Rangoon on the Brink

General Thomas Hutton holds in his hands the fate of Rangoon, Burma's only major port and the strategic linchpin without which neither the armies of the subcontinent nor Chiang Kai-shek's China can be supplied. Since the Sittang front collapsed, Japanese columns have been swallowing miles every day, while British, Indian and Burmese defenders, nerves shredded, fall back in disorder. In the city itself, the civilian exodus and looting have paralysed the port districts; the docks are cluttered with stores that no one has yet had time to destroy.

Hutton weighs 3 options of unequal promise. Ordering a methodical evacuation, blowing up the refineries, depots and port facilities, then withdrawing northward to preserve a fighting army, would irreversibly sever the Burma Road. Holding Rangoon street by street and keeping the port open at all costs would maintain the logistical lifeline, but at the risk of encircling a garrison already exhausted. Launching a counter-attack to drive the Japanese back beyond the Sittang would appeal to headquarters in Delhi and Chongqing, but the units available lack artillery, armour and any offensive momentum.

Every hour that passes narrows the options. The demolition parties are standing by for orders; the last merchant vessels are still at the quays. Hutton knows that the decision he makes tonight will commit hundreds of thousands of fighting men and the fate of a supply route linking 2 theatres of war.