"Take this down. I am making the following deployment: Liao Guansan will lead the Sixth Army toward Monywa and advance on Myingyan. Sun Zhongneng... those foreign devils... This battle will take Mandalay for certain."
Wang Yan stood with his hands behind his back, pacing around the tent as he muttered a long string of unit designations and commanders' names.
After listening to the staff officer repeat it all back, Wang Yan nodded slightly. "Send the telegram."
He walked to the entrance of the tent and watched the torrential rain splatter onto the ground outside. Lighting a cigarette, he listened to the telegraph clicking away behind him...
It was now the winter of 1944. Another year of fighting had passed, and all the land north of Mandalay was already under their control. Wang Yan had personally traveled through most of it; wherever he had not gone, he had sent Mi Long to spread the word, kill those who needed killing, and recruit all the men they could get.
The Japanese had retreated across the board to southern Burma. They were already struggling to hold on, yet still stubbornly resisting. This operation against Mandalay could be called the decisive battle of the Burma theater.
Whether the Allied forces won or lost, the Japanese had already lost. Unless they dealt the Allies a devastating blow in this battle, crippling them so badly that they could no longer advance, there was no way out of this crisis. Otherwise, not even the gods could save them.
Japan's strategy was an integrated whole. Their failure to cut off the China-India route had already sealed their defeat.
Burma was not their only battlefield, and Japan no longer had the strength to sustain the war.
Besides, China was closer to Burma and had more routes leading in. If