Sticking with the subject of World War II in the Southeast Asian theatre, we’re getting close to the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Stilwell Road. Until the very end of the two-year construction period this was the Ledo Road, built to connect Ledo in India to Bhamo in Burma, and from there join a spur linking to the Burma Road and crossing to Kunming in China. In January 1945, though, as the new piece of infrastructure was about to become operational, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek suggested it be named for US General Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stilwell. The first convoy of 113 vehicles drove out of Ledo on January 12, 1945 and into Kunming on February 4 – a three-week journey of 1079 miles, of which 478 miles were actually on the Stilwell Road. For the remainder of World War II, this was a critical supply route into China.

There are many sources of information about the fabulous engineering feats undertaken by a total of 63,000 men. By far the best, to my mind, is a 51-minute propaganda film produced in 1945 by the US Army Pictorial Service. The Stilwell Road is freely available on YouTube (view count: 146,000), and is a superb documentary about the road and, indeed, the campaign to regain Burma from the Japanese. This is Stilwell speaking about that task: “I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma, and it’s humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back, and retake the place.”

One of the great pleasures of watching the movie is seeing so many legendary figures from the Burma campaign pop up in contemporary footage: Alexander, Auchinleck, Chennault, Merrill (and his Marauders), Mountbatten, Stilwell himself, Wavell and, most poignant of all, Wingate (of Chindits fame), shown boarding the flight that would crash and kill him in Manipur in March 1944. The narrator is Ronald Reagan. It’s amazing how much they all get through in a good deal less than one hour of screen time.

Soon after the fighting ceased, the Stilwell Road fell into disrepair and today is impassable in places. In India there is considerable resistance to reopening it. As it approaches its 70th birthday, it nevertheless merits full recognition.