EPIC MARCH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 January 1943, Page 4

EPIC MARCH

CHINESE TROOPS FROM BURMA FRIGHTFUL CONDITIONS. RICE DROPPED FROM PLANES. The Chicago “Sun” carries a story from India of the arrival there of General Liao Tze-ping and his Chinese troops after a journey of three months and four days through the jungles of Burma—a march that will make military history, the message says. Attempting to push north into China last May, Liao’s path was cut off by the Japanese. He was forced to burn his trucks and order his men to start on foot towards India. About 1000 men died on the long march, and others were severely battered by a monsoon and the hardships of the jungle. Liao said the Chinese first attempted to withdraw into their own country from north-eastern Burma, but were trapped in the Lashio area, where the Japanese annihilated a division. From Lashio the remaining Chinese marched north-west through trackless jungles to Mansi, crossing the Mandalay-Myit-kyina railway and hitting the Chindwin River. Next their march carried them up river north to Singkaling Hkamti, and thence north-east to Taro. Following the Chindwin River road, Liao’s forces crossed ’to the north-west into India at Ledo, in Assam Province. The final leg of their journey took them to U.S. headquarters in India, probably southwest down the Brahmaputra railroad.

For seven days they never saw a clear piece of ground. For 20 days they did not see another human being. They marched through drowned forests, in quagmires that often rose 20 feet in one day.’ They had to climb almost vertical cliffs. Day after day it rained but the men floundered on.

At night they cut bamboo and put banana leaves on them, sleeping on piles of the bamboo poles. It was almost impossible to start fires on which to boil rice. Seme of the soldiers lived on dead mules. For about a week they were out of food altogether, until American planes

found them and dropped 400,000 pounds of rice. Leeches crept under their raincoats and made bloody splotches, which became infected and developed into sores. Many of the troops simply lay down and stayed where they were, for under such circumstances death seemed easy. But those who carried on through the unequalled experience of suffering acquired a discipline they never had before, Liao said. When the story was written the Chinese were recuperating under the treatment at the American Hospital by Major Clarence B. Warrensburgh, of Phoenix, Arizona, and Major Gordon S. Seagrave, of Granville, Ohio. Major Seagrave knows the hardships they went through at first hand, foi' he accompanied Lieut.-General Joseph W. Stilwell on his march out of Burma. As the Chinese troops recover, they are being given training by American officers and enlisted men of the Stilwell command, making them ready to fight their way back to China.