Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1943-03-19
BURMA
By Daniel De Luce

/ BURMA
/ BY Daniel De Luce
| (WNU Feature-Through special arrange
ment with Golfers Weekly
Greatest reservoir of fighting
manpower to whip the Japanese
lies in free, unoccupied China. For
five years the Chinese soldier has
proved himself every bit as coura-
geous and clever as his Japanese
enemy, He has hung on in the face
of discouraging odds, lacking
modern weapons and an air force.
Anglo-A meric arsenals
should eventually be able to fur
nish him with these new arms
and give him the support of
combined armada of airplanes.
However, "the day" is indefinite.
In 1943? Perhaps longer. There is
lot of spade work to be done, for
a great Allied offensive on the
Asiatic continent.
1t is required chiefly in Burma.
And it is being planned right now
by Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek,
General Wavell and General Still
well.
Allies Need Burma
The transfer of thousand
bombers and a thousand fighting
planes from America to China
could be made in seven days. But
once having got the air fleet to
China, the Allies would be little
better off than before, unless they
had Burma.
For the air force would need fuel
not few thousand gallons
flown laboriously over the Hima-
layas, but many thousand tons.
And where is the oil for the
future planes of China? In Bur-
ma. "Oh," you say, weren't
the Burma fields scorched by
the British. Or was that just
another newspaper story?"
Yes, the Burma fields were
scorched, thoroughly scorched. At
the moment they're useless. But
listen to the man who did the
scorching.
"If the Japanese brought in 15,-
900 specialists and 10000 tons of
equipment and machinery, they
could get Burma producing again
within a few months. But they
have neither the specialists nor
the equipment. We have both. We
can soon have the wells flowing
if and when we recapture Burma"
Scorching of Burma
For the story of the scorching of
Burma, let's begin looking into
little red cloth-covered notebook
which this itinerant war corre-
spondent bought in Mandalay for
ten annas, before the ships were
bombed and burned down on Good
Friday last year. | had it in
sweaty pocket of my khaki shirt
when ] jeeped through Yenang-
tuang, oil capital of Burma, on
Thursday, April 16, 1912.
Yenang-taung in Burmese, means
"stream of the smelly waters"
Some centuries ago, silk-skirted
natives scooped up the pungent
black liquid and burned it in crude
lamps at home.
Came the white man. In the
last SO years thousands of der
ricks sprang up on the drab ills.
Burma oil, a million tons every
IL months, began lighting many
lamp in greater Asia.
Then came the Jap. He was
about 30 miles south of the oil
capital and pressing hard last April
when l walked into the main oil
field headquarters and met lean,
hard, eagle-nosed English civilian
loading his .3S army revolver.
He was Walter L. Forster of the
Shell Oil company at Cairo. He
had supervised the demolition of
the Rangoon refineries the previ-
Gus month, then ca,mly. departed
and was now in central Burma to
finish similar assignments there.
At work or play, Forster likes
dynamite. Knowing his specially,
the British government had sent
him late in 1941 to Russia, to adj
wise the Soviet engineers in their
program of scorching the earth.
He quickly decided that the Rus
slams knew more than he did, but
he stayed to learn their methods,
and visited secret areas of the
Caucasus.
He remarked afterward that the
Reds had carried out factory