The Stilwell Campaigns in Burma

General Joseph Stilwell was one of those exceptionally rare instances where a great man was the only one best suited for the worst job. He was, at one point, held in consideration for the post of Commander, North African and Europe Forces. It was a position that would later be filled by the remarkable Dwight Eisenhower himself, one of the most coveted positions in the entirety of military history. As commander for Allied forces in North Africa, Stilwell would have been logically promoted to the position of Commander of all Allied Forces, and from there it may even have come to pass that Stilwell may have become a candidate for the presidency itself, as Eisenhower would become.

In the nature of the Army, though, he was assigned to the place where he could do the most good for the Army. There may have been two men who could have commanded the African forces, but there was only one who could have handled China. And that man was Joe Stilwell. His unique combination of experience in China and indeed, his unique personality and skills made him ideally suited to leading the charge in the Burma-India theatre, so to speak.

What made the Burma-China campaign so unique in the history of commands was the fact that it was a completely insignificant and low-prority part of WWII, but still a line that absolutely had to be held, at all costs. If there was not a significant Allied military presence in China, then in all likelihood, Japanese forces would completely overrun the Chinese military and forcefully entrench themselves in the treacherous terrain of Southeast Asia. On several occasions, in fact, Japanse forces demonstrated this precise ability, annihilating an entire division and scattering her to the winds overnight.

"One of his armies, the thousand man Chinese 55th Division, vanished so completely under Japanese attack that they were never reconstituted again.
"There's no trace of it," Stilwell told Jack Belden of Life magazine as the two went in search of the Chinese Fifty-fifth. "It's the god-damndest thing I ever saw. Last night, I had a division. Tonight, there isn't any." (Webster 36)."

What makes the Indochinese theatre so fascinating, especially in the hands of Donovan Webster and Barbara Tuchman (two well-known authors of the Burma campaigns), are the people who are involved in the highest echelons of Allied command. Both authors paint highly unfavourable views of Chiang kai-Shek, for example, though if Webster's Chinese sources are accurate, then perhaps the history documented from Stilwell's notes is not far from the truth. He is regarded as a very arrogant, overpowering warmonger with no faith in the abilities of his own generals, or trust in them, for that manner.

Similar portraits are painted of General Chennault and his independent Air Force in Tuchman's book, though those views are likely heavily drawn from Stilwell's journals, rather than firsthand and factual accountings. Stilwell regarded Chennault as a glutton for fame- Chennault saw Stilwell as an overbearing patriarch with no sense of adventure.

General Stilwell was a practical, sensible general. He was not a man accustomed to flashy maneuvers, to being overly aggressive or timidly defensive. He saw what options were available, and took the most effective route possible in order to accomplish his objectives. More importantly, Stilwell was not afraid to state his mind when he deemed it necessary, or retreat from a course of action once he had decided upon it.

Two of the most famous instances of his absolute dedication to even seemingly impossible propositions cut directly through the Burmese jungle. The first of these was his march out of Burma, perhaps one of the most difficult forced marches conducted in the history of American warfare. In the jungle, pursued by Japanese troops, with a minimum of supplies and equipment, he simply walked out of one of the toughest areas in the world, because it was the only option available to him. And, again, he made the same difficult call a year later, when he ordered the construction of the Burmese road across the jungle. An immensely difficult, expensive, and time-consuming task, for certain, but one he stuck to, once the choice was made. This would become typical of Stilwell's style of command in Burma- he would aggressively pursue the course of action he selected, unless confronted with obstacles utterly insurmountable.

Of the most readily available sources, three in particular lend themselves to reasearches. Many modern historians derive their notes and histories from "The Stilwell Papers", Stilwell's personal notes and journal entries from the campaign. They are highly insightful and encompass virtually every day of Stilwell's command choices and decisions, from both the minutiae of staff leadership to the choices he made at the highest strategic levels. Though they cover a great deal of time chronogically, they -are- personal observations, and not held to any particular standard. Some entries are barely a sentence in length, others go on for several pages at a time, describing interactions with people all along the echelons of command. Though they can be very colorful and highly descriptive at times, they lack the detail necessary to be a useful stand-alone source of documentation on the Burmese theatre. Without a secondary reference handy to cross-check proper names and locations, they run together and become difficult to place in the historical and tactical context of the war itself.

In terms of providing the most unfiltered opinion of a commanding general, however, they are the most useful of resources available. Stilwell's journal entries are extraordinarily honest. He does not conceal his thoughts or feelings for the other leaders he works with, including both the President of the United States, General Chennault, General Slim, and Chiang Kai-Shek. Whether other historians agree with Stilwell's reasons or not, it remains that he held Chennault and Chiang in exceedingly low regard, and this greatly affected both his style of command and the way he managed the war. Perhaps if he had been able to maintain better relations with Chennault, Stilwell might have been able to use his Air Expeditionary Force more effectively in terms of his overall force projection plan, rather than allowing both the Generalissimo and the President to determine the use of Chennault's air force, and eventually giving him such a tremendous amount of free reign.

The Burma Road, Tuchman's analysis of the Burma campaign, was written in a slightly more stylized, perhaps entertainment- oriented style. It reads exceptionally smoothly, using very little in the way of technical vernacular or being caught up too far in the minutiae of military operations, as can occasionally happen during the course of writing. It makes a much stronger connection to the personal lives and relationships of the soldiers and characters involved in the Burmese Theatre, most especially Stilwell himself. Frequent mentions are made towards not only his character, but his relationships with other generals, with Chiang kai-Shek, and with the powers that be in America itself.

One of the most poignant lines in The Burma Road, which really illustrates the character of General Stilwell, follows the announcement of his newly assigned command.

"In an instant, Vinegar Joe Stilwell watched the most-desired field generalship in American History evaporate...In his promised job's stead, Stilwell was being offered an impossible command in the wettest, muddiest, most-unknown, most-disorganized, lowest-priority corner of World War II.
'Will you go?' Marshall asked.

'I'll go where I'm sent," Stillwell said." Webster (30)

Webster does an exceptional job of personalizing the characters in the Burmese theatre. Especially when he describes the interactions between Stilwell and the other key players, the reader gets a definite sense of the relationships that the highest echelons carried on with one another. This has a great deal to do with the manner in which Webster presents the dialogue, making it sound like direct conversations and cause-effect discussions, even though some decisions may have been determined following lengthy council, or weeks or even months after the fact.

Webster's documentation and his bibliography are extraordinarily thorough. Not only does he utilize Stilwell's journals, he goes a step furthur and analyzes portions of the campaign from the Chinese perspective, contacting historians Ge Shuya and Li Zhi Cai, Chinese military historians. Chung Cheh, the son of General Sun Li-Jen, and Richard Ming-Tong, Stilwell's aide-de-camp, also contributed to Webster's narrative. He recieved information from David Quaid and Bob Passani, two of Chennault's marauders and historians themselves.

Though she does dwell heavily on Stilwell's campaign, Barb Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience" tends to be far more wide-ranging that The Burma Road. Though it is primarily about Stilwell and his command experiences, Tuchman gives ample coverage to virtually every major and many lesser players, spending several chapters setting the story and the historical background in proper context for the reader. While this is highly informative and invaluable in a military text or history book, it does generate a tremendous amount of text and requires substantially more time to absorb, thus causing the reader to gloss over some potentially critical aspects.

Tuchman's text draws heavily on several dozen sources, ranging far and wide across the literary spectrum. Everything from The Stilwell Papers to Stilwell's Black Book to even DA publications. She uses numerous cross-references to confirm her sources, examining not only the actual history of the war itself but analyzing professional manuals, such as various books on engineering and professional officer developement, as well as sociocultural analysis on the Chinese and Japanese forces and their leadership.

Stilwell's campaign was that of a hardworking, un-extraordinary man whose greatest strength lay in the fact that he would do anything to accomplish the extraordinary. His great march out of the jungle, the Burma Road, dealing with Chiang Kai-Shek and managing Chennault's flyboy antics were hallmarks of his firm leadership style. He was the kind of leader that every soldier wanted in command- blunt, plain-spoken, and honest. He refused to back down and he stood firmly by his convictions. His most famous utterance may be at a press conference, following the first American rout that took us out of Burma.

"No retreat is voluntary," Stilwell once said, famously. "All retreats are ignomious as hell. We got our asses handed to us. I say we go back, find out what went wrong, and retake it [Burma]." This kind of short-spoken, blunt-natured style is what so endeared him to soldiers- the simple utter refusal to surrender to defeat. Stilwell was one of those rare men in a time of extraordinary soldiers who's simple work ethic and uncompromising spirit propelled him into the annals of Western military history, and endeared him to the men under his command.

Bibliography

Coakley, Robert and Jessup, John. A guide to the Study and Use of Military History. Center of Military History, US Army, 1982.

Gen. Stilwell, Joseph (USA, Ret.) The Stilwell Papers New York: William Sloan Associates, 1948.

Tuchman, Barbara. Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-45. New York: MacMillan, 1970.

Webster, Donovan. The Burma Road. New York: Farrar, 2003.