Recalling Battles of WWII

As we draw farther and farther away in time from the titanic global struggle called World War II, the number of people with actual memories of events continues to diminish.

According to the Veteran’s Administration, an almost incredible total of 16,112,566 people served in the US Armed Forces in the War, of whom 291,557 were killed in action and 113,842 died of other causes (plus 670,846 wounded). That leaves according to my sometimes-shaky arithmetic 15,707,157 veterans alive on VJ Day, of whom as of mid-2011 something more than 2 million were still alive, with a median age of 88.

A sad sequel to great sacrifice is to have it more or less forgotten; think of the veterans of Korea, our ‘forgotten war.’ But even amid the colossal struggles of World War II, some have been unjustly neglected by many historians. Today’s excellent book The Burma Campaign, aptly subtitled “Disaster in Triumph, 1942-45, by the prominent military historian and biographer Frank McLynn, remedies this neglect.

The 1942-45 Burma Campaign cost the Good Guys some 27,000 fatalities, and the Japanese invaders 144,000. It included the terrible siege of Kohima, sometimes called “The Stalingrad of the East:” 65,000 fighting soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army crossed the Chindwin River in 1944, of whom 30,000 were killed and 23,000 wounded at Kohima, plus another 15,000 fatalities in their support staff.  Of this battle, the Allied ‘Supremo’ Lord Mountbatten wrote to his wife: "It is the most important defeat the Japs have even suffered in their military career because the numbers involved are so much greater than in any Pacific island operations.” Be honest, now: you’ve heard of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, but have you ever heard of Kohima?

McLynn’s historical approach works particularly well for this campaign; he decided to write “history from above” and “tell the story of the campaign through the biography of four larger than life personalities, indeed some of the most interesting characters to wear British or US uniform.” By far the best leader of the four was General Sir William Slim, a modest but brilliant strategist and tactician with a genuine gift for supporting and encouraging the people who fought for him.  He was a fine general and a wonderful human being.  Runner up for military talent, but somewhat deficient in the personality department, was US General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell: very talented, theatrically brave, and a rare senior Army officer who spoke fluent Chinese and knew a great deal about China, Stillwell was (unfortunately for an Allied leader) a violent Anglophobe who despised the Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, whom he usually called “Peanut,” a corrupt, not-too-bright autocrat who nevertheless had enormous political clout in Washington through the so-called China Lobby.

A taste of Stilwell - when his boss, and friend, General Marshall asked him to take on the Southeast Asia command, he demurred. Marshall demanded that Stilwell propose an alternative. Knowing that Marshall despised Lt. Gen. Hugh Drum as a “pompous, self-important and over-promoted nonentity,” Stilwell replied, “since Chiang was the original stuffed shirt, the best bet would be for the USA to send out its own biggest stuffed shirt.” Despite this, of course, Stilwell went.

Moving back to the British forces (and sharply down hill) we have two more characters. "Supremo” in the Southeast Asia Theatre was the handsome, rich, royally-connected Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, a favorite of Churchill but in my (and McLynn’s) view vastly overrated - an adroit player of the political game who moved on from shambles to fiasco (right through his disastrous term as British India’s last Viceroy right after the War) who always managed to stick someone else with the blame for his screw-ups.

Finally, there is Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate, quite possibly the oddest man ever to reach such a rank in the British Army. He is still something of a cult figure in Britain, and a genuine hero in Israel. Although raised in a stern, puritanical Christian  sect in England he became a passionate pro-Zionist when serving in Palestine in the 1930s, whether because of his Old Testament personality with abundant ‘smiting’ or out of his usual sheer contrariness, who knows? Wingate was slovenly, rude, disloyal to superiors except an adroit suck-up at the very top as with Churchill, and contemptuous of non-acolyte subordinates. He was quite possibly as mad as a hatter, surely bipolar and probably clinically insane. But in his lucid moments he had creative ideas about jungle fighting.

So it was under this mixed bag of leaders that this huge struggle took place.

This is fine history, well-written and absorbing.

Now for three items of local literary interest at the Greenwich Library:

Next Friday, Oct. 14th, at 7 PM in the Cole Auditorium at the Greenwich Library, in lieu of the usual Friday movie, the famous humorist Bill Bryson will read from his latest book At Home.

Next, on Saturday Oct. 22 at 1 PM, there will be a presentation featuring Ken MacDemotRole, author of Mark Twain vs. The Imperialists; a Republic not an Empire, who will narrate, Library staffer Richard Langeloh who will be the ‘interviewer’ and History Librarian Carl White will “play” Mark Twain. Two days later, on Monday, Oct. 24 at 7 pm Karen Jewell, author of , (reviewed in “Literary Lines on Aug. 26, 2011), will speak on that subject.  The latter two events will be held in the Meeting Room.