Backsides Bare

In Mandalay last week a correspondent recalled a characteristic crack made by Lieut. General Joseph ("Uncle Joe") Stilwell, who now commands U.S. and Chinese forces in Burma. Said Uncle Joe: "The higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see of his backside." Uncle Joe said that many months ago. As the Jap climbed up the Burma pole last week, he saw much more of the Allies' backsides than they did of his.

The Chinese around Toungoo bore the brunt of the ground fighting, with no air support. The American Volunteer Group flyers and the R.A.F. could spare no planes to help them. Unmolested, heavy Jap air forces backed up the ground attack, bombed Toungoo six times in one day. The Jap sidestepped Toungoo to the west, then wheeled at right angles, took the airport north of the town and cut off the Chinese from the British. Surrounded on three sides, the Chinese fought for 60 desperate hours without rest. Then reinforcements arrived and they broke through to begin a retirement. According to the Chinese High Command in Chungking, the Jap used poison gas in his hurry to take Toungoo.

For fear of being flanked by another Jap cross-thrust, the British on the Irrawaddy River pulled back their lines toward Prome.

As the Jap moved north toward the oilfields and the mountain passes at the junction of the India-Burma-China border, he took with him a rabble of Burmese traitors, looters from the slums of Rangoon, red-brown Karen tribesmen who have brandished their sharp heavy dahs at the British, off & on, for more than a half-century. Between thrusts, the Jap rested in the zeyats which Burmese Buddhists build for the ease of travelers and of their own souls in the next world.

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