World Battlefronts: On the Plains of Hukawng

It will be months—perhaps many months—before Lord Louis Mountbatten's forces strike in strength. But, on the Burma borders, Allied power is already manifest. In the north, an Allied push clawed forward on schedule. Columns of crack Chinese troops in three weeks had advanced 50 miles, were at the southern tip of the 50-mile-long Hukawng Valley (see map). In the Chin hills to the south and west, where opium-smoking tribes men are still loyal, the British claimed the west bank of the Chindwin. The campaign has a limited but sharply important objective: to pry a...