Kyaikto, Burma November 17, 1942
Hurricanes descended from their waiting circle 8,000 feet overhead. Bombs fell from the wings of the four fighters. The steel casings burrowed into the ground before their almost instant fuses exploded, spraying shards and fragments of the thin casings in egg shaped fans. Even as the fighters regained altitude, a regiment of artillery supporting the Indian infantymen walking next to the obsolete but still very useful tanks began another bombardment.
Light cannons barked from the tanks and then the machine gunners inside the steel hulls came into the action as Japanese anti-tank gunners revealed their position, firing too early and too far away for their light shells to reliably penetrate. Instead, they only attracted attention, first from the targeted tanks companions and then from the mortar sections supporting the infantry companies that had already hit the ground before maneuvering elements began searching for a weakness in the Japanese rear guard’s position.
Men with tanks on their back crawled forward through hails of bullets and a wall of hand grenades. One man became a human torch when a string of tracer bullets blasted the tank on his back and lit the fuel. His section mate shot the poor human candle. Other flamethrower teams were getting closer and closer to the hard outer edge of the Japanese blocking position and then long dragons tongues reached out to machine gun nests and spider pits. All the while, the tanks continued to fire their light high explosive shells and streams of machine gun bullets at anything that resembled organized resistance. Two tanks by now were on fire, ammunition cooking off as Japanese attacks with satchel charges had some success. Five other times those attacks were stopped cold by the infantry that had practiced this battle drill with the targeted tank for months on end.
All across the town, the rear guard was being overwhelmed, slowly trading their lives for time as the rest of the battered regiments continued to retreat from their defeats along the east bank of the Sittang River.