MARCH OF THE 400

This is the story of Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell's trip from Burma. It was cabled to TIME early this week by TIME'S Correspondent Jack Belden, who was with "Uncle Joe" Stilwell through the whole Burma campaign and the long march to India.

Marching at a dogged, fixed pace of 105 steps per minute, which became known to us as the "Stilwell Stride," the iron-haired, grim, skeleton-thin General walked into India with tommygun on shoulder at the head of a polyglot party of weary, hungry, sick American, British and Chinese Army officers, enlisted men, Burmese women nurses, Naga, Chin and Shan tribesmen and a devil's brew of Indian and Malayan mechanics, railwaymen, cooks, refugees, cipher clerks and mixed breeds of southern Asia.

Stilwell, showing no signs of wear except gradually thinning cheeks, led the untrained party of civilians and soldiers through the elephant trails and teakwood forests and jungles of northern Burma, across the Chindwin River over a 7,000-ft. pass into a cloud-enveloped land of head-hunting tribesmen to final safety in India, only a few days' march ahead of the Japanese, without losing a single member of the party.

The Chinese Army units under Stilwell's command were one day's march behind us when we crossed the Chindwin, but we have had no news of them since then. We have reason to believe that the greater portion of the Chinese Army, except the unit left in the hills of the Shan States at the time of the Jap drive toward Lashio, are safe.

For three exhausting weeks Stilwell led our undisciplined, untrained party through a maze of crisscrossing paths, alternately coaxing, urging, commanding them to hurry as we sought to escape the jaws of the gigantic Japanese encircling movement. On the second day of our trek our radio was destroyed and thereafter as far as information went we marched almost blindly.

Along the main northern roads in the ebb tide of British Empire our progress was blocked by a leaderless, directionless stream of helpless, pleading, praying, begging, cursing refugees seeking food and comfort and aid to reach India. At other times, at the orders of Stilwell, we plunged into the thickest jungles, striking across unknown trails where the only sounds were the screaming of hordes of unseen monkeys and the slitherings of the brightest green poisonous snakes. Alternately scorched by terrific heat under which several of our party faint ed, and drenched by tropical rains, our ranks were affected by dysentery, malaria, heat, exhaustion. Some had sores from infected blisters; others were suffering from lack of sleep. But all of us were safe.

Our inadequate rations were augmented by Karin Kachin, Burmese girl nurses who, under the direction of Major Gordon Seagrave, Burma-born mission doctor, picked berries and vegetables, made stews complementing the small rice diet. Our ofttimes drooping morale was also kept alive by these girls, all of whom were between the ages of 17 and 22, singing Christian hymns, ancient American jazz, as they marched barefoot downstream through heat-scorched thickets and over rocky trails toward India, always in higher spirits and better health than the male members of the party, to whom at the end of each day they gave medical treatment--piercing blisters, bandaging infections, soothing bruised spirits in as romantic a setting as Hollywood ever conceived.

Our major goal on this trip was the Chindwin River. We crossed it a few days ahead of the Japanese.

As practically all river transport around Shwebo had been sunk under orders, and as the railway was hopelessly jammed with refugees and later with some wounded and stranded, we formed a motor column composed of 14 jeeps, four sedans and about ten trucks, planning to go along by cart tracks as far as possible, then to walk. There was no other way.

Though the oldest man of the party, Stilwell, who is noted for his wiry toughness, stood the trip better than the youngest private and performed every task that any other member of the party performed. Against food scarcity, terrible heat, and rains, the General battled with dogged perseverance through the jungle at the rate of 14 or 15 miles daily until, at the end, he whipped the strange, polyglot mob into a disciplined force, willing to follow him anywhere.

Stilwell alternately performed the services of company commander, mess sergeant, gun-bearer and guide, bedding down beside us in the jungle, standing in line with us at food time, loading his sick on mules or improvised stretchers, coaxing others to march where they thought they couldn't until we arrived at safety.

Though we were ragged and weary, so thin that rings won't stay on our fingers, some of us with malaria, dysentery or infected feet, yet everyone was in comparatively good health for so arduous a trip.

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