Marauders to Mars

In northern Burma the Japanese were all but washed up. There was no continuous front--there could be none across the forbidding north-south ridges. But between the ridges, four Allied armies were probing southward like the fingers of a hand; another, like an opposed thumb, was flexing southwestward from China's Yunnan Province. The enemy was fighting only rearguard actions. Obviously he was falling back upon his supply bases in central Burma.

Last week the first finger of the Allied hand jabbed deepest into the softening Japanese defenses. At its tip were jungle-wise troops of the Chinese 22nd Division under General Lee Tao, who had marched and fought 210 miles through roadless terrain in two months; and U.S. troops seasoned with veterans of Merrill's Marauders, now gathered in an outfit ominously named Mars Task Force. Commanding it was Brigadier General John P. Willey, who had conquered Myitkyina.

At Bhamo (bypassed by the Mars Force), a Japanese suicide garrison had had enough after 28 days of siege by the Chinese 38th Division. Last week it was annihilated in an attempt at a breakout. Lieut. General Daniel I. Sultan, theater commander, tramped through the smoldering ruins of Bhamo's teakwood fortress, called it one of the strongest Jap positions in north Burma.

Other fingers of the Allied hand probed directly toward Mandalay. The British resumed their two-year-old drive on Akyab through Arakan, made faster progress. The stagnation in Burma was ended.

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