Word: rangoon
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...still busy, and wondrously successful, in the first steps toward joining the German and pinching off the great United Nations salient between Calcutta and Gibraltar. To pinch off that salient he needed control of the Indian Ocean, and he had a good start-Singapore, the Indies, Rangoon. But the other key to the salient was Madagascar, and the busy Japanese couldn't get to it in time...
...Many Men. It was never a battle of great numbers. The biggest body of British troops reported in the retreat from Rangoon was 1,000, and they had with them all the British mechanized equipment in Burma. The largest British force reported in action last week was 7,000. There were also a few thousand Indian troops, and two or three battalions of native Burmese riflemen, who were the exceptions to the Burmese natives' general indifference or hostility. The R.A.F had very little in the air at the start, practically nothing after a few weeks of combat. Because...
...themselves in all northern Burma, they will have a new front on China's borders. But Jap conquest of Burma is mainly dangerous to the Chinese because of the great new land routes abuilding from India into China. The Japs choked off the Burma Road when they won Rangoon; if they win access to the northern roads, they might all but choke China...
...rains to Burma. Southern Burma will be a green, cooled land for the invaders. Its rice paddies will be lakes, many of its roads will be bogs. But the best roads will still be usable, for bringing up supplies to the troops in the north. So will the Rangoon-Mandalay railroad; so will the rivers, except when they are flooded. In the north, where the fighting is headed, the monsoon will not halt combat. If the monsoon has any real military effect, it will be in the Bay of Bengal. In monsoon time the Bay and its air are stormy...
...people at home wondered why they had heard so little from these forces (in three weeks, only the Andamans raid and two on Rangoon were reported), Lewis Brereton knew the answer. Except in direst need, he was done with sending insufficient forces into battle. When he struck, he would strike with enough to defeat and destroy his enemies, the Japs across the Bay. It was a resolve, a policy which General Brereton had acquired the hard and bloody...