The Chinese Expeditionary Force that entered Burma in early 1942 comprised the 5th, 6th, and 66th Armies -- approximately 100,000 troops under the overall command of American Lt. General Joseph Stilwell, with Lt. General Luo Zhuoying serving as executive officer. In February, the 5th Army moved from western Yunnan toward Toungoo in central Burma. Its elite 200th Division, widely regarded as one of China's best mechanized units, arrived at Toungoo on March 8 and took over defensive positions from withdrawing British forces. Meanwhile, the 6th Army advanced from Kunming toward the Burma-Thai border, reaching Mawchi, Mong Pan, and Mong Ton by mid-March. The 66th Army arrived last, taking up reserve positions at Lashio and Mandalay. Three armies, spread across hundreds of miles of unfamiliar terrain, connected by roads that barely deserved the name.

The campaign opened on March 18 with the Battle of Tachiao, a preliminary clash that tested Japanese strength south of Toungoo. Two days later, fighting erupted at Oktwin, and by March 24, the full Battle of Toungoo was underway. The 200th Division found itself defending the town against a larger Japanese force that attacked from multiple directions, cutting supply lines and encircling the garrison. For nearly a week the division held, fighting house to house in conditions that recalled the urban warfare of Stalingrad. When the 200th finally withdrew on March 30, it had inflicted significant casualties on the Japanese 55th Division but suffered heavily in return. The defense of Toungoo became a point of national pride in China -- proof that Chinese troops, properly led and supplied, could stand against the Japanese army. But the broader campaign was already unraveling.

After Toungoo fell, the fighting spread across Shan State like fire through dry grass. In April alone, engagements erupted at Yedashe, the Szuwa River, Mawchi, Bawlake, Pyinmana, Yenangyaung, Loikaw, and Hopong-Taunggyi. Each battle followed a grim pattern: Chinese troops defended a position, Japanese forces outflanked them through jungle terrain that favored the attacker, and the defenders withdrew northward to fight again. At Yenangyaung, between April 17 and 19, Chinese forces intervened to rescue a surrounded British unit -- one of the few instances of effective Allied cooperation in the campaign. But cooperation could not compensate for the fundamental problem. The Japanese moved faster, supplied themselves more efficiently through the jungle, and exploited every gap in the overstretched Chinese lines.

By late April, the campaign's outcome was no longer in doubt. On April 25, Loilem fell. Four days later, Japanese troops captured Lashio itself -- the Burmese terminus of the road the entire campaign had been fought to defend. The supply artery was severed. Fighting continued into May, with battles at Hsenwe on May 1 and along the Salween River through the end of the month, but these were rearguard actions fought during a general retreat. The Chinese Expeditionary Force withdrew in two directions: some units retreated northward into India, where they would be reorganized into the X Force; others fell back across the border into Yunnan. Stilwell himself walked out of Burma on foot, famously telling reporters, "I claim we got a hell of a beating." The Yunnan-Burma Road would remain closed until January 1945, when Allied forces finally reopened the overland route to China.

The Burma campaign of 1942 has been called "the forgotten war" -- overshadowed in Western memory by North Africa, Stalingrad, and Midway, and in Chinese memory by the larger battles against Japan on the mainland. Yet the soldiers who fought and died across Shan State in those ten weeks deserve more than a footnote. The 200th Division alone suffered thousands of casualties defending Toungoo. Thousands more Chinese, British, Indian, and Burmese soldiers died in the engagements that followed. The terrain they fought over -- steep ridges, river gorges, dense jungle -- remains largely unchanged. From the air, the roads that connected these battlefields still thread through the hills much as they did in 1942, narrow and winding, following valleys where armies once marched toward engagements whose names are now known only to specialists.