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3.226 Fall and Rise of China: The Race for Rangoon
Episode 226
Monday, 2 November, 2026
Last time we spoke about the invasion of Burma. Burma, culturally tied to South-East Asia, had been absorbed into British India through nineteenth-century wars, breeding lasting nationalist resentment and a hunger for independence. When Japan entered the war in December 1941, Britain's regional defenses collapsed almost overnight—Prince of Wales and Repulse sunk, Malaya crumbling, and Burma left thinly defended by a single division stretched across an enormous frontier. Japan invaded methodically, having spent months on reconnaissance and jungle training. Colonel Suzuki recruited Aung San's "Thirty Comrades" into the Burma Independence Army, which fought alongside Japanese troops for political rather than military effect. The 143rd Regiment landed first, meeting fierce Thai resistance at some beaches before Thailand reversed course and allied with Japan. Victoria Point fell without a fight, though two British officials there vanished into Japanese custody under murky, possibly grim circumstances. A British sabotage raid against Japanese rail bridges failed for lack of accurate maps. Wavell, newly responsible for Burma, found promised reinforcements diverted to Malaya, leaving the colony dangerously exposed as the invasion gathered pace. #226 The Race for Rangoon Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. While Victoria Point had fallen without resistance, the Japanese were about to prove that no terrain, however forbidding, would be allowed to stall their advance. Meanwhile, some 1,500 men of the 3rd/2nd Battalion Group, under the command of Major Oki, set out from Bangkok on 3 January with orders to take Tavoy. It was a plan of characteristic audacity. The force travelled first by train to Kanchanaburi, aided by the local BIA contingent, then pushed upriver by motor-boat along the notorious River Kwai to Wanpo. From there, they turned to face the real obstacle: the steep, jungle-smothered Tenasserim Range separating Thailand from Burma. There were no maps, no trails—only a route an advance party had scouted as difficult but not impossible. Each man carried seven days' rations along with either 120 rounds of ammunition or a fourteen-pound mountain artillery shell, on top of his standard kit. Oxen supplemented the Japanese horses in hauling the heavier loads, while several elephants, lent by the Thai army, led the column—their surprising agility over rough ground proving invaluable—with engineers following behind to hack out a path. Progress was brutal. Horses and oxen collapsed and were lost along the way, leeches tormented the men without pause, and the column crawled forward at barely two miles a day. Rations dwindled to the point that pack animals were slaughtered and their loads abandoned. But on 14 January, they finally crested the range, and the terrain eased. By the 15th, they broke free of the forest onto open grassland, with the village of Myitta before them—and beyond it, a motor road leading over one last, gentler ridge to Tavoy, still 34 miles distant. Tavoy itself was no minor outpost—a town of 30,000, defended by the 6th Burma Rifles, one of the newly raised battalions, bolstered on the eve of battle by two companies of the 3rd Burma Rifles arriving by boat from Mergui. The defenders held an outpost at Myitta and a fortified position astride the road on the ridge behind it. When the outpost opened fire on the approaching Japanese on the 16th before falling back, the invaders occupied Myitta unopposed, resting through the following day. That evening, under cover of darkness, they resumed their advance—and roughly two hours later collided with the British position. Japanese scouts drew fire, losing three men, but the response was swift and overwhelming: machine-gun bursts and five rounds from a mountain gun sent the Burma Rifles into retreat and the village into Japanese hands. Rattled by wild rumors and expecting the worst, the three forward companies abandoned their planned fallback position at Wagon entirely, dissolving into the jungle and striking out for Moulmein—some 200 miles to the north. On the 18th, the Japanese pressed on in daylight, cloaking men and horses alike in cut branches to evade detection. Twice they froze as British aircraft passed overhead, apparently unseen, before making camp just short of Tavoy to prepare for the final assault. By now, the town's defense had thinned dramatically—down to a single company of the 6th Burma Rifles, two companies from the 3rd, and detachments from the Kokine Battalion and the Tenasserim Battalion of the Burma Auxiliary Force. When the attack came around 9am on the 19th, it opened against the airfield, where the police detachment fought with real spirit, and briefly held the line at one point in the main perimeter—inflicting casualties the Japanese themselves acknowledged. But as his officers fell one by one, Lieutenant-Colonel Cotton read the situation clearly: his men could not hold much longer. Just past midday, he gave the order to evacuate. The Burma Auxiliary Force detachment carried out the demolitions with remarkable composure even as the position disintegrated around them, while a rumor of massive Japanese reinforcements sent most of the remaining Burma Rifles fleeing into the forest, bound for home rather than the front. What remained of Cotton's force withdrew up the road and was recovered some twenty miles north by the 4th/12th Frontier Force Regiment, dispatched from Moulmein in support. By 3pm, Tavoy belonged to the Japanese. The entire operation had cost them just 23 dead and 40 wounded—a remarkably light price for the town they'd won. Trailing in their wake, a BIA detachment under Captain Kawashima moved quickly to establish an autonomous administration and begin recruiting volunteers; within two weeks, they claimed, the town had returned to normal. The Burma Rifles units involved suffered a collapse in morale they never truly recovered from, and the damage spread to other units besides. Worse, it planted a lasting image—of Japanese forces materializing without warning from supposedly impassable jungle—that would haunt British and Burmese forces for months to come. Yet the psychological toll on Burmese troops demands more sympathy than judgment. A powerful independence movement, and with it a current of anti-British, pro-Japanese sentiment, had been building among Burma's politically engaged classes—and it swelled with every British setback and Japanese advance. For any soldier associated with the losing side, the calculus was becoming brutally clear: defeat meant danger for himself, and worse, it meant leaving his family exposed and friendless in a land about to change hands. Under that kind of pressure, the temptation to desert and return home was only growing stronger. With Tavoy secured, the 3rd/2nd Battalion turned north along the coast road toward Moulmein—only to find the town had already fallen the day before their arrival. Mergui was now isolated, cut off from any hope of relief. Originally defended by the 2nd Burma Rifles Battalion along with two companies of the 3rd, the garrison had been bled dry when those companies were diverted to Tavoy's defense. On the 19th, Army Headquarters in Rangoon recognized the position was untenable and ordered the garrison, along with non-Burmese civilians, evacuated by sea to Rangoon. Valuable stockpiles of rubber and tungsten had already been shipped out ahead of them. The withdrawal proceeded on the 20th and 22nd, the power station and other key installations reduced to rubble behind them. Both Victoria Point and Mergui endured Japanese bombing—Mergui considerably more so—yet at neither location did ground forces ever actually meet the enemy. Running alongside these military maneuvers was a quieter but equally consequential campaign: Colonel Suzuki's Burma Independence Army trailing in the wake of Japanese advances, moving into Victoria Point, Mergui, and Tavoy to establish control, swell its ranks with new recruits, and free the Japanese regulars to push on and rejoin the main force. Japan, recognizing air power would be decisive, shifted an air division from Manchuria to Thailand to strike Rangoon. On 23 December, 87 bombers with 34 fighter escorts hit Rangoon and nearby Mingaladon airfield—deliberately targeting the city itself rather than the docks or refineries, aiming to terrorize civilians and drive off laborers. With no shelters and crowds watching from the streets, casualties were heavy, triggering a mass exodus: Burmese fled to their villages, Indian dockworkers began the long trek toward India. A second, larger raid on Christmas Day (67 bombers, 32 fighters, 25 Oscars) pushed even more people to flee. Burma had no anti-aircraft guns and only weak air defenses—18 outdated Buffaloes and 21 AVG Tomahawks—but a functioning Observer Corps and one working radar gave enough warning to intercept both raids effectively. The defenders shot down ten bombers and five fighters while losing only ten aircraft themselves, an unexpectedly costly outcome for the Japanese. Reinforcement arrived from India on 31 December in the form of the 8th Heavy and 3rd Indian Light Anti-Aircraft Batteries—desperately needed, since the combined RAF and AVG squadrons had dwindled to just 29 aircraft against a Japanese force exceeding 150. On 4 January, defenders successfully turned back a raid of 21 Japanese fighters, and a lull settled in, broken only by occasional night nuisance raids. For the time being, Allied airmen had done the improbable: they'd made the Japanese think twice. It bought something invaluable—a window in which troopships could slip in and land reinforcements Burma desperately needed, unmolested from above. Hutton, newly arrived with Chief of Staff Brigadier 'Taffy' Davies, assessed Burma's defense problem in early January. The frontier with Thailand ran for hundreds of miles, but only a few routes crossed the Salween River: tracks from Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai in the north (long, hilly, and partly reduced to pack-animal trails), a forest road from Phitsanulok over the Dawna Range to Kawkareik and Rangoon, and a mule trail from Kanchanaburi through the Three Pagodas Pass to Moulmein. Rangoon was the linchpin—Burma's main city, port, and industrial center, and the gateway to the Burma Road supplying China (whose continued resistance tied down half of Japan's army). But that same road ran exposed along the frontier for 700 miles, vulnerable to being cut. Unable to defend everywhere, Hutton judged the main Japanese thrust would come through Raheng toward Rangoon, and committed accordingly: a light force in the north near Toungoo, relying on Chinese support; acceptance that Tenasserim in the south couldn't be held and should only be delayed; and the bulk of his effort directed at the Raheng approach. He ordered 16 Brigade to Kawkareik to cover it, and on 9 January, Major-General Smyth VC arrived to take command of the 17th Indian Division, moving forward to Moulmein to oversee both the 2nd Burma Brigade and the incoming 16 Brigade. 'Jackie' Smyth was a decorated and highly regarded Indian Army officer—a VC winner from World War One, later earning a Military Cross on the North-West Frontier, and one of the few chosen for the elite Staff College course at Camberley, where he became close with Lord Gort. That friendship paid off: when Gort became BEF Commander-in-Chief, Smyth got a frontline brigade command in France, serving through Dunkirk before Auchinleck brought him back to India with a promised division. He briefly commanded the 18th (later 19th) Indian Division before being tapped in January 1942 to lead the 17th Indian Division into Burma. At 48, Smyth had courage, training, and charisma—seemingly the ideal commander. But he was secretly unwell: a bout of malaria and a severe anal fissure that summer, plus dyspepsia symptoms possibly masking a mild heart attack. Reassured he'd recover, he'd accepted the 18th Division command; by the time Wavell offered him Burma, he felt sick again but assumed it was flu. Unable to turn down such a critical posting without appearing to lose his nerve, he said nothing and hoped for the best—then spent a week in bed recovering while his staff deployed to Burma ahead of him. On 16 January, the 46th Indian Infantry Brigade came ashore at Rangoon and was sent forward to the Bilin River, likewise placed under Smyth's command. He now had three infantry brigades at his disposal, along with three Sapper and Miner field companies—the 1st Burma, 24th Bombay, and 60th Madras. What he lacked was any field artillery worth the name: his only fire support came from the 5th and 12th Indian Mountain Batteries and a lone section of four Bofors guns from the 3rd Indian LAA Battery. And this modest force was expected to cover a stretch of frontier running from Mergui in the south to Papun in the north—some four hundred miles in all. Hutton's plan to redistribute his forces took time to unfold, made no easier by Japanese bombers, which repeatedly struck Martaban, Kyondo, and above all Moulmein during these weeks. Even without enemy interference, the logistics alone were formidable. A railway did connect Rangoon to Martaban, opposite Moulmein on the Salween's northern bank, but it ran on metre-gauge track, mostly single line, with painfully limited capacity. There was no through road at all, since the only bridge spanning the Sittang River belonged to the railway. A metalled road existed for much of the distance, but for fifteen miles on either side of the Sittang bridge, it dissolved into a dusty track, useless the moment rain fell. Most vehicles, as a result, had no choice but to travel by rail, while three ferries across the Sittang could shift only a limited number more. Further ferries were needed again at Martaban to cross the Salween estuary into Moulmein, and two more beyond that for anyone continuing on to Kawkareik—rickety country-boat crossings capable of moving roughly one vehicle an hour. It was, in short, a wholly inadequate lifeline for a force that depended on motor transport to fight. Since early December, the approach from Raheng had been watched over by the 4th Battalion, Burma Rifles, under Lieutenant-Colonel Abernethy—a battalion belonging to 2 Burma Brigade, whose headquarters sat some eighty miles away in Moulmein. The battalion held the tangle of tracks crossing the densely forested Dawna Range toward Kawkareik, a small town set back from the border itself. Malaria had already thinned its ranks to barely two-thirds strength. To reinforce this thin screen, Smyth ordered 16 Brigade, under Brigadier J.K. 'Jonah' Jones, forward to Kawkareik to relieve 4 Burif. But recognizing the value of 4 Burif's hard-won local knowledge—and wanting to speed the whole movement along—he instead kept the battalion in place under 16 Brigade's command, and shifted the 4th/12th Frontier Force Regiment across to 2 Burma Brigade in its stead. 16 Brigade was also tasked with covering the approach to Moulmein via the Three Pagodas Pass, eighty miles south of Kawkareik—a job handed to a company of the 1st/7th Gurkha Rifles. Meanwhile, a company of the 1st Royal Battalion, 9th Jat Regiment, was sent to escort a section of mountain guns moving by road to Kawkareik, though this group was recalled before covering much ground. As a result, neither the Jat company nor the Gurkha company would see action in the fighting soon to come at Kawkareik or Moulmein. With these arrangements settled, Smyth shifted his own headquarters back to Kyaikto, roughly midway between the Bilin and Sittang rivers. Between the 8th and 15th, 16 Brigade made its way by river steamer up the Gyaing to Kyondo, then onward by truck—of which there were few, this being essentially a marching brigade—along the long route via Metheraw to the Haungtharaw river ferry at Kya-in. While the British pieced together their defense, the Japanese were assembling their own machine with characteristic thoroughness. The Imperial Guards Division had crossed into Thailand from Cambodia back on 9 December, establishing a presence in Bangkok, and remained there until 55 Division arrived to take over—at which point the Guards, leaving behind a single battalion for internal security amid a string of anti-Japanese incidents, moved south to join the invasion of Malaya. 55 Division, tasked with spearheading the drive into Burma, moved its 112 Regiment (minus the battalion already committed at Tavoy) from Saigon to Bangkok by road and rail at the close of December. Alongside it, 143 Regiment—which had come ashore earlier across the Kra Isthmus beaches—rejoined the division with two of its three battalions, the third having been diverted to Victoria Point. On 28 December, an advance party—a platoon of infantry alongside a BIA contingent, led by the commanding officer of the 2nd/2nd Battalion—set off for Mae Sot, a Thai village hard against the Burmese border, to scout the crossing of the Dawna Range toward Kawkareik. The rest of 55 Division followed by rail to Phitsanulok, then by divisional transport to Raheng, roughly forty miles short of Mae Sot. The Raheng–Mae Sot route crossed jungle-covered hills via a footpath impassable to vehicles, forcing the Japanese to rely on horses, elephants, and oxen while troops manhandled heavy loads (even bicycles) over four grueling days. By mid-January the 112th Regiment had arrived at Mae Sot, followed by most of the 143rd and, by the 19th, 55 Division's headquarters. With BIA assistance, the Japanese scouted multiple crossing points beyond the main Miyawadi–Kawkareik road: the Kyawku pass to the north (via Nabu and Mepale) and the Kwingale pass to the south. General Takeuchi advanced mainly along the main road and the southern Kwingale route, sending only a patrol north. Specifically, 112th Regiment's 2nd Battalion took the main road while its 1st Battalion crossed further north at Yebu; the reconnaissance regiment pushed south through Palu and Kwingale toward Myohaung; and the 143rd Regiment stayed in reserve at Mae Sot. On the British side, Brigadier J.K. Jones, leading 16 Brigade, set up headquarters at milestone 22, north of Kawkareik, to prepare for the Japanese advance along the difficult 38-mile frontier road—a steep, jungle-choked climb that only leveled into open ground near Miyawadi. By 20 January, 4 Burif had two companies watching the northern tracks—one at Nabu, one between Mepale and Tichara—while its headquarters and a third company held milestone 18, and a fourth sat in reserve at 'Misty Hollow,' awaiting relief by a company of the 1st/7th Gurkhas. Misty Hollow was a small plateau where vehicles and mules could shelter off the road, roughly four miles from the crest of the range. The Gurkhas themselves had one company and battalion headquarters at the main position, milestone 36, with a second company positioned two miles short of Miyawadi and a platoon pushed into the village itself; their third company, after starting out toward Kwingale, was by the 20th en route to Misty Hollow. The Jats had a single company forward at the Kwingale pass, watching the southern approaches to Kawkareik, while headquarters and two more companies sat in reserve near the town. The lone company of Burma Sappers, meanwhile, was busy preparing demolitions along the road between milestones 38 and 49. Only 4 Burif had had any real time to learn the ground, but Brigade headquarters found unexpected help close at hand. Mr. Maurice Maybury, the British Sub-Divisional Officer of the Burma Civil Service at Kawkareik, proved invaluable, as did a local forest officer named Raymond Hall, who worked for the teak firm Steel Brothers and had lived for years at a forest bungalow near Mepale. Well known and deeply respected throughout the district, Hall's extensive local contacts had already made him a vital source of intelligence on cross-border activity since the war began; once 16 Brigade arrived, he was promptly recruited as the brigade's Intelligence Officer. Equally valuable was the Indian postmaster at Miyawadi—a man badly rattled by his exposed position in a village nearly emptied by Thai police gunfire across the river, yet who kept watch on the Mae Sot airfield regardless, telephoning word of every aircraft that arrived or departed. His reports gave early warning to both Kawkareik and Moulmein and helped the RAF land several effective strikes. With the brigade spread so thin across such difficult country, reliable communication was everything—and here the picture darkened. Neither Indian Army battalion carried wireless sets of its own, forcing divisional headquarters to detach a small Indian signal section to fill the gap. Even this equipment worked only sporadically, hampered by battery failures since there was just one charging set available. Cable had been laid between brigade headquarters and the two Indian battalions, but for a time, every unit along the road simply tapped directly into the telegraph line running from Miyawadi to Moulmein. It is not hard to imagine how isolated the forward company of Gurkhas near Miyawadi must have felt, facing what was already known to be a substantial and growing concentration of Japanese troops just across the river. Lieutenant-Colonel Abernethy, whose own 4 Burif had held that ground before them, had argued forcefully that pushing so far forward was militarily unwise. General Smyth overruled him, convinced that a visible military presence steadied local morale and kept the flow of intelligence from across the border alive. The first blow at the frontier came from the air. On 12 January, Japanese bombers struck Kyondo, sinking a steamer and wrecking the landing stage; the following day brought a raid on Sukhli and Misty Hollow. These raids soon became a near-daily ritual, climaxing in a heavy series of strikes on Sukhli on the 20th. Fortunately, the troops were well dug in and concealed, and casualties stayed surprisingly light. The real assault opened at 0500 on the 20th. The platoon holding Miyawadi was caught in darkness and overrun; the survivors fell back on their company two miles behind, which now bore the full weight of the attack. 'D' Company kept in touch with battalion headquarters until 0930, when the telephone line went dead. Their last message reported that they were surrounded and running low on ammunition. Colonel White, the battalion commander, set out with the brigade Intelligence Officer, a company of Gurkhas from Kwingale, and a platoon each from the Jats and 4 Burif to restore the situation. They collided with the advancing Japanese at the foot of the hills, and in the skirmish that followed took a string of casualties—among them Raymond Hall, killed in the fighting, a genuinely painful loss of a remarkable man. Colonel White himself went missing, and the relief force fell back to a covering position at Thingannyinaung. Brigadier Jones placed Abernethy in temporary command of both battalions until White reappeared that evening at Sukhli with the covering force. With no word from the Gurkha company near Miyawadi and fears mounting that it had been lost entirely, Jones ordered a general withdrawal to the main position at milestone 36 and told the Burma Sappers to blow every demolition between Thingannyinaung and Sukhli. He also shuffled his units—sending the two Burif companies forward to join the Gurkhas at milestone 36, while redirecting the Gurkha company at Thingannyinaung to milestone 18 under 4 Burif's command. Why he chose to intermix the battalions this way remains something of a puzzle. As it turned out, 'D' Company—under Captain Eric Holdaway—had not been lost at all. They held their ground for hours, and when relief clearly wasn't coming, Holdaway broke his company out of encirclement, abandoned their two trucks, and led his men north-west through the forest with their weapons and mules intact. In these opening clashes, the Japanese 2nd/2nd Battalion suffered 20 killed and roughly 50 wounded, and their advance grew markedly more cautious as a result. On the Palu-Kwingale track, the story unfolded very differently. A Jat patrol ran into the mounted infantry of the Japanese 55th Reconnaissance Regiment advancing from Palu, opened fire, claimed casualties, and withdrew by truck to report the contact. After dark, this Japanese battalion struck the Jat company holding Kwingale. In the chaos of a night attack, the company commander misjudged the situation and ordered his men to disperse back down the track toward Kawkareik—a serious blunder that tore open 16 Brigade's right flank. By dawn on the 21st, neither the main position at milestone 36 nor the 4 Burif company covering the north flank at Mepale had come under attack, yet the Japanese were now advancing freely along the southern flank. Brigadier Jones responded by pushing his two reserve Jat companies forward to cover the tracks emerging from the hills at Tadangu and Myohaung, and ordered the main demolition near milestone 37 blown at first light—duly carried out by Lieutenant Eustace Lord and his sappers, tearing away the roadbed where it crossed a rocky precipice. It was meant to cost the Japanese dearly in time. But without trucks to worry about, they could simply divert their pack animals around the gap, so the demolition, while a nuisance, only briefly slowed them. The night of the 20th and 21st was a wretched one for everyone involved. None of the troops in Burma had yet learned to handle night fighting in the forest, and rumors of Japanese infiltrators seemed to spring up everywhere at once. Nearly every unit spent the night firing wildly at shadows. Colonel Abernethy later remarked—pointedly not about his own Burmese troops—that the effect of the jungle on these young soldiers was striking: officers and men alike swore they saw the enemy moving through the trees, when it was nothing more than shifting light and shadow. There was no enemy anywhere near. The disorderly retreat ordered at Kwingale rattled the entire Jat battalion, and wild rumors spread unchecked. The battalion's own war diary admits bluntly that the commanding officer acted indecisively, and that this uncertainty rippled swiftly through the ranks. Jones, sensing that his reserve companies would not hold under serious pressure, had already advised Maybury, the Sub-Divisional Officer, shortly after midnight to evacuate civilians from Kawkareik and destroy anything of value to the enemy, and had asked him to arrange boats at Kyondo and bullock-carts on the far bank. Jones then reported the situation to 17 Division, and Smyth—who had never wanted to hold this far forward in the first place—secured Hutton's permission to pull back if 16 Brigade risked being cut off. Jones shifted his own headquarters to Hlaingwa, three miles west of Kawkareik, and moved his administrative units further back still, to milestone 7. That morning, a now-empty Kawkareik was pounded by a heavy air raid that destroyed the telephone exchange. Word soon arrived that the Jat company at Myohaung had run into the enemy and lost its commander. With the Japanese clearly continuing their push along the southern flank, Jones decided he could wait no longer. At 1800 hours on the 21st, exercising the discretion Smyth had granted him, he ordered a night withdrawal from the main position. The only road home to Moulmein crossed a wide river at Kya-in via a small, locally operated ferry that could carry just one vehicle at a time—an agonizingly slow bottleneck. Jones ordered non-essential kit jettisoned and surplus vehicles burned, a decision that, however sound tactically, did nothing to steady anyone's nerves. The convoy set off at 2000 hours for the ferry, ten miles distant. Then disaster struck: the first vehicle across, an overloaded ammunition truck, tried to drive off the ferry on the far bank before it was properly secured. The ferry tipped, filled with water, and sank—taking the truck with it and severing any further hope of moving vehicles across. The plan called for withdrawal to begin at midnight. The Jats would hold a lay-back position north of Kawkareik while trucks collected the troops marching down from the main position; 4 Burif and its attached Gurkha company would let the main force pass before falling in behind; a covering position would form at milestone 13, through which the Jats would eventually pass to establish a bridgehead at Kyondo. Abernethy sent a mounted runner ahead to redirect his two northern companies to rendezvous near Moulmein, at Zathabyin. The main body of Gurkhas and one Burif company withdrew down the main track without incident. But wild rumors—spread by police claiming the Japanese were already approaching Kawkareik from the south using poison gas—drove the Jat commanding officer, at 2200 hours, into ordering a chaotic withdrawal of his own battalion into the town, a panic sharpened further by ammunition trucks igniting prematurely and sounding uncannily like an attack. When the Gurkhas reached milestone 18 by vehicle, having marched the first ten miles on foot, they found no sign of the Jats or anyone else—communications had collapsed entirely, and neither the Brigadier nor his Brigade Major could be reached. The Gurkhas took charge of the supplies dumped there and, together with the sappers, set about destroying what equipment they could before driving on through Kawkareik to milestone 13. Around 0430 on the 22nd, the 4 Burif column sent its mules ahead and followed by truck. The Jats, by now back in Kawkareik and believing the last troops had already passed through, mistook the approaching mules for the enemy and opened fire. The mules stampeded back up the road and vanished into the forest, scattering their loads, while the fleeing drivers insisted to Abernethy that the enemy held the town. Though skeptical, Abernethy couldn't rule it out, so he turned his column around, withdrew a short distance, found no trace of any enemy, then burned his own trucks and led his men west across country toward Kyondo. Back in Kawkareik, meanwhile, the Jats were now convinced they were under attack and scrambled onto vehicles to flee. Their war diary records the episode with blunt honesty: "no clear picture can be painted of this [occasion] as it was nothing short of a panic." Brigadier Jones, having ordered the Gurkhas to hold the lay-back position at milestone 13 to cover the Jats' withdrawal, had gone forward himself with his Brigade Major to meet them—leaving his headquarters to fend for itself. In his absence, panic broke out there too, triggered by the sound of exploding ammunition in the burning trucks and the confused firefight with the mules. Convinced Kawkareik had fallen, the Staff Captain and most of Brigade HQ retreated in disorder to Kyondo, where they met the Sub-Divisional Officer, who had spent the day arranging transport and evacuating police and government staff. The Staff Captain telephoned Smyth in Moulmein with a badly garbled account, claiming the Japanese held Kawkareik and that the brigade—and its brigadier—were lost. Granted permission to withdraw, he pushed the administrative units on to Moulmein, destroying headquarters vehicles and wireless sets and throwing mortars and machine guns into the river as he went. The Sub-Divisional Officer, seeing his own carefully laid plans no longer needed, followed him out. By daylight, order finally returned. By midday on the 22nd, everyone except Abernethy's group had reached Kyondo, only to find the ferry there damaged by yet another air raid, with no sign of the Sub-Divisional Officer and no idea what arrangements, if any, remained in place. In the confusion, many mules were simply turned loose rather than swum across the river—an unfortunate choice, since mules were exactly what the Japanese needed most, having already lost heavily among their own horses on the brutal march to Mae Sot. Jemadar Jug Lal of the Jats managed to recover many of the machine guns and mortars that had been thrown into the river. Eventually the whole force crossed the Haungtharaw and marched south of the Gyaing to Kawbein, arriving on the evening of the 23rd, and by steamer reached Martaban early on the 24th. Abernethy, meanwhile, made his own way overland along the Gyaing's north bank, welcomed and fed by villagers along the route; one of his northern companies rejoined him at the Zathabyin rendezvous, and together they reached Martaban by boat on the 25th. The Japanese entered Kawkareik on the 23rd; the next day, five RAF Blenheims bombed the town but missed its most conspicuous building entirely—which happened to be housing the headquarters of 55 Division. It was a dispiriting way to open the campaign. The Japanese 55th Division had never before seen action, though many of its men and officers carried battle experience from elsewhere, and it was, in truth, not an especially powerful division—only four infantry battalions were engaged in this phase, each fielding three rifle companies rather than the standard four, as was typical of divisions raised in 1941. The terrain offered the defenders every advantage, if only they had been able to use it, and even the Japanese commander of the 112th Regiment had been shaken by the early resistance he met. And yet, of the entire brigade, only a single company of Gurkhas had actually fought the enemy in earnest. Hutton wanted Jones sacked, but Smyth refused, correctly judging the fault lay elsewhere—Jones later performed well and earned a DSO. The Jat commander, however, was replaced. Wavell's dispatch was blunt: the setback stemmed from poor local leadership, inadequate training, and in places a lack of fighting spirit, damaging morale on both sides. Kawkareik exposed a deeper problem: the troops' greatest weakness was psychological, not material. Inexperience bred anxiety, rumors of an unstoppable enemy fed panic, and few soldiers had learned to master the natural fear of dense, dark jungle—something the Japanese had already turned to their advantage. Ultimately, the failure traced back to a total lack of pre-war jungle warfare training, through no fault of 16 Brigade itself. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Japanese forces crossed jungle-choked hills toward Kawkareik, probing multiple passes as British defenders spread thin across the frontier. Panic, rumors, and communication failures triggered chaotic withdrawals, near friendly-fire incidents, and a botched ferry crossing. Though tactically avoidable, the collapse revealed untrained troops' psychological fragility more than any real Japanese superiority.
