NOW OPENING UP

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 19, 23 July 1945, Page 5

NOW OPENING UP

FIRST BIG BATTLE OF WAR

RUGBY, July 21.

The first big stand-up, face-to-face battle of the whole war in Burma is opening up today with large-scale skirmishing round Zaha railway station 140 miles north of Rangoon, says a correspondent in Burma.'"Here the remainder of the Japanese army in this area have at last joined battle with the Allies.

"More than 3000 Japanese were last night observed concentrating in the jungles a few miles west of Toungoo and Pyu (15 miles south of Toungoo), in the Rangoon-Mandalay corridor. This morning 200 of the enemy launched frontal attacks on Indian infantry positions along the railway track at Saa, three miles south of Pyu. "More than 7000 Japanese may within the next few days make a desperate dash for the further bank of the Sittang River. This will be the signal for the first major action in Burma since the struggle for the approaches to Rangoon in the beginning of April, when 3500 Japanese were killed." The news from the battlefront is flashed from the British and Indian headquarters strung along 40 miles of closed road. "Asthmatic. Archie," the Rangoon-?yu supply train, has stopped running. The Tactical Air Force is operating a "cab rank" of fighters and fighterbombers. Convoys of transport aircraft skimmed the tree-tops for four hours this morning, flying through the steady blanket of monsoon rain. The whole country is waterlogged and boggy. The Allies in this battle are operating defensively for the first time since they went on the offensive in this theatre of war, but they are sitting astride the main Japanese escape routes.—B.O.W.