Kohima

by Arthur Swinson

  It was a bitter day for the Punjabis; they had failed against these objectives just as surely as the Camerons and the Worcestershires. The Japanese positions seemed utterly impregnable.

  The failure was particularly disturbing for Messervy and Stopford. The earlier attacks by 5th Brigade, on the 15th and 19th, had not been supported by medium artillery, and it had been hoped that once these 5.5 guns were available, they would be able to hammer the Japs so hard that the positions must fall. But now, despite their help, and the skill and courage of the Punjabis, the situation appeared no better than before. The Japanese line still held and neither Grover nor Messervy could advance a yard further.

  How was it that if the Japanese were so far gone with starvation and disease, as the Intelligence people believed, they were able to continue fighting with such determination week after week? Some clues are given by the statements of soldiers after they reached Japan. One of them said: ‘The shelling grew to 3,000 or even 4,000 a day. I was always afraid when I was caught away from my bunker, but once I was inside it there was a wonderful feeling of relief.’ When one considers how many shells some bunkers took without their inhabitants being wounded, the soldier’s statement becomes immediately understandable. Undoubtedly, too, the bunker was very much suited to the Japanese mentality. This fact is borne out by the statement of another soldier: ‘While we were actually fighting at Kohima we did not fear the enemy… but once we retreated and we were in the open, a deep fear for the enemy came upon us.’ But there are other clues; as an N.C.O. put it: ‘In the final stages of the battle many soldiers stayed in their bunkers because they were so far gone with starvation, malaria and beriberi that they did not have the power to move. Their clothes were soaked with rain and sweat, and filthy dirty… and they could never get out of the bunkers to dry them. All they could do, in fact, was rest against the fire-slit and pull the trigger whenever attacked.’ Another factor to be taken into consideration is that not all the units had suffered equally. The 124th Regiment, for example, had some of its companies fairly fresh even at the end of May. Finally, there is the fact that from the early days of May the troops believed that they would be relieved by another Division. Now we know, of course, that there was no Division which could possibly have come to their aid, but the troops did not know this, and this false hope undoubtedly buoyed them up day after day, as their own hunger and the military situation grew worse. It is difficult to believe that General Sato or his staff would have started such a false rumour, and where it emanated from it is now impossible to say; the important thing is, however, that the troops believed it.

  Having noted the experiences of the Royal Norfolk and the Royal Scots in the thick jungle around Mount Pulebadze, it is interesting to read the anecdotes of Japanese soldiers in the same area. One of them remembered: ‘Surprised by the noise of the bomb, a group of monkeys moved over our heads from branch to branch, some carrying their babies in their arms. One of these babies fell, but managed to clutch a branch before it hit the ground. The mother climbed down, rescued it, and hurried off with the others.’ Like the men of the 4th Brigade the Japanese saw the luminous vegetation in the jungle and, as this anecdote shows, managed to use it to good effect: ‘I tried to follow the soldier who was walking two or three steps ahead of me. It was difficult until he put what I thought was a luminous insect on his pack. It wasn’t an insect though, so I discovered, but some leaves rotted to phosphorus. This made following him very easy.’

  Reading these stories, the Japanese soldier seems very far from the superman who was feared throughout the East in 1942 and 1943; in fact, he seems just as human as any other soldier. But, nevertheless, his tenacity and courage were of an order seldom equalled. In fact, if Sato’s men had not possessed qualities of this order it is difficult to see how they would have remained in being as a fighting force. This narrative by a subaltern of the 58th Regiment probably sums up the desperate circumstances of the 31st Division at this time, better than almost any other: ‘Even the invalids and the wounded were driven to the front to help supply manpower. Even those with broken legs in splints were herded into battle, the malaria cases too. I have seen these going forward with yellow faces, the fever still in their bodies. I saw one man, whose shoulder had been fractured by a bullet, stagger forward to the front. Some of the wounded who were over forty fondly hoped that they would be sent home but even they were sent forward.’

  *

  While Messervy was attacking on the left, Grover was preparing his operation against Aradura, on the right. The front attacks against the Spur (which ran down parallel with G.P.T. Ridge) were allotted to the Royal Norfolk and the Royal Scots of 4th Brigade, while 6th Brigade, under Brigadier Shapland, would try and deal with the positions high up on the shoulder, in the area of Aradura Village. Grover had agreed to this operation by 6th Brigade, after being informed that 4th Brigade could not burst through towards the road unless their right flank was covered. During the 25th and the 26th, the Royal Berkshires, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the Durham Light Infantry (now reduced to a headquarters and two rifle companies) and the 1st Burma Regiment, assembled on G.P.T. Ridge. The general plan Shapland had worked out was ‘to move on a one-man frontage by battalion groups, stepping up from firm “bases”…’ Guides would be provided by 143rd S.S. Company which had already reconnoitred part of the route.

  A word of explanation is necessary here regarding the term ‘stepping up’. It is a gunner term and means that unit A goes forward to position X, then as unit B arrives there to relieve it, unit A moves on to the next position. Brigadier Shapland was a gunner and to him, therefore, the manœuvre was quite a natural one. To infantry commanders, though, it was anathema, as it inevitably resulted in a period of some minutes during which both units were milling around in the same position, and neither was firm. When Colonel Braithwaite (Royal Welch Fusiliers) and Colonel Bickford (Royal Berkshires) heard the orders for the operation they were both horrified. Braithwaite protested strongly, and said that ‘stepping up’ was a manœuvre unknown to infantry. Why, he asked, couldn’t his battalion leapfrog through Bickford’s? Shapland explained that this was not in his plan, and insisted that the orders should be carried out as laid down. Braithwaite was so alarmed that ‘he considered disobeying orders and asking to see the divisional commander’. Bickford was equally concerned and has recorded: ‘I was convinced that the project would be disastrous and said so.’ His objections to the operations were manifold. To begin with, there was no definite start-line to the attack, and the doctrine that ‘the start-line should be parallel to the objective’ could not be observed. Also, he ‘hated stringing his battalion out in single file’ along a jungle track. And finally, he ‘could not see the point of capturing these positions which were high up in thick jungle and could not maintain observation of the road’.

  To counter these objections, Shapland pointed out that 143rd S.S. Company had already been up on the Spur and reported it clear. But Bickford already knew that they’d had difficulty cutting a route through thick jungle—and they’d found some enemy positions. Apart from his other technical objections, these facts ‘made him very sceptical’.

  Shapland, it should be explained, had been C.R.A. to the 2nd Division, and was a well-liked and highly respected figure in it. But there is no use denying that his ‘gunner methods’ and way of doing things sometimes worried his battalion commanders. Gunners tend to be more intellectual, more precise and mathematical than infantrymen, while the latter tend to be more instinctive, more reliant on personal experience. 6th Brigade had had a very hard time during this battle (as in the Arakan campaign the previous year) and its casualties were very heavy. In recent actions it hadn’t had the best of luck, and had been ordered to attack enemy positions which had proved to be very strongly held.

  Altogether, the Aradura operation—at least 6th Brigade’s part of it—started off in an atmosphere of depression; and then the weather became so bad that it was postponed till the 27th. For two days the troop
s crouched in their sodden trenches while the rain poured down and the mud grew thicker. The officers used the time to study the air photograph which had been taken by the R.A.F., and to watch for movement on the four features to be occupied, named in the operation orders as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Royal Berkshires, so it was now planned, were to capture the crest of the Spur, and John, then the Royal Welch Fusiliers, were to pass through them and capture the remaining apostles. The height of their objective was about 4,000 feet, but to reach them the troops would have to keep climbing, descending and then climbing again. In all they would probably be going up 3,000 feet.

  If Bickford had been suspicious of this operation initially, now he viewed it with horror. The plan, he writes, was ‘simplicity in itself, but lacking most of the information vital to a commander who had to carry it out…. Information about the enemy gave no details of estimated strength and armament, [his] defences or even where he was dug in.’ The blurred aerial photograph he considered almost useless—‘the scale could not be estimated as no one knew the altitude at which it had been taken’. And ground observation did not help a great deal: ‘For days we kept constant watch on the objective, through glasses from a vantage point on the left flank. No sign of movement or defences could be seen.’ Also—’the perspective from the left flank from which the watch was kept bore no relation to that on the right flank from which the approach march had to be made. Each view presented quite a different picture, one across the hilltops, and the other into impenetrable jungle. As the crow flew the distance could be roughly estimated, but as the climber ascended and descended it could not. [In this terrain] it could take four hours to move one man and his mortar a quarter of a mile, with or without the aid of a mule.’

  On the morning of the 27th the rain was still bucketing down, but no further delay could be tolerated, so at 6.30 a.m. the Royal Berkshires passed through the Burma Regiment and entered the jungle. Ahead of the battalion was Major McGeorge, with his S.S. Company, and the Royal Welch Fusiliers were still on G.P.T. Ridge. The only communication between Bickford and Shapland at this time was by telephone; a signaller following immediately behind Bickford, unrolling a coil of wire as he went. The going was extremely bad, and according to one account:

  ‘The ground began to rise steeply, through a dripping mass of vegetation, which limited visibility to twenty yards or less. Tall trees soared skywards, forming a vast umbrella that provided no protection from the rain. Lesser timber, decked with orchids, blocked their way. Glossy-leafed shrubs deluged them with water, thorn bushes caught in their clothing and equipment, and creepers ensnared their feet. The soft ground and undergrowth quickly became deep in mud, which on the steep slopes caused men to slide back on those behind. These conditions, coupled with an uncertainty of the enemy, made the pace intolerably slow.’

  In Bickford’s view, even this description does not give an adequate picture of the conditions his men were facing in this operation. He has written: ‘First, the denseness of jungle. Bamboo… is so dense, and thorny, that even elephants cannot barge their way through. To clear a path… is a long, tedious business. Jungle not only provides a physical barrier but also restricts visibility to about ten to twenty yards; and therefore to move a body of men through it, deployed laterally, is almost impossible, as no one can see how fast or how far his neighbour has progressed. Single file is therefore the only answer, but how vulnerable it makes one to any marksman lying still and motionless by the side of the track! The noise of the advancing column cutting down the undergrowth gives ample warning to anyone waiting silently in ambush positions.’ He also points out that expressions like ‘heavy rainfall’ give no real idea of the Assamese monsoon. ‘It will fill a mess tin in half an hour’, while the heaviest European rain takes several times longer.

  As to the tactics employed, he continues: ‘The peculiar conditions made it impossible to make normal tactical moves, as one would do in other parts of the world. No one in his sense would move a brigade up to the attack in single file, but… there was no other means of approach. To keep direction one would normally have prominent landmarks on ground and map as guides. Here there were none. Alternatively, in other terrain, one can march by compass, but in these conditions you couldn’t take a bearing more than twenty yards ahead—and you’d be confronted with some impenetrable bamboo and have to make a detour.’ Apart from impeding progress and making it hard to keep direction, these mountain-jungles provided other difficulties. As Bickford adds: ‘No other climate in the world was so devastating to communications, particularly to infantry wireless sets. This meant that a commander could rarely communicate with his subordinates. If he wished to start the head of the column or stop it, a message had to be passed from hand to mouth.’

  The track dipped into a ravine, then rose out again, almost vertical, and the men were only able to climb at all by joining their toggle ropes together and hauling themselves up. As with 4th Brigade, on the Pulebadze hook, machine-guns, mortars, and ammunition were being carried, and hauling them up the steep slopes was difficult in the extreme. Among the wet vegetation leeches abounded, and these wormed their way under the men’s clothing to begin sucking at their blood. The damage they inflicted wasn’t great, and the men knew how to burn them off with cigarettes, but they were another discomfort to add to the rain and the ground.

  After a few hours, it was obvious that the men were getting very tired; but Bickford had no alternative but to keep going, even though the pace got slower and slower. Towards mid-day, the men began to think that they must soon arrive somewhere but the jungle still surrounded them and the path still led upwards. Then Major McGeorge came back to see Bickford to report that his company had lost the way. The maps were hopelessly wrong, he added, and how far the column was from the objective he couldn’t say. Bickford decided that the column had better keep going for a while, but at about 1230 hours McGeorge came back again to say there was no sign of the crest, and he’d really no idea where they were. Faced with this dilemma, Bickford asked his gunner, Stewart Liberty, to call up his battery and tell it to put down some high explosive and smoke-shells on to the objective. Liberty did so; and a few minutes later the shells whined overhead and went travelling up the mountain. Explosions were heard in the distance but nothing could be seen; it was obvious that wherever the column was, it was a long, long way from the crest, let alone the four apostles. The hour for the attack had long gone by, so Bickford ordered the regiment to form a box for the night, then sent patrols probing forward to see what they could discover. In fact, they discovered nothing but more jungle; and at 1630 hours, McGeorge came back to report that he could find no way to the crest at all. Bickford reported the situation to Shapland whose tactical headquarters was with the Burma Rifles headquarters, and it was agreed that McGeorge should have another go at first light the following morning. At the same time the Royal Welch Fusiliers would come forward to ‘step up’ into Bickford’s position, so that he could move up to the crest. So the troops dug themselves in to spend the night, ‘drenched… exhausted… wedged against the trees to prevent slipping down the khud-side in their sleep, but unfortunately no one slept’.

  While the Royal Berkshires had been looking for their objective, the Royal Norfolk and the Royal Scots had found theirs and were moving up to attack it. The Royal Norfolk at this time was reduced to less than four hundred officers and men, and the majority of those still serving were suffering severely from dysentery. ‘Exposure, wet, fatigue,’ wrote an officer,’ had all told their tale….’ However, the spirit of the unit was still remarkably good (as it was in the Royal Scots), many men refusing to be evacuated although they could have, legitimately. The Norfolks’ first objective was ‘Charles Hill’, on the right of 4th Brigade’s objective, the Royal Scots being allocated Basha Spur, on the left. The two leading companies of Norfolks were to move forward before dark and patrol towards the objective, and if it were found to be undefended, or weakly held, to occupy it. If, however, it was found to b
e strongly held, then an artillery concentration was to be called for and a full-scale attack put in. The Norfolks didn’t like this plan (any more than the units of 6th Brigade liked theirs) but loyally put it into execution. At 0315 hours two companies moved forward in torrential rain, but before they were near the objective a report came back from a reconnaissance patrol that the position was strongly held. Robert Scott, who was well forward as usual with his tactical headquarters, therefore waited till the rest of the brigade could move into position and the barrage could come down. But the rain became so heavy that any operation was virtually washed out, and in the early afternoon the two companies were recalled. After a conference, it was decided by Shapland that the attack should go ahead the next day, and so the two companies dutifully went forward again. (The fact that they did so in such good order says a good deal for their stamina and discipline.) The going was rough and hard but fortunately the rain had stopped, and then the sun came up to greet a clear blue sky. At 0730 hours the leading company found the jungle thinning as they came towards their objective, and then the Japanese opened up on them from two bunker positions. These were situated just below the crest of a steep escarpment and had a commanding field of fire. A second company moved up to the left of the first, also came under fire, suffering several casualties, and the company commander, Major Murray-Brown, was only able to extricate his men through a most gallant and skilful operation. It was clear that no advance was possible against such a strongly held position, and an effort was made by men of a third company to work round to the right flank, but they hit trouble too. Despite repeated urgings from brigade headquarters to go on, Robert Scott realized that any further attempt would only lead to unnecessary casualties, so got his battalion firm on the ground where it was.