Stilwell Road: A War Time Engineering Miracle

TERRIBLE jungles, gorges, rivers, swamps and oceans of mud. That is what the builders of the Ledo Road faced and the mocking of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who called the project mad and useless. The United States of America’s army spent over US $148 million, and exactly two years from January 1943 to construct the transport link from Ledo, Assam Province in northeastern India, through the northern Myanmar state of Kachin, to the old Burma Road in Mong Yu, just south of the Chinese border.

The Ledo Road: Construction starts, December 1, 1942The Ledo Road project made use of the Burma Road, connecting China to India. But the effort was enormous, an incredible feat of engineering and human achievement compared to the construction of the Great Wall of China. Plans were drawn up hastily and submitted to General Joseph Stilwell on November 5, 1942. Then, at the beginning of December, an advance contingent of American engineers arrived in Ledo to build a base from where road construction could start. The US headquarters hired manpower through the British – Indian, Nepali and Sri-Lankan workers from tea plantations – but also locally. As work progressed, Naga, Kachin, Shan and Chinese workers would be involved, amongst others. Up to 25,000 men, women and children would work alongside the engineers in the coming two years, felling trecs, digging mountains and drainage ditches and crushing rocks. Equipment was short; the drenching monsoons swept away camps, washed out new roadbeds, buried bulldozers and caused landslides. A large percentage of the engineer units were hospitalized with malaria and other diseases. On October 3, 1943 Col Lewis A. Pick was flown from Virginia, USA to assume command of the road construction. He summoned the key men of his staff and said "I have heard the same story all the way from the States; it’s always the same; the Ledo Road can’t be built. Too much mud, too much rain, too much malaria. From now on, we are forgetting this defeatist attitude; the Ledo Road is going to be built mud, rain and malaria be damned!" Ledo Shingbwiyang: one year to build 100 miles Round-the-clock schedules were drawn-up. Oil was burned in buckets when the lights gave out. When Stilwell made his first visit to the construction site on November 3, 1943, the road had progressed barely 50 miles from Ledo. Stilwell and Pick decided to cut a jeep trail through the Patkai Mountains to reach Shingbwiyang, sixty miles of the toughest mountain jungle in the world – a technical and physical nightmare. Work progressed at a pace of roughly one mile per day, not including bridge constructions. On December 27, 1943 – four days ahead of schedule – the lead Caterpillar bulldozer broke through and headed towards the Hukawng Valley. The convoy of 55 GMC trucks carrying men of the Chinese 38th Division trained in India, followed.

And beyond On October 18, 1944 Gen Stilwell finally fell victim to his long struggle with Chiang Kai-shek and his opposition to the Chinese Generalissimo’s operations and staff management. ‘Vinegar Joe’ was called back to the US. Chiang Kai-shek named the road that included the Ledo Road and the Burma Road ‘Stilwell Road’ in honor of his former chief of staff during a ceremony on January 28, 1945. Lashio fell on March 7. Mandalay fell on March 20 and Rangoon on May 1. Japanese forces surrendered on August 15, with the official capitulation being signed a month later. From January to October 1945 more than 34,000 tonnes of supplies were trucked from Ledo to Kunming.

Today Stilwell Road goes nowhere. Northeast India remains sealed from the neighboring countries. The Indian Government has a “Look East Policy” that doesn’t realize the potential of this engineering marvel called the Stilwell Road built at a historic moment by lots of blood, sweat, and tears. Let us open this road to prosperity and assure that those 25000 people did not toil in vain. (Credit: www.myanmar.gov.mm)