Chindits

Chindits, name given to Brigadier Wingate's ‘Long Range Penetration’ (LRP) groups who fought behind Japanese lines (see Map 19) during the Burma campaign while being supplied and supported from the air. It was a corruption of the Burmese word chinthe, the winged stone lions which guard Buddhist temples and which were used as the Chindits' insignia. The main principles of Chindit operations were surprise, mobility, and the employment of aircraft in the role of support artillery.

But Wingate's theories also countered Japanese tactics of cutting lines of communication by infiltration and then attacking from the rear. Since his groups were supplied totally by air, there were no lines of communication to cut and no rear to attack. Instead, it was the Japanese who would be infiltrated and whose communication and supply lines would be severed. To deal with such incursions the Japanese, in Wingate's phrase, would have to drop their fists by withdrawing front-line troops, thereby laying themselves open to a knock-out blow from conventional forces.

Long Range Penetration, therefore, was intended to be part of a co-ordinated strategy, not just an isolated incursion behind the Japanese lines. But when General Wavell, then C-in-C India, told Wingate that, apart from an attack towards Akyab in the Arakan, no offensive was possible, Wingate still urged that he should proceed. His argument was that the only way to convince the many sceptics of the feasibility of such operations was to undertake one. Wavell relented but gave Wingate specific tasks.

In forming his new force, 77th Infantry Brigade, Wingate had abandoned the conventional battalion formation. Instead he divided his units, which comprised the 13th Kings Liverpool Regiment, 3/2nd Gurkha Rifles, No. 142 Commando Company, and the 2nd Burma Rifles, into eight self-contained columns, each made up of four patrols of four sections. But to accomplish the tasks assigned to him by Wavell, Wingate divided his force into two groups for the operation (LONGCLOTH) which was launched in February 1943. One of them was to cut the railway south of Wuntho before it marched 400 km. (250 mi.) across Japanese- occupied northern Burma to rendezvous with the second group, under Wingate. This cut the railway further north near Nanken before crossing the Irrawaddy river. Both groups then combined to sever the Mandalay–Lashio railway, but the country was unsuitable for guerrilla warfare and hard fighting ensued. On 24 March 1943, after attempting to recross the Irrawaddy, Wingate ordered his columns to disperse and find their own way back to Burma. This took many weeks and out of the 3,000 troops involved only 2,182 returned. All had marched at least a thousand miles, some much more.

LONGCLOTH was evaluated as being of no strategic value; but after the war it emerged that it had at least encouraged the Japanese to believe, incorrectly, that they could apply the same principles when they launched their Imphal offensive in March 1944. Valueless or not it was a great morale booster and the British press seized on it as if it were a victory. Churchill had Wingate recalled and took him to the Quebec conference in August 1943 (see QUADRANT) where Wingate won over Roosevelt and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to his theories of ‘deep penetration’. He obtained not only the necessary backing to train a new force of Chindits, officially called Special Force, but liberal American aid in the form of a 3,000-strong LRP Group (see GALAHAD) and the Air Commando. But it was only the impending Japanese Imphal offensive, and not one undertaken by the Allies, that created the right military situation for Wingate's new operation (THURSDAY). As part of a deal to obtain co-operation, Wingate relinquished control of GALAHAD to Stilwell, whose Chinese forces began advancing into northern Burma from north-east India at the end of 1943. But his new force still comprised six brigades totalling 20,000 men which included the all-British 70th Division, 4/9th Gurkha Rifles, and troops from British West Africa. Each brigade was made up of four small battalions and each battalion was organized into two columns. Its immediate task was to attack from the rear the communications of the 18th Japanese Division to facilitate Stilwell's advance and to create a situation that might encourage Chiang Kai-shek's forces to advance from China into Burma. But Wingate's vision encompassed far more than that. He was convinced that, by committing his reserves, he could bring about the destruction of Mutaguchi's Fifteenth Army during its Imphal offensive by severing its supply lines.

The 1st Brigade entered Burma from India on foot in February 1944 to attack Indaw. The airlifting of the balance, in gliders, started on 5 March 1944, while the Air Commando, which carried out the airlift, also established, with RAF help, air superiority. A road/rail block (WHITE CITY) and two strongholds around airstrips (BROADWAY and ABERDEEN) were established and attacks on Japanese lines of communication began to draw off Japanese troops and aircraft which should have been taking part in the Imphal offensive.

Before his plans had time to bear fruit Wingate was killed in a plane crash on 24 March. He was succeeded by one of his brigade commanders, Walter Lentaigne, who was not a Wingate enthusiast and on 9 April the Chindits' role changed to supporting Stilwell under whose direct command they came on 17 May. The war they now fought was a conventional one, for which they were wholly unsuited. Stilwell, intent on capturing Myitkyina, kept them in the field much longer than originally planned without adequate supplies or air support (the Air Commando was disbanded on 1 May). Only 25 men out of one Chindit force of 1,350 Gurkha Rifles eventually remained fit to fight, while another force was withdrawn without orders by its brigadier to avoid it being wiped out. By the time the last Chindits were airlifted to India on 27 August casualties had amounted to 3,628 killed, wounded, or missing.

Although training commenced for a new Chindit offensive, Special Force was dissolved in February 1945.

Bibliography

Bidwell, S. , Chindit War (London, 1979). Carfrae, C. , Chindit Column (London, 1985). Fergusson, B. , Beyond the Chindwin (London, 1945).