Burma Turnabout

For more than a year the Allies had hacked through the Burma jungles, around the swamps, over the roadless mountains. There were innumerable difficulties. The Japanese could employ small forces in the constricted battle areas to hold back larger forces. For most of the year the enemy had held almost all the all-season roads.

Last week the results of long-range Allied strategy burst into full bloom. The little Allied drives, inching through meaningless territory, had turned into a coordinated, full-sized offensive. 'Its main plan: to cut up the Jap forces (some 50,000 men) in north-central Burma; to drive southward to the sea.

Diversion. Weeks before, the Japs had been drawn northward by two threats on Mandalay. The enemy rushed armor to meet those threats. Then, in daring and unorthodox thrusts, Lieut. General Sir William J. Slim got forces across the Irrawaddy river 80 miles south of Mandalay. With Jap strength stalled in the north, General Slim's tanks dashed 85 miles to Meiktila. In that area, in a five-day battle, his Britons and Gurkhas captured eight airfields and severed rail and road lines from Rangoon (TIME, March 12).

With Meiktila gone, Mandalay had lost military importance, but the Japs fought last week as though it were a Shinto shrine. In 130-degree heat, in swirls of white dust, dashing, diminutive (5 ft. 4 in.) General Thomas Wynford Rees led his turbaned Punjabis into the city from the north. From the west came another Allied force. Mandalay's defenders were trapped.

More trouble for the Japs developed elsewhere. Lieut. General Daniel I. Sultan's American-trained Chinese troops burst into Lashio, were in position to cut the Japs' routes of retreat.

At Meiktila British and U.S. airmen quickly put the airfields to their own uses. Tanks ranged over good roads to prevent reinforcements coming up from Rangoon. At Akyab, ruined as a port when the Japs fled nine weeks ago, Allied ships were unloading.

The Burma campaign had come a long way. There was still a long way to go, but the turnabout of war's fortunes appeared to be only beginning.

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