[
    {
        "id": 212824,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "118\n\nassistance which it might be possible to provide, and, soon after, the Myosa left to return to his country.\n\nIn August 1943 British troops were poised on the Assam border at Imphal, Tamu, and Tiddim, awaiting sufficient replenishment of equipment and the cessation of the rains to undertake the return advance into Burma; and there was activity down in the Arakan: while General Stilwell's Chinese divisions, retrained, reinforced, and re-equipped in India after their withdrawal from Burma, were just beginning to feel their way forward from Ledo, away up at the northern end of Assam, down the road which later was to become famous as the Ledo road. General Wingate's first expedition into Burma had just been completed, with heavy loss on our side, but with much success in confusing the enemy and disorganising his effort to consolidate his positions. The shape of future operations depended on the enemy's dispositions, so that any information which could be collected in eastern Burma would be useful: and in Kokang it might also be possible to organise patriot parties to assail his communications.\n\nIt was not an easy matter to obtain the consent of our allies for the passage of a British party to Kokang. The Chinese have unfortunately imitated the Japanese in a predilection for red tape; formalities are extended ad infinitum. It was fair enough that any British officer who entered China should require a pass issued by the Chinese authorities - though no such restriction attached to the presence of Chinese officers in India - but was it really necessary that the power to issue the pass should be retained by the highest authority in the land, the Military Affairs Council which would correspond with our Committee of Imperial Defence and that it should have to carry the personal chop of the Generalissimo? It did not make for speed in administration. It should also be remembered that the Chinese refused to serve in Burma under British command: that is how General Stilwell first came on the scene; and I think it is fair to say that our American allies had come to look on the Far East, and perhaps more particularly China, as their own special sphere of operations, where there was no room for any British.\n\nMy appointment was from the Army in India, which in those days, before the South East Asia Command had been established, was responsible for the operations in Burma. The proposal for assistance to the Myosa was submitted by the British representatives in Chungking to the Chinese government with a request that the necessary passes be",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212842,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 151,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "136\n\nme whether I was afraid I would be arrested and carried off in the same way! It was because of the Lopez incident that for a long time some of the most useful men in Kokang, intimidated by Chinese threats, did not dare to work for us.\n\nAt Hsintang we occupied the thatched wooden building which the people of the village had erected for Lopez and in which he had been surrounded and arrested. It had two stories, with three small rooms on each floor, and packed into these rooms were no less than twenty beds, in layers. Though small, the building could thus house the whole of our party. All the furniture was made of bamboo, the beds, the steps leading to the upper storey, the stools on which we sat, and the table off which we ate. In the centre room below, Lopez had installed a mud fireplace, where of an evening we lit a fire, because here we must have been somewhere about 7,000 or 8,000 feet up and the nights were bitterly cold. The chimney, a hollowed bamboo over which we had to throw water every now and then, was unsatisfactory and the smoke hung about the top floor to the discomfort of those trying to sleep above.\n\nOur wireless was a great asset; it made such a contrast to the isolation which had been our lot when in eastern China. We could send and receive signals, and by laying the headphones in a tin basin, we could make a near-enough imitation of a loud-speaker to sit by and listen when the news came in. It was about this time that the Japanese made their desperate attack on the British at Imphal in an attempt to cut the railway, which supplied General Stilwell's Chinese divisions; in this attempt they were to exhaust themselves, and open Burma to reoccupation by the Allies. A little later General Wingate's second l.r.p.g. - long range penetration group - operations were launched. We were later to discover that the withdrawal of Japanese troops from all along the Salween to meet Wingate's threat offered an explanation of why they failed to raid across the river to disperse us.\n\nStan rejoined us, reporting that there was no flat territory in central Kokang, but that he found a hill slope which would do well enough as a dropping zone. The slope was near the large village of Lunghtang, two days march south, and we prepared to move there. The country became more open; the jungle on the mountain slopes was replaced by long grass. We passed herds of brood mares, with their young. The Myosa in the past had been the contractor for the supply of mules to the Burma Government; we were passing the breeding centres. A lonely",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]