Page:CMH Pub 9-2 - Stilwell's Command Problems.djvu/100

SEXTANT: THE WATERSHED have commanded, had made it very plain that he wanted to retreat. The Chinese were now heavily engaged, and the situation had been described to Stilwell as critical. So Stilwell prepared to go to north Burma and assume command in the jungle. He was then sixty years of age.

The conduct of American military-diplomatic relations with China was tacitly assumed by the President. In 1942 and 1943 Stilwell had presented many memorandums to the Generalissimo, to which the Chinese had rarely replied. In 1944, the President sent one message after another to the Generalissimo on military matters, and these the Generalissimo could not ignore. As will be seen, the role of CBI Theater headquarters in these exchanges was the humble and mechanical one of delivering the text of these presidential proddings to the Generalissimo.

Once again in the history of the U.S. effort in China, Burma, and India, the issues were about to be placed before the President, this time by Stilwell at Madame Chiang's suggestion. Stilwell was not hopeful of the President's willingness to intercede, but he adopted the suggestion. Manifestly, Stilwell did not feel that the action of the President and the Prime Minister in reneging at Cairo on the long-promised amphibious operation made it unnecessary or inadvisable for the Generalissimo to take action in Burma or that it made ungraceful any criticism of the Generalissimo's reluctance from within those powers that had broken their pledges to him. So, Stilwell told Marshall that the SEAC plan was now virtually what CBI Theater had been urging all along, that if the President would exhort the Generalissimo to cross the Salween River when his allies attacked Burma, the Chinese leader might play his part. If the Generalissimo knew of this move, he could have reflected that his own message to the President two days before had accepted one of the two choices the President had offered, and that in the past the President had extended credits, lend-lease, and air support without asking anything in return.

Drafted by the War Department, the President's reply indicated that Roosevelt had moved away from the Generalissimo's and Chennault's views and was a great deal closer to Stilwell's. The President returned a qualified negative to the Generalissimo's requests. Describing himself as fully aware of the military and economic situation in China, the President said that the best the United States could do was to aid in the immediate opening of a land line of communications to China. The military actions involved in so doing would afford greater protection to the Hump air route. Roosevelt told the Generalissimo of Mountbatten's planning the largest possible operation to retake Burma and expressed his hope that the Generalissimo would do everything he