'The Japanese as an Opponent'

An excerpt from Bernard Fergusson's account of fighting with the Chindits behind the lines in Burma

Men and mules of Brigadier Bernard Fergusson's 21 Column, Wingate Expedition, fording a river, Burma, 1 May 1944.

Bernard Fergusson fought in both Chindit campaigns - the deep penetration raids into the jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma in 1943 and 1944. He wrote two memoirs of his experiences. Beyond the Chindwin describes his part in the 1943 expedition. The Battle for Burma - The Wild Green Earth describes the 1944 expedition in which Fergusson led the 16th Infantry Brigade on a long exhausting trek from Ledo in India into Burma (the only Brigade not to be flown in). They established a base in the Japanese rear from which they maintained disruptive operations for five months.

The Wild Green Earth also contains a long section of general observations about the nature of Chindit operations, how they were fed and supplied, how they lived in the jungle, their tactics and more. The following excerpt is an observation on the Japanese as an enemy:

Brigadier Fergusson was 32 when he led the 16th Infantry Brigade into Burma in 1944.

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Victory was not due to any innate superiority of the Allied soldier over the Japanese. The victory in Burma was doubtless won partly by good generalship and partly by good fighting; but it was contributed to largely by the unguarded and immoderate confidence of the Jap, who thought he could safely rely on captured British supplies, and so largely dispense with lines of communi­cation. Thus he destroyed his own army; and thus the same confidence which had brought him strings of victories in the past led him at last to irretrievable disaster.

I am not competent to discuss his generalship, but only his characteristics as an individual fighting man - although I fancy . that these characteristics, with their corresponding shortcomings, are mirrored in his generalship. As a fighting man he has two outstanding qualities: his courage and his quickness. He has shortcomings: his gullibility, for instance, and his close adher­ence to the book of the words.

From the earliest days, there were plenty of commanders who refused to be hypnotised by the Jap’s apparent mastery of the art of war, and who set themselves resolutely to find the chinks in his armour, even in the depressing circumstances of retreat. On the battalion commander’s level, there were such men as Ian Stewart of Achnacone, who commanded the Argylls in Malaya, and Joe Lentaigne, who commanded a battalion of Gurkhas in Burma, and who was afterwards to raise a second Brigade of Chindits, while Wingate’s First Expedition was still “in,” and finally to succeed Wingate himself as Commander, Special Force.

In those days, the Japs had learned how dependent we were on our com­munications ; and, with marked success, they set to work to cut them, or to appear to cut them, on all occasions. It fell to Orde Wingate to deduce, and exploit, their own sensitiveness about a threat to their rear.

To treat first of his virtues, his courage is not seriously in dispute. There are plenty of methods of breaking it down. He is as sensitive as anybody else to heavy concentrations of fire before he is dug in, to the use of flame, to major bombing. But he assaults well in offence, he stands his ground well in defence, and he fights superbly as an individual.

In this last respect he compares favourably with any rival. Few soldiers can be found in other races who are prepared to fight alone and unsupported, to die anonymously and unseen by their comrades, to spit out their last breath without an eyewitness to carry back the news of how they died. Most fighting men have a secret dread of being “ missing.” They will die almost willingly at the head of their men, or among their comrades, so long as somebody is there who will know what has happened, or what has probably happened. Even the R.A.F. pilot can be sure that his family will know at least on what sortie he was killed. But your jungle fighter who is overrun in his foxhole, or who gets a chance to sell his life profitably but dearly while on a lone patrol, minds most of all the knowledge that he will be missing, and that vain hopes for his return will linger on for maybe years to come.

Yet the Jap will tie himself into a tree so that his riddled body can stay there long after it has lost the physical power to do so of its own volition. He will creep into an enemy bivouac and open up with his rifle, getting off as many rounds as he can before he is shot down, and making no attempt to get away. With tiny patrols he will insinuate himself into a strong position and sell his life dearly. And he will fight until he has no more breath in his body.

Many a casualty has been caused by a “dead” Jap. I should have been one myself, had it not been for the vigilance of my batman, who saw him start up on an elbow and point his rifle at my back from three or four yards away. The Jap takes as much killing as a conger-eel, and is every bit as slippery. (Bill Smyly, however, was equally slippery once, when he shammed dead among some dead Gurkhas near Hopin; he had some dead Japs to show for it, too.) But I will not have the Jap called “ cunning.” The “cunning Jap” belongs to the Green Hell School, which teaches the doctrines of “The Forgotten Army,” “Burma, Land of Snakes,” and “How to Live on the Country, in Six Easy Lessons.”

The other virtue in which I willingly award the Jap soldier ten marks out of a possible ten is in his speed. If the head of your column should bump into him, you may expect a flank attack to develop in roughly half the time that you reckon it ought to take him. He travels light,burdened only by his rifle,his bandolier and a small haversack; he is usually small, and always lithe and nimble.

His courage and his speed, then, are his two principal virtues; and I will accord him four supplementary ones. He digs fast, well, and as if by instinct; he is underground before the British soldier has finished spitting on his hands and getting his coat off.

His engineers are good, with the barest minimum of equipment, or more often with none at all. They achieve their results by a ruthless exploitation of native labour, which they handle with skilful cruelty.

His camouflage is excellent. I have flown over his positions at treetop height without seeing a thing. This experience was most vivid in Arakan, where the British works and camps were prominent everywhere, and where the Jap-held areas showed no signs whatever of being occupied. (The enemy’s air effort was negligible, and attempts to hide the British work would have been a gross waste of time.)

Lastly, he has a grand eye for ground. This manifests itself not only in his choice of defensive positions, but also in minor respects, such as the fashion in which a patrol settles down for the night. Its men explore all neighbouring tracks and short cuts, so that if they have to clear out or fight an action during the night, all ranks are familiar with the topography.

The foregoing catalogue of the fighting qualities of the Japanese may seem grudging; but when you come to consider it, they comprise no mean mental equipment for a soldier. His courage, particularly, is of such a high order that it outweighs many other defects; and even his stupidity is in some sense an advantage to him, or to his superior commanders.

Certainly no Jap commander in Burma lost a battle through over-caution, or through lack of drive; whereas his dash and his promptitude in exploring a suddenly developing situation has imposed excessive caution on many a commander opposed to him.

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General Orde Wingate, mastermind behind the Chindit operations. He died in an air crash midway through the 1944 operation.

Orde Wingate had three sound slogans for fighting the Japanese which stood the test of time.

“ Don’t be Predictable.”

“When in Doubt, Don’t Shoot.”

“The Answer to Noise is Silence.”

Predictability was a Jap sin, and it was sheer gain to us. Our­ selves, we went to great lengths to observe this basic Wingate law. Only once was it badly broken, and from that breach sprang all our troubles in 1943- Our whole Force, less certain columns outside the ring, allowed itself to linger in the great loop formed by the Shweli and Irrawaddy Rivers, long enough for the Japs to become aware of it. They knew that we must break out, and lined the rivers to prevent our doing so. We had excuses in plenty, but the Law knows no excuses, and that particular law is fundamental. We never offended again. “ When in Doubt, Don’t Shoot.”

I believe that in New Guinea the Australians followed a different teaching, and continued to believe in it. I have heard, for instance, that, once bivouacked for the night, they forbade all movement outside the perimeter, and brought down a heavy fire without question if such movement were heard. I prefer the Wingate teaching; the other leads to trigger-happiness and jumpiness and mutual slaughter. We never forbade movement outside the perimeter; although anybody going out had to be properly cleared before doing so. Certainly, if this slogan had not been learned and taught ad nauseam we should have had a lot of unnecessary firing. As it was, men repeated it in moments of stress, and it induced self-control and self-confidence of a high order.

The same applies to the last slogan, “ The Answer to Noise is Silence.”

The Jap relies on noise. He shrieks when he goes into action; he fires shots at random when he thinks he is on to something suspicious. If he is answered by noise, he knows the most of what he wants to know: that somebody is there; whereabouts he is and his approximate strength. All this knowledge he has won for the price of a few rounds.

If, on the other hand, he gets no answering cry or shot, he is either falsely reassured or thoroughly discomfited; if the latter, he has lost the moral initiative, and the seeds of nervousness are sown in him. And again, he who answers with silence knows that he has given nothing away, and feels himself to be a Strong, as well as a Silent, Man.

For the worst thing that can befall the commander of a small force in a jungle encounter is the loss of control. When indiscriminate shooting starts, you have begun to lose control; from there it is only a small step to losing moral and physical control of your force. When that disintegrates you are sunk; and soon you will be fighting other elements of your own men.

© Bernard Fergusson 1946 and 2015, 'The Wild Green Earth'. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Swords Publishers Ltd

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