Stilwell Road - LIFE - February 12, 1945

CHINA-BOUND CONVOY APPROACHES MYITKYINA ON STILWELL ROAD. ROAD BUILDERS KEPT PACE WITH ADVANCE OF FIGHTING FRONT, JUST BEHIND RETREATING JAPS. ENLARGE PHOTO

  In the last days of January the land blockade of China was broken. For the first time sincethe Japanese cut the Burma Road in 1942, a truck convoy reached Wanting with supplies for theChinese armies. Thus one prong of the pincers around Japan were strengthened. On the other sideof the pincers American troops were about to capture Manila.

  The truck convoy reached China via the Stilwell Road from India - a road named by Chiang Kai-shekafter the former American commander in the CBI theater. Cut out of the mountains and junglesof Burma by the sweat and blood of American and Chinese engineers, it includes in its 1,000-milelength the new Ledo Road and the old Burma Road. It leads through an area with one of the greatestrainfalls in the world, over sheer cliffs and tangled swamps infected with jungle leeches andmalarial mosquitoes. At one time more than 80% of the men working on it were sick with tropicaldiseases.

  At the ceremony dedicating the road one man was missing. General Stilwell who left China afterdisagreements with Chiang Kai-shek, was in Washington.

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Sgt. Robert B. Goodman confers with three Chinese drivers at Myitkyina.
Soldiers call road "Pick's Pike" after Brig. General Lewis A. Pick who built it.

American and Chinese flags are attached to truck. Opening of Stilwell Road will help tosatisfy China's urgent need for more trucks. There are only 6,000 trucks in China now, all old.

Convoy gases up at a completed pipeline from Ledo in India. This is temporary end of theline which is used mostly to supply airfields and construction gangs along the Stilwell Road.

Americans clean their guns at Myitkyina motor pool. The town was taken from the Japsduring the monsoon of last summer. Its fall made completion of road possible.

Allied leaders confer in Myitkyina. L. to r.: Lieut. Gen. Daniel Sultan, Maj. Gen.Albert Wedemeyer, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Maj. Gen. William Donovan.

Near a signpost just outside of Myitkyina, General Pick, road engineer, jokes with aChinese soldier., Jap tankettes and dead Jap soldiers were still lying at sides of road.

Adapted by Carl W. Weidenburner
from the February 12, 1945 issue.
Portions copyright 1945 Time, Inc.

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