Kohima

by Arthur Swinson

  From about 1015 hours, as Lowry recalls, ‘and at odd intervals during the day, there were low sweeping clouds and mist which, of course, brought some rain. This was one of the few occasions when we welcomed this thick mist and rain, as it meant that we could move around a little without being sniped from behind us. When the sun came out for periods we had a few more casualties…. For the rest of the day we dug like beavers—everything we could find, plates, mugs, bayonets, and entrenching tools—not so much digging as it is normally done, but by making a hole and burrowing and tunnelling ourselves forward below ground level. By the evening we were completely dug in and all section posts linked up.’

  At 1800 hours a company of the 4th/1st Gurkhas moved across the road to support the Queens, immediately coming under fire and losing six men. On linking up, they observed that ‘the Queens had gained one-third of the north-west portion of the hill, but the rest was very strongly held by the enemy… the positions we were on were very strongly enfiladed by enemy M.G. fire. There was no cover whatsoever, and any movement was met by a hail of bullets.’ Gradually the two battalions linked up and a little more ground was gained.

  To help the troops dig in, Loftus Tottenham had asked John Grover that the battlefield should be smoked out till dark, and the artillery began putting down their shells. However, after an hour, reports came through from the Punjabis that their troops were being hit by the canisters, and Colonel Conroy had been hit in both arms. The smoke barrage therefore had to be called off. Fortunately, however, the heavy rain clouds came down on the ridge, giving the forward troops some relief from snipers, and the stretcher-bearers a chance to remove casualties.

  At 1600 hours, a company of the 4th/i5th Punjab, aided by a 6-pounder, put in an attack on a bunker at the rear of the F.S.D., which was causing trouble to the Queens. But the whole area was swept by cross-fire from light machine-guns, and it became obvious that tanks would have to be brought in to deal with the situation. The 4th/ 15th Punjab were therefore ordered to clear the road block between Jail Hill and D.I.S. and sappers were laid on to deal with the mines.

  Only one battalion had any real luck that day: the 1st/1st Punjab, who found Pimple Hill unoccupied and dug in without interference.

  All the night of the nth it rained, and the Queens and the Gurkhas on Jail Hill, the 4th/i5th Punjab on the D.I.S., and the Royal Berkshires on the south end of F.S.D. had a miserable time of it. The Gurkhas managed to get forward food, rum and ammunition, but not all the troops were so lucky. The Queens had no sleep at all, as they were so close to the Japs that grenades were coming over all night, and the L.M.G. fire was almost continuous.

  Of his experiences on Jail Hill that night Lowry has written: ‘We had a 50 per cent stand-to all night, but we were virtually all awake. It poured with rain throughout, and it was one of the noisiest nights imaginable. Jap machine-guns and our light machine-guns were punctuated by grenade and mortar fire. Three of the enemy bunkers were only ten or fifteen yards away, and the grenading was a little unpleasant.

  It was a bleary dawn on the 12th, cold and with the rain still sheeting down. The clouds hung low over the mountains and the whole of Assam seemed foul and dank. At six o’clock John Grover was already in conference with Loftus Tottenham, and it was agreed that his troops ‘should get solid where they were, then feel forward….’ They also discussed the situation in the F.S.D. area, which it was hoped would improve when the tanks got through. Later a report came through that the Japs had made a road block past the D.C.’s bungalow bend, but this turned out to be merely a stack of 37-mm. shells, which seemed to indicate that they were running short of anti-tank mines. The tank commander decided to run over them, which he did without any ill-effects, and soon the leading tanks had linked up with the Queens on Jail Hill. Their object was to shoot up the bunkers on the reverse slopes, which they proceeded to do at very close range. Lowry, whose men were on this flank, recalls: ‘It was an amazing sensation as the tanks shelled these bunkers. We had to lie flat on our stomachs to avoid debris and even the shells… as the positions they pounded were literally only fifteen yards away, but we had no casualties at the end of it.’ Two bunkers were dealt with very successfully, and the Japs streaming away from them were caught by the Manchesters’ machine-guns. A bunker by the road was shot to bits, and the corpses were seen ‘to be blown clean up into the air’. This improvement of the situation enabled Lieutenant Hamilton to lead his platoon against the Jail buildings which had defied capture on the previous day, and take them. Two companies of Gurkhas, supported by tanks, attacked bunker positions on the western and south-western slopes of the bill, pressing on with great determination. Two bunkers were reached and captured, but the third, which held out, was surrounded, the Gurkhas digging in within ten yards. All through the day sniping continued and there were casualties among both battalions, but it grew less, and towards evening men were allowed to slip down the hill to fill their water-bottles. From his command post, Grover had been watching the attack by the Gurkhas and noted the behaviour of one of the Japs. ‘He ran out of the bunker and, after pausing to take cover a couple of times, eventually dropped into a firing position behind a tree—a very cool customer.’ Others strolled out of their bunkers unarmed and walked off, ‘three miraculously getting away with it’. At three o’clock, twenty Japs were seen running down the far side of the hill. But whether they walked or ran, it was good to see them go; this was a new development in the battle.

  At 1500 hours the Grants began shooting up Jap positions on D.I.S. and F.S.D., and the 4th/i5th Punjab and the Royal Berkshires went into the attack. The Punjabis on the D.I.S. met considerable opposition, and were unlucky when their tank jammed its gun. However, they kept plugging away and eventually cleared the whole feature, except for one small bunker which was left for the following day when another tank could be brought forward. Meanwhile, the Royal Berkshires continued their attack on the F.S.D., and soon after four o’clock when a second tank came up to join the first (to quote Grover) ‘there was the sound of bunkers cracking hard—a good sound’. Their fire was directed by Sergeant Garrett of the Royal Berkshires, until his company commander took over with his radio set. No Japs ran from the F.S.D. during the day; in fact, they fought on with great bravery, despite their heavy losses and the hopelessness of the situation, once the tanks were confronting their positions. None surrendered, though corpses littered the area, and about forty men were buried in their bunkers. One of these was a battalion headquarters, ‘as big as a cathedral and full of galleries’. It was also full of papers and equipment; and before the action was over the Royal Berkshires had captured a 75-mm. gun, two regimental guns, eighteen machine-guns, and a good deal of ammunition.

  ‘A depressing day for the Japs…’ Loftus Tottenham remarked, as he left Grover’s headquarters that evening. It was also a depressing day for 5th Brigade, as their commander, Victor Hawkins, was wounded, while going forward on reconnaissance. He was the third casualty among the brigadiers of 2nd Division, Theobalds, who had taken over from Goschen, having been hit the previous day. Two commanding officers (Hedderwick and Brown) had already been killed, apart from a high proportion of company and platoon commanders. The Japanese snipers certainly stuck to their job. By a coincidence, Robert Scott was standing next to Theobalds when he was hit, just as he had been with Goschen, and so twice took over the brigade. Scott had been hit several times himself, and for days a large bloody bandage adorned his head. On seeing this, soon after the battle of G.P.T. Ridge, John Grover said to him: ‘Perhaps you’ll now apologize for your truculence when I asked you to take steel helmets on the march round Pulebadze.’ Unfortunately, Scott’s reply isn’t recorded.

  ‘Just rain… rain and misery,’ wrote an officer on the night of the I2th, which was just as wet as the two nights before it. But still the troops stuck it out on Jail Hill, on the D.I.S., and F.S.D. Ridge; Loftus Tottenham had called for one final effort, and they weren’t going to let him down. Their tenacity was rewarded. At d
awn, patrols from the Queens and the Gurkhas probed forward to find the enemy bunkers empty. The main bunker on the top of the hill was large enough to hold fifty men, and had steel loopholes, taken from the Assam Rifles barracks, which could be closed against grenades. It was so deeply dug into the hill and covered over that no shelling or bombing could touch it. The whole hill was honeycombed with tunnels and interlinking bunkers. As the Queens mopped up they caught sight of fifty Japanese streaming back from the Treasury position, to the north, and put in some very effective shooting. But everyone was anxious to leave Jail Hill, which an officer described as ‘an unattractive place, battered, barren, scattered with debris and thick with the most disgusting flies’.

  The Japs were not only leaving Jail Hill and the Treasury. Before daylight the men of the Royal Berkshires on F.S.D. Ridge woke up to find that they were running away down the rear slopes, and left their positions to chase after them. The enthusiasm was so great, in fact, that they had to be called back and warned not to overdo things. The Royal Welch Fusiliers probed forward to find Kuki Piquet unoccupied; they also found a grim reminder of the bestiality of war against the Japanese. Tied to a tree was the skeleton of a soldier whose shoulder flash disclosed that his regiment had been the Royal West Kents. In his battle-dress were a dozen or more slits, the poor fellow having been used for bayonet practice. At the same time as the Queens and the Fusiliers were probing forward, the 4th/i5th Punjab sent a patrol on to the top of D.I.S., and this was found unoccupied too. As Marment recorded: ‘The Japs were either dead, buried, or had packed up… it had been a wonderful show. All was quiet and someone thrust a bacon sandwich into my hand. I have eaten a lot of bacon since then, but no bacon sandwich has ever tasted quite so good again.’

  One of the Japanese strong-points that the Punjabis had to face on the D.I.S. was the bakery, and as the rain poured down on them during this foul night of the 12th it occurred to Marment that the story of the three little pigs might amuse his men. So, translating this into Urdu, he told it to them, and when he came to the refrain which runs: ‘We’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow your house down!’ (‘Ham apne hunkar se apke ghar kaundar denge!’) the men roared with laughter. The morale of this battalion, after its losses during the action and the foul circumstances of the last forty-eight hours, was amazing.

  The situation, therefore, on the morning of the 13th was that the whole central sector of Kohima had fallen, with two exceptions: the D.C.’s bungalow and the tennis court. Here the fighting was as stubborn as ever.

  In dealing with the main offensive, it has been necessary to neglect the Dorsets for a while, but it shouldn’t be imagined that the battle of the tennis court had died down. Day by day they’d been probing, patrolling, and fighting; and getting ready for ‘the final set’. On the nth, after some concentrated fire from a 6-pounder which had been dragged up on to the hill with immense effort, an attack had gone in against that old sore, the bunker in the north-eastern corner. It had failed, but not till several Jap positions had been identified for the first time. Then, on the 12th, the sappers decided to bulldoze a track straight up Hospital Hill Spur and into the perimeter from the rear, so that a medium tank could be pulled up on to the hill. This was a difficult task, as the ground was sodden and the gradient steep; but the sappers went on doggedly and by afternoon the job was done. Then the Lee tank arrived and, watched breathlessly by the troops, gradually manœuvred itself forward, chucking up mud with its tracks, slithering, and occasionally halting but never giving up. Before night the miracle had been achieved and the Lee was found a position by the cookhouse. News spread round the slit trenches like wildfire and suddenly everyone was very excited. ‘…nearly every man who could get away from his post came to look at this monster,’ wrote Geoffrey White, ‘the dragon, which was to help us annihilate the stubborn defenders of the bungalow on the morrow.’ White and his commanding officer, Jock McNaught, were so elated, in fact, that they ‘recklessly squandered half a mug of water each on a shave!’

  The plan for the morrow’s attack was as follows: with the help of the Lee, a platoon would get a hold of the north-eastern corner of the tennis court, and then would move along under its covering fire, clearing the positions dug into the bank below the club. A second platoon would move round the right, clearing the water tank, and the tin shed area; while a third would advance over the captured tennis court area and advance towards the bungalow terrace. This third platoon would link up with the platoon still holding the spur above the road junction. To reduce risks to a minimum, the Mountain Gunners were invited to manhandle a 3.7 howitzer up the bank to a site to the south of the position, which would give them a good shoot at the tin huts and the water tank. They could also take on other targets as required.

  But first the Lee had to descend the club bank and get itself on to the tennis court, and a good many anxious eyes were on its commander, Sergeant Waterhouse of the 149th R.A.C., as he drove forward to attempt this task. The track had been widened and reinforced the previous evening, but the job was still difficult and after so many days of this battle no one was going ‘to count their chickens’. However, having contemplated the bank for a moment, the tank slid down and suddenly its nose was on the base-line. Geoffrey White continues:

  ‘We had done it at last! Anxiously we watched for any Jap reaction as the tank slowly swung round and started to serve. There was no nonsense about foot faults: Sergeant Waterhouse just let the Nip have it with his 75-mm., firing straight into their bunkers at a range of the length of a standard tennis court. On the first round… the infantry moved forward and the 3.7 howitzer opened up and let the enemy have fifty rounds fire at point-blank range, up their sterns. With great skill, Sergeant Given manœuvred his platoon round to the north-east corner, where he deployed and started setting about any opposition he could find. On the right, Sergeant Cook waited until the gun-fire had switched and then got in among the shell-happy Nips.’

  As the 3.7 finished firing, about fifty Japs were seen leaving their positions, to run away past the Commandant’s bungalow and into the nalas below. Immediately everyone who could bring a gun to bear opened up and the remnants of this party were pursued by bullets till they reached the slopes of Treasury Hill, eight hundred yards away. Meanwhile, Sergeant Given moved round the tennis court, directing the Lee’s fire to any position which still showed, signs of life. Soon it became obvious though that the garrison had all been killed or had fled, so the Lee turned and moved forward to the edge of the terrace overlooking the bungalow itself, and under the cover of its gun the infantry went through. The bungalow itself was cleared with one casualty, the only one sustained that day, and then Major Chettle took over the mopping-up operations. This entailed searching out the bunkers, getting up to the slits under covering fire, lighting the fuse of a pole-charge, then pushing it through the hole. The charges were originally twenty seconds, which gave the Japs time to pull off the fuses, so, realizing this, Chettle cut the fuses down to four seconds and hoped that he and his men could get back before the bunker went up. With one exception they did. When he temporarily ran out of bunkers, Chettle searched out any likely hole which might be harbouring Japs and stuffed a 25 lb. tin of ammonal down it. This process went on right into the night, but when it was over the entire area had been cleared; sixty Jap dead were counted and many more must have been buried or blown to bits when their bunkers went up. Richard Sharp, the B.B.C. War Correspondent who had attached himself to the Dorsets, recorded an account of the day’s action which was broadcast a few days later; it was one of the few graphic descriptions of the fighting in Assam that the people at home were ever granted:

  ‘It’s difficult to make sure of facts in this catch-as-catch-can type of warfare, but I know we’ve taken the tennis court, because I’ve been on it this afternoon. The men who took it… have been plugging away at that tennis court for sixteen days, and when I got there at noon they were on it at last. In these sixteen days they’d become personal enemies of the Jap
there, who used to taunt them at dusk, calling across the tennis court: “Have you stood-to yet?” Today they’re on top and they walked on their toes, laughing among the bulges in the earth of dug-out roofs.… There was a company commander—a robust man with square, black jaw covered with stubble. The skin between his battle-dress trousers and his tunic was bloody, and he swayed as he stood with his legs straddled. But his brain was working at full speed, and he laughed and shouted at his men as they went eagerly from fox-hole to fox-hole with hand-grenades and pole charges—that’s twenty-five pounds of explosive at the end of a six-foot bamboo....

  Now all that’s left is the litter of war—piles of biscuits, dead Japs black with flies, heaps of Jap ammunition, broken rifles, silver from the District Commissioner’s bungalow. And among it, most incongruous of all, there’s a man cleaning a pair of boots, another boiling tea, and an official photographer [Antony Beauchamp] who used to photograph Mayfair lovelies, saying: “Move a little to the left, please.” And there’s another chap reading an “Edgar Wallace thriller” in a Sunday newspaper. Yes, today’s been a great day for this battalion. Here’s hoping they hold the tennis court through the night.’

  They did, with no trouble. And the following day they were ordered back to Dimapur for a rest, with the other troops in the perimeter. For the first time in six weeks there was no fighting on Kohima Ridge.

  *

  Even before the attacks on the nth developed, Sato realized that affairs were approaching a crisis and in an Order of the Day exhorted his men to keep fighting.

  ‘The enemy are superior in weapons and firepower. Each and every man must look after his rifle as a mother her child. An uncared-for arm is a criminal offence, and any found with an unserviceable rifle, or no rifle at all, will at once be shot by his officer. You will fight to the death. When you are killed you will fight on with your spirit.’