen irregulars harried the 50,000 Japanese in the hills and directing air strikes, providing close reconnaissance of targets for No 224 Group’s aircraft. Their attacks, beginning in early April, were coordinated by HQ 14 Army to coincide with the advance of elements of IV Corps, and were focused on preventing the Japanese 18 Division from reaching and reinforcing Toungoo before the arrival of 5 Indian Division. To get to Toungoo, 18 Division had to pass through areas of jungle hills to the northeast and east entirely dominated by the Force 136. By means of repeated ambushes the Japanese were fought every step of the way. Large amounts of detailed target information was radioed through for use in attacks by the air force. The official historian of SOE observed ‘that in the week before the fall of Rangoon (2 May 1945) almost all their long-range fighter-bombers were employed on Force 136 targets, and that so many high-grade reports came in that it was impossible to act on them all.’ There were many notable successes, the principal being an attack on the railway station at Pyu which coincided with the arrival of a troop train, causing over 1,000 casualties. No. 221 Group RAF was so impressed with Force 136’s later intelligence that they proposed that when operations began in Malaya at least one squadron should stand by to carry out immediate strikes when a mobile target was reported – something that had not been done in Burma. Roadblocks, ambushes and demolitions held up the Japanese 18 Division’s cross-country advance to Toungoo in the area of Mawchi, fifty miles east of Toungoo. In his immediate report on operations Slim described the operational effect of the Karen irregulars:
Our own levies led by their British officers were a most valuable asset and had a real influence on operations. They were tactically controlled by wireless from Army Headquarters, told when to rise, the objectives they should attack, and given specific tasks. They could not and were not expected to stand up to the Japanese in pitched battles but they could and did in places harry them unmercifully. Their greatest achievement was the delaying of 15 Japanese Division on the Loikaw-Mawchi area, thus enabling IV Corps to reach Toungoo first, but they have rendered almost equally valuable services. They had an excellent jitter effect on the Japanese, who were compelled to lock up troops to guard against attacks on the lines of communication.
The work of Force 136, in particular in operations such as Operation Character, delivered exactly the sort of support Slim demanded of Special Forces. This was to assist the work of the main, or conventional forces, by gathering close target reconnaissance and mounting attacks on enemy rear echelons, lines of communications and other such ‘soft’ targets by means of ambushes and hit-and-run raids. Without the operations of these SOE-led Karen guerrillas in blocking the Japanese 56 Division’s attempts to defend Toungoo and 18 Division’s efforts to reinforce it, 14 Army would almost certainly have been stopped in its tracks. If this had happened, it is reasonable to surmise that Kimura would not have felt the need to evacuate Rangoon, with all the attendant difficulties for Operation Dracula of having to assault a defended capital just as the monsoon struck. The estimate of Japanese killed by Operation Character was 11,874, far more than those killed by the soldiers of 4 and XXXIII Corps. As Duckett asserts, Operation Character achieved dramatic operational effect at ‘a low cost in terms of men and equipment’ by helping ‘to protect the flank of Slim’s XIV Army as it advanced into southern Burma… [By] raising the local population and operating in difficult terrain, the Character teams assisted regular forces by inflicting significant casualties upon the Japanese, as well as psychological damage.’
This is the background to many of the personal recollections brough together for the first time by Duckett in Serving the Empire: The Karen of Burma. For anyone with an interest in the war in Burma, or the story of the Karen people, this book should be an essential part of your library.