by Fergal Keane
That night they were struck by the quiet of the high mountain world and many found it hard to believe that thousands of Japanese troops could be out there in the darkness. The oil lamps flickering in the remaining occupied buildings were a comfort to the sentries. On the road from Dimapur they had passed Nagas; the appearance of the warriors with their cloaks and elaborate headdresses, and the stories of headhunting, compounded the sense of strangeness felt by the men. The C company runner Ray Street thought the Nagas looked like ‘Red Indians … carrying old shotguns. Others had spears and bows but all wore a Gurkha style knife on their hips.’ However much the Nagas waved and smiled as the trucks rolled by, there was in those early moments at Kohima a distinctly uneasy feeling, as if they had entered a landscape whose surprises would be many.
The horrors inflicted by their own artillery at the tunnels had not broken morale; instead, these men took pride in their ability to endure. As Lance Corporal Dennis Wykes put it, ‘We were up for it. The lads moaned all the time like any soldiers would, but they had great pride in the battalion. When you get the daylights hammered out of you as many times as we did you either go to pieces or you feel you are special, and we were special.’
Lieutenant Colonel Laverty had still been given no full information on the threat faced by his men. The impression at Kohima was that there was still time to prepare proper defensive positions, although an entry in the battalion war diary foreshadowed a crucial problem. ‘Water situation is precarious,’ it noted simply. It was only a few days later that Laverty would discover quite how precarious. Lieutenant Tom Hogg was struck by the number of line of communications troops and civilians still hanging about in Kohima. He estimated there were ‘perhaps 3,000 leaderless non-combatants milling around’, a dangerously high number of ‘useless mouths’ for a position that could soon be under attack from what was now known to be a Japanese division.
At 8.30 a.m. on 30 March, Laverty called his company commanders together and sketched out a plan for the day: they would reinforce the defences around the brigade headquarters and mount patrols along the road from Kohima towards Imphal. They spent the next two days digging and patrolling, but there was no contact with the Japanese. There was a scare on the second night in Kohima. Some Indian troops were jittery and opened fire at what they thought was a Japanese soldier. ‘It turned out to be a cow and they killed it,’ recorded Private Norman in his diary. At 0800 hours on 31 March he was sent to patrol the road for some twenty miles beyond Kohima. The West Kents who patrolled down the road towards the 1/1 Punjab positions had the eerie experience of travelling into clouds on the roller coaster of the mountain roads. Worse, the jeep driver’s cap fell off and he took his hands off the wheel as they went round a corner. Private Norman saw to his horror that there were two crashed jeeps at the bottom of the ravine. The driver seized hold of the wheel in the nick of time. That night the rain fell and the men huddled in the cold. There was still no contact with the Japanese. On the same day, Laverty accompanied his boss, Brigadier Warren, on a visit to Mao Songsang, about twenty miles from Kohima on the road to Imphal, where the 1/1 Punjab were based. He was told that the West Kents were to remain at a half-hour’s notice to move back to Dimapur.
On the morning of 1 April rumours flew around the ranks that they were to be moved back along the road to set up a new defensive position at the Nichuguard gorge, outside Dimapur. Then Private Norman heard they were to stay where they were. Finally, orders came through. ‘We got a message through the rest [of the brigade] wouldn’t be following us up,’ remembered Major Donald Easten. ‘We were to go back!’ To another young officer, Lieutenant Tom Hogg, it ‘smacked of confusion in high places – difficult for a young Lieutenant to explain away and/or for his men to accept with equanimity’. Men who had spent hours digging trenches in the rain at Kohima cursed the brass who seemed to change their minds at a whim. Lance Corporal Wykes could not understand what was happening. ‘It was the obvious time to dig in and get ready.’ Private Norman was now nursing a severe cold and felt thoroughly ‘browned off’. His only consolation was a conversation with Laverty, whom he met walking around the position. Norman does not record what was discussed, but it is hard to think he did not give Laverty the full benefit of his views on the new orders.
For the garrison commander, Colonel Hugh Richards, and for Charles Pawsey, the order defied comprehension. They had already watched as a battalion from the West Yorkshires had been pulled in and out of Kohima, and in and out again, in the five-day period between 24 and 29 March. Now Kohima was once more being stripped of battle-hardened troops.
Captain Arthur Swinson blamed the local area commander, General Ranking, for the decision: ‘2,000 men left in Kohima and the area commander is quite confident they can hold it. By the tone of his voice the Brigadier [Warren] indicates he is not.’ The gravest problem was that the majority of the men in Kohima were a mix of various colonial, line of communications and convalescent troops, unused to fighting together and untested in the face of a substantial Japanese force. Only the men of the 1st Assam Regiment, who were struggling to get to Kohima from Jessami, could be regarded as a solid infantry formation. The deputy commissioner, Charles Pawsey, was livid. ‘With one Brigade in Kohima, and the troops already there, we should have been quite happy. To the chagrin of everybody the Brigade was taken back to the Manipur road … this was heartbreaking.’
But Ranking was merely the messenger. Slim and Stopford had now decided that Dimapur was the more likely target for a Japanese attack. There was a logic to their decision. Why would the Japanese pause to give battle at Kohima when they could take the greater prize at Dimapur? Should the Japanese arrive in the next few days, the base, with its paltry defence and milling refugees, would certainly fall. Ranking called Brigadier Warren and told him that 161 Brigade would have to leave Kohima. The pressure from on high had been exacerbated by intelligence received from RAF pilots that a sizeable Japanese force was threatening the rail line near Dimapur. When Warren told Pawsey about this he thought the idea was nonsense. Any movement on a large scale would have been reported by his Naga scouts. In fact, all the indications from his informants were that the Japanese were bearing down on Kohima, and at some speed.* The West Kents claimed the Dimapur story was invented by a radio unit that fled a village having ‘left their equipment behind and brought instead this story’. The inaccurate report was not of itself decisive, but it chimed fatefully with what the higher command believed.
Brigadier Warren pleaded with Ranking to visit Kohima to see the situation for himself and at least to listen to the arguments for staying in place. The general drove up and met with Richards, Pawsey and Warren. They were unanimous. The brigade must stay in Kohima. Warren argued that the Japanese would not bypass Kohima if it contained a sizeable force. The threat to Sato’s rear and his line of communication would be too great for him simply to march on to Dimapur. Conversely, if Sato succeeded in taking a poorly defended Kohima Ridge, it would take a long hard fight, with many casualties, to drive him off. Why leave now, when there was a chance of stopping Sato in his tracks? Besides, argued Pawsey, the Nagas would feel they were being abandoned by the Raj. Ranking defended the orders he had been given. Richards wrote that ‘It was a frightening situation for him, with his responsibility, to contemplate.’ There were angry words. Warren and Pawsey offered to fly and put the case directly to Slim. Ranking rejected this and promised he would relay their fears. At midnight on 31 March, Slim went to see the 33 Corps commander, General Stopford, who would take overall control of the battle, to tell him that Ranking had been on the phone. He told him about what the ‘political people’ – Charles Pawsey – had said about the impact on the Nagas. ‘I had to refuse to listen to these suggestions’, Stopford wrote, ‘and made it clear that I had my plan and must stick to it.’ In the greater scheme of things the vast supply base, railhead and airfield at Dimapur mattered more, at that point, than Kohima.* There were other ‘political people’ with more influence than C
harles Pawsey. Stopford knew that Churchill and the Americans would create ‘a hell of a row if we lose [Dimapur]’.
Hugh Richards was given another order on 1 April, but one that he decided to keep to himself. The ‘202 Area Operation Instruction No. 3’ from Ranking said that he was to hold Kohima ‘as long as possible without being destroyed yourselves’. The next part of the order filled Richards with foreboding. ‘If and when it is decided to withdraw the Deputy Commissioner should be told to impress on all Nagas that such a withdrawal will be of a temporary nature only and it is the intention of the British to return and destroy all Japanese west of the Chindwin.’ It concluded with a blindingly self-evident statement: ‘such an announcement must NOT be made prematurely’. Nobody knew better than Richards the potential effect of such orders on his garrison or on the local population. The garrison commander stuffed them in his back pocket, mentioning them only to his second-in-command, who was sworn to secrecy. ‘I regarded this [order] as highly dangerous from a morale point of view,’ Richards wrote. ‘Nothing could be more unfortunate or undesirable than that there should get abroad any idea that there was a possibility of a withdrawal from Kohima, however remote.’
It was still pouring with rain when the West Kents and the other elements of 161 Brigade in Kohima began to pull out at lunchtime on 2 April. Pawsey watched them go with a feeling of anger. For over two decades he had preached to the people of the Naga Hills the gospel of a caring and paternal Raj, and asked that in return they give their unconditional loyalty to the crown. How was he to explain this betrayal? Pawsey’s answer was typical of the man. As a civil servant, there was no question of his being expected to stay in a battle zone. In fact, the idea would have been positively discouraged. The Japanese would kill or torture him as quickly as they would any soldier. He could leave on any of the numerous trucks that were evacuating non-combatants by the hour. There was still something of the warrior in Charles Pawsey. The veteran of the Somme and the Italian front had already seen the horrors of total war and, without a wife or children, he might have felt he had less cause than most to take a ride away from danger. But at the root of his decision to stay was loyalty. If he stayed with the Naga, they might see that the Raj still had honour. So he told Richards he would be staying put and helping to coordinate relief for Naga refugees, as well as doing what he could to help with the defence. Together they watched the West Kents mount their lorries in the downpour. Rain rattled violently on the roofs of the bungalow, hospital, treasury – on all the buildings of the little outpost, adding to the feeling of desolation as the last of the vehicles vanished in the direction of Dimapur.
Kohima settled into a nerve-racking wait. The young cavalry officer Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar, who had arrived the previous day, found Kohima at ‘real panic stations. Everything was a bit all over the place.’ He was a trained tank and troop-carrier man but found no armour in Kohima. ‘The defences were poor. It was really surprising … we really were useless.’ Hayllar was given a composite group of Indian troops and told to man a position on Jail Hill. Before heading up, he was introduced to Charles Pawsey at his bungalow. ‘I remember saying to myself “this is going to be a proper war and they are going to destroy this bungalow so I better go and use the loo!”’ Lieutenant Hayllar’s only wish was that the fight would last long enough for him to be shot at.
Richards’s best hope now was for the arrival of Brown’s men from Jessami. The survivors of 1st Assam did not begin to appear in any numbers until 3 April, and when they did appear they were all exhausted and hungry, many without boots and in tattered clothing. In all, 260 men would be available to help strengthen the defence. The first seventy to arrive included twenty who were ill or wounded and had to be evacuated to Dimapur. When Lieutenant Colonel ‘Bruno’ Brown arrived his ragged condition so moved Charles Pawsey that he went to his bungalow and found him a polo sweater to wear.
Kohima Ridge was about a mile long and roughly four hundred yards in width, a series of hills and gullies that ran alongside the road. With steep slopes along much of the road side of the perimeter, it presented a formidable obstacle for any attackers trying to scale their way up. But it was a narrow space from which to repel an enemy attacking in strength and the other side of the perimeter, away from the road, was overlooked by mountain slopes which offered enemy artillery any number of ideal firing positions.
Across the garrison, work parties were busy digging in, frantically trying to rectify the weaknesses. Richards had already moved to consolidate his defence around a single box. At the southern end of the ridge was GPT Ridge, where the Assam and Nepalese troops watched the road to Imphal. Beside it, but on the other side of the road, was Jail Hill. From there the defensive line swung back across the road in front of Detail Hill, Supply Hill, Kuki Piquet and Summerhouse Hill, soon to be renamed Garrison Hill, where Colonel Richards had his headquarters.* Above him, on what was known as Hospital Spur, was a series of hospital buildings; on the lower slopes stood the district commissioner’s tennis court and below that his bungalow with its gardens tapering down to the road. From his headquarters, looking north across the road towards Dimapur, Richards could see the Treasury and the huts of the Naga Village.
The great difficulty for anybody trying to defend Kohima Ridge was water. All the water sources lay outside Richards’s perimeter, at the mercy of a besieging force. There was a steel tank near Charles Pawsey’s bungalow which was filled by a pipe that ran all the way south to a source on Aradura Spur; the pipe could easily be cut once it was discovered by the Japanese. Worse still, the other eight tanks, a mix of canvas and steel, had not been dug in and presented an obvious target for Japanese snipers. Soon, Richards would watch helplessly as thousands of gallons of precious liquid spilled across the ridge. He would later blame himself for the failure to conceal the water supply. Happily, Kohima’s position as a major store for the area meant that there was no immediate shortage of food or ammunition. Fifteen days’ rations were distributed, along with grenades, ammunition for 2 and 3 inch mortars, pistol rounds and cartridges for Very lights, the flares so important in the howling darkness of a Japanese night attack.
News of the approaching enemy crackled through Kohima. Pawsey’s Nagas were invariably first with reports of sightings. Richards’s outlying patrols were also bringing regular information. At 1800 on 2 April the Nepalese Shere Regiment had reported some Japanese about three miles outside Kohima. A patrol brought in three Japanese ears as proof of the enemy presence.
The following day Lieutenant Dennis Dawson of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps went with a patrol to Aradura Spur to the south. A Major N. R. Giles had asked him if he wanted to join him for a ‘spot of fun’. They reached the foothills of Aradura and made camp for the night. Dawson heard digging near his position. Then there was a shot. ‘Round about three or four in the morning a Japanese sentry came across our sentry and he shot my chap dead. So that gave our position away. We had just time to drag him to where I was.’ A friend of the dead man took his personal papers and the patrol fled, leaving the body. The Japanese were now all around them. Another member of the patrol, Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar, was enthusiastic for the battle. ‘We went to try and find the Jap and beat him up … at dusk we met the Jap and after a bit we lay in the circle in the wood, with the Major in the middle.’ Then it started to rain heavily and Hayllar felt afraid. He recited Psalm 23:
Even though I walk
Through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil
For you are with me;
Your rod and your staff
They comfort me.
Hayllar was astonished that Major Giles, a jungle veteran, could fall asleep when the Japanese were just twenty-five yards away. He cursed himself for a being a fool and having volunteered. Then the attack started and his fear vanished. ‘I just felt very excited and concentrated on the job of keeping control of my own fire and trying to locate the Japs creeping in towards us … The men all seemed to fee
l the same, some sort of savage instinct comes to ones [sic] aid when logically a man should be scared stiff.’ A man was shot through the heart beside him, but Hayllar was too busy to pay much attention.
Dennis Dawson remembered his men shooting and killing several Japanese. The shouting and the shelling from the Japanese side wore at the men’s nerves. ‘It was horrible. It just went on and on,’ recalled Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar. He prayed again to overcome his fear. The men fell back to Kohima in groups of three and four. On the way they shot four or five of the encircling Japanese. Hayllar was moving from tree to tree, trying to avoid presenting a target, when he saw a Japanese standing on the track in front of him. He squeezed the trigger and the man fell. For a moment Hayllar had the sense of being caught in a dream, as if the dead man lying in front of him was merely play-acting and would rise to life again. ‘It is pretty horrid to kill. But if you have seen them killing our lot then you want to repay. It’s a horrible feeling.’ The patrol reached Kohima later that morning with Dennis Dawson wondering if anybody would go back for the body of his sentry. Decades later he was still thinking about the dead man.