Another side-story from Burma…
The dream of a secure foothold on Burma's Andaman Sea is an old one, for both Karen and Mon insurgents, and was also once an irresistible lure to Chiang Kai Shek's Chinese army, the Kuomintang (KMT).
Before the KMT abandoned their mission to recapture China for the profits of the drug trade there were a few brief years when they posed a real threat.
When Mao Zedong’s communist forces secured mainland China in 1949 the KMT retreated to Taiwan but a remnant of one division was stranded in Yunnan province. They moved into the Shan States and built bases and, with Taiwanese and CIA assistance, prepared to retake China. This was the height of the Cold War, when America was at war with North Korea (and half a million communist Chinese “volunteers”), and the American hawks who formed the “China Lobby” were calling for direct confrontation with China. General MacArthur favoured using Burma as a second China front but was relieved of command by President Truman.
As the KMT was being built up in the inaccessible Shan States by airlifts, an ambitious strategy was hatched to establish a life-line down to the Andaman Sea. In 1952 almost a thousand KMT troops marched south to the sea to secure a beach head and meet six ships, the first of many planned convoys. As the vessels waited off shore, unable to land their men, arms, and ammunition, the Burmese engaged the KMT in a fierce battle and drove them back. This lost opportunity is one of the great "might have been