Transcript: Episode #173: Revisiting the Aluminum Trail

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Host  00:09

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01:14

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha That is

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all you have to do

Host  01:50

welcome to this episode of insight, Myanmar Podcast. I'm here with the historian and author Robert Lyman. Robert, thanks so much for joining us.

Robert Lyman  01:57

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Host  02:00

Yeah, so as a historian who's written extensively about World War Two, particularly the Burma Theatre, which is the book among the headhunters, which we're going to discuss today, we're eager to delve into your expertise. Before we get into this particular book. Could you provide us with some background on your interest in this specific aspect of the war? And what motivated you to study and write extensively about the Burma theater of World War Two?

Robert Lyman  02:28

Okay. Well, very quickly, for all your listeners, I began this exploration probably about 35 years ago, I suppose, serving in the British Army and I was asked to undertake a course on deliver a course on the Burma campaign for my soldiers read Bill Slim's famous book defeat into victory and became hooked. And eventually, to cut a very long story short, I ended up doing my PhD on Bill slim. And I think I've spent, I spent such a long time on the Burma campaign. I'm trying very hard to get away from it, but it draws me back all the way back every time because it's, it's absolutely fascinating. It's an area or part of the war that very few people really know much about. But one of the things that really got me interested in is the role of the hilltribes. And many years ago 2004, I was enjoyed invited to join the start of a charity called the kahibah Educational Trust, which introduced me to the people of Nagaland for the first time. And the reason why all this is connected is because the Naga people gave really quite extraordinary even unconditional support to the British and Indian soldiers fighting the Japanese in Farland, in 1944, that the trust was set up by veterans of the British army to repay a debt of gratitude to the Nagas. So it was through him educational cross that I came across this very remote Naga village on the right on the border of Burma and India. In fact, the border between the two countries runs right through the village is quite an extraordinary story. And and I became completely fascinated by a very different dimension to the British side of the story, which of course is limbs conquest of Burma, which is the hump which is largely an American extraordinary American effort to replace the road that ran from Rangoon through to Mandalay last year in Chongqing, which the Japanese, of course, had captured in 1942. So with quite extraordinary American, I mean, only the Americans could have done this. I mean, I'm serious, really was quite an extraordinary piece of thinking that went behind a bind. And I mean, in short, when the the physical Burma Road was lost to the Japanese by May 1942. The American founders said, well, we don't really mind we'll rebuild another road in due course, from the northern Brahmaputra valley, but in the meantime, we'll supply China centrally Chiang Kai Shek and his allies at Zhang Qing and Yunnan Province. With all the fuel and ammunition and support they need by air, and your listeners may well have heard about the hump Airlift. But It's extraordinary to relate that at the time, it was probably one of the greatest logistical exercises ever undertaken in human history. And I'm not exaggerating here, it's really the the size of the hump airlift was, was massive. And if I can summarize it, let me just put it in these terms. The hump airlift went on for about 900 days, it involved the transport of 650,000 tonnes most extraordinary numbers, so 650,000 tonnes of supplies from the upper Brahmaputra Valley in Assam to you Nan. And when you consider that the majority of the planes that were using, they were using for transport the C 47, the famous in British terms, the DC three Dakota but America terms a C 47. A sub there are some C 46 years as well, the commandos were the main, the main backbone of the LF for the C 47. Its payload was two and a half tonnes. So do them. There we are 900 days 650,000 tonnes, two and a half 1000 tonne payload for a C 47. We're talking about in the region of 240 or 50 C 47 in the air every single day, undertaking the the long journey seven hour journey into Yunnan and at the time, it really was extraordinary because these planes weren't didn't have oxygen, automatic oxygen pilots would have to take oxygen up with them. Because in order to cross the 17,000 foot mountains into China, they need to avoid the Japanese at a place called Mitchener. They needed to cross over. And it's just I mean everything whenever you look at the hub, it's just the most extraordinary story ever. And I love it because it's such an expression of American can do that, you know, something that was we really struggled to find in the early years the war I think Britain recovered it towards the end. But gosh, it was there in spades in America. And in my view, that's one of the reasons why the Allies won the war. There's quite extraordinary. We can deliver, we can solve these problems. Nothing's too big for us. The roads gone, hey, we'll fly Fly everything and by air and they are one of the I mean, I love telling my students this one of the extraordinary things about this is that in terms of the numbers of troops in what was Southeast Asia command in by 1945, commanded by Admiral Lord Luke, Mountbatten, and Abraham 45, there were 1.3 million men and women in Southeast Asia command of that 1.3 million, about 55 or 56% of them were Indian, about 270,000 were American. And only 100,000. Believe it or not, we're Brits. So in Britain, we have this view of the war on the far east being a British water object, the Japanese from Burma. And, you know, well done us. The reality is there are nearly three times as many Americans in northeastern India, Assam, and ultimately Burma, and they were bred. So I always remind my students that, you know, we only think it was a British campaign because we don't don't actually know the facts. As soon as you start unraveling the layers of the onion, you realize actually, or the American presence was quite extraordinary.

Host  08:34

Yeah. And just read some of the history I've read is some of the names that were there are interesting as well, you know, Steven Spielberg's father was a soldier and it was Steven Spielberg's father talking with his old friends and the Burma front, that first exposed him to the to the idea of storytelling and storytelling in the context of war, which started you know, his imagination and, and early movies that were made. I believe Obama's grandfather also was there, there was there were

Robert Lyman  09:03

I had absolutely no idea that but to be honest, none of that surprises me. One of the things that does depress me is because, is of course, you know, the war in the Pacific. And the war in Europe takes everyone's imagination, right. It's extraordinary story of an amazing multinational effort between Britain, America, India, free China, the Cantonese Chinese armies of Chiang Kai Shek free Burmese troops, and ultimately in only 45, the troops of Aung Sangs Burma army itself, all joining together in a remarkable coalition effort to defeat the Japanese and it's full of very, very rich stories that only a handful of Dare I say I I'm one myself a history nerds actually know anything about it. It's a great tragedy, and I spend a lot of my time banging the drum booth in India, United States when I'm across the pond, explaining to people that there's a huge chunk of code The extraordinary history that we are we are neglecting. And you know, Steven Spielberg, his father Obama's father. I mean, that's, I mean, none of that surprises me at all that the American effort was really fantastic. In fact, I've been reading a memoir recently by a British soldier who called Calcutta in 1943, in American city. Now, that doesn't surprise me either. Because America, American LendLease supplies when Rangoon was cut off in early 1942, were then diverted to Calcutta and they were transported 800,000 miles up the brown bridge Valley by railroad and see and through the river, other the Brahmaputra River to the airfields in the northern Assam region, Jebediah and Jan to fly over into China. I mean, that's just really an extraordinary thing. And my friend, Giles Milton, who's a writer, and he's written a recent book on the Berlin Airlift, revealed that actually, the Berlin Airlift was only successful because the people who were able to design that quite extraordinary effort in Berlin, in the late 1940s, had cut their teeth.

Host  11:10

Yeah, wow. That's that's, that's amazing. And I I've read other histories that have framed the fighting as kind of a precursor to the jungles of Vietnam, that would happen in the war later. And to clarify about Obama's father that was not as American side or grandfather excuse me, that was his African side. Oh, because there were these Pan African regiments that were that were there.

Robert Lyman  11:31

Yes. Yes. Well, when the African event is another very enduring thing. They were 90,000 African troops from both West and East Africa, serving in in Burma, there were there were two West African divisions in West Africa, the Gold Coast. Now, Gambia, and Ghana and Nigeria, and in East Africa, Northern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia, as was Somaliland, believe it or not, and Tanganyika and what has now missed something and Kenya as well. So it's quite extraordinary that kings African rifles from the Eastern, they formed a division and a half the head, the 11th, East African division, about 12 15,000 men, they had two separate brigades fighting, doing some severe fighting in 1944 45. And then the West Africans fighting incredibly well, in error can do both through 4544 and 45, as well. And if I just give your listeners a real sense of what's going on here, because we have very little actually in the history books or in popular conversation today about these feats of arms, the Africans, bear in mind the same number of African troops fighting in Burma as as were British, in the extraordinary number in era can in 1944 45, and entire West African division. Were moving I moved down a valley parallel to the coast called the Culloden Valley, to put pressure on the Japanese who were occupying the coasts and the Japanese, the Africans were effectively moving behind them, and ultimately forced the Japanese commander to leave the town the main town of Aqib and to to evacuate the defences of the coasts, which meant that when the Infibeam landings went in, and only 45 they were unopposed. And that was an African division, and then African division was on air supply. Many of those aircraft were American aircraft air supply for nine months. Wow. So, I mean, I amaze myself, I mean, really, I'm, I'm surprised myself every time I come across these facts and figures and every time I prepare a lecture, I do a little bit of work and it's quite extraordinary. We've just got we're really the world has lost sight of the enormity of the effort that was undertaken that was launched rather to, and undertaken to defeat the Japanese in Burma and India and elsewhere. It really was quite an extraordinary thing. It does, really, I mean, there's so many angles to the story, which is why I love going back to it. I love going back to the hub, nicknamed the pilot by the pilots, the aluminum trail for all the aircraft fell out of the sky. You know, it was it was quite an extraordinary story for many, many perspectives, not least as I've said, this really, really remarkable logistical effort, and it's really remarkable coalition joint national effort by a whole variety of nations to come together. America bought its engineering expertise. It rebuilt railways and expanded the capacity of the railways through its railway know how it helped build airfields, I mean, the number of about 200 extra additional airfields in northeastern India built in 1943 44 200 Extra airfield. I fly into Dima port twice a year in Assam and it was an American airfield Built on managed 42, to service this quite remarkable logistics hub that was building up a demo port to support the the hub airlift and also the Indian and British forces in Matterport. So there's no end to the stories, but the size and scale of everything is just so mind boggling. So you're just flicking across to Vietnam. Yes, it was a really remarkable exercise in jungle bashing. And certainly the American effort. The northern combat area command was a significant jungle bash through some really remote territory in the Horkan valley right up in the northeast of Burma, crossing the mountains from India into Burma through territory where nobody lives because it's so remote and difficult. Through an area populated by the Contin tribe, large numbers of Christians were recruited, joined American forces to fight the Japanese as scalps and as soldiers. And then they launched the the famous attack in 1944, on Japanese held Mitchener, which is the most northern Japanese town or Burmese town held by the Japanese during the war. And that was, of course, led by General vinegar, Jerry still will. So there's some extraordinary stories. So yes, bet a lot of jungle bashing. The other really interesting thing for me, and this really does Telly with early American experience with a mountain yard in Vietnam, a lot of very significant support by Liaising with local tribes, right. One of the really significant features of this on my book among the head hunters, but actually the whole second world war in the Far East, is that actually the hill tribes on the whole around Burma, the Burma periphery, supported the Allied war effort against the Japanese. And there's lots of reasons for that. And they're all very interesting. But, you know, the Nagas a one case in point, when you would imagine that perhaps some of the Nagas, who I described in the book would have little interest in supporting the allies against the Japanese actually, the reverse was the case and the American experience in northern combinatory. Command way, way up there in the northeast, was, was moved in this regard because of the Kuchins, or the Korean people in the south east of the country played a significant part in uprising or rising against the Japanese and only 45 and actually enabled Bill slim to capture Rangoon on time. You know, this is all because of the work of the hilltribes nuggets that kahibah One of the reasons I joined the kahibah Educational Trust in 2000, and then forwards, the Nagas played such a significant role in helping to amplify the Japanese, that veteran set up this charity, which I joined nearly 20 years ago. And there's all that introduce me to the detail of Naga life in general and of course, puncture in particular. So there is an enormous amount of space for academics, popular writers, people with a general interest to scholars, scholars of all kinds and travelers to actually investigate these stories further and there aren't enough of us. People actually doing the sort of work I love. I love the headhunters actually, because I was able to see all of humankind whenever I started investigating the loss of this aircraft as American commando C 46. You know, all of life is in the story. Yeah. In remote part of India and Burma. And it was it's an exciting story. And when I first came across it, I don't want to preempt you, Joe, but it just hooked me. Here's the story of a whole bunch of different civilizations bumping into each other. And, and let's see what happens. It's really extraordinary.

Host  18:58

Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, definitely. And that comes across in the writing and definitely the just referencing how the Americans were able to rely on their allies and some of the ethnic minorities and regions in the hills in Myanmar. You know, it's a testament that outside of the US Embassy and Yangon, you have a statue of a kitchen Ranger. Just showing a connection that was there. One question I do have, this is something I've always wondered. And now that I have a private audience with you, I get to ask this to World War Two historian that will be able to shine the light on this, you know, I've learned about the hump and the Flying Tigers. I've read about these these are not so well known as you reference in the overall story of World War Two. And indeed, the Burma front has been called the forgotten more or the Forgotten front for just how little attention it's received. And whenever I read about the trials and tribulations of what the pilots are doing, I can't help but think of really one of the most famous writings that's ever come out of oral War Two, at least in terms of fiction, at least in America is Joseph Heller's catch 22. And the description of just the madness, kind of the exaggerated madness of the danger and the risk and the chaos and the craziness of the pilots, pilots flying. I think that was a Mediterranean,

Robert Lyman  20:18

somewhere around there, that I get the parallel. Yes.

Host  20:22

Right. So my question is just looking at, you know, that's something that really catch 22 really captured an American audience when it came out. And it continues, you know, a new TV series came out with catch 22 A few years ago, and it just has captured an American sense of the craziness of not of not just wartime, but particularly the, the what the pilots were going through in this kind of context. And this has the the descriptions of what the pilots were going through with something that's become quite well known and understood in in general culture, I think you could say. So I guess my question is, how would How would you compare what was going on in the hump and what the Flying Tigers were doing with what's much more well known about? Well talked about what Joseph Heller depicted, I'll be at knowing that he took some creative liberties. And that was that was very intentional and wanting to show the inner landscape as well. But it definitely also showed the dangers and the risks the pilots were going through in that context as well.

Robert Lyman  21:27

Well, it's a great question. And let me answer it by saying that I think what we have here is a dichotomy between the purposefulness of war and people's personal experience of actually playing out their role, whether it be in an aircraft, or as a pilot, or flight engineer, or fighting on the ground is an infringement. So the point about a Heller, and Heller was talking about these flights from North Africa into Sicily and Italy, there was a very distinct purposefulness about what they were doing, they were undertaking a planned set of operations to defeat the enemy. And that's exactly the same as the hump it was, it was an extraordinary effort. But if when when people internalize their part in this war, you can feel or when one does, I was a soldier once and I suddenly know this feeling, you suddenly become lost and the enormity of what's going on around you. And you get lost also, or maybe sometimes overcome by the chaos of war, or what not might appear to be the case of war. So there's this dichotomy between actually a purposeful venture well planned pretty well organized, but thrown together, but certainly working hump operation over the mountains and China. And then you've got the personal experiences and the craziness and the fear, and the upside down pneus of life. You know, this, these a young men plucked out of America right across the length and breadth of America stuck into aircraft given in many cases, a modicum of training. And all of a sudden, they were flying seven hour flights, and C 46 Isn't C 40, sevens, over to great mountain ranges across the whole of northern Burma, which is swept by Japanese aircraft. And casualties are high, the aluminum trail lost a lot of aircraft. And the randomness of your life in those circumstances is something that you have to deal with. Now, I tell you, most servicemen deal with the randomness, the potential randomness, of the threat against them by saying it's going to happen to someone else. And I certainly did that as a young soldier. And, and we know that's the experience of people in Europe during the bombing campaign, you know, with such a large number of aircrafts shot down Britain, about 30,000 men were killed, and more than 35,000 were killed in the bombing campaign. So you, you deal with that in a number of ways, and Hala dealt with it by just turning the world upside down and describing the craziness of everything and making it look and sound mad. And I think, you know, that's clearly a perspective. It's clearly applauded. I don't think Heller fully believed it, but it told an amazing story of how you can get lost in the craziness of war. And I think that's certainly if you asked any of these survivors of flight 12420 On the second of August 1943, the Heller question, or the catch 22 question they would all put their thumbs up and say we all know what you're talking about. This is great. We're here we are one way to do our flying across China. And all of a sudden one of the one of the engine starts stuttering and we can hear a vibration on the aircraft and we're looking at each other and then within sort of half an hour all but one of those people on the ground having jumped out by parachute into territory they know nothing of but that today that is still the largest involuntary parachute on any aircraft. In in human history. It's quite extraordinary. Nothing has come near as And I mean, it's very interesting when I was looking at this from a British perspective, I was quite struck that American aircraft actually had parachutes in the Royal Air Force SEA 40 sevens didn't even have parachutes for passengers. But if you think you know, if you think of your bill Stanton or Jack Davis Oh, Eric's ever odd or Duncan Lee getting onto that aircraft, and being given a parachute or told that there's a parachute on your seat, never having been taught how to put on never be told how to pull the ripcord because these weren't parachutes. That open by static line, you had to actually physically pull the parachute cord yourself. And you know, if you're falling out of an aircraft at only three or 400 feet, you've got a second to do it. Everyone did it. Now, that's that that's the Hala story. This is completely loopy. Who could ever imagined a plot as crazy as this. What's even crazier Joe is the fact that in that particular aircraft, you had people from right across the United States. And you had personal stories here that actually in and of themselves, are mind bendingly interesting. I mean, I've often thought this when I've flown around the world, you know, what are people's stories line? I think about all the other people in this plane, line them all up, what are your stories? What are your personal stories, and this is still a great lewer of the Second World War for me. The war was fought by millions of people, each of those individuals had or, you know, had a degree of autonomy or agency. And they all have stories to tell. And that's why someone asked me the other day, you know, why are you still writing on the Second World War? And I thought about it. And I answered with the response that there are still lots of stories. And I don't think they'll ever end is quite an every single one of those stories gives a really unique perspective on on the chaos and the craziness and the seeming randomness. I say seeming actually a lot of it was pretty random. You know, life and death and wartime can be pretty random. And, and I think Hala was trying to capture that, that loopiness That, you know, it's out of control. It's, it's bizarre is nothing much we can do about it. It's just it's, it's crazy. It's chaotic. Yeah.

Host  27:22

Right. And before we get into the specific story that you tell in the book, let's just say one more question to set the context for audience. Let's discuss this China Burma, India, CBI theater during World War Two. This was a region that played a really significant role in overall war effort. And perhaps you can inform the audience about you have the Japanese invasion, the subsequent British retreat that's described in the book, when this plane crash takes place. Where are we specifically in the timeline of the conflict? What's happening on the ground in the shape of what the different the different troops and the different sides are doing at that moment?

Robert Lyman  28:03

Yeah. Okay. So the quick story is that the Japanese invaded Burma they arrived in January 1940s 1942. And they'd pushed the British defenders very weak defenders out of Burma by May, and in so doing, they had captured Rangoon and cut to the Burma Road. Now, so that was May 1942. This is over a year later, August 1943. Now the hump airlift had been operating for many months now the Hebei left began at the end of 1942, the Americans were able to get this area lifeline into Chiang Kai Shek forces up and running really quickly. And what they were doing is they were flying fuel and ammunition and supplies into Yunnan Province chunking. And coming and they were flying back in their aircraft, Chinese soldiers to be trained by British and American soldiers in India paid for incidentally by Britain in order to be able to populate a new force of American and Chinese troops who would advance with still will down the length of the new road known as today in an India's still will road. And as outside India as the leader road, a new road from Lido down to Mitchener. So that process had begun there was a lot of your right to say it was very, very significant politically, because why was America supplying such enormous amounts of equipment to China? Well, America had been doing this since before the war through LendLease. And in fact, the only reason really when you boil everything down to it, the only reason why Japan invaded Burma in the first place was to capture was to cut the Burma Road. They only managed to capture they managed to capture the rest of Burma because the British defenses were so weak and they were able to push them out. They weren't expecting to they they were only expecting to capture Rangoon. But the early experience of battle gave them are confident that they just continued pushing, the British would be entirely ejected. And that's tells us something actually about why the Japanese did so little in the years thereafter to defend Burma and to present it as a as a bestehen. In the, the new empire they'd created, they did, they did a very poor job of that. So here we are, we're towards the end of latter end of 1943. Guadalcanal had been the battle Gargano had begun at the end of the previous year. 1942. So we've got the start of the island hopping campaign that's been going on relentlessly. 1943 some very big battles together. 1944. But let's just hop back to China. America had supported China against the Japanese very significantly, in terms of you mentioned Flying Tigers earlier, and in terms of LendLease war materials. And this was to support the Chinese against a quite aggressive Japanese militarism, rather than militarism, that actually began in the 1930s. I happen to believe that Japan had been building up at all like efforts, since the early 1920s, led not just by some by the politicians, but by Emperor Hirohito as well, I think the evidence is very clear in that regard. And China was the place where Japan was designing to make its fortune as an empire. Now, the problem is that once they had stepped up their efforts in 1937, they had moved into China and Korea dementia. And as that one was that actually stepped up their efforts in 1937, they still couldn't make the headway they wanted. And this was a constant irritation, not least of all, because they blamed America for placing sanctions on Japan in terms of sanctions on oil and some some industrial stuffs like rubber and so on. So the Japanese very quickly because they were failing to achieve their strategic objectives. And China started playing the United States. And that, in part fueled the war talk in Tokyo, and led to the declaration of war and the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor on the eighth of December 941, was simultaneous with the attack on Malaya, British Malaya, it all happened on the same day. It's a different date, the seventh of December, it's only that's because of the International Dateline. But the big question here is for America, if we don't support China, then of course, those very large numbers of Japanese troops in China are going to be diverted to fight us in the Pacific. Yeah, so it's very, very important to keep the Japanese occupied in China. So the way to do that is to feed and fuel and arm the Chinese so that they can hold down the Japanese. And also they can help in the recovery of Burma. And the recovery of Burma was only important for the allies for the purposes of recovering the Burma Road for Rangoon once that was achieved as a very, very significant war aim. And I would, I would argue, no, we do have, we have entirely forgotten the strategic dimension to this, because if you take China out of the war, you've got a very, very different dynamic now operating in the Pacific, that you have to deal with very, very large numbers of Japanese infantry. And you've also got the success of a Japanese emperor, if the Japanese were successful in China, it meant that they had achieved their imperial ambitions, and they would have a higher morale, they would have a different perspective on the fight, as it was because they were struggling to make any headway in China, and they weren't able to redeploy those troops elsewhere. You know, it was much much harder for them to do anything other than simply defend what they had. And that's really the story of 1943, after the failure of the last battleship forays, naval forces in the Pacific was a Japanese defense of their possessions and of the home islands. So that's, that's why China was so incredibly important. And it's why the hump airlift really should play a bigger part in our conception of the overall war.

Host  34:22

Thank you for that. So with that context in mind, both of the specific missions happening in the area that we're talking about, as well as the overall CBI theater, let's get into the story that you tell and you just briefly mentioned some of the names that were on this crew, but let's go into more detail if you can share some of the more notable names that were part of the C 46. That went down.

Robert Lyman  34:46

Well, it's quite an amazing story, actually. Because on this plane flying into junking were a number of individuals going for military purposes. One of them was a chap called Captain Duncan C. Lee. And he was an auditor. He had a pretty lonely job in Southeast Asia command or CBI, but actually his he was unknown to us at the time. He was a Soviet double agent really quite extraordinary that this man was on the aircraft. In addition, we had one of the most prominent American journalists of the era and certainly not a Morrow at the time, but in decades to come. He has to he wants to be the Voice of America, Eric Severide. As a war correspondent, he also happens to be on the plane we also had John Payton Jack Davies, who was the political attache to general still will, and a very significant individual in designing the steel walls war plans and and executing them and your your listeners rather will be interested to know of the really quite extraordinary gameplay, political gameplay behind this entire story, because still will was representing a particular view of how America might fight the Japanese by supporting the Chinese. And he was being opposed, both publicly and privately by cloture note who was essentially arguing for an A, a type of warfare dominated by aircraft, the code generator and afraid was way out of time, in terms of his doctrine, because by this stage in the war, it had been demonstrated that, but through the Blitz and so on that bombing aircraft, were not going to do what he thought they might be able to do. He had this view that simply bombing Japan into submission would end the war. Well, yes and no dependent what you were dropping on them. And the other real challenge to put your notes or arguments was that if soon as soon as you started flying, a B 29 out of China, you are going to bring the wrath of the Japanese army down on you and they would advance against those airfields and and that, in fact, was part of the story in 4344. So it's um, that's that's that's his role Davis political test, he still will we had Bill Stanton, who was from the board of economic warfare, another administrator, but a very interesting character. And then a couple of officers from the Chinese army and then a whole bunch of soldiers who had no idea about all the maisonette machinations going on around them, who were just doing the military duty. And and, and doing as they were told, I mean, it's, it's quite extraordinary, actually, that you wouldn't have you wouldn't ever have thought about putting all of these people in the same aircraft. Alright. That's that's a fun thing for me. If these were just ordinary soldiers, pejoratively, then I probably wouldn't have given this subject another. Another look, but actually, the fact is that Eric Severide, very interesting guy, fantastic writer, very good journalist, was part of the crew is really fascinating. He left some very, very interesting memoirs that I've been able to use. And he talked through the whole story of what happened. So if it wasn't for Eric, we wouldn't have had really the angle into the story that we had. But John Payton Jack Davis, he also left some memoirs as well, a lot, not as extensive, but the two of them together have given us you know, enough to be able to tell a pretty good story about what happened.

Host  38:50

Right, so they go down, and they're after their plane falls. And we should also paint the context a bit more of the Flying Tigers and tional. The hump we talked about, you talked about this action taking place as part of the theater, but I think the complexity, and the controversy behind it hasn't really been fleshed out because this was whether or not this i This was definitely a very hard thing to do. It was it was a massive undertaking. But that doesn't get into the question of was it a good idea to actually commit action in this way? And was it effective looking back historically, with that perspective, that was this something that actually supported the Allied cause of the war and there's a lot of controversy with this. And there's also a lot of ego with both the Nationalist Chinese as well as the American Flying Tigers, in terms of the belief and what they want to do and they I believe it was still well and others that had very different ideas about the effectiveness of pursuing the, an airlift strategy through the hump. So can you flesh out a bit of The different opinions around the decision to to commit to this action and looking at it with the advantage of quite a bit of hindsight, historically, how effective actually was this was a massive undertaking. And it was amazing that they did this. But how much did this actually impact the war effort?

Robert Lyman  40:18

It's a great question. So let me try and unpick it slightly. And the reality is, in my view, it was incredibly important strategically. And I think when you come when you come to analyze military decision making, what you have to do is you have to ask yourself, what the impact was at a grand strategic level, either the level at which the global war decisions were being made to the conversation between Roosevelt, Hitler and Stalin and so on. And from a grand strategic perspective, it was incredibly important that America and Britain supported Chiang Kai Shek. And actually through 1942 and 43. Roosevelt spent a lot of time trying to persuade church to in particular, to invest in ground troops and ground operations in Burma, because that's what Chiang Kai Shek was asking for. Chiang Kai Shek was saying, the in exchange for my commitment to fight the Japanese. I want you, Britain in particular, to deploy troops into Burma to recover the Burma Road. Well, the problem for Britain at the time in India was they didn't have the ability to do that they didn't have the troops Burma is a massive country. Just for your listeners who don't know much about the terrain. The war in Burma by 1945 has been fought from Calcutta, the distance from Calcutta forward into the Brahmaputra Valley, across the Naga Hills into menopause, then across the Chindwin to Mandalay and then down from Mandalay to Rangoon is 1800 miles. Now that's the same distance. So I didn't have an American equivalent, but that's the same distance as London to Moscow. So 1945, we, the allies were having to fight a war in Moscow, the equivalent of Moscow from London. Now, this was critically important, it was critically important to keep Chiang Kai Shek in the war, for all the reasons I've explained. And, and Britain had to find a way of committing ground troops. And as an aside, that was the rationale for or Wingate, second kindred expedition in 1944, Operation Thursday, but we that's a bit of a tangent here. So So that's the first and most important thing now at a grand strategic level, a commitment was made to support Chiang Kai Shek. And and I've described that to you at a strategic level. And then at an operational level below that, you have to work out the best way of defeating the Japanese what's the best way of using the resources that we've got to fight the war against the Japanese and of course, that's where they touched on earlier, you have this really quite extensive battle between Stillwell and Plourde general approach, and I was presenting a an aerial campaign. And still will was presenting a different approach, which was to effectively build the road down to Michonne arm with American and Chinese troops. And he didn't really care what the Brits did. But the extraordinary thing about all this, as you mentioned, is how egos and personalities got in the way actually, yeah, it's an unusual campaign in the sense that it didn't really have the tight control of George C. Marshall. Still will actually was a very was a protege of Marshalls and Marshall held him in high regard. But you know, that you had a massive battle and both Claudia and old and still will fought out their battles in Washington as much as they did on the battlefield. There was a lot of political play here. And I think I mean, you you can criticize, and I do I criticize both parties, I think in 1943 44, clinical closure notes strategy was wrong, was clearly out of date. He was a he's an airpower theorists, early 1920s, in the early part of the Second World War had disproven his his ideas dramatically. But equally, Stilwell got things badly wrong, and the problem was still well is that he saw American aid to China to be for operational purposes. Well, that was only partly true, because the most important purpose of American aid was to show political goodwill towards China. And you had to make that work. You couldn't just say the Chinese were no good. They didn't fight very well. You couldn't just accuse giant Gacek of being pinned up, which is a phrase he used. His theories are absolutely terrible. I mean, I mean, they were never they were never meant for publication, but I still cringe every time I read them. I think that does reflect still wills political naivety, he didn't realize that she did. This was a very significant war. Very significant political play rather. And he, you know, he was very, very limited by that his particular viewpoint. And I've sort of concluded in my research over the years that still an extraordinary guy, but he was an insufficiently competent strategist, he couldn't see the big picture. A Claude Shannon was he was failed by a flawed strategy, but actually he had the political support that he needed in the United States. Claude Juncker was an intern guy, he talked big, whereas still taught small. Yeah. The American I mean, I call it Forgive me, you know, American chutzpah, I'm not being redrawn. American view was always think big, and people liked to grasp the big things and to say, and do things that everyone else regard as being impossible. And you know what it worked, it was really quite an extraordinary thing we would do without it. And think about just the way that Detroit was mobilized to become the factory of the world, equipping, equipping everyone from the Chinese to the Russians. And we often forget that and of course, when we, when people in Russia indeed, claim that they won the Second World War, they're forgetting that they were their troops were trucked to battle in British and American tanks, with American trucks with American and British Petroleum. And that's a really, really important point to make repeatedly because it was a logistically complimentary war. People like Phillips O'Brien, an academic in the United Kingdom, American academic in in Scotland, makes this point very well in one of his books that the complementary nature of the logistical War was the one that won it for the for the allies. It wasn't simply each country on their own doing their own bit and add to that the politics at play in in China and Burma were really quite profound. Do you have the other thing I just need to mention about those particular politics going back to Churchill and Roosevelt was that Roosevelt sorry, Jeju was never interested in launching troops that he didn't have, in 1942 43 into Burma, described the idea of sending troops back into Burma to undertake a land campaign against the Japanese as akin to jumping into the sea to wrestle with a shark. You know, it's an absurd idea, what Jeju to do was to launch an amphibious set of operations against the Burmese coast to seize Rangoon and then launch further amphibious operations against Malaya and Singapore. Well, that's all well and good as a grand strategic idea. It falls apart in 1943, of what you do in 43, because the world's or the allies, available, seaborne resources for amphibious landings were seriously limited. And only 42. They were focused, of course, on on operations in Madagascar, Madagascar, and then on North Africa, and then a North 1943 on Sicily, and then Italy, and then a 1944 and D Day in Normandy. So it was only AFTER D DAY normally that those amphibious assets were sent around to the Far East where they were used effectively 1945. So you've got a serious problem here, strategically so Churchill didn't want to go into Burma buy land, but Chiang Kai Shek was banging the drum in Washington saying British aren't really interested in helping us they don't want to undertake a land operation, and something fell into Churchill's lap, and that something was a chap called abusers later rank Major General, or Wingate, or whichever

Host  49:05

What a character,

Robert Lyman  49:07

a real character he, I mean, that's this is the story of the war in the Far East. It was a war of characters. He's not mad. I've described him as, in other ways, he wasn't he wasn't mad. He's quite an intelligent. He's just

Host  49:20

someone who liked to eat onions when he was naked, right? What sticks in my mind?

Robert Lyman  49:25

That's exactly right, that that gives a good summary of the character really, really idiosyncratic. But he came out of the first unit expedition in 1943. It was a massive failure. He went in with 3000 men and came back with 2002, he lost a third of the sports. Very few of that those 2000 who came back were actually worth anything. Fighting later on they, they didn't play much of a role and later campaigns, but in the story of British and Indian or Gurkha troops going behind enemy lines in Burma was a really good one. spawned by the General Headquarters in Delhi. Wingate started to believe his own hype and, and this came at a time when Georgia was desperately trying to find a way of placating Roosevelt and saying, Well, we've got the capacity to help Burma. And all of a sudden this man or Wingate arrived, Churchill, he ordered Wingate wrote a report that he sent directly to Churchill, he bypassed the generals in India, much to their annoyance, I mean, he broke every rule there was, and he wrote a report that was really tendentious. On reflection. I read it again last year in the production of my book, a war of empires. It's quite hilarious in parts, because a lot of it's just not true. It's he, he made a lot of it up in terms of the consequences of the potential for long range penetration operations to very large scale and Burma is a little bit novelistic. But Churchill got hold of this. And he said to himself, this is the man who can wage the war successfully against Japanese and even told his generals, this man, we should make them the Commander in Chief, fortunately wasn't successful. But he was able the timing was quite interesting, because this all came about just before. Churchill went off to the Quebec conference to meet Roosevelt, and he put Wingate and his wife on the ship together, the Queen Mary, they went across. And they met up with Roosevelt and Roosevelt introduced, or Wingate, or sorry, Churchill introduced Roosevelt to orde Wingate, and it had at the time to develop some grandiose ideas for taking large numbers of men throwing them behind enemy lines, destroying the enemy from behind. And, and so winning the war, he had ideas of taking his long range penetration operations deep into Thailand and on to Vietnam and Ruza. And he was a very good talker. He was a very good salesman, Wingate, and he had everyone in the palm of his hand. He certainly had Roosevelt in the palm of his hand, and Roosevelt said, Well, I'm sorry, Churchill said, This is the man he's going he can lead a significant operation into Burma next year. And Roosevelt said, well, we'll give you the air support and air supply and resources necessary. And eventually about 300 aircraft under an air Commando, led by an American called Cochran was put in place to establish this. But it's very general only did this in exchange for I mean, this is the point about grand strategy. There are a whole series of exchanges and quid pro quos. Churchill was desperate to persuade Roosevelt, Roosevelt to accept his his Mediterranean policy. The basic Mediterranean policy was after the invasion of West Africa and November 9 for the operation torch. Instead of going straight up to launch an invasion of France, across the channel from Britain was what then became D day in June 1944. They would launch an operation against the access soft underbelly of Europe, in Sicily, and, and Italy. And of course, Roosevelt in exchange for Churchill's commitment to Burma. Agreed. So that's, that's how decisions are made. Yeah, I keep on reminding people of my students in particular, that the famous chinder expedition in 1944, had no operational purpose other than satisfy this need for agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt. That's the start and the finish of it. And actually, it turned out to be quite a dramatic failure, these 20,000 men and 300 aircraft, very brave men. And don't get me wrong. It was quite an extraordinary story. But actually, they achieved nothing strategically, and often talk about the importance of thinking about strategic effect when you do something in military operations, think about the effect that it might have strategically doesn't achieve your strategic objectives. While there are lots of operations in Burma that did achieve strategic objectives are very well, but the Chindits were not one of them. I'd say going back to your question about the hub, I think in my in my view, the hub was absolutely essential to keep in China in the war and actually met the grand strategic imperatives that I've laid out. It was a perfect way and it was a perfect way of bringing Roosevelt and Churchill together and coming up with a an agreed strategy for the Far East. It placated Chiang Kai Shek, although it wasn't ever an easy relationship between the three of them. Yeah. And then at a strategic level, as I've described the sub level politics as as perhaps we could describe it between supporters still and supporters of Chennault were really quite destabilizing. I want your listeners also need to know that by October 1943, the Roosevelt and Churchill had decided to create a new command Southeast Asia command led by Lord Louie Mountbatten as the combined joint. So multinational commander, and in my view it that particular organization was a dramatic success and pulled everyone together. For the first time, it gave everyone a single purpose. Interestingly enough, as as this opera organization began to shake itself out and to and to deliver combat effect on the battlefield, still will, by the way, was not bad and deputy, he had a number of tasks, but one of them was his deputy. And interesting enough, he absolutely failed. He was not a good try National Commander. He, he played a lot of politics behind Mountbatten's back. And, you know, he just didn't rise to the occasion. And I think that's one of the great challenges of war, you could be a good infantry platoon commander, you could be a really good company commander and a battalion commander. But it doesn't mean that you've actually got the Nels to be a great strategist or to understand the strategic level of war. But that's the big challenge that we had, of course, and second of all, we have to expand our armies massively from next to nothing to something quite extraordinary. And we had to learn on the job. By not ended it 44 Still will had gone, he had been sacked and quietly moved on, and replace with a series of other commanders. But I think, you know, by 1944, all that politicking had died away, we all knew what we were trying to do. We are speaking as a historian, that the Allies knew exactly what they were trying to do. And on the whole, they achieved it. So yes, it was important. It was politically critical. You know, the, the execution of it led much to be desired. And, but it worked. It worked in, in this sort of chaos theory. The interesting thing about chaos theory is, if you understand enough about the golden thread, what are you trying to achieve? And enough people are working towards it, you can mitigate the chaos. You don't mitigate the chaos due to enemy action. But if you're well trained and organized and well led, then you can, I think that's probably one of the great stories of Second World War and the great stories of the Far East.

Host  57:27

That's that's quite a vision. And it's so interesting, as well, because all this this chaos that's going on, and all these egos and these different motivations and different factions and different ambitions and aspirations. I mean, really, all of this is paving the way to the problems that Burma would experience in the coming decades leading up till today. That's a whole other conversation is looking how many of these things laid the groundwork for conflict that still ongoing now, but rather than guide this conversation forward at the moment, I want to actually guide it backward and bring in a new character that is one of the main characters of your book that we haven't really talked about at all yet. That's the Naga people. So can you tell us what is NACA land and who are the Naga people?

Robert Lyman  58:13

Okay, that's fabulous. Well, the Nagaland didn't exist in the early 1960s. And prior to that, they were known as Naga hills and there's a lot of confusion about the nature of British colonialism in India. But suffice it to say that even by the 1930s much of the Naga Hills weren't part of anyone's jurisdiction. The Nagas are ancient Mongolian tribe who came down probably 1000 years ago for Mongolian populated a lot of these hills and, and and elements of the people traveled out actually as far as Papua New Guinea and so on. So extraordinary diaspora no one really knows why. But this very, very clear genetic relationships between people in the hills and, and other other people who fled from Mongolia 1000 years ago. The Naga people at the time, maybe 200,000 people scattered across 16 or 17 language groups, these are entirely different language groups. They there was nothing in common between each language and another and in order to communicate they needed to create another language, which is now which is known today as monogamy. So it's an additional language to enable people to communicate. And these people lived agrarian subsistence lives in very small villages dotted across these, this mountainous terrain, the Naga hills. And to cut a very long story short, they were tended to be absorbed into the I call it the British Empire. They weren't really weren't part of India, but they're absorbed into the control and security orbit of the Empire by violence between the villages, so if I just tell a little story in a village, would be attacked by its neighbor And in order to be able to secure itself, they will often go to the British colonial authorities pay a little tax and in exchange for the tax receive security from future attack. The Nagas were traditional headhunters. headhunters provide headhunting provide a spiritual benefit to the recipient. If you chop someone's head off, even if it's a child, you received the spiritual value inherent in that individual. And it was more of a cultural right than a, you know, there wasn't widespread head hunting. It wasn't as though 1000s of being killed every year. But it was sufficient to cause the, the British along the Brahmaputra Valley and in the hills at places called Cameron mocking Trump, to realize that if head hunting and violence continued, it would destabilize villages and it would lead to all out war. So these Naga villages, as the years went by, from the 1880s, when the British first arrived in the hills, British sort of control with a small c crept deeper and deeper into the hills, as more and more villages opted to pay their tax and receive security from the British government in the form of the Assam rifles who are basically a paramilitary force. And they would come under the control of the Deputy Commissioner for hilltribes, one of whom was based in Mako Chun, and the other was based in kahibah. And they would do annual trips around the villages and they would be basically magistrates and the tribal elders would bring their tax to be paid. They would also bring any outstanding legal cases that they couldn't really manage themselves murderers and so on, that they didn't deal with in their own way. And the district commissioners or the sorry, the doctors, three commissioners, the Deputy Commissioners would deal with them in their own way. There are a whole series of villages beyond the control of the British Empire. The British Deputy Commissioner the hill tribes knew about them. And one of the most significant right on the border with Burma was this very large mega village of puncture which had a very long tradition of violence towards his neighbors. In fact, all of his neighbors were terrified of it and would launch regular attacks against people outside the village stockades capturing women and children. Incidentally, slavery, headhunting was closely associated with slavery. So a village would often capture men, women and children out in the fields or collecting water, and they would use them as slaves. And once when they thought it was opportune, they would kill them and take their heads and stick their heads on the the head poles that adorn the entrances to the villages. So slavery and headhunting were intertwined. And as I suggested, a little bit of headhunting was accepted by the British authorities because, you know, what can you do about one or two heads taken? As soon as you get 3040 or more, you basically got war on your hands. Yeah. And when that happened, the Assam rifles we mobilized and sent out to stop the villages undertaking that sort of activity. And these were known as punitive expeditions because the the point of the message was that the point of the exercise was that if we send messages out to you to stop headhunting and raiding other villages and killing innocent men, women and children will come and we will punish you. That's the That's the definition of punitive. Yeah, and a number of these punitive operations were undertaken in the 1920s and 30s. Some of the not very successfully because what your listeners need to know is actually, the Nagas were fearsome warriors, you really didn't want to get involved with these guys dangling them, because they were very good. The one thing they didn't have were rifles, and they absolutely desperately wanted rifles. But they had every other sort of weapon you can imagine from spares to bow and arrows and Punji sticks, and which are hardened bamboo with poison tips, which they were put in pits on tracks, and we fell into them and you were injured, then there's really little chance of you surviving, you know, nasty forms of dying actually. And these periods of expeditions were, were designed to stomp on this activity and, you know, persuade villages to act within a broad consensus or broad understanding of the law.

Host  1:04:40

Right. And another interesting part of the British Naga relationship in history that you go into, are the particular administrators who were assigned here in the Indian civil service, the ICS. And you describe how these were quite unusual characters for are the type of colonial administer we usually think of, and we usually think of in Burma. So tell us a bit about who these people were? Well, I mean,

Robert Lyman  1:05:07

we do have this view, many of us completely erroneous view about the nature of the colonial administration. And as you quite rightly say, the colonial administrators in the hills tended almost exclusively to be really significant anthropologists in their own right. They were there to study the people, they wanted to preserve the cultures of the people. In fact, in 2010, the Indian government repealed the restricted area permits act the RA P Act, which meant that you had to have a special permit to go into the hills. When I first started going to Nagaland I needed an RA p, which is this began in the 1880s. And it was an attempt to stop non Nagas from getting into the hills and upsetting or changing the peculiarities of Naga culture. So these early administrators were anthropologist and they were desperate to preserve Naga culture recorded and preserve it. And they some very, very impressive characters JP mills. Stars vary spectacularly in the 1936 story. But he was one of a number of quite remarkable men who played a very significant role in preserving Niagra traditions. And you go to Nagaland a day and that the the the history that's captured of Nivea culture, going back to the early days of the British, of Western involvement in Nagaland comes through these men. Just as an aside, some of the earliest white men to arrive in the hills, as I described in the book were American missionaries in the 1830s onwards, and immediately after the American Civil War, there seemed to be a sense of sort of American revitalized, revitalized sense of itself, which sent lots of evangelical mainly Baptist missionaries to places all over the Indo Pacific, including Nagaland, the extent the result of all that is that Nagaland is, I think it's 97% Christian today. It's a very, very dramatically Christian part of India, very dramatically Christian part of the world, and they take their Christianity very seriously. And it began with with Americans, so the Americans were there before the Brits, but going back to your point, yes, these what these early administrators were really remarkable people. And it's worth just saying that the support that the Nagas gave to the British during the climactic battle occur here and only 44 was largely due to the fact that they trusted and supported their the deputy commission the DC is quite extraordinary character. But know that during the battle, the British managed to feed the Nagas look after them, keep them away from too much harm. Bring them out of the jungle, where many of them had run when the Japanese arrived and looked after them. So if we have a sense of British colonial administrators being nasty judges who just wanted to punish and take taxes, that's entirely the wrong view, entirely the wrong view, it doesn't reflect at all the reality of life in these hills in the in the 1920s 30s and 40s. So does it you still had a little bit of this cultural practice of headhunting going on? But it was it was, it was constrained by these large scale punitive raids that were undertaken. When When, when these mega villages like banks had just stepped out of line.

Host  1:08:43

Yeah, and I was struck by your book as well, where when you give a lot of varying motivations from which is you know, the huge truth, the true human cocktail of our intention, ality and what drives us and a very complex situation, but you do describe incidences where the the main colonial administrator that's in the Naga territory is taking certain actions not really with the British government in mind, but more in attention to how destabilizing the headhunting practices slavery obviously, is the the how, how much the fear of one larger power, one larger Naga power, attacking another takes away all the opportunity of being able to, you know, pursue education or other kinds of economic advancement and some of in their own words, some of these colonial administrators are describing how they're they're seeking greater stabilization and control really for a purpose of wanting to provide greater stability and prosperity to some of those weak or not Naga tribes that just generation after generation are just caught in a cycle that doesn't really benefit anyone but it's a culture they can't get out of.

Robert Lyman  1:09:53

Well, you've you've captured entirely and that's exactly right. You either have endless war endless pay Yes. And if you want endless war, it's very easy. Just Just allow these villages to keep on fighting each other. If you want endless space, you have to set up mechanisms structures to enable that to happen. And, you know, these deputy Commission's were very impressive men, and their wives are pretty impressive as well. And they were able to, they were able to see this issue in its darkness. Now you can see it really particularly at the end of the war, when Britain started preparing to leave India. And the Nagas immediately said, We don't want you to leave Russia today. And this is something I touch on at the end of the book. And it's really quite amazing. There's a lot of lot of work well, so there's not a lot of work done on it. But actually, the the evidence is very clear from stuff that was written at the time that the the deputy commissioners, for the hill tribes, were desperate to preserve the integrity of the Naga, the Nagas themselves, but then you realize that without the British being there, they would simply revert to this earlier cycle of warfare. And there would never be peace. And even though it wasn't what the Nagas wanted, staying as part of India or leaving as part of the handover to India, was probably the best way of ensuring this extension of peace. Now, if you're interested only in Naga culture, then and the preservation of what the Nagas have always done, then you'd be happy to leave them to continue their warring ways. Yeah. There's, there's a degree of paternalism here, which says actually, yeah, if you want to achieve long term peace, it has to be enforced. It's a very interesting dilemma. Yeah. And as a consequence, Britain, handed over the Naga hills to India when when Britain left and I'm 47. And now the ramifications for that are really dramatic and heavy, dramatic. I mean, I've been challenged repeatedly by friends and Nagaland, one in particular, I can think of now who says Rob Britain shouldn't have left. And I keep on saying, well, Britain didn't have much choice, but we're not Indians. Why did you leave us to the Indians? Well, that's just that's life, I'm afraid. But it's very interesting, how passionate these arguments still run many, many years after the amount of minutes.

Host  1:12:16

Sure. And another consequence of that is that you know, I couldn't help but but feel a sense of this horrific familiarity by the punitive missions you describe with the British were their their main and, and primary goal is burning villages. And this has been a primary goal, the tatmadaw, the Burmese military, going back decades, and is one of the you know, I don't have the numbers offhand. But since the military coup A couple of years ago, the number of villages that have been burned across Myanmar, and the number of people that have been displaced, has been horrific. And I was as this was going on, I was just in the early stages, I was like, this is you know, I haven't really heard this kind of tactic from other conflicts or civil wars, that you just didn't sometimes even go to a village and they told the villagers, okay, you have one hour to leave there actually, in some cases, they kill everyone. In some cases, they say, We're gonna burn your village, you have to leave. And I was speaking to someone from Amnesty International last year, and they were saying that they're working on a report, we hope to have this as a podcast later, that is, is really examining this, this study this practice of the tatmadaw today, and in past decades, using the burning of civilian villages, as a as as one of their main tactics. I mean, the time it doesn't that their their, you know, their, their strategic ability can sometimes be argued in terms of its effectiveness, they just kind of hit it every they see everything is a nail and they they they just have the same hammer to hit it. And one of those hammers is the burning the villages. And the person I was speaking to with Amnesty said they were tracing this back to the colonial era of how the British would pacify some of the ethnic regions in that was one of their tactics. And like so many of the things that Tomodachi does today is influenced either by the Japanese Imperial Army or the colonial British presence.

Robert Lyman  1:14:10

Yeah, well, it definitely is in my area of expertise and interests. I would completely reject the Amnesty International argument, I understand it, but actually, you can't draw direct parallels. But the reason why you can't draw direct parallels is a there were very, very few punitive expeditions. Second, the punitive expeditions that were undertaken, were undertaken to burn villages, not kill people. So that's a very, very significant distinction, and even burn villages. Look, the village most of the villages were rebuilt every year anyway. But the idea was to punish the recalcitrant villages, not for not for cocking a snook at the imperial power because there wasn't really much imperial power there, but for destabilizing the localities and thirdly, it's very important that the punitive expeditions undertaken the 19 20s and 30s and the main were undertaken with the support and agreement of local Naga villages. So Ching Mei Chang Mack rather, and tune sang next to Banksia. They were they were the villages that were regularly been beaten up by puncture. And they were the ones who asked for support. So the tap of a door model or argument is not a logical one, in my view. Now, there's an easier way of explaining what is going on in Burma, which is really to understand the continuing civil war that's been raging in Burma since the Japanese invasion in January 1942. And I think it's really quite straightforward. Actually, if we get rid of the modern politics, the reality is that the Braemar people have been at hammer and tongs on the whole overgeneralize. With the people on the hilltribes for a very, very long time, the Japanese invasion and journey 1942 managed to exploit original existing divisions, and set the people against each other. So that you see throughout 9042 4344, a very significant, very significant indeed support, as I've said earlier, by the people on the hilltribes. The kitchens in particular, their Koreans are less accent, the Schande, but certainly the Nagas and also their angers in support of the British stroke, the allies and the war that has continued to this day. It really is quite the the the ethnic stroke political divide in Burma is as dark now as it ever was. And I'm sorry that that that's just the case that the divide is dramatic. I mean, one of the real challenges of Burma has faced is that in the early days, Aung saying, of course, who understood that the only way a future politic could be established in Burma, uniting the hilltribes in the Myanmar together, would be by by linking everyone in the same political universe, he was assassinated by people who disagreed with them, who were pushing the line of Bomar exceptionalism. And I think the MAR exceptionalism is a significant problem. And if you're the DAP Madore, and you're fighting against the people on the periphery of Burma all around the horseshoe of Burma, and you're, you think that those people are your enemy, you've only got one way of dealing with them. And that is to go into their territories and burn their villages and kill people. That's not something that British ever did. This is a tap Madore. This is a Bomar stroke Burmese strategy to assert their power and authority over the people the hill tribes, who frankly don't support the structures of political control, or violence in Burma and Myanmar. This is a read this is the fundamental challenge. I think it's very, very easy to blame or create a blaming historical precedent for what's going on the villages. But I do suggest that it's entirely concocted. You don't need to create a precedent by looking at the Colonial suppression of villages like puncture, in order to be able to explain away tatmadaw excesses against the chins or the Koreans and just you don't need to do it. It happens because these individuals and these these villages, and these people, the Corinthians and so on, are antipathetic, to the current regime in Burma or are perceived to be good considered the enemy. That's the fundamental problem.

Host  1:18:41

Thanks for that, um, going back and looking at historically the Naga people and Naga land there, you lay out kind of three different groups of people of Westerners that are starting to have influence on Naga culture. And I wonder if you can tell us both what influence they had as well as how they, how they worked with each other, how they liked each other, how they might have been antagonistic one is the missionaries which you've already mentioned, largely American Protestants. Another are the colonial administrators that are there. We've already mentioned that the third which has not been mentioned is the East India Company. So if you can share those three different groups of people and how they came to interact intersect in Naga territories in that time,

Robert Lyman  1:19:24

yeah, certainly well, let's start with East India Company, because the East End companies that have ended at the end of the the mutiny in 1850, early 1858, after the after the median age of 87. So the East India Company had been going since the Battle of Plessy. And somebody at whenever it was 75, and the East India Company was primarily concerned about establishing its commercial prerogatives, and it did so in many cases in a pretty blunt and brutal manner. It wants to protect its markets and one wanted to predict its trade. It wasn't interested in gaining territory. But if you want to secure your trade, then it's quite important that you suppress the coterie you just or violence or and you establish militias to be able to create security in the areas that you control. And of course, in the 1840s and 50s and 60s, in Assam tea was being grown for the first time and quite extensive tea interests were invested in by the East India Company or controlled by the East India Company. And, and a commercial interest and a security interest was first created now, the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam. These are the foothills of the Naga hills so that the people living in the hills, the Nagas, and the Nagas, would see all this going on and would come down and raid the tea plantations, kill a few people take away good, the Nagas would always come down and trade for salt because there's no salt in the hills. But in addition to this, they would launch quite regular regular expeditions of their own raiding parties, down with the Brahmaputra Valley. This has clearly gone up the nose of the East India Company, but actually nothing much was done about it until the British government under what we all know, as the Raj took over in 1858. And started to regularize government. And there's a very significant change here in 1858 from a commercial sort of freewheeling commercial enterprise where the primary focus of life and of law and the structures of social existence were built around trade, all of a sudden under the Raj, that the world was turned upside down and the preeminent priorities were about civil order that was of the Raj and a British government was civil order. And the Indian civil service all of a sudden was was played a very significant role. And in the governance of India and the East India Company, troops became part of the Indian Army, and so on. So we had the East India Company joining into the Raj, the Raj had to put down or felt that they had to put down the rating Nagas one of the most significant Naga tribes was the ngami tribe based in CA Hema, which is now on the road through dope man Kapoor. And interesting enough in 1879, the ngami town of kahibah was subdued by British troops, supported by mandatory troops by the by the princely state troops of the princely state of man report, further to the so this is another little point about the Empire, the Empire grew as a result of joint interest between powers, power and power. So the British Raj wanted to put down the ngami Nagas, in kahibah. And so did the Maharaja of mesopore, who lent troops for that particular purpose Variante enough very shortly after carnamah and kahibah, had been subdued and agents in July in 1880. You know, the Missionaries of whom I've mentioned and you have touched on, began to play a very significant part. Until then, there are a small number of missionaries. But from the 1880s, a very large number came in from America at some from Britain, and began to change the change in agriculture directly. I mean, men were encouraged to wear trousers, women, to wear dresses, and so on and to worship. A foreign god actually didn't take long for the Nagas to worship the Protestant or Christian God, because there are so many parallels between the Christian story and what Nagas had taught themselves about the nature and existence of God is an absolute fascinating story. So that particular process of conversion wasn't a difficult one. It certainly wasn't imposed, but it was not liked by the cultural custodians of Naga of Nagaland or the Naga hills, namely the anthropologist minded Deputy Commissioner. So the British Civil Servants put in charge of overseeing the administration of the Naga hills, on the whole hated anything that wasn't a benign Anglicanism. So this strident evangelical American Protestantism, which was changing Naga culture quite dramatically, was regarded as anathema by the Deputy Commissioner. So you are right. There is really a dramatic culture clash here in the 1880s 90s and the early 20th century between American Christians who said well to be a real question, you need to live a different life and they about the cultural mores, which describe a Christian life are, you know going to church on Sunday singing hymns and wearing trousers. Whereas the British approach and the the approach of the colonial administrators with their sort of benign Anglicanism, which was much more relaxed, it was much of a complementary, let's allow Naga Naga culture to develop, if they want to adopt Christianity, that's great, they can express it in their own way, will will clamp down on the various excesses like slavery and and headhunting. But we're not interested and we don't actually we're, we're dead against changing the culture of these extraordinary people. And it's very interesting, it's very interesting looking at the arguments, people today perhaps just have this binary view of colonialism. And it's, and it's so called oppression. In reality, it's much different, it's much more nuanced. And it's much more startling, in its realities, that actually, the British colonial administration and the Naga Hills was, you might describe it today as being woke because it was desperately, desperately keen on preserving the privileges of an ancient culture that modernity was, was threatening to strip away, and even a part of the expression of that culture involved heading, so be it.

Host  1:26:26

That's interesting, because I think you're right, I think if if you were to present someone today, this kind of generalized monolithic view of like, well, you have these white people going into this area where it hasn't really seen outsiders and, you know, they want to create order instability, and bring religion and have commerce and tax. And it's these all these things sound like a package, you know, they sound like they all go together, and to really look under the hood and pick them apart. And you see that, that these are actually clashing with each other, and that it's not one monolithic force coming, but they're, they're from these three different parties. They're, they're prioritizing what what it is they want to bring, what how they want to interact with the culture. And in some ways, these aspects are actually directly among the white people, the British and the Americans, mainly, that are there, these values are actually directly clashing with each other in terms of what they want to bring to the Nagas. But you know, certainly that's not the view you get if you just get a generalized view of the white colonial experience and primitive people

Robert Lyman  1:27:24

exactly right. And I think I think there's, there's been some very good books recently in the UK, one by Professor Nagar bigger on colonialism last year, which actually makes this point very, very well, that there was no such single view of colonialism, we need to we need to look at it in the round. No one's suggesting that colonialism is necessarily an ideal form of polity or a good form of policy, but in the circumstances, it needs to be understand individual contexts wherever that might be. And in India, there are very, very many sorts of that colonial context which you need need exploring. And as historians we ought to be encouraging everyone to understand the nuances of history rather than just trying to lump it together to something that makes sense, as a generalization, but actually is inaccurate. That's one of my big concerns. As a historian, a lot of the history I hear is actually quite inaccurate, even though it makes sense. General perspective.

Host  1:28:23

So just one more question before we get back to the story of the youtell in the book, I think this is fascinating, because we're getting we're going into depth and all these different people and people as individuals, peoples as ethnic groups, and then the clash of where they come together. But the question I have is where did the DeMars fit into this both in terms of the pre colonial era that the Bomar kingdoms have any contact with the Nagas in World War Two and then if you want to carry it on after independence and Naga got that you mentioned I think one Naga village that's actually it actually sits right on the line that ended up being divided between India and Burma. But where how would you describe historically the Bomar Nagar relationship?

Robert Lyman  1:29:04

Well, you need to remember that the the Mars the people of Burma, the Buddhist people of Burma actually were part of an ancient kingdom which which ran all the way across them that one another Naga hills, Nagaland into menopause. So the knives and the menopause trees and the DeMars have been together at various times in the same kingdom for a long period of time. They're all their ancient history stretches back as far as outdoors. So that's part of the context. Of course, as the home Empire died, and the the Burmese kingdom came in on itself, and establish relationships with the Shan states and so on. Its relationships with the people, the hills, not just the Nagas. But the Christians and the Koreans itself was always rather tenuous, and it was always on the basis of local accords and so on for the purpose of trade and peaceful coexistence. But I think this is one of the real problems with with Burma. It operating as a as a unique entity where it represents the views of all the people in the country. And and I would suggest that actually that's never been the case has been sure problems. In fact you might make a case and earlier writers have that actually the period of 55 years of colonial rule from 1885 through to the end of the war, or actually the start of the Second World War was the first and only time in modern and modern times were Burma was united. Now, of course, that's not a palatable argument, though those have a an anti colonial bent, but actually in terms of historical reality, it is true. And the same argument can be made about India, you know, the British better or worse or not the British, British people and Indian people together, made in India, that that was largely united, it was a very interesting conglomeration of British government directly controlled parts of India and 570 princely states, all of which had individual agreements or not with the British government to operate in a particular way and so on had their own maharajahs it was very, very interesting set of dynamics and, and immediately after a partition, that those arrangements fell apart and India split, it's three ways. It's two ways first, and then three. So it's, it's it's very intensive dynamics and the Nagas. Between the knot again, back to your original question, the Naga people spread right across the borders, these borders are largely colonial in their ambitions. And Burma, was applied on a map, and it's quite hilarious when you look at the map nowadays, to realize there's no rhyme or reason to a lot of it. In fact, in northern menopause, and the Naga hills, those parts of the world were never properly mapped by the British, the mapping under what was known as the Survey of India, there was some big exercises undertaken the 1920s, early 1930s. But the second world war put a stop to it. So there are still large parts now complete, but there are large parts on independence, where that mess just didn't exist. But those Dinagat people spread out into into Burma. And I mean, one of the great challenges, of course, both for India and Burma, even today is for is to allow peaceful coexistence of the these, these tribes, this tribe in particular between the two countries and to allow their tribal identity to be respected, regardless of international borders. So the real challenge with the been Bomar so the Buddhist per miles of the who hold the power in Burma and have done for a very long time. The big challenge is to be able to absorb into their system of belief and of poverty, a polity and of organization as a nation, not just as a state, but as a nation of all the people of the hilltribes. And I I have to say that I don't think that the government of Myanmar and many of Burma, then Myanmar over many years, has successfully solved that problem. What to be able to consider yourself and save yourself as a united Burma not just impose impose that that point of view on everyone who's within the borders of Burma, you actually have to work towards was, as I mentioned earlier, with the Naga hills, you have to create the systems and structures and processes to enable a nation to grow. And you're never going to do that in Myanmar if you just beat up the chins of the Koreans. Sure. Yeah. If you utilize violence, the one thing I wanted to say earlier, was the fact that actually they're there they're really tragic thing about Myanmar is that the government doesn't seem to understand that every time they use violence against the Qin villages that we've we've seen an occurrence over many years, they simply create more warriors for their for their, for the opposition. They're creating enemies for themselves. They're not doing anything to create a long peace, I made the point. Very easy, very easy indeed. To allow the cycle of war to continue, it's very difficult to impose a set of structures that will enable peace to grow. And Myanmar needs to do that. If Myanmar wants peace, if meanwhile, you know, wants to create a national polity and a national identity. There are very good ways of doing it. But, but stamping on and creating violence or causing violence against the people in the hilltribes is not the way to do it.

Host  1:34:51

Yeah, they've never had hearts and minds campaign, that's for sure. So, so yeah, so we've done a really good job in this conversation. What kind of man AP is also the journey that you treat in your book of on one hand talking about these very modern developments of a World War and the coalition's that are coming together the arguments the fighting that's taking place. And it just so happens that as is in the case and a lot of places around Burma, in particular, this book focuses on Naga, that all of these modern forces and personalities and grand dois operations that are taking place in this whole scheme of, of this massive worldwide fight between great countries, that these particular characters fall into this, I guess you can call this Land Before Time, although the of course the British had a British and the American missionaries had a presence there. But you're you're talking about these, these characters, these American characters that are representing each of them in different ways, representing very important in different aspects of the missions that are taking place. And they suddenly find themselves in a place that is not quite as primitive as it was maybe a half century before, but it's certainly not very exposed to the to the outer world. And that there's a lot of misconceptions and, and probably just basic fears about, especially at that time, what this primitive society represented and the danger of, of the plane crashing down there. And some of them were very legitimate in terms of the I think, I think surviving a plane crash even in peaceful times, it's not a very pleasant or not very pleasant experience that assures any type of survival, surviving during wartime with the Japanese heroes that are also hovering in the area and the different, the different peoples that are, that are occupying different parts of where the plane crash actually takes place. So we've set up this this clash of cultures, and now it goes from the general to the very specific in terms of time and place and people and everything else. So take us from there.

Robert Lyman  1:37:00

Well, I mean, that's, that's extraordinary. The whole thing about this story is, all of a sudden, you have this vast war, summarized in the lives and experience of a handful of people who don't know each other, by the way, we're into the sea 46 That is flying across to Yunnan Province, that experiences and engine failure is a heavily laden aircraft, and it has to turn around to go back over the hills in order to land back at the airfield at chebula. But of course, it's losing power in one of its engines and then losing altitude. So as every minute goes by, the pilot and the copilot start to realize they're not going to get over back over these these mountains. So they give orders that are all the the stuff, the extraneous stuff and the plane is thrown out. And it's really extraordinary reading John Payton's diaries and Eric several stories, in fact, parting with really precious mementos and stuff as all went out the back of the plane in an attempt to enable it to survive up there over remote, jungle clad hills. They don't know where they are. And by an extraordinary set of coincidences, everyone managed to get out apart from the copilot Second Lieutenant Charles Felix, who is killed as the payment goes in, he's a very brave man, he stays at the controls of the plane to allow everyone else to get out. Because I think one of the things that struck me going through the story minute by minute, was how long it took for the survivors actually to jump out. And I think in taking time, it's very hard to criticize. Now, of course, I wasn't there, but the time they took to physically jump out of the plane and pull their parachutes. That actually, by the time the last person jumped out, there was no time for Charles Felix to get out of the plane, very brave man. And, you know, this is all this is the intimate tragedy of war. This is these men are pulled together by the vagaries of circumstance. They didn't ask to be there. They're fighting a war, many of them don't fully understand they're in a part of the world, they definitely don't understand. They're there because they represent a patriotic obedience to their country and the requirements of their country to fight. And they arrive under a parachutes floating down on this barren landscape actually not so barren in some parts, because when they land, they discover that there are parts of these hills that have been cultivated before. Now we all know because we've been talking about it, that the land is occupied by Nagas. Now, were these the occupants of the plane landed was a very close to the Naga village of puncture, which everyone will know by now was a very large mega village and undertaken two very significant raids against its neighbors, killing lots of people in the 1920s and 30s. And it was finally subdued in a very significant punitive expedition, led by the Assam rifles in 1936. And actually in a subsequent campaign in 1937, all with the support of neighboring Naga villages. Chang sang and tune sang. And but these, I laugh when I think about these young Americans floating down under the parachutes with this view of American superiority, superiority of American know how and of power and of might, and they're emerging, or they're finding themselves dropping into a world that has no comprehension, absolutely zero comprehension of this power of this nation across the seas and never seen a railway never seen a train. They knew about the existence of planes, because they saw the planes flying across the sky. No, it's very integrant, you asked the Nagas. What do they think about these planes? Is it always the we we just saw them as the gods, this is the goal, demonstrating their power. So put yourself into Naga shoes, you're a potential warrior, you be as up been dealt a blow by by the British Navy, 36 and 37, you've got no real reason to appreciate the white man apart from the fact that you might appreciate their power, and so on. But all of a sudden, a whole bunch of white men come falling on top of your village. Now, it's a mind boggling thing to contemplate, actually, for us. And for the Americans who were who were undertaking that evacuation from the plane, it was equally mind blowing for the bench rights to see these people descending on them. And you can imagine that they had a number of choices in their heads, you know, what do we do with these people? Do we? Who are they? Are they angels? Are they come from the gods? Are they are they a gift to us? Bear in mind that the pasture rights had occasionally met white men, or they met JP Mills, of course in 1936. And the Assam rifles they knew what rifles could do. They'd been drying for about a decade or more to get hands around rifles. And all of a sudden, these white men arrived in their western clothes with boots and equipment and belts and woven clothes, and watches, and so on that just really blew them blow their minds because all of a sudden, they're thrown into a, you know, a 21st century world at war with all the power and strengthen engineering expertise, including the parachutes is quite an extraordinary way of jumping off coming out of the sky in a parachute, which they had never contemplated before. So I think we can't underestimate the dramatic cultural discombobulation of the banks roads. And in many respects, I think this probably explains why they behaved so benevolently to the to the survivors of the air crash, they, you know, if the survivors ever knew they only really understood towards the end of their time in the jungle, who these puncture rights were that they were the most fearsome headhunting tribe in the entire region, they would have had reason to fear. But actually the only evidence of their meeting the men and women of puncture was actually it was a really the men that the women were kept quite clear that Pink's rights weren't sufficiently trustful of these, these newcomers to allow them access to the women of the village. So the women were sent away to other parts of village where they weren't seen that there are plenty of children that came out and met them and so on. But you know, it's it could have gone either of either way, they could just have been slaughtered in their head stuck on Pike's, which is what normally would happen. But this was such an extraordinary cultural event that the crisis the cultural crisis created by it, enabled the Westerners to survive and for the bank's rights to look after them. Now. They were eventually rescued by a river, a punitive expedition sent out from Bhutan. And I think the event expedition came in the nick of time, because I think by that stage, the newness and dramatic nature of the arrival of the survivors from the from the aircraft, the parachutist was wearing off and the banks rights, we're now thinking, Well, you know, what's in it for us next, and I, you know, you can understand, I think the benevolence of the first few weeks, but thereafter, it's less easy to understand it. Yeah. Well, it's very easy to see where things could have gone If they hadn't been rescued from by a British and an Assam rifles expedition out to puncture,

Host  1:45:10

well you reference how once they start getting the air drops, and that includes food items, and including canned foods, that when they eat the food and they want to dispose the leftover TINs that almost leads into a riot of the different villagers who want to see that 10 is kind of a prize. I mean, because obviously, they've never seen anything like that. And there's no further access to just simply getting a tin can, in the jungle.

Robert Lyman  1:45:39

Well, tin was was just unknown in the mountains and, and the the swords or pet or sort of machetes that the puncture rights had was was very care of carefully sourced from within Burma itself, and then down into into India as well on Expedition trading expeditions. So there was there was a bit of tin and steel, or metal in the hills, but it's quite extraordinary, as you say, you know, you mentioned the tin cans, I mean, all the rubbish that the this commercial society this, that America had produced, the boys were just happy to chuck away the tin cans without realizing the dramatic value that a tin can had to a member of a Naga tribe in the middle of the these, these hills, pieces of string, anything left over. I mean, the parachutes themselves were remarkably prized, highly prized. You know, that's, that's part of this clash of cultures that was really quite, quite dramatic. And, you know, there wasn't a single survivor from that from the aircraft's that wasn't able to see that these two cultures were so diametrically opposed to each other. It's a little bit like, you know, if you think about, you know, we call them hopefully not pejoratively, but Stone Age tribes in Papua New Guinea, that's the same sort of thing. It's really a tribe of people that have never experienced any form of modernity, and all of a sudden, have these 20 odd people arrive out of the sky with no warning, and expect to be looked after? And, and you have to, you have to create a whole new set of interactions and social interactions and communicate effectively with each other. And, you know, that's hard. How do you make all that up out of nothing? I think that's the triumph of the story that the fact that you know, both American survivors and Naga puncture rights, actually were able to communicate talk to each other, at levels of their base humanity that enabled our both sides to survive, quite respectively irrespectively rather and get through this. This event, which was culturally traumatic, there's, there's very little that we can actually think of being being dramatic. And then being more culturally dramatic in history, think about sort of missionaries arriving in a foreign village and villages, seeing these strange people arrive with a strange story and strange language. You know, this was this was quite a dramatic

Host  1:48:14

event. And coming from the sky, literally. Yeah, it's

Robert Lyman  1:48:17

hard enough, you know, from Americans coming to London, you know, in us going to American to just to be able to recognize that we're in different cultures. And for them, this was really quite dramatic.

Host  1:48:31

Right, so they, except for this one co pilot, who unfortunately dies during the crash, heroically staying on to the last moment, all the rest of them survive, I'll be it very difficult in terms of having to stay for a number of weeks until they're able to find a way out. And then I think it was Adams, who was the the local British that was stationed there is able and knows the Naga and speaks their language and is able to, to lead them out and they all eventually get to safety. And then after this incident, what what goes on with the story in terms of the specifically in terms of of what this crash meant, I'm thinking, as I say this, I'm thinking that you you go on to reference the as one character in the story that we haven't told this doctor, Don flick injure, I think his name is if I'm saying it, right, is decides to, to parachute in and to, to stay to administer medical needs of the survivors of the crash. And this gives way to Black Keys gang, as you describe which in which you have a rapid response team. That is because you mentioned all the planes that are going down over the hump, that this medical response team gets much more efficient at being able to drop in and identify where the crashes take place and have a better survival rate.

Robert Lyman  1:50:02

Well, there's a great question. The truth is that the puncture event on the second of August 1943 was the start of modern military search and rescue and oh, yeah, this was very, very finely developed and attuned by the United States in particular, and it all began with puncture. Because the one of the military one of the doctors don't flick and jet at chebula airbase when he heard that one of the aircrew the radio operator Sergeant water Oswalt, had badly broken his leg without despite being told not to, didn't think twice about getting up and a C 47. And jumping out with two of his orderlies who he offered them the the choice of coming with him they'd never he had flicking your head jumped once before but the other two hadn't. And they just parachuted, you know, with no training into bank shot. I mean, it was quite an extraordinary sacrifice a remarkable story by Don flick and do is a remarkable man. And don't flick and just sorted out. Walter Oswald's leg and there's some wonderful footage on Pate, news of the the rescue as the crowd of survivors were coming out at market charm Several weeks later, with Oswald on a beer or a stretcher, carried by by Nagas really quite extraordinary footage. But he fixed up as well be he then also started helping some of the villages with boils and, and illnesses and so on. And this was a this played a very important part, in my view, in de escalating any potential tension that might have existed between the banker, right and the survivors. All of a sudden, this power that the white men had, because that's how they were seeing the white men from the sky, these angels from the sky was good, it was virtuous, it helped them it didn't rape or pillage it didn't kill them. It didn't take their heads off. It actually helped the children it gave them things it gave them tin and string and rope and bits of metal. And that's that can't be gained said it's very important to understand that often these these interfaces are regarded moral terms. And in fact, rights very clearly saw the the Americans as a custodians of moral virtue. That's a very important point. But in terms of rescue, yes, I mean, very, very quickly, Dawn flick and during a number of others, created a dedicated area of recovery or aerial recovery teams. One of them black, his gang, sadly shot down by Japanese aircraft not much long after that was there established. And they did a tremendous amount, not least of all in giving confidence to the air crews going over the hump that if they were to come down over this this inhospitable, this terrible terrain, the the Americans at shabby would do everything in their power to help them and you know, I can't give you the figures that top my head, I don't have them. But large numbers of aircrew was subsequently helped by by air sea rescue. And of course, this was then further developed in Korea, and then massively expanded in Vietnam. And it all began to puncture in August 1943, which, you know, is an extraordinary story. Really, it is. All these stories have an extraordinary element, in my view, because they began out because of the agency of one man, if it wasn't for Don Flickinger, the doctor saying that, you know, casting aside all instructions to do otherwise, he says, No, we've got a wounded man, I'm going to jump in and help him because I can, and he did so. And by his personal agency, he rewrote history and created in a way that we now understand it with dedicated military crews have dedicated doctrine and training and so on. And, you know, he also played a significant role in de escalating or, you know, de escalating potential problems with the bank's rights in the village through his medical expertise.

Host  1:54:11

Yeah, that's, that's, that's great. It's this little microcosm of all these personalities with different ambitions coming together and then seeing the way that this particular incident then goes on to to set a precedent for other things. And in closing that the last question I have is to look at the Naga people and their legacy and going through the you reference these lines drawn on colonial maps that that separate villages and these artificial ways between India and Burma, and then looking to today, what are we seeing today in Naga territories? I don't I'm not having expertise in this area not having been here myself. I'm not so familiar with the trajectory of some of the conference Next and the issues that have gone on. But I have seen recently, a number of headlines about violence among the Kooky, which I believe is a Naga tribe in in India. And this is also an opportunity to learn a little bit more about what's what exactly is happening with that as well as anything that you might know, in terms of how the Naga territories have been affected in the last two and a half years since the military coup?

Robert Lyman  1:55:26

Yes, it's a very interesting question, I have to say, I think the political structures and arrangements in in India are much more stable than they are in Myanmar. The extent democracy is a really vibrant thing in India. And I think, you know, we can easily dismiss what's going on in India. without really understanding that actually, it's democracy at its noisiest and most vibrant, I'm relatively positive about domestic activity in India in a way that I'm not with Burma because of course, Burma is a military dictatorship. And military dictatorships always survived by concentrating power in the hands of a very small number of people. And it's a bar, sadly, the male dominated the door. But what we see in in in fall and menopause at the moment is a traditional is a revitalising of a traditional animosity between two tribes, the Kooky and the Meitei, and the Meitei, the people who live around the southern side of LOGTAG lake and then fall, and the kicker who live in the hills towards the east and a lot of attention, domestic tension in India is, dare I say, a tribal and there has been a long animosity between these drives. But you know, I would also suggest that, you know, long periods of democratic government in, in India has enabled the tribes to get on well with each other every now and again, there are explosions of of rage and violence that, I think, and hope and trust that the that India are managing. And I think all the evidence that I've got from friends who live in Kima, and in follow the moment is that's the case. Interestingly enough, there was a very long insurgency largely now over between a Naga nationalist against the Indians who, you know, the nationalist noise is still strong, but the violence is largely over. But that went on really, from the end of the war, until very, very recently, and certainly, recent times when I've been there. So I think that what always whatever always dominate in these environments. And we know this in Britain with the experience in Northern Ireland, is the power of democracy. Democracy allows people to give vent to views and opinions and to shape them and frame them in a constrained and and positive way. And that's why, you know, all societies have noisy protests and differences of opinions and views. And so long as the structures of political discourse, enable those conversations to take place, you have peaceful outcomes, which is why I'm confident that that the issue and in follow, I hope to be there in a few months time will be resolved. Because I know that these people do talk, talk with each other, and they do so very animatedly. That's not the case in Myanmar, sadly. And I think that's the real challenge for for for the West. And it's a challenge for Myanmar, because so long as you attempt to control and constrain the people of the country who don't want to be controlled or constrained, then you're going to have challenge and you're going to have the use of force. And there is I can't see it being a historian I can't see any alternative to to to continuing war, the point that I made earlier, you either have continuous peace, and you need to work out the structures and systems of delivering it. Democracy is a very good way, as Winston Churchill said as the best way apart from all the others. It's a very good way of systematizing peace. And I would dare I said, I'd suggest that capitalism is important part of that, unfortunately, in you know, where you have structures of power that aren't democratic, you have different sorts of problems. Now, that's not to say that democracies are the only peaceful societies we know. In fact, that's just not the case and from Western experience in Europe from 2011, over the 2011 onwards, the the Arab Spring, forcefully introducing national democracy on tribal relationships and entities and so on is always a bit of a disaster. I think the West has got its hands very badly burnt in trying and thinking too simplistically about the power of democracy which takes us back to Myanmar if you're going to be apply democracy successfully and Myanmar you need to do what Aung sang believed was necessary, which was to involve all of the peoples of the of the hilltribes and the Myanmar together in very intimate ways. Bottom up, top down, you know, we need systems of structure and governance that don't automatically create political parties that are tribal based. As soon as that happens, you've got significant problems. And I'm, I'm definitely not a communist. But one of the things that communism used to do was to cut across these tribal boundaries to create a new sense of identity. Now, they not always have worked and we know what happened in former Yugoslavia when when Tito died and his his form of collectivization or dive with him, the tribal entities of the people of the of the Balkans reasserted themselves. But that I'm not, I'm not a pessimist about Myanmar. It, but it's a very significant challenge. And if the West can help, it's to understand me and my better. And my sadness over many years is to see how actually the West doesn't understand. Surely, West has failed to understand Aung San su chi, they've failed to understand the nationalist drivers in a national polity. And they failed to understand actually the endless cycles of civil war that began with the Japanese invasion. So it's, you know, it might look into mountable no problems and in in history, in my view are insurmountable, but it's going to take an enormous amount, not least of all, the ending of military dictatorship and Myanmar.

Host  2:01:40

And do you know anything about how Naga people have been impacted or involved in the last two and a half years with the coup and the resistance movement?

Robert Lyman  2:01:49

Not Not that I can say publicly, I'm afraid, but suffice it to say that, you know, the, whatever happens, and Myanmar has cross border implications for the tribes, and I think that that's very clear, I think what's also very clear that there's, they're still very, very close dialogue amongst the tribes on on both sides of the border. And, and that's very powerful, and I can see it and hear it, you know, when I'm whenever I'm there, so, those those borders are largely artificial, the tribal entities and identities and relationships as tall as tall, very, very, very close. And of course, that works well for relationships between the Indian government and and, and Myanmar. But, you know, it has, it has detrimental effects as well, you know, it's a very, very difficult set of circumstances.

Host  2:02:46

Well, it's been interesting, just that so many chin refugees have been finding some kind of safe haven in Mizoram. And that was addressed by one guest we had on a recent podcast that was actually explaining it as kind of a function of the Indian type of democracy that you had Modi, who was the Prime Minister of India, quite cozying up with with with the junta and and, and meeting the current regime, not being very friendly to the democracy movement and Burma or the dissidents who were needing to find a safe refuge. But then you had a local government in the way this guest explained that you had a local government in Mizoram, that was able to enact their own policies despite Modi's less than friendly response to, to the current resistance movement. And so Mizoram has very much been a place where many chins and other refugees have been finding some kind of refuge from all the violence that's been taking place. Yes, that's

Robert Lyman  2:03:45

exactly right. It's, um, you know, so Modi and the Indian government have got a tightrope to walk, frankly, you know, you can, what you need to be able to do is to maintain peace on the border, and you need to be able to maintain peace with an important neighbor, even though you might not agree with the structures of political organization in that country. That's none of your business, frankly, and Modi is a pragmatist and he understands that he's surrounded on all sides by countries with different political structures and Myanmar is no different to Pakistan or China or Afghanistan. So he's got that to deal with, but he's got to be able to make sure that the the refugee chins and when he's got this problem with her anger is well managed in a in a humanitarian way. But yes, that's one one dimension but also in a way that preserves the, the tribal identities of very significant parts of his own population. And the last thing he would want of course, is for instance, with analogous is for anything to upset the increasingly settled state of Naga politics, with his move away to from nationalism to a sense of the Need for integration between wider India and Nagaland. And that's been that's been Modi's policy for a very long time when I was back in Nagaland, and in February, I could see that very clearly. It's a real problem. And I have to say that, you know, further instability in Myanmar, caused by the taboo door is, you know, is undermining and threatening the stability of a whole series of very fragile relationships, both tribal and, and international.

Host  2:05:30

Well, thank you so much for that. So it's been really a pleasure chatting with you about having using the book as a focus, but then going off in all these different tangents of different historical perspectives, as well as the implications in modern day so I really enjoyed it, and encourage listeners to check out your books, you have a range of books about World War Two about the Burma front in World War Two. And the one we discussed today, again, was among the head hunters, there'll be a link in the show notes for that. And definitely encourage listeners to check that out to be able to delve a bit deeper into some of the things that we talked about. And thank you so much for your time here.

Robert Lyman  2:06:05

Oh, Joe, it's been an amazing privilege for me to talk about one of the subjects close to my heart, so thank you very much for the opportunity.

Host  2:06:26

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2:09:42

whatever your Anagha we're gonna do we're gonna do the gun is gonna we're gonna have this a year now Vizio Ooba ya know, yada yada, yada yada yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada yada.