Singapore gave Malaya meaning; nearly everyone knew that Singapore was a great naval base. Burma had no Singapore. Burma was a strange place, with strange names, where Japanese invaded, British retreated, and young Americans flew gallantly in the alien sky. Last week, as the battle for Burma ran its course, it was still a remote, uncomprehended struggle to most of the world.
Burma is a land of three rivers: the long, motherly Irrawaddy in the west ; the tired, gentle Sittang in the center; the wild Salween in the east. They rise in the northern hills, where God lives. They all run southward, through Upper Burma to the rice fields of the south, and then into the Gulf of Martaban and the Bay of Bengal.
Who conquers Burma must win the rivers and their valleys. With them go Burma's chief port, Rangoon; the oil of Yanangyaung, on the Irrawaddy ; the ruby and silver mines; 85% of all the precious tungsten in the British Empire; Burma's rubber plantations; the inland cities—Pegu, Prome, Mandalay—where Burmese kings once ruled their separate realms, and the British were never quite at home.
Japanese strategy was first to seize the estuaries. The invaders drove from Siam into extreme Lower Burma, and then around the Gulf of Martaban to ruined, abandoned Rangoon.
After Rangoon, the battle for Burma was a struggle to keep the Japs in the south, at the river mouths. In the spring, the south is a grey, heat-beaten land, where only the rivers are cool and even the wide rice paddies gape with cracks in the baking earth. It is a time when prudent men, fools, even Englishmen stay out of the midday sun. But the Japs fought in the sun, and drove the British steadily up the Irrawaddy and Sittang valleys. Then the Chinese came down from the north.
The British and Indians concentrated on the Irrawaddy front. The Chinese took over the Sittang—and, later, when the Japs opened a flanking drive along the Salween in the east, that front as well.
By last week, the Chinese had pretty well taken over all three fronts. Like the British, they lacked air support and tanks ; they had to retreat. But one good thing had come out of the battle for Burma.
After long, bitter weeks of misunderstanding, Chungking reported that the Chinese had at last reached an understanding with Great Britain's General Sir Archibald Wavell. King George conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. The Chinese now feel free to send additional troops into Burma. There they fight under their own commanders, who are in turn responsible to Chiang Kai-shek's Chief of Staff, U.S. Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell.