By one of those curious quirks of timing which punctuate this whole story, while Ranking was giving out his disastrous orders on the roadside at Kohima, ‘the Auk’ was making another speech, this time in the Indian Assembly. He said: ‘We cannot stop every Japanese threat as soon as it makes itself apparent.… I am convinced, however, that the security of Assam has never been in any danger….’ And a few hours later, Tokyo radio announced: ‘Kohima has fallen.’ It is difficult to say which of these statements was further from reality.
Things at Jessami that night were worse than ever. The Jap infantry showered the position with grenades, then came in furiously with the bayonet, wave after wave of them. The attacks were furious, but uncoordinated, and somehow the defenders were able to cling on. Whenever small parties of enemy infiltrated through the first ring of bunkers, they were exterminated by the second. The Assam Regiment had suffered remarkably few casualties, even now, which says a great deal for the siting and construction of the defensive positions. And the courage shown on all sides was magnificent. Peter Steyn wrote later:
‘Young and inexperienced sepoys were fighting like veterans; red-hot machine-gun barrels would be ripped off, regardless of burns suffered in the process; Japanese grenades and cracker-bombs were picked up and thrown clear of the trenches with all the calmness in the world and there did not seem to be a man in the garrison afraid to carry out any task given to him.’
But everyone was getting very tired, and the odds were building up with each hour that passed. It was only a matter of time before the position would be over-run.
The next morning, the 31st, the enemy continued the pressure, though things were never quite so bad in daylight as at night. The R.A.F. flew over in an attempt to drop supplies, but the parachutes drifted across and fell outside the perimeter; and the men had the mortification of seeing Japs retrieve the precious packages. So the hours wore on… and darkness descended again. Towards ten o’clock there was a good deal of shooting at the southern end of the perimeter, and all posts were alerted to repel another attack. Then a man could be heard bellowing at the top of his voice:
‘Stop firing, will you. It’s John Corlett. Stop firing.’
Fortunately for its owner, the voice was immediately recognized, and Corlett was allowed to scramble through the perimeter and make his way to Brown’s headquarters bunker. He was an officer of the regiment who had been with the detachment at Phek, and when orders came through to withdraw, he immediately inquired whether the rest of the battalion had been advised. Assured that messages had been dropped from the air, he remained somewhat sceptical, doubting whether the position could be accurately located, so made for Jessami with his orderly.
At first light, ‘Bruno’ Brown assembled all his officers and issued orders for a withdrawal the following evening. The battalion would be split up into two parties, the western sectors under Brown himself, slipping out by the west, while the eastern sectors would evacuate the position eastwards, skirt Jessami village, then strike westwards for Kohima, if possible linking up with Brown’s party. This was a reasonable plan, and if the Japs hadn’t read the message dropped by the R.A.F. it might have worked. But now they knew what the battalion was up to and renewed their efforts to destroy it before it could get away. In a whole series of savage attacks the perimeter was breached several times, and hand-to-hand fighting went on inside it. Bunkers were lost, retaken, lost, and won back again in fierce, deadly combat by small groups of men, friend and foe hopelessly jumbled. Somehow, despite the exhaustion, gaps in the defence were closed, but by 1700 hours, a large gap had appeared and there were no men left capable of putting in a counter-attack. For some reason, the Japanese did not pour any men through the gap, but it was clear that there was no point in continuing the struggle and, if the battalion was to get away at all, it must be now. Brown changed his orders, and the sections were told to move off as they were able to disengage themselves, after dark. The only hope now was to move in small parties and filter through the Jap positions. Documents were destroyed, and the men, having collected such possessions as they wished to take away, and some food and water, waited for their moment as darkness fell, and slipped into the jungle. Others were not so fortunate and could not disengage until it was almost too late. Some could not get away at all and fought to the end. Later that night, it is said, the Japanese ran howling and screaming through the empty bunkers, enraged that their prey should have eluded them. But not all the garrison who slipped away reached the temporary safety of Kohima; many bumped enemy detachments on the jungle tracks, and some parties, in panic, fired at each other.
The situation at Kharasom was even more tragic. No message to withdraw had reached Captain Young, but before dark he had seen a battalion of Japanese approaching his position, with mules and elephants, and he knew that he must soon be overwhelmed. His orders were to fight to the last round and last man, but increasingly he had come to the conclusion that they were senseless; that, having delayed the enemy with great gallantry for four days, his company had done enough. He therefore decided to disobey orders, and made plans for a withdrawal that evening. Unfortunately, however, as soon as the men learned of these they became restive and some of them slipped away before time, the company eventually becoming split up into three groups. But, though he refused to sacrifice his company, Young, perhaps wishing to demonstrate that this refusal wasn’t motivated by fear, announced that he would stay to face the Japanese alone. This he did, and during the night the Nagas heard him destroying equipment. At first light when the enemy troops moved in to search the bunkers, Young took them on single-handed with grenades and his machine-gun, till riddled with bullets he could fight no more. He was a very gallant officer.1
The position at midnight on the 31st March therefore was that the road to Kohima was open to Sato’s column, advancing from the east, and to Miyazaki’s column, preparing to advance north up the road from Tuphema. Two battalions of 161st Brigade were now back at the Nichugard Pass, and the third was under orders to join them the next day. Ranking, who was becoming increasingly worried about the order he had been compelled to deliver to Warren, rang up Slim, who was at his headquarters in Comilla, and asked if he could leave the Royal West Kents at Kohima. The reasons he gave were not only military but political: in Pawsey’s view, he said, the virtual abandonment of Kohima would be a great blow to the Nagas, who up to now had been doing such magnificent work. Slim replied that he would have to discuss the matter with Stopford, and with Brigadier Irwin, a staff officer, walked into his room. Stopford, however, remained adamant. ‘I had to refuse to listen to these suggestions,’ he wrote later. ‘I had made my plan and must stick to it…. Slim eventually accepted this.’
Slim, it now appears, was in some difficulty. In agreeing to Stop-ford’s appreciation and the directive to Ranking, he had not appreciated that they entailed the withdrawal of the 161st Brigade. In his view, Kohima covered Dimapur. Stopford saw things differently; his view was that if—as Slim had agreed—the first task was to defend Dimapur, and the second to defend the railway, then the troops must come back. If Sato sent a column round the north of Kohima, as the R.A.F. report indicated he might be doing, then to have the only available striking force out on a limb would be to invite disaster. On the face of it, the case was unanswerable; and Slim, having given Stopford a job to do, had to let him do it in his own way. Perhaps the balance was tipped by the fact that Brigadier Irwin supported Stopford. So the fateful order remained; and Ranking was told that the 161st Brigade must be ‘concentrated at Nichugard as soon as possible’. One historian has suggested that Ranking might have interpreted the phrase ‘as soon as possible’ more liberally, but this seems quite fatuous: as an officer holding a purely administrative appointment, he was in a most anomalous position as it was, commanding operations, and with Slim and Stopford on his neck he had no option but to do as he was told.
Stopford’s recollection of this episode is slightly different from Slim’s. He says: ‘I don’t th
ink there was any misunderstanding between Slim and myself about the implication of his orders, but probably I was over-anxious about the likelihood of japanese infiltration and he may not have realized the defenceless state of the Base.’ Regarding Warren’s argument, that Sato would not dare to leave a brigade in his rear, Stopford says: ‘Admittedly, Kohima might be considered as covering Dimapur but it was a long way off and, from what I heard of the Jap tactics, I anticipated that they might try to seal off the frontier and infiltrate round it as the Base would be a most valuable prize.… Even a small attack on the Base during this interregnum [i.e. before the arrival of the 2nd Division] would have caused chaos.’
Both Stopford and Slim were working on imperfect information, with little knowledge of Sato’s intentions; and there is no question of blaming either of them. But the historical fact is that Slim’s instinct bowed before Stopford’s hard logic; the last in a long chain of decisions was ratified, making a battle of attrition inevitable.
The tragedy was, though the British commanders could not know this, that Sato’s objective was strictly confined to Kohima. Dimapur was in no danger.
1 Some very interesting information regarding the actions at Jessami and Kharasom has recently been revealed by Colonel Yamaki, Senior Intelligence Officer to 31st Division. He says that the reason why the Assam Regiment was attacked in such strength is that Major Shibasaki, commanding the troops on the extreme right flank of the Japanese advance, ‘marched to the sound of the guns’ and joined in the battle. When Sato came forward and heard this he was furious and reprimanded Colonel Torikai, the column commander. He said: ‘Your correct course was to leave enough troops to contain the garrisons here and push on to Kohima.’ Some months later, Sato remarked sorrowfully: ‘If Miyazaki hadn’t delayed at Sangshak, and Torikai at Jessami, the face of the Kohima battle might have been very different.’ How right he was!
4
Green for Eastertide
At 1930 hours on the evening of Saturday, 1st April, a train pulled into Dimapur station, loaded with troops and kit. The first contingent of the 2nd Division had arrived—the 7th Worcestershires, and advance detachments from the other two units in the brigade, the Dorsetshires and the Cameron Highlanders. The Brigade Commander, Victor Hawkins, was already in Dimapur, and had reconnoitred a concentration area at Bokajan. This lay eight miles to the north, astride the track from Kohima, and was therefore the obvious place to go. Hawkins planned to build up a fortnight’s supplies of food and ammunition, so that, if necessary, the concentration area could be used as a base for future operations. It cannot be said that Bokajan found great favour with the troops. Geoffrey White of the Dorsets has written:
‘Of all the many jungles we have encountered, I would say unhesitatingly that the Bokajan species was the worst. It was wet and prickly, dank and gloomy, and it was not only rank but stank. By the grace of God and the Japanese, we were only there a very short time.’
If Bokajan didn’t impress the 5th Brigade favourably, Dimapur was even worse. The staff captain 5th Brigade wrote in his diary:
‘The whole place is in one big flap. The L. of C. area are digging and wiring themselves in their offices, and gangs of pioneers are putting slit trenches round the Rest Camp. Transport with wild-eyed Indian drivers is speeding north along the Bokajan road with barely six inches between trucks. Haggard-looking coolies stagger on with loads and the number of refugees gets bigger every hour. They walk slowly along with their whole world on their heads; occasionally one collapses by the road and the others group round, blocking the traffic but doing nothing. Am told there are 80,000 men in this place, but only 10,000 rifles. Can quite believe it. Have never seen so many troops walking around unarmed.’
The 80,000 were coolies employed in the depots which lined the main roads, in areas cut out of the jungle. They could obviously not fight themselves, and would get in the way of anyone else who tried to. Some civilian labour had disappeared altogether. On the 2nd April an officer and his batman, just arrived with 5th Brigade, rode their motorbike into a large canteen issue depot. Walking up to the counter, they found themselves gazing at vast quantities of chocolate, food, toilet requisites, cigarettes, beer, and even whisky. There was not a soul to be seen and their shouts to be served failed to bring anyone. The whole stock was at their disposal. Debating for a moment what might be the most useful stores to take to war, they decided on chocolate, cigarettes, tinned pineapple, and a bottle of whisky, which were all stowed into the saddle bags. The officer then wrote his name and unit on the counter and offered to pay if a bill were sent him. Needless to say, it never was.
But the chaos wasn’t only caused by the coolies and civilian labour. Large numbers of officers and troops who were on their way back to Imphal from leave when the road was cut were hanging around idly in the Rest Camps. Some of them, under the Area Staff, were formed into defensive companies and others were sent out on patrols. But they were very depressed and hated the whole business; if they were going to fight the Japs, they wanted to do so with their own units.
The chaos, understandably, extended into the Area offices; some people said it started there. The staff officers, like their commander, weren’t trained or equipped to conduct operations, and their dealings with the staff of 5th Brigade who walked in, demanding transport, rations, defence stores, tarpaulins, ammunition, all in vast quantities on demand, were not very happy. One officer, being pressed for mortar ammunition, threw up his hands and declared piteously: ‘Dear God, I didn’t come here to fight a war!’ As already mentioned, the whole of 2nd Division’s transport was still on the road, including the R.A.S.C. transport trucks. This made the business of concentrating the brigade and building up supplies extremely difficult. The staff had to keep ‘scrounging’ trucks, then holding on to them in the face of angry demands for their return. For the first two days the staffs were even denied transport for themselves and had to walk from place to place. Eventually, Victor Hawkins got an issue of transport agreed with General Ranking, which improved matters a little. But the Division was still coming in at the rate of a train-load per day. There was no sign of any guns; and a group of staff officers and junior commanders, who had been sent ahead on a fast train, had vanished without trace. The frenzy and the fears of this time were expressed by an officer who wrote on the 2nd April: ‘Couldn’t sleep last night. My nerves are on edge. Not exactly through fear, but because I’m furious that our magnificent 2 Div. should be sent dribbling into this party without guns or tanks or workshops or transport. Lord, give us time and we’ll ask for nothing else….’
But time, like tarpaulins and a good many other stores, was in short supply, both at Dimapur and Kohima.
*
On the afternoon of the 31st March, Richards watched the Royal West Kents get in their trucks and move down the road for Nichugard. All he could do now was shorten his line, set his men at work digging for dear life, and stock up the forward posts with food, water, and ammunition. The evacuation of non-fighting personnel was still going on—and would do till the road was cut—but it was under control of 253 Sub-Area, and Richards was neither advised nor consulted. How many men would be left to fight and how many still to be fed, he’d still no idea. His allocation of troops at this moment was as follows: G.P.T. (General Purposes Transport) Ridge, to the south, a composite company of Indian troops, with some V Force men, a company of Gurkha troops, and a few rear details of the Assam Regiment. A roadblock to the south of this position was manned by some Gurkhas under a British officer. On Jail Hill, there was a rifle company of the 5th Burma Regiment and a Garrison company of the same regiment. On D.I.S. and F.S.D., two platoons of Mahrattas, some V Force troops, a composite company of Indian infantry, some R.I.A.S.C. men, and a G.P.T. company under a regular Indian Army officer, Major Rawlley. Kuki Piquet, one of the hillocks on the ridge, between Garrison Hill and F.S.D., was held solely by some V Force men. The D.C.’s bungalow was held by a party of British troops, while the I.G.H. Spur was held by the A
ssam Rifles, commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Keene. On Summerhouse Hill there were some State troops, who also maintained a detachment on Naga Village, the high ground to the north. Five regimental aid posts were set up for the various sectors, and telephone lines were run out to the unit command posts round the perimeter. In the time available, Richards also made his supply arrangements as comprehensive as possible. Fifteen days’ rations were distributed, of which seven were the ordinary rations and the remainder were ‘hard’. Two-inch and three-inch mortar ammunition was carried to the perimeter posts, together with smoke grenades, Mills bombs, and Verey light cartridges. As long as the men were alive, they would have something to fight with.
But water was a different matter. In the D.C.’s bungalow compound there was a large metal tank, filled by a pipe running from the Aradura Spur via G.P.T. Ridge. This pipe would obviously be cut very early in the battle. To help matters, the engineers had dug in two tarpaulin tanks, and there were six steel tanks at points between the bungalow and the F.S.D. How long these would remain unholed, once things got started, was very doubtful; and water would obviously be one of the main problems. The only hope, if things got really bad, was supply from the air.
Even more important than water was morale; fortunately the departure of the Royal West Kents had left this unimpaired, many of the troops being unaware of what had happened.
Some time during the 1st April, Richards received an operation order from Ranking which informed him that the garrison would be reinforced by the Assam Regiment ‘if extracted from Jessami’. But, being an experienced soldier, Richards contained any optimism in this respect; he knew that the battalion must have been severely mauled, even if it escaped intact. The order continued: ‘You will command the garrison of Kohima, and will deny Kohima to the enemy as long as possible without being destroyed yourselves…. The decision as to the precise moment when it will be necessary to withdraw from Kohima must be made by you.’ This sentence revealed that Ranking wasn’t subject to any false optimism either, and was obviously expecting the whole ridge to be taken. At the tail end of the document came detailed orders concerning the destruction of supplies, vehicles, secret documents, ciphers, and signal equipment. Richards was told to take action so that this could be carried out immediately, but refused. As he says: ‘Nothing could be more unfortunate or undesirable than that there should get abroad any idea of the possibility of a withdrawal from Kohima, however remote. I therefore put the order in my pocket and neither showed it or mentioned it to anyone except Colonel Borrowman, my second-in-command.’ One can’t help remarking that Richards was wise in this decision, as in another. He had been told to ask Pawsey to inform the Nagas that if the British withdrew from Kohima, it was still their intention ‘to return and destroy all the Japanese west of the Chindwin’. He decided that any premature announcement would be very dangerous indeed, and left the matter to be decided on the outcome of events.
Kohima Page 7