OFFENSIVE-MINDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1942, Page 4

OFFENSIVE-MINDED

BRITAIN’S INDIAN ARMY SPECIAL TRAINING. OPERATIONS ON BURMA BORDER. SOMEWHERE IN ASSAM, Dec. 7. The armies sitting on the Assam mountain-tops waiting to invade Burma are as “offensive-minded” as their comrades in Northern Africa, the Western Desert, or the Russian fronts, writes H. A. Standish, correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.” Long months of special training have familiarised the men with the jungle, and now they know how to 'make allies of the trees and dense masses of jungle vegetation, which at first seemed to be frightening enemies holding them back at every step. These troops are lucky in their senior commanding officers, all of whom know one another so well that each can make more than a good guess on how a colleague will react in any circumstances.

These generals have never been caught in the comfortable toils of Blimpery. The lead is given by the corps commander, a lieutenant-gen-eral, who insists that every officer and n.c.o. should use his brains and ask questions until there is a thorough understanding between him and his seniors, and complete plans have been worked out for every move. This commander is a vivid example of how the army has outgrown the days when it was' a military virtue to accept orders unthinkingly and unquestioningly. He says: “I was always a turbulent child myself, and that is the sort of junior leader we want.” He tells them: “When you are ordered, for instance, to hold a certain bridge, you are quite entitled Io ask: ‘Yes and so what? What shall I do, then, if such or such happens?’ Get a full understanding of plans from your commanding officer, and if he is vague, force him to make clear-cqt plans, providing as far as possible for every contingency. Half the trouble in battle comes from woolly and vague orders.” OFFICERS AND MEN. I have seen these generals around with their men, talking with them, trying on their equipment, and saying, “Come on,” not “Go on.” . I shall always remember the almost wild-eyed military fanaticism of a long, lean staff officer, carrying a rifle and wearing a tin-hat as he scrambled untiringly around hillside camps. This human dynamo is a product of Eton. It is hard to imagine how a polite and top-hatted public school boy has developed into this man of taut whipcord, both mentally and physically, bending every ounce of energy to the task of beating the Japanese. I shall remember, too, how a general led me on a wild scramble up a 700 ft hill at a killing pace to point out troop dispositions and rushed off down the steep tracks as sure-footed as his own Ghurka troops before I had time to recover breath.

Then, there were the brigadier and the colonel, who tramped for miles demonstrating ingenious booby-traps which the troops had been taught to make from local materials. A trip over the tendril of a tough jungle creeper across the path exploded a deadly mine. At another point the pathway was completely undermined by a deep pit fitted with bamboo stakes needle-sharp, which the Burmese call pangyis. There were local variants of all sorts of well-tried commando tricks—loose equipment which when picked up fired a mine, steps cut in the earth to tread on which meant death. “You can write about these as much as you like,” the brigadier said. “The enemy knows about them in theory, but what keeps Ijim guessing is that he never knows where he will find them and what, form they will take.”

We saw sappers felling heavy trees in seconds with explosive to form roadblocks, and troops, wearing gasmasks, charging uphill with weapons firing a devastating blitz which experience has shown Japanese can never withstand. It was a terrific demonstration of stamina and training. Assam Army officers and men should be tough. LEGS AND LAUGHS. The troops on the Burma border may argue about the respective merits of Hedy Lamarr or Greer Garson, but they are unanimous on the subject of May Carter. May is the leading and the only lady of the one and only concert party to penetrate this maze of mountain and jungle. She is young, tall, and pretty, with a mop of close curls, and she is madly keen about this war job which she has undertaken since coming from, London, where she was training for a song-and-dance stage career. When I met her she was telling the Army, in the person of a senior officer, what she thought of it, because all the concert party’s equipment and costumes had gone astray. But this did not stop her ’from giving a> cheerful improvised show a few minutes later on a stage made from the flattened top of a large anthill with truck headlights instead of spot and foot lights. “Our policy is legs and laughs,” May explained. Several of the men performers are-well-known English music hall comedians and broadcasters.

The roars of laughter that floated out over occupied Burma would have convinced any conscientious Japanese or Japanese agent that the English are, indeed, mad.