From June through October, the monsoon season brought heavy rainfall that turned these rivers into torrents and made roads and trails a quagmire. Within Burma, the ranges extended north to south with steep-sided valleys where deep, swift rivers carved their way to swampy deltas and alluvial coastal plains in the south. Mountain ranges of over 10,000 feet edged the country in a crescent moon, isolating it from India and China. Dense, malarial jungle and impenetrable elephant grass dominated the landscape. In his stirring account of the Burma campaign, Field Marshal Viscount William Slim described Burma as “some of the world’s worst country, breeding the world’s worst diseases, and having for half the year at least the world’s worst climate.” 2 Natural barriers prohibited access to Burma, except by sea and mountain passes. Scouting detachment of armed Burmese patriot fighters, accompanied by two American Soldiers, cautiously wades through jungle stream in Northern Burma, circa 1944 (Chronicle/Alamy) The Campaignġ942–1943. Finally, implications for future joint force operational design in the Indo-Pacific derive from these inferences, indicating lessons contemporary joint force commanders and staffs can learn from the Burma campaign. Second, inferences are drawn from the historical narrative applied to modern warfare. First, a historical narrative of the Burma campaign highlights the struggles of 1942–1943, then details the second Arakan operation, the second Chindit operation, the battle of Imphal-Kohima, and the final Allied operation to retake Burma. This article is organized into three parts. Despite the passage of time, the Burma campaign provides penetrating insights into how the joint force may prevail in a contemporary conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. Joint force leaders must actively practice operational art and continually adapt these designs to recover quickly from losses and capitalize on success. Future Indo-Pacific battlefields require operational designs that stress proficiency over mass and firepower, emphasize maneuver and sustainment in contested environments, and leverage allies and partners against monolithic opponents. These inferences lead to implications for joint force operational design.
The interaction of technology, readiness, and tactical concepts in Burma provides inferences for the contemporary relationships among these factors.
These stories offer poignant lessons for the U.S. 1 They tell stories of overcoming catastrophe to reach triumph, replete with leadership failures and successes, innovations in warfare and operational art, and astonishing endurance and courage. The few accounts that exist describe this “forgotten war” as one of the most remote, demanding, lengthy, and heroic struggles of the war. The literature, personal accounts, and films documenting World War II over the past 80 years have generally overlooked a pivotal chapter of that conflict: the 1942–1945 Burma campaign. When you go home, Tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, We gave our today. Army barge, powered by outboard motors, crosses Irrawaddy River near Tigyiang, Burma, with Soldiers, ammunition, and truck, Decem(U.S.
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