Word: myitkyina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...monsoon-drenched jungles of Burma, an eleven-week campaign was ended and a new star pasted to the record of leathery Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell. His weary Chinese troops wrenched the last stubborn defender from the railhead village of Myitkyina. Thus fell the last Japanese stronghold in north Burma. Now Stilwell had only to hold off the Japs and bulldoze through 70 miles of jungle and mountain to complete his project for 1944-to reopen a road from India supply bases to China...
...Lights, Green Troops. On May 17 Stilwell's top assistant, Brigadier General Frank Merrill, with Chinese and a few American veterans, completed a 20-day march over mountains and through jungles. They pounced on the Myitkyina airstrip, two miles south of the town, held it while gliders and transport planes piled in with a division of fresh Chinese troops. Unfortunately, they were too fresh...
Still unused to battle, the Chinese advanced through Myitkyina then were driven out. Their retreat ended short of the airfield, but it gave the Japanese time to burrow for a long, costly struggle...
From the East. Myitkyina was the easternmost end of the road to China. Already from Yunnan province another road was being freed to complete the route. Chinese forces who held that stretch had crossed the Salween River and last week were fighting for the road town of Tengyueh. With crude ladders they scaled the ancient walls built in Marco Polo's day, turned modern flamethrowers on the Japanese defenders. At week's end they had occupied the inner defenses. Between Tengyueh and Myitkyina there were no Japs...
...took them four months to cover the 700 miles of pestilential jungle, but they made it. Last week many of the mules were still there in the interior of Burma, shuttling supplies around in the battle for Myitkyina. They will probably never bray in Missouri again. When the northern Burma campaign is finished, they will be turned over to the Chinese. Some day they may plod on east over the Burma Road into China...