End of the Road

The monsoon was coming and the jungle air was saturated with the all-pervading damp, and with a sense of disaster. On a winding, roller-coaster trail hurried a pitiful file of refugees, fleeing from destruction, despair and defeat. At the head of the line, setting the pace with a brisk 105 steps to the minute, trudged a slight, bespectacled old man wearing a World War I campaign hat. Malaria, cholera, the heat and exhaustion had plucked younger men from the line, but Uncle Joe, then 59, never faltered. He refused to ride one of the caravan's few mules: they were for the nurses and the wounded. Somehow the ragged line struggled through to the roadhead in India. The first, disastrous Burma campaign was ended.

Said the durable old man who had led the retreat: "I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. We ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it."

That was in May 1942, in the darkest hour of the war. General Joseph W. Stilwell had spoken bluntly and honestly; and he was determined to go back to that lost Burma.

Two years later a ribbon of road was slowly unwinding eastward from India. It was Stilwell's road back. His uniform was the same, except that now he wore a Chinese cap. He was always too close to the front to wear the stars of his rank. Once, as he passed a working party of U.S Negro engineer troops, one remarked: "Look at that poor old man. Some draft boards will do anything!"

No Time to Be III. In a theater where disease inflicted ten times as many casualties as the enemy, "Old Tu'key Neck," as he called himself, seemed immune. His liver was ailing, but he went on walking. He refused to be hospitalized: "I'm fighting a war and I can't spare the time."

Uncle Joe never spared himself either. Son of a Yonkers doctor-businessman, he had been an underweight (140-lb.) quarterback at West Point ('04), returned to the Academy after a tour in the Philippines to coach the cadets in French and Spanish. On the Western Front in 1918 Major Stilwell saw plenty of action as a G-2 staff officer. He scoffed at the Distinguished Service Medal he received, said that medals were for the combat infantrymen.

More than any other top-flight general in World War II, he was beloved by his troops. He was demanding, but fair: he saw to it that officers looked out for their men. He mixed with the common soldiers in the mud and they respected him. Besides being commander of all U.S. forces in China, Burma and India, he was Chiang Kai-shek's chief of staff and commander of all Chinese troops in Burma and India. He was on the same terms with the Chinese G.I. (he spoke efeven Chinese dialects) as with Americans.

Full of authority in a field command, he was no diplomat: he got lost in the jungles of Chinese and British high imperial policy. Chiang asked for his recall, and President Roosevelt consented.

After tours of duty in the Pentagon and the Pacific, he took over command of the Sixth Army with headquarters at San Francisco's Presidio. There last week death came to Joseph Warren Stilwell, 63, after an operation on the liver. A 17-gun salute was fired, the flag was hauled down to the accompaniment of ruffles and flourishes. Uncle Joe would have snorted at such solemn ceremonial. But just 24 hours before he died, he had got his dying wish: on orders of War Secretary Patterson, he received the Combat Infantryman Badge.

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