| United Kingdom Royal Navy Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (June 25, 1900 – August 27, 1979) In August 1943, Churchill appointed Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command (SEAC) with promotion to acting full Admiral. He is seen here at his desk at the Viceroy’s House in Delhi. Mountbatten arrived in India on October 7, 1943, and SEAC came formally into being in Delhi at midnight on November 15-16. United States Army General Joseph W. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell (March 19, 1883 – October 12, 1946) was appointed Deputy Commander, over the objections of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (October 31, 1887 – April 5, 1975), leader of the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) Party. Mountbatten threatened to cut off supplies to the Chinese forces if Stillwell was not retained as advisor to the Chinese Nationalist Forces. Untied Kingdom Royal Army General William J. Slim was elevated from XV Corps Commander to overall command of the 14th Army – a multi-national force comprising units from Commonwealth countries. As well as British Army units, many of its units were from the Indian Army and there were also significant contributions from the British Army’s West and East African divisions. It was often referred to as the “Forgotten Army” because its operations in the Burma campaign were overlooked by the contemporary press, and remained more obscure than those of the corresponding formations in Europe for long after the war. The early days at Delhi were chaotic. If Mountbatten had been starting from scratch, it would have been comparatively simple. He was trying to put together an entirely new command out of the demoralized, disillusioned mess of an old command that had become discredited in its own eyes and was made up of numerous nationalities, many of them in full scale departmental war with one another. No 1 trusted anyone else, and everything was in short, sometimes desperately short, supply: transport, weapons, clothes, medicines, ammunition, fuel. Mountbatten later recalled, “There were just a few of us to get things started, and we worked from day to day, supported by the certain truth that every day things must get better if only because they couldn’t get worse…The 1st thing was to make contact, make friends. It wasn’t the men who were wrong – Slim had been there for a long time, after all — it was the leadership and the spirit. “It’s quite a big thing to set up an Allied headquarters to deal with a war and over a million men with nothing to start with and no one willing to help. If Chiang Kai-shek was my first difficulty in China, Royal Army Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck (June 21, 1884 – March 23, 1981) was my first difficulty at home. He had had a very rough going-over from Winston, been kicked out of North Africa by him and was Commander-in-Chief Indian Army. He was supposed to be training my troops, and my headquarters was actually in his area. So that was very tricky. He was touchy as hell and it took me about six weeks to break him down. However, things gradually began to get into shape.” However, Slim was more diplomatic in his memoirs: “It was a good day for us when he [Auchinleck] took command of India, our main base, recruiting area and training ground. The Fourteenth Army, from its birth to its final victory, owed much to his unselfish support and never-failing understanding. Without him and what he and the Army of India did for us we could not have existed, let alone conquered.” After initial Allied setbacks, in a series of battles at Arakan, Kohima, Imphal, and Assam, 14th Army destroyed Japanese Forces and liberated Burma. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1782.jpg |
| Image Size | 214.45 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1212 x 1686 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | British Official Photographer |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | October 14, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Delhi |
| State or Province | Delhi Territory |
| Country | India |
| Archive | Imperial War Museum |
| Record Number | TR 1230 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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