Roads to Delhi 277
regiment mounted a daring attack on the British airfield at Palel. The
Japanese force under Major- General Yamamoto had advised them to
leave all their heavy baggage, including machine guns and grenades, at
Kalewa. All that each soldier needed, they had been led to believe, was a
rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition and a blanket, since the rest could
be acquired in Imphal, which was on the verge of collapse. The lack of
supplies proved to be a great handicap for the Gandhi Brigade the
following month. The third regiment of the first division, the Azad
Brigade commanded by Gulzara Singh, reached Tamu- Moreh on the
Burma- India border in the middle of May, and set up its base north of
Moreh at a place called Narum. Fierce fight ing took place all along the
Tamu- Moreh- Palel- Imphal road during the month of May, with hill-
tops and villages changing hands more than once. The Gandhi Brigade
fought on the left flank of the Japanese forces and the Azad Brigade
on the right. Decades later, local residents spoke of encounters with
ghosts at these sites of some of the bloodiest battles of the Second
World War.^77
That year, the monsoon broke early—toward the end of the third
week of May. On May 21, Bose shifted back to Rangoon from Maymyo,
where he was find ing it increasingly dif fi cult to get accurate news from
the front. If Imphal fell, he could just as quickly fly in from Rangoon
using his small aircraft, the Azad Hind. He had learned, from both
M. Z. Kiani and Shah Nawaz Khan’s messages, about the supply short-
ages and transportation bottlenecks. The INA soldiers were being rav-
aged by malaria and had no medicines. Bose set up a Supply Board in
Rangoon and instructed Alagappan, his supply minister, to buy local
produce in Mandalay to provision the INA. He then sent Alagappan,
Chatterji, and A. M. Sahay to Tamu, to purchase what supplies they
could for the INA and bring back for him a precise report of the chal-
lenges being faced. Morale in Rangoon was still high, and on May 29
Bose had a successful public meeting where enthusiastic Indians con-
trib uted nearly five million rupees (around $1.5 million) in cash and
kind to help the war effort.^78
Torrential rains washed away all tracks and turned the entire terrain
on the Indo- Burma border into rivers of green mud. The ferocious
encounters of May gave way, during the month of June, to anxious pa-