In January of 1942 they struck by land from Siam and advanced with strategic caution and tactical brio. Hastily the Allies—stodgy Britain, stunned America (it was only a month after Pearl Harbor) and feudal China—improvised a defense. This was necessarily a limited defense. British generals believed in war but not in combat. Americans were thin on the ground and inexperienced. The Chinese (whom the British, with perhaps justifiable reluctance, finally deigned to admit to the “defense” of the Shan States) believed that when you had trained and equipped a good division you should not erode it in battle. (“The Fifth Army,” said a Chinese general to a British general, “is our best army because it is the only one which has any field guns, and I cannot afford to risk those guns. If I lose them the Fifth Army will no longer be our best.”) At first the Allied line ran north-south, and the Japanese thrust westward across Burma’s southern panhandle. The Japanese then consolidated, struck for Rangoon and fanned northward; the Allied line pivoted to run east-west.
