Ironic and improper as this may sound given the circumstances and the subject of this piece, we would all do well to remember those that died in the earthquake yesterday, on the 11th.
Chapter 279
The 2nd Battle for Rangoon was to be very different from the last one. While there was rough parity in terms of overall numbers the Allies had an ace up their sleeves in the form of the 12th Indian Armoured Division and the fact that two battalions worth of veterans had been pulled out of the Indian Divisions in Europe and been fed into the units here. The merit of this action was controversial, as acclimatization and that the Japanese weren't even half as well equipped as an average German or even Soviet unit of comparable form and size made a lot of their experience useless.
However the presence of the 12th Division was seen as a game breaker for the Japanese. Three Independent Japanese Tank brigades and one Chinese Tank Brigade were there to counter the presence of the 12th which was something the Indians were looking forward to. They had been given their share of veterans, but the Division as a unit had yet to see action.
This was to change soon. The Monsoon season had already all but shut down the front, but General O'Conner and the 14th Army were determined to retake Rangoon before the window set by Field Marshal Auckinleck for operations in 1942 closed, not only because the harbour installations would make the resupply of the Allied Forces easier but also because citizens of the Empire were suffering under a Japanese Occupation Force that thanks to British Light and other Naval Forces found it increasingly hard to feed itself, let alone enemy civilians in the largest city of the region.
The situation of the Asiatic Pact troops in Rangoon was not a good one. Cut off from supply over the sea only the roads into Siam remained, and these were under constant attack by British partisans. Up in the north of Burman the remnants of the 12th and 42nd Route Armies were defending the approaches to the Burma road, even though General Ida, commander of the Japanese Forces suspected that this direction of withdrawal was not so much military necessity as an effort to keep out of reach of the so-called Free China Army while the Chinese Government tried to figure out what to do about this unit. Ida could for the live of him not see why any proud asiuan man willingly fought for the British, but that was none of his concern. The Free China Army was at this point little more than a single Infantry Division and a few Air Squadrons, but if the rumours (unknown to the general originating from British Leaflets and at least partially correct) were true then the British were busy recruiting more from the remnants of the units the 12th and 42nd had lost, and considering that both of them where somewhere near 60% strength, so that meant a lot of units.
General O'Connor was spending most of the 20th September in his forward command post, determined to move it into Rangoon before the month was out. He had four Divisions at his disposal of which two, the 14th Australian and the 26th Indian would be sent straight into the city, while the 12th Armoured, supported by the 82nd West African would circle around to the north, force their way across the river and cut the unfinished Burma Railroad and generally force the Japanese main Army to either withdraw into Siam by whatever means possible or retreat towards the Burma Road that was likely not going to survive long if that was the case. Either way, he would push the Japanese from Burma and prepare for an possible future attack into Siam itself. Possible and future because the Japanese and Chinese were likely to start feeding units into Siam and French Indochina if the forces in Burma failed to hold on. What would likely help to defeat any new attacks into Burma was that there were only so many roads in the area that could be used, and unlike last time the Allies had considerable air assets in the area.
However, both sides plans, such as they were, went completely astray the second the first Australian and British-Indian troops nosed their way into the outer western edges of Rangoon on the 21st.
The Japanese had the best part of four Divisions in the city itself, all of them Infantry with a detached Tank Regiment supporting them, and the Allies had failed to anticipate this. General O'Connor had decided to ignore reports to the effect that the Japanese Garrison was 'large and well-motivated' as they had not been confirmed by either SigInt or other sources in time to affect his planning, and any way, he was banking most on the encircling move to the north.
Sergeant Ranjid Sing was not looking forward to going into the city, the front in North Africa and later Italy had cured him of any remaining notion of glorious war, but like most of the other Veterans he had seen enough of the Fascists and Nazis to come to the conclusion that the British were offering an infinitely better deal, something that the Indian Army had set out to teach the Japanese the hard way. It seemed like far more than a mere two years since he had left the academy and a father who was probably still insisting that his son was acting above his station and would never bring it to anything.
At least the lads around him were accepting him for the uniform he wore and not who and what his father was. The Stens the company had been issued with in lieu of their rifles for the expected urban combat came out of a factory near his hometown, so it was more than likely one of his brothers had operated the machine that had stamped out the metal parts. The Captain was seconded from the British Army in India after being wounded at the North-West Frontier and..
“Lieutenant?” Ranjid said as he saw the man in question walk up to him through the knots of men that were strewn about along the road, waiting for the orders to attack. The new and fresh nature of the Division were indicated by the fact that Ranjid was the most senior NCO with two years of active service under his belt, but the combat experience he'd had against Italians, Germans and Soviets still but him leagues ahead of the men now expected to fight the Japanese. The Division was a hodgepodge unit if there ever was one, it seemed as if every major religion and ethnic group of the country was represented with a Regiment of its own, but so far everything seemed to work. Who was it that had said that nothing welded ethnicities and religions together like a common foe and fighting this foe side by side?
He shook his head and instead listened to what Captain William Lawford was saying.
Minutes later they were marching down the road past Cromwells and a few precious few Comets[1] that had their barrels aimed down the roads towards the first few houses, ready to support the Infantry if needed. Luckily the point of insertion the gods of war had graced C Company, 1st Battalion, The Bombay Infantry Regiment was one where the houses were only yards from the edge of the fields that surrounded the city, giving them good cover as they fanned out and began to crouch towards the houses. Sure enough, almost immediately after going to the ground Ranjid could hear the woodpecker sound of the Japanese machine guns and the popping sound of their rifles. As if this was not bad enough, the whine of incoming mortar rounds added to his misery, and within minute the advance stopped as the Company was taking cover in a drainage ditch at the edge of the field.
The tanks came down the road and began to fan out, taking pot shots at the houses where the Machine guns were shooting. Then the Japanese upped the ante by unmasking a battery's worth of Type 1 Anti-tank guns that began to fire at the tanks, but both the Cromwells and the Comets shrugged off the 47mm projectiles with ease. While the guns and the Tanks battled it out, the Infantry charged. Ranjid rose with the rest of them and charged the line of houses, grenades in hand and bullets whistling past his body. He used his teeth to remove the pin and lobbed it into a window that had a machine gun poking out. Japanese voices yelled in alarm seconds before the fuse ran out and the room was reduced to splinter of wood and mangled flesh.
Ranjid grinned in satisfaction at that and also because the remainder of the Platoon had closed up to him and soon the Lieutenant detailed the Squads that would begin to clear the houses on this side of the road. Ranjid gathered up his Squad and the battle for Rangoon began proper.
A Squad of the same Regiment a week before the battle. Note the SMLEs still issued to the BIA.
As the Sergeant he was the first one in. Procedure was normally to kick in the door, followed by grenades and then storming the room but friendly civilians were about, so they had been ordered to 'be careful'. So instead it was kicking in the door, taking cover, waiting for any eventual Japanese to react and then, if there were any, to let rip with the grenades. Here there were Japanese but the main room was too large for grenades. So when the explosions of six of them subsided, Ranjid peered around the edge and pulled his head back as bullets slammed into the wall.
“Whose turn is it?”
The men in question rose and ran into the room, firing from the hip as they went. The room was a long-ish storage room, actually part of what had once been a factory producing rubber next door, and the men leap-frogged past damaged, wrecked and abandoned machinery towards the back where a dozen Japanese soldiers were firing their rifles as fast as they would go. However the length of their rifles and the fact that the British troops were using Stens led to a massive disparity in fire power that favoured the side using automatics.
It still took them almost half an hour to fight their way across a hall no longer than half a football[2] field and it ended with Ranjid gut-shooting a Japanese Lieutenant who was about to try to use his Katana on him.
The Battle was not developing as expected. That the Japanese were fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground was nothing unexpected, but the Forces in the Far East had not yet seen anything on this scale, and unlike at Klagenfurt masses of friendly civilians prevented the large scale application of Artillery fire that had solved similar battles in Europe, so the city had to be cleared quarter by quarter, street by street, block by block, house by house, room by room. The Allied Forces in the Far East were learning urban combat as fast as their European counterparts. Losses were heavy and not only on the military side...
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Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes?
To be perfectly honest, the Battle of Rangoon was a snapshot decision I made while on a walk out one day. I had originally figured to have the Japanese pull out as per OTL, but realized that with the better part of four Divisions in the city this would be rather stupid, considering how the Japanese acted IOTL when significant forces were surrounded and/or cut off. Besides, this all is supposed to feed into what I have already firmly planned out and sometimes even established as Allied and British Grand Strategy and tactical deployments later and also much later in the war. Suffice it to say, the TTL Battle for South-East Asia will be considerably harder than the OTL one.
As for O'Connor, public perception of him outside of those more well informed than most people is that he was one of the great unknowns of the war. Most people don't even know that he, once out of captivity actually commanded forces in Western Europe, and merely regard him as the man who could have wrapped up North Africa earlier. It's hard to figure out how he would have fared in a position where he was supreme commander, and I think I went for an acceptable middle road here, even though I am probably still doing the man a massive disservice.
Anyway, the Battle of Manila is inspiring the Battle of Rangoon.
[1] Here acting as commander's vehicles.
[2] Proper, European footie of course.