Battle of Yenangyaung

• 1. Introduction

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  In Chinese, the Battle of Yenangyaung carries a second name: the Great Victory at Yenangyaung. That title signals, from the outset, whose soldiers turned the situation around. The battle lasted from the 16th to the 19th of April 1942, fought in the interior of Burma. On the first day, almost 7,000 British soldiers, along with 500 prisoners and civilians, were completely encircled by Japanese troops. Who broke that ring, and how a relief column managed to reach them, unfolds across four days of fighting that stretched every alliance involved.

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• 2. A Corridor Under Siege

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  The Japanese 55th Division crossed into Burma on the 22nd of December 1941, beginning an advance that reshaped the region within months. By March 1942, Rangoon had fallen. Allied commanders reorganized around a new formation called the Burma Corps. It consisted of British, Indian, and locally raised Burmese troops, commanded by Lieutenant General William Slim. The Corps aimed to hold the Irrawaddy River valley. The Chinese Expeditionary Force in Burma protected the Sittaung River valley to the east.

  After capturing Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, Japanese commanders freed up divisions that had been committed elsewhere. They also seized captured trucks to reinforce their Burma force. One specific objective in the Irrawaddy valley emerged: the oil fields at Yenangyaung. Fighting for those fields began on the 10th of April.

  Japanese forces attacked the 1st Burma Division on the Allied right flank. They also struck the 48th Indian Infantry Brigade at Kokkogwa during a nighttime storm, but casualties halted that thrust. The 2nd Royal Tank Regiment found itself engaged near Magwe, at Thadodan and Alebo. From the 13th to the 17th of April, British forces fell back under sustained Japanese pressure. Repeated Japanese roadblocks divided the retreating Allies into three separate groups. The Burma Frontier Force, the 1st Burma Division, the 7th Armoured Brigade headquarters, and the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment each found themselves isolated in turn.

  On the 15th of April, Lieutenant General Slim ordered the oil fields and refinery demolished. General Harold Alexander commanded the Burma Army and turned to Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell for help. Stilwell was both the American commander of the China Burma India Theater and Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek. He was asked to move the New 38th Division to Yenangyaung immediately. Sun Liren commanded that division and was already preparing to act. What he would actually be permitted to bring was another question entirely.

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• 3. A Command Divided

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  The IJA 33rd Division had advanced through a gap in Allied lines. It pushed between the British 17th Division at Taungdwingyi and the 1st Burma Division to the south, completing the encirclement. Lieutenant General Slim recognized that the Burma Corps itself risked being trapped alongside the surrounded forces. He called on Sun Liren's New 38th Division for relief.

  General Sun requested permission to lead his entire division into the rescue effort. General Luo Zhuoying, commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force in Burma, refused. On the 17th of April, Sun led the 113th Regiment instead: 1,121 men in total, of whom 800 were combat personnel.

  The 113th Regiment carried no artillery and no tanks of its own. Lieutenant General Slim addressed that gap directly. He assigned the 7th Armoured Brigade to General Sun for the operation. Brigadier John Anstice commanded the brigade, which brought two regiments of M3 Stuart light tanks and a battery of 25-pounder guns.

  The 113th Regiment set out toward Yenangyaung on the 17th of April into conditions that no advance intelligence had prepared it for.

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• 4. Breaking the Ring

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  At 114 degrees Fahrenheit, the air over the Yenangyaung battlefield offered no relief to soldiers fighting through the April heat. Smoke from demolished oil wells and refineries hung over the area. For three days, the 113th Regiment pressed southward against Japanese positions.

  The 1st Burma Division meanwhile was fighting its own way clear, moving toward the Pin Chaung river. On the 19th of April, those troops reached the river and met the approaching relief column. The junction was the pivotal moment the encircled forces had been building toward.

  Chinese forces continued pressing toward Yenangyaung and Pin Chaung. The attack inflicted casualties on the Japanese, but the oil fields could not be held. The combined Allied forces retreated northward. The 112th Regiment of the New 38th Division arrived to cover the withdrawal. It held off Japanese pursuit until the following day, then retreated from the battlefield to rejoin its sister regiment.

  The battle's final accounting, at least in strategic terms, would be put into words by historian Louis Allen.

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• 5. Monument and Memory

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  Historian Louis Allen put the strategic cost of the Burma Campaign in direct language. The British had been deprived first of a supply port at Rangoon and then of their fuel source at Yenangyaung. In Allen's assessment, the question facing Allied commanders was no longer whether to retreat, but where.

  In 2013, the Monument to the Great Victory of Yenangyaung was erected to commemorate the battle. Liu Weimin drove the effort to build it. He is the son of Liu Fangwu, who commanded the 113th Regiment during the fighting. A son promoting a monument to his father's regiment seven decades later is a precise measure of what those four days still meant.

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