OSS Detachment 101, China-Burma-India

Reflections on Working with General Peers on the OSS Detachment 101 Exhibit

by Eric Saul

I had the distinct honor, and I should say pleasure, to work with General William R. Peers.  Together with Colonel Carl Eifler, we produced a tribute exhibit honoring OSS Detachment 101, which they commanded in Burma during World War II.  The exhibit opened on October 6, 1985.

General Peers was a helpful and inspiring mentor for me and the Museum.  He was appointed to the Fort Point and Army Museum Association Board of Directors in 1977.

During his tenure on the Board of Directors, he would often be at the Museum, encouraging us in our task of depicting the history of the United States Army in the Pacific during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  He served as technical advisor on a number of exhibitions. 

One of General Peers’ greatest contributions to the Museum was placing the exhibits Go For Broke: The Story of the Japanese American Soldier in World War II and Yankee Samurai: The Story of Japanese American Linguists in the War in the Pacific in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.  Shortly after we opened the Go For Broke exhibit in 1981, General Peers asked me if I thought the exhibit should be placed at the Smithsonian Institution.  I told him that the Smithsonian rarely takes outside exhibits.  He said, however, that one of his junior officers in OSS Detachment 101 was currently the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.  His name was S. Dillon Ripley.  Ripley had been attached to the Japanese American unit assigned to OSS Detachment 101.  Peers added that Ripley and he were close, and that he remembered Ripley being enthusiastic about his wartime service with Japanese American soldiers.  Peers then wrote a letter to Secretary Ripley, who promptly replied that he would like to install the exhibit in the National Museum of American History as part of the Smithsonian’s commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the U.S. constitution.  The exhibit was assigned to Roger Kennedy, then-Director of the American History Museum.  Ripley informed us that the exhibit would be finished and dedicated on September 17, 1987.  The exhibit was called A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the Constitution.  The exhibit was installed in the third floor military gallery of the museum in a spectacular installation.  The exhibit was originally only a temporary exhibit, but was on display for more than 20 years.  A commemorative version of the exhibit was installed at the museum in 2017.  The Smithsonian considers this to be one of its most important exhibitions of all time.  Director Roger Kennedy was quoted in his obituary as saying that this was his proudest accomplishment as Director of the American History Museum.  Hundreds of Japanese American veterans and their families attended the opening ceremony.  The exhibit, A More Perfect Union, inspired the creation of both the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), in Los Angeles, and the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), in San Francisco.  I had the honor of being a founding curator of NJAHS and a consultant on the More Perfect Union exhibit.  I collected hundreds of photographs from original sources that were used in the exhibition, as well as numerous artifacts.  The More Perfect Union exhibit’s installation coincided with the Japanese American redress and reparations movement.  The exhibit was used by Japanese American political leaders in support of the Congressional bill HR442.  Japanese American Congressman from San Jose, Norman Mineta, and 100th/442nd veterans Senators Spark Matsunaga and Daniel K. Inouye, also used the exhibit to persuade their colleagues in the Senate to support the reparations bill.  The bill passed Congress with an overwhelming majority of support.  The Japanese American community will be eternally grateful for General Peers’ contribution to the More Perfect Union exhibit and inspiring its adoption by the Smithsonian.  (For more information, see the book Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress, by Mitchell T. Maki, Harry H. L. Kitano and S. Megan Berthold, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999, pp. 157-158, 159.)

Shortly after becoming curator of the Museum, I became aware of the illustrious history of OSS Detachment 101.  This was one of the most interesting units to serve in the Army in the Pacific.  It was a unique guerrilla force that was trained to operate behind enemy lines in the most primitive and dangerous circumstances.  It operated in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II.

The Detachment was activated on April 14, 1942, under the auspices of William Donovan, who was then serving as Coordinator of Information (which later became the Office of Strategic Services, in June of that year).

This unit was a prototype of many future units of special warfare that are still being implemented by the U.S. Army today.  Detachment 101 utilized the native Kachin tribesmen in Burma.  They were fiercely anti-Japanese and were integral to the success of Detachment 101.

The unit was deactivated on July 12, 1945.

Detachment 101 was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation by General Dwight Eisenhower, who stated: “The courage and fighting spirit displayed by its officers and men in offensive action against overwhelming enemy strength reflect the highest tradition of the armed forces of the United States.”

Detachment 101 eliminated 5,428 Japanese soldiers and rescued 574 Allied soldiers.  General Peers was the original training officer of the Detachment, and was later promoted to commanding officer after Colonel John Eifler sustained serious head injuries. 

Peers was commanding officer of the Detachment until 1945, when he became commander of the overall OSS operations south of the Yangtze River in China.  There, he led a nationalist Chinese parachute commando force to Nanking.  After his service in the war, Peers was recruited to the CIA and established its first training program.

In Korea, Peers commanded secret operations utilizing Chinese nationalist soldiers in a mission covering the southern portion of the People’s Republic of China.

At the beginning of the Vietnam war, Peers became the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Special Operations.  He soon was appointed Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities for the U.S. Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In January 1967, Peers was appointed commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division, as a Major General.  In March 1968, he was promoted to Lieutenant General, commanding the I Field Force in Vietnam.  First Field Force was headquartered in the Vietnamese central highlands and was comprised of the 101st Airborne Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, and the 173rd Airborne Brigade.  Under his command, U.S. Army forces, along with two elite South Korean divisions, defeated North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas in the major battles of Dak To in November 1967 and the battle of Duc Lap in August 1968.

In 1969, General Peers was tasked by the U. S. Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor and Army commander in Vietnam William Westmoreland to investigate the My Lai Massacre.  The massacre occurred on March 16, 1968, in the coastal village of Song My, which was located in north-central South Vietnam.  After a thorough investigation, Peers issued his 20,000-page report on the massacre on March 17, 1970, called the Peers Commission.  In the report, Peers stated that it was a “tragedy of major proportions.”  He was highly critical of senior officers at the brigade and division levels who, he stated, participated in a coverup of the massacre by minimizing the number of victims.  His criticism of commands was not well received by the Army command or the Nixon administration, but was well regarded by others because of its thoroughness.  The final 260-page report was later released.  The Secretary of the Army at the time of its release, Howard H. Callaway stated, “The release of this report concludes a dark chapter in the Army’s history.  This is a story which is not a happy one.”

General Peers retired after completing the report, after serving 35 years in the Army.  General William R. Peers was born in Stuart, Iowa, on Jun 14, 1914.  He graduated from UCLA in 1937.  Peers entered the Army as a Second Lieutenant in 1938, serving at the Presidio of San Francisco.  General Peers’ service decorations include a Distinguished Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters, a Silver Star and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

General Peers passed away at the Letterman Army Medical Center at the Presidio of San Francisco on April 6, 1984.

Peers died before the opening of the OSS Detachment 101 exhibit at the Presidio Army Museum.  I remember working with General Peers on the exhibit, which we had planned for a number of years.  I interviewed him about his military experience and came to admire him greatly.

While working on the exhibit, Peers presented me with a large, oversized, leather-bound photo album with numerous photographs of Detachment 101 in the field in Burma.  These spectacular combat photos, many of them unpublished, formed the basis for the photo exhibit.  Many of the photographs were taken by eminent Hollywood director Admiral John Ford.  Admiral Ford had been assigned by General Donovan to document the history of Detachment 101.  John Ford presented the photos and album to General Peers shortly after the war.  Ford and Peers remained friends for the rest of their lives. 

I also worked closely with Colonel Carl Eifler, the first commanding officer of OSS Detachment 101.  I remember visiting his house in Salinas, California, and viewing his collection of historic photographs and memorabilia, which we also used in the exhibit.  While studying his home office, I saw two framed, autographed photographs.  Both of them were inscribed to Colonel Eifler.  One was of Lieutenant General Joseph A. Stillwell and the other was of John Ford in an Admiral’s uniform, with the inscription, “With great admiration.”

General Peers co-authored his memoirs, with Dean Brelis, about his World War II experiences, Behind the Burma Road, which was published in 1963.  He also wrote his memoirs of Vietnam and of the My Lai Massacre in My Lai Inquiry in 1979.

General Peers and I were working on an exhibit to honor the enlisted soldiers of Vietnam at the time of his death.

EYES, EARS, DAGGERS FOR STILWELL’S RETURN TO CHINA

Commander of Incredible Detachment 101 Named Director of Our Association

The Fort Point Salvo
Newsletter of the Fort Point and Army Museum Association
Volume 3, No. 5
May 1977


The two of us were standing looking at photographs in the Presidio Army Museum’s permanent exhibit dedicated to General Joseph W. Stilwell. The tall man with the easy confident smile of a soldier who has had mud on his boots - lots of it - said quietly, “You know, there might not have been an OSS (Office of Strategic Services) if it hadn’t been for General Stilwell.”

My friend ought to know; he is Lieutenant General William R. Peers, USA (Ret.) who as Colonel commanded Detachment 101 in Burma, America’s first and most successful guerrilla force. At our Annual Meeting, April 20, he became a Director of the Fort Point and Army Museum Association.

How 101 Came to Be

After walking out of Burma with the remnants of his army in 1942, General Stilwell called on his old friend, General “Wild Bill” Donovan, to help analyze some of the reasons for the defeat. Foremost among them, they decided, was the work of the Japanese 5th Column; ambushes behind allied lines, jungle night attacks, surprise demolitions and the work of guerrillas, striking and fading away, striking again, creating confusion, spreading fear of the gun our soldiers couldn’t see.

The decision was made - we had to organize a better guerrilla force of our own. It was to do two things. First, furnish vital information about the enemy and his intentions which would guide our forces as they went back to take North Burma and build a road across it (the Stilwell Road). This they had to do if China was to have a secure supply route. The old Burma Road was in enemy hands and the stream of supplies desperately needed was down to the trickle that could be flown over the “Hump”. Second, we must rely on guerrillas to unsettle the enemy; frustrate and wherever possible destroy his isolated units, slip behind his lines and blow his installations, worry and frustrate him in every way possible.

What It Takes

The problem was to find men capable of organizing and leading a guerrilla force in a country that had never had one before. There literally was nobody trained or qualified for the task.

Guerrillas are different from front-line soldiers. They are irregulars; they operate not from their own innate strength, but by striking at the enemy’s weakness. Their first job is to remain anonymous, to live among the enemy so they can discover his weakness. When they find it, they rub it raw; not by overwhelming it, but by dodging in and out, keeping the enemy off balance.

Guerrillas are not gallant fighters; they are ruthless, they respect no battle courtesies. Their actions are sudden, momentary, deadly. They are not concerned with quick, decisive victory. They work to build up an accumulation of surprises that irritate the enemy, hopefully beyond endurance.

Guerrillas must have patience, wiliness and possess a self-sufficient courage that is not disturbed by long periods behind enemy lines.

Stilwell and Donovan wracked their brains to come up with a guerrilla leader. Finally, General Stilwell happened to remember a man he had known in Hawaii named Carl Eifler, who had been Honolulu’s Deputy Collector of Customs.

Ex-Port Collector and Border Patrolman Becomes 1st Guerrilla

Eifler, a captain in the Reserves, had lived for years among the Chinese and Japanese in the Islands and the Far East. He also had spent considerable time with the Border Patrol along the Mexican Border. Already on active duty with the 25th Infantry in Hawaii, he suddenly found himself on orders to Washington to report to General Donovan, Chief, Coordinator of Information (COI) which soon became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS ).

Before leaving the Islands, Captain Eifler recruited Captain John Coughlin of the 25th Infantry, a West Pointer who had been a baseball pitcher and a heavyweight boxer. Next Eifler enlisted Vincent Curl, his 1st Sergeant; a medical officer, Captain Archie Chun Ming, and Robert Aitken, Captain in the Intelligence Section of the Hawaiian Department.

On meeting General Donovan, Eifler was told his organization would be the first American unit ever organized to conduct a wide-range of clandestine operations - espionage, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, propaganda, escape and evasion - the works. The area of operation might be anywhere in the Far East -- in jungles, ports, rice paddies, cities. The assignment--carrying out insurrectionary tasks from killings to bridge blowings.

101, the Only One

On April 14, 1942, Detachment 101, Office of the Coordinator, was officially activated. Its very name was a bit of propaganda. The “101” suggested it was one of many similar units, an established outfit. Actually, it was the Number 1, the only one, and it mustered just 21 men.

About this time Captain Wm. R. Peers heard from Captain Coughlin, whom he had met when he had first come on active duty out of U.C.L.A.

In early 1942, Ray Peers was going through the wartime abbreviated Infantry Officers Advance Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. One cold, rainy Sunday he got the message: “Are you interested in combat assignment in the Southwest Pacific?” Signed: “Captain John Coughlin.” He thought a minute, and as he says, “Suddenly I knew the answer had to be Yes!” So he was on His way to join 101.

Captain Eifler was the right man to lead such a detachment. He was intelligent, imaginative, tough, with a gambler’s instinct as to when to chunk it in and when to pull out. At 6’2” and 250 pounds, he was agile as a cat, and strong! After showing Peers around the Washington office and introducing him to General Donovan, he offered his hand, “and cracked every bone in mine,” recalls Peers, “all the while bathing me in a beatific smile!”

Recruiting went on. Four more Infantry officers, three radio technicians, a watchmaker, a Korean patriot, a court stenographer and an American who had been advisor to Chian Hsueh-liang, a powerful Chinese War Lord of the 20’s, joined on.

Training started in earnest, too. In just two weeks Peers and his outfit had to learn the basics of agent operations, secret writing, resisting an interrogator, searches for downed aircrews, cryptography. They experimented with a variety of high explosives, learned the difference between blowing a stone and a steel bridge, were taught how to use primitive but effective detonators and explored methods of sabotage. Anybody was lucky to get a few hours sleep a night.

On May 20, 1942, Detachment 101 sailed from Charleston, South Carolina.

“Hurry Up and Wait”

This old wartime frustration caught up with 101 when it reached India. Our CBI (China-Burma-India) Command in New Delhi was understaffed and over-worked. In addition, by August 1942, India was seriously threatened by powerful bands of fever-hot nationalists and by the Japanese preparing to invade.

The allies also were suffering from the festering sores of defeat. It was all summed up in General Stilwell’s forthright words, “I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it was as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back, and retake it.”

On 101’s arrival the General was away on urgent duties in China. While waiting for action, Major Eifler developed contacts with the Indian Army and the Burmese Army. The whole detachment learned much more about Burma - its high, jagged mountains, its jungles, its fast-flowing dangerous rivers - the Irrawaddy, Chindwin, Sittang, Salween. 101 also learned about the Burmese people, particularly the Kachins, who were to provide most of the manpower for the detachment as it developed.

The Kachins made up a significant part of the pre-World War II Burmese Army. They were superb jungle fighters, but no match for Japanese mechanized infantry and armor. As the Japanese advanced, the Burmese Army slipped back into the hills.

By the time Detachment 101 came on the scene a great many Burmese including members of the Japanese 5th Column, who called themselves the Burmese Independence Army, were thoroughly disenchanted. The Japanese, preaching “Asia for the Asiatics” and “Co-Prosperity Sphere”, had proven themselves not to be liberators, but conquerors, cruel and contemptuous.

Stilwell Returns and the Torch Moves toward Burma

In September 1942, General Stilwell got back to New Delhi from his mission in China and met with the officers and men of 101. In his fascinating book, “Behind the Burma Road”, Peers wrote of that meeting:

“He said he was anxious to have us get behind the Japanese lines. Information was scarce, and he believed anything we could reveal about the enemy would influence forthcoming operations. What he wanted was a group eager to knock to pieces the myth that a white man could not survive in the jungle. He thought that we should consider ourselves pioneers in blazing a way back to Burma. Whatever doubts had obscured our destination were now gone... We had heard the General say it: he had selected Burma as our target. We readied ourselves for the task, the impotence of waiting forgotten, the sense of mission restored, and the General’s calm our blessing.”

In October, Carl Eifler, John Coughlin, Bob Aitken and Ray Peers located their headquarters on a British tea plantation at Nazira, close to the Naga Hills in upper Assam.

In its recruiting of Kachin jungle guerrillas, 101 relied heavily on the British. They knew where the best men were, the steady ones, the smart ones like Zhing Htau Naw, a Kachin head man with a price on his head.

The Anxious Missions

Early in 1943, the first units of 101 were ready to play for keeps. They had made mistakes and learned lessons. One of the most important lessons was that they must travel to their target areas without being seen, heard or identified. In the Burma jungles this meant parachute landings. But how to get planes?

101’s senior officers got an interview with General Alexander at Air Transport Headquarters. He was bitter over the fate of his lost air crews. “I’d give anything,” he said, “to guarantee my people that they had a chance!”

“That’s why we are here,” Peers said. “Those hills, those mountains are Kachin country. They are on our side and if we could get in and show them that we mean to stay, we should be able to get your men out.”

That’s the way it was left. 101 would act as an underground railroad for downed British and American airmen. And it did. In its three years of operations, it brought back 125 of them, plus 350 other Allied personnel. In exchange, ATC provided 101 with planes and parachutes.

The first mission was a jump into the Koukkwee Valley, Burma, roughly a hundred miles south of Myitkyina. Captain Barnard and Saw Judson were to make the first jump with radio equipment Jan. 26. The next day the rest of their 13-man unit was to follow. A C-87 with fighter escort took them to the target. The jump was perfect, the planes got back to base, and then the long wait for Barnard’s radio signal. This lasted all night and the signal never came.

Next morning, a shaken, but determined group took to the C-87 again to complete the landing. When they reached the target the glum sky turned to rainbow. There, far below, were two tiny figures waving their arms off. Barnard and Saw were all right. It turned out their radio had been smashed on landing. With the sight of them, the rest of 101’s “Mission A” went out whistling.

That first mission wasn’t perfect. The group got separated. A two-man unit was surprised by a Japanese patrol and one man was killed. Some of the party were in the jungle for days before finding the other members. But three railroad bridges were blown and the Japanese knew they had trouble. They responded by tracking 101’s men night and day. But the guerrillas managed to keep ahead of them.

101’s operations in North Burma proceeded apace. Recruitment among the invaluable Kachin warriors was good. Larger, better equipped units were penetrating farther and farther behind enemy lines wreaking havoc as they went. There actually was a 101 man as far down country as Mandalay.

But in the south, 101 had its most heartbreaking failures. The first was a mission to gather information and cut the enemy’s supply road from Prome to the Akyab Front. The group was taken to Ramree Island by Royal Navy Submarine. Its members scrambled through the surf and headed for the jungle. They didn’t look back. They should have. A lone hand battery cell had been dropped and was washed up on the beach. It was picked up next morning by a fisherman and turned over to the Japanese.

The hunt was on. It was learned later the group was captured. Its men were shot standing close together, their faces covered with mud and shouting defiance to the enemy.

Although it had its share of heartbreaks, 101’s successes far outweighed them. But the end of 1943 it was ready to be told: -

“The big job now, Ray, is for you and 101”

General Stilwell said it to Colonel Ray Peers in February 1944 at a command post, North Burma. Colonel Eifler had been invalided home with a severe head injury. Colonel Coughlin had been put in charge of all strategic operations in the CBI theater and he had asked Peers to take command of 101.

What the General was demanding was a major breakthrough before June - the liberation of North Burma. After his retrained and resupplied 22nd and 38th Chinese Divisions had defeated the enemy at Yupbang Ga and advanced into Burma, he knew Chinese troops could slug it out with anyone. But he also knew that all his conventional forces in the end would have to depend on the guerrillas. With their help, his units might stay together, withstand heat and humidity, march where there was no enemy, and fall upon the enemy out of the jungle. Colonel Peers put it this way: “The jungle on your side can spread disaster to the enemy; with the jungle against you, death explodes in your face ... 101 had been saying they owned the jungle; now 101 must prove it.”

General Stilwell’s directive called for quick expansion of 101’s capabilities.

Four area commands were set up to cover Stilwell’s line of attack, southward to Myitkyina. Among them was divided the region from the lrrawaddy River watershed on the east to the Chindwin River Valley on the west. All together they were to raise about 3200 guerrillas whose duties broadly were to harass the Japanese, prevent reinforcement of Myitkyina, extend espionage and intelligence operations farther and farther along the enemy’s lines.

The Typhoon Starts to Blow

Early in February 1944, Merrill’s Marauders arrived from Ledo, their jungle-training base in India. They were to be the envelopment force; to swing around the Japanese flank, set up road blocks in the enemy’s rear and force him to fight past them while Stilwell’s Chinese divisions kept pressure on the front--pushing, always pushing toward Myitkyina.

Their first engagement, together with a composite American-Chinese Task Group was a classic flanker around the Japanese at Walabum. In a futile attempt to break the road block they established, the enemy lost 850 dead to 7 Americans wounded.

As this was going on, the Japanese front was taking a bloody pounding from the hard-fighting Chinese 22nd and 38th Divisions. As the Japanese started withdrawing, the Chinese lashed in, overran their rear guards, and linked up with the Marauders.

Then came the tough one. The Marauders’ 2nd Battalion and a combat team from the 3rd advanced to set up a road block at Inkangahtawng. 101’s Kachin guerrillas were encountering strong enemy patrols and warned the 2nd Battalion. On probing and finding that the enemy was gathering greatly superior forces, the Battalion started withdrawing northward. But the Japanese advanced swiftly, maneuvering troops and artillery into positions threatening the fate of the whole allied force.

By the end of the third day, the 2nd Battalion was surrounded at Nphum Ga. The battle was savage. Time after time, waves of Japanese broke through the Battalion’s outer defenses screaming, “Die, Joe, Die, Joe!” But ‘‘Joe” held on. Food, ammunition, artillery pieces, even water had to be air-dropped. But it got there which was more than the Japanese could accomplish.

The enemy lacked air-drop capacity. And 101’s guerrillas were ambushing their supply columns, cutting telephone lines, seizing radio stations, damaging the fighting capacity of the Japanese front line troops who waited for food and ammunition that never came.

On the seventh day, the Marauders’ 1st and 3rd Battalions forced the Japanese to break contact and withdraw. General Stilwell ordered the whole Marauders unit into bivouac for a short rest.

It was at this time that friction between the General and the Marauders developed. They felt they had been promised that they would be relieved after 90 days in combat, and the time was about up. However, General Stilwell had other ideas. Myitkyina was the key to North Burma and it had to be taken whether it took 90 days or 190 days. As General Peers viewed it: “In this determined decision, he (Stilwell) was to deprive himself of that which was nearly a necessity to him, a bond with the man who stood out in his mind in the front rank of soldiers anywhere - the Infantryman of a rifle company.”

(This may be one reason why to the end of his life General Stilwell wanted the Combat Infantryman’s Badge more than all the other decorations he had received. It was awarded October 11, 1946 and brought to him at Letterman Hospital, San Francisco, a few days before he died by Assistant Secretary of War, Robert Patterson.)

Task Force Galahad Drives for Myitkyina

Stilwell wasted little time organizing the drive south after the Marauders’ heroic stand. He assembled a task force made up of elements of the Chinese 30th and 50th Divisions and the Marauders to be commanded by General Merrill. Its code name was Galahad. 101’s guerrillas were to provide all possible support to the combat forces.

The first, K Force, led off April 28 followed by H Force. 101’s Kachin Rangers led them over the rain-soaked, slippery trails of the high Kumon Range. On crossing it, K Force ran into Japanese Infantry near Ritpong which they wiped out.

H Force by-passed K and pressed on toward Myitkyina with Kachin guerrillas again leading them over abandoned and hidden trails. Naw, a young Kachin guide, was bitten by a poisonous snake and severely weakened, but went on, riding a mountain pony. He led the way to the Myitkyina airstrip. On May 17, H Force hit it with a surprise attack and before the day ended the great Myitkyina airfield had been won.

There was almost hysterical jubilation. The campaign seemed almost over. General Merrill sent a message to Detachment 101: “Thanks for your assistance. We could not have succeeded without the help of 101.”

Horror at the Railroad Station

With bugles sounding two battalions of Chinese entered the town of Myitkyina, one from the south, the other from the west. They advanced with hardly a shot being fired. As they neared the railroad station about dusk, a handful of do-or-die Japanese snipers began picking off men from both units.

Possibly panic-stricken, possibly seized by a mad rage that sometimes grips troops in battle, the Chinese started shooting one another! To this day nobody knows why. Their losses were unbelievable. The two Chinese battalions methodically destroyed each other to the point that they had to be withdrawn.

The Japanese reacted fast and started pouring in reinforcements from every direction. Stilwell brought up his reserves from every part of the CBI theater until he had 12 ,000 men to break the enemy grip.

For the Japanese there was no retreat. The dog-eat-dog fight over Myitkyina went on day after day through June, through July, into August. The allies were able to sustain their forces. The Japanese could not - they were surrounded. Yet not a one surrendered.

The first break came in late July. The Japanese began evacuating their wounded by tying them to rafts and floating them down the Irrawaddy. General Mizukami, the Japanese Commander, committed Hara-kiri. On the night of August 2, Colonel Maruyama led the last 200 Japanese out of Myitkyina, and the battle was over.

During the siege, Colonels Thrailkill and Lattin were given command of a small handpicked force with orders to head east, to contact the Chinese in the Salween River Valley. A detachment of 101 Kachins led the American troops to the Chinese border and a meeting with the Chinese Army. For the first time since early 1942, Stilwell’s dream - a land route to China - was in sight!

The British 14th Army which, under Field Marshal Sir William Slim had knocked out a determined Japanese drive for a breakthrough into India at Imphal in early 1944, joined in the action south of Myitkyina. It later took Mandalay and Rangoon.

Home for the Kachins

By that time the Kachin tribesmen who had contributed so much to victory were eager to get home and their units were inactivated. As they were mustered out, Citations for Military Assistance (CMA) were awarded for feats of outstanding gallantry. 101 also initiated a silver campaign badge for all Kachin Rangers who had served with distinction against the enemy; and a shoulder patch, red, white and blue similar to the CBI patch with “Kachin Ranger” embroidered across the top. The effect was tremendous. Many of the recipients could hardly hold back their tears. They were being treated as equals - as comrades in arms, which they certainly were.

As General Peers says of them: “Always steady, the Kachins were the vital force of 101 in its guerrilla operations. They were the fighters who raised the flag of freedom in the jungles of Burma. As guerrillas, they never lost a battle. It was the Kachins who wrote the splendid accomplishments of 101 ...

Mission Completed

After 3-1/2 years, nearly three years of which was actual guerrilla combat, Detachment 101 was inactivated, July 12, 1945. It was cited for “outstanding performance of duty’’ in War Department General Orders, 17 January 1946, signed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chief of Staff.

For the fascinating story of Detachment 101, read, -- “Behind the Burma Road” by William R. Peers and Dean Brelis, available at circulating and military libraries. Warning: Once you start reading it, you won’t be able to put it down.

Colonel John Eifler, first commanding officer, OSS Detachment 101, at the Presidio Army Museum exhibit opening, October 6, 1985.

Colonel William "Ray" Peers, second commanding officer of OSS Detachment 101. 

Lieutenant General William "Ray" Peers, circa 1968.  Photo was taken shortly after he was assigned to conduct the My Lai investigation.  

Bibliography

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Peers, William R. and Dean Brelis. Behind the Burma Road. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963.

Ward, James R. “Detachment 101 Office of Strategic Services: Burma – April 14, 1942 to July 12, 1945. ‘The American-Kachin Rangers.’”