ABSTRACT
The 14th Army was justifiably immensely proud of its achievements by late June 1944. A combination of inspired leadership, new fighting methods, greater availability of modern arms, equipment and ammunition and lastly a radical overhaul of training in India Command and 14th Army had paid enormous dividends. British Commonwealth officers and men had demolished the myth of Japanese invincibility and shown they were capable of operating deep in the jungle, which was no longer a source of unreasoning fear to troops now highly trained and psychologically and physically accustomed to live, move and fight within its confines. 1 As Slim proudly wrote on 3rd June 1944: ‘We have proved to our own satisfaction and to the discomfiture of the Jap. that, man for man, the British. Indian and Gurkha soldier is more than a match for him. We have inflicted the first defeats that the Jap has ever suffered at the hands of a British Force.’ 2 In large part victory was attributable to Slim’s deliberate policy of fighting on ground of his choosing where at last the quantitative and qualitative superiority of British artillery, tanks and aircraft was exploited with deadly effect in some of the bloodiest, bitterest attritional fighting of the Second World War. 3 Exploiting air supply and transportation had also featured in his planning. The vast number of Japanese dead, destroyed vehicles and abandoned guns left littering the battlefield provided graphic testimony to Fifteenth Army’s massive defeat. In Slim’s own words:
I think we can say that we really have beaten the pants off the little yellow beasts. We have picked up 50.000 dead and there are a good many more than that, and we have got most of the guns, tanks and M.T. they brought with them. We have also got 600 prisoners, which doesn’t sound a lot to you chaps but is the most anybody has ever taken of the Jap. The little swine still fights till you kill him, and that of course is what makes fighting him so difficult, plus the country and the climate. 4
In itself capturing half-starved Japanese prisoners acted as a massive fillip to morale. 5 A report prepared by the HQ of 2nd Division in mid-1944 concluded: ‘By far the greatest weapon which had held by the Division, is a universal feeling, now prevalent, that the British soldier can, will and always does, beat the Jap.’ 6