![]() ![]() ![]() “We, the Allies, had been outmaneuvered, outfought, and out-generaled,” he said. Slim was familiar with defeat and had no illusions about the wily, tenacious enemy who had captured most of the country. “They might look like scarecrows,” the general observed proudly, “but they looked like soldiers, too.” He had skillfully extricated them from near disaster in the steaming jungles of Lower Burma. Gaunt and exhausted, they nevertheless carried their arms and kept their ranks. The burly, bulldog-jawed “Bill” Slim anguished over the pitiable condition of his men. ![]() It was one of the longest and most disastrous withdrawals in the history of British arms. ![]() The two-division, 42,000-strong corps had lost 13,000 men killed, wounded, and missing, and it had only 28 field guns left out of 150, and 80 trucks and jeeps out of several hundred. They were the remnants of his 1st Burma Corps (Burcorps), ending a 900-mile retreat ahead of pursuing Japanese troops and a monsoon. Slim stood on the Imphal Plain, high in the Assam hills of northeastern India, and watched columns of tattered, malaria-ridden British, Indian, and Burmese soldiers straggle across the frontier from Burma. ![]()
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