The Burma Campaign

by Frank McLynn

  Now is the time to capture Imphal. Our death-defying infantry group expects certain victory when it penetrates the main fortress of the enemy. The coming battle is the turning point. It will denote the success or failure of the Greater East Asia War. You men have got to be fully in the picture as to what the present situation is; regarding death as something light as a feather, you must tackle the task of capturing Imphal. For that reason it must be expected that the division will be almost annihilated. I have confidence in your firm courage and devotion and believe that you will do your duty, but should any delinquencies occur you have to understand that I shall take the necessary action … On this one battle rests the fate of the Empire. All officers and men fight courageously!74

  As Slim rightly remarked: ‘Whatever one may think of the military wisdom of thus pursuing a hopeless object, there can be no question of the supreme courage and hardihood of the Japanese soldiers who made the attempts. I know of no army that could have equalled them.’75

  The grim war of attrition continued. By the middle of June the Japanese held only half of Ninthoukgong – they occupied the southern end, separated from the British in the northern part by a muddy stream. Throughout the first half of June the village was the scene of bloody fighting, with an epic encounter on the 7th, when another Victoria Cross was awarded. Ninthoukgong was in fact something of a nursery for these awards, for two more were awarded, to Gurkhas, for the June combats. Still Tanaka urged his battered and bruised men on, and the slugging firefights for individual hills continued: the Japanese took Forest Hill on 20 June but failed against Plum Hill. By now Cowan was confident he had the upper hand – so confident in fact that he had Noel Coward performing cabaret in Bishenpur for his troops. The British superiority in tanks, artillery and airpower was overwhelming, and even the monsoon seemed to take a greater toll on the enemy; by the end of June Tanaka had lost altogether 12,000 dead, 7,000 killed in battle and another 5,000 to disease – an amazing 70 per cent of the division’s strength.76 Slim’s tactic of bleeding the enemy dry was rarely seen to more dramatic effect. Yet even at the end of June, the crazed Mutaguchi still clung to the forlorn hope that an eleventh-hour victory at Bishenpur would both retrieve the situation on the southern front and save his face. The real fault, however, must attach to the Japanese commander-in-chief Kawabe. Dithering, ill and decisive, prostrated with amoebic dysentery, he periodically reasoned that he must cancel U-GO in its entirety, but every time he summoned the courage to do so, a cable would arrive from Tokyo stressing the paramount necessity of victory in Burma, to compensate for the disasters in the Pacific. Two-faced also, Kawabe tried to hedge his bets, at once urging Mutaguchi on to even greater efforts and asking Tokyo for permission to cancel the Imphal operation. Even more incredibly, he still hoped for great things from Bose and the INA, despite all the evidence that both were busted flushes. In the end it was a race between Kawabe and Mutaguchi as to who would give up first. On 8 July, just before receiving formal cancellation of U-GO, Mutaguchi himself concluded that the offensive against Bishenpur had failed and ordered the tattered remnants of 33 Division to retreat across the Chindwin.77

  Despite all the desperate battles fought on the central, southern and south-eastern front, it still remains the case that the heart of the great Imphal-Kohima struggle centred around the village of Kohima itself. The siege of this remote outpost, and subsequent battle, took place so far from the other fronts that some historians, mistakenly, have regarded Kohima as a separate battle.78 Yet it is very clear that Kohima-Imphal formed an organic whole, that no conflict on any individual front could be properly understood without reference to simultaneous events on the others. Slim’s intention always was that the Japanese should be encouraged to believe that victory was imminent on all fronts. This was why, despite Mountbatten’s urgings, he did not reinforce Imphal to the point where it was impregnable, for that might have encouraged the Japanese to withdraw. His abiding intention was not just to defeat the enemy but to annihilate him, so that a British invasion of Burma could become a solid reality. Debate has raged over whether Slim initially made a mistake about Kohima, whether his subordinates did, or whether inveigling Mutaguchi into a protracted and impossible campaign in the northern sector was not all part of some machiavellian masterpiece. Slim himself claimed that he was taken by surprise when the Japanese threw an entire division against Kohima,79 but his autobiographical statements were sometimes misleading – disingenuous, his critics would say. A very good example comes right from the earliest days at Kohima. Slim had originally told Ranking to hold both Dimapur and Kohima until Stopford arrived on the scene. On 3 April Stopford arrived and made what was undoubtedly, from the standpoint of the defence of Kohima, a bad error. He ordered Ranking to pull 161 Brigade out of Kohima and transfer it to Dimapur. Ranking appealed over Stopford’s head to Slim to rescind the order but, reluctant as always to overrule his generals, Slim confirmed it.80 If Slim had overruled Stopford, there is good reason to believe that the ensuing siege of Kohima would not have been so protracted. In Defeat into Victory, Slim muddies the waters by claiming that the error was Ranking’s, not Stopford’s. The usual judgement is that Slim made a mistake and thought Kohima of limited importance compared with Dimapur.81 Another interpretation is possible: that Slim realised Mutaguchi was playing right into his hands by the assault on Kohima – militarily nugatory alongside the far richer prize of Dimapur – and encouraged him to continue in his folly. This would explain why Slim assigned 161 Brigade to Kohima in the first place, as also the 4th West Royal Kents. Slim’s original orders to Ranking were ambiguous and muddled, and this was uncharacteristic of the man. Either his touch in early April was less than sure, or he was playing a very devious game.82

  The Japanese under Lieutenant General Sato Kotoku launched their attack on the beleaguered Kohima on 4 April, and a famous two-week siege commenced. The defending garrison numbered only some 3,000, of which 1,000 were non-combatants.83 There was no systematic defence, so the British troops dug in at suitable places along the Kohima ridge. Kohima village, at 5,000 feet, was set in an ocean of peaks and ridges crossed by bridle paths, with some peaks to the west as high as 10,000 feet and those to the north and east reaching 8,000 feet. The village was at the summit of a ridge, where the best road between Assam and Burma goes through a pass. The ridge at Kohima was steep and thickly wooded, creating conditions of pitch blackness for attackers swarming upwards (until the trees were destroyed by artillery). At a right-angled bend of the main road was the deputy commissioner’s bungalow, complete with tennis court, to the south of which were small hills on which stood warehouses and supply shacks. With maddening temperatures oscillating between very cool at night and sweaty humidity in the day, this obscure spot was destined to be the scene of ‘fighting as desperate as any recorded in history’.84 Once he had realised his mistake, Stopford sent 161 Indian Brigade back to Kohima. They arrived on 5 April, but there was no room for them on the tightly packed ridge, so they withdrew to Jotsoma, two and a half miles to the north-west, from which they could support the defenders by raining down artillery fire on the attackers. However, by 8 April the Japanese had cut off Jotsoma as well, so there was no direct reinforcement possible from 161 Brigade, which took up a defensive position in a ‘box’.85 From the very beginning the Japanese launched one determined attack after another on Kohima ridge. Sato threw everything he had at the defenders, shelling and mortaring the garrison at dusk, then, after dark, sending in wave after wave of infantry, who clashed with the British in the most terrible and vicious hand-to-hand fighting.

  Using both frontal attacks and infiltration, Sato’s men gained early success by penetrating as far as the huts on the night of 6–7 April; some of them hid in brick ovens in the field supply depot. They were flushed out from here by an act of courageous self-immolation by a Lance Corporal Harman, who was awarded a posthumous VC.86 Still the Japanese pressed relentlessly on, nibbling away at the defences on the ridge, taking one small section a
fter another, pressing the garrison into a tighter and tighter defensive circle. On 9 April the British were pushed back to Garrison Hill, while the Japanese took the all-important GPT ridge, which controlled Kohima’s water supply; the defenders were now short of water as well as fighting men.87 As a by-product of their advance, Sato’s men seized three months’ supply of rice and salt – just as well for them, as they had received no supplies since crossing the Chindwin. Thus fortified, they took Jail Hill to the south, reducing the Kohima defence to a defensive perimeter 700 by 900 by 1,100 yards. The Japanese now had an open field for their guns, so it was exceedingly fortunate for the defenders that the enemy was low on ammunition. Nonetheless, this was the moment when morale was at its lowest, with many soldiers complaining openly that the generals had left them there as sacrificial victims.88 Although they were being resupplied from the air, the airdrops themselves had disappointing results, increasing the British despondency. Many of the dropped water containers were holed, the wrong ammunition was sent in, the transport planes were highly vulnerable to ground fire as they flew along the floor of the valley, and worst of all, many of the drops fell into the hands of the Japanese, who were overjoyed with this manna from heaven. The one bright spot was that a new water supply was eventually found on the road to the north-west, but this could be used only after dark, with the water-carriers in continual danger of detection and destruction.89

  No description can do justice to the horrors of the period 4–20 April at Kohima. Every inch of ground was disputed in the bloodiest and most desperate hand-to-hand fighting. Major battles were fought over undistinguished hills on the ridge: Bunker Hill on 11–14 April, Garrison Hill on 17 April; FSD Hill on the same day.90 There was a grim five-day struggle for the tennis courts of the deputy commissioner’s bungalow, which became one of the enduring legends of Kohima. Every night the Japanese repeated their assaults, which the British always knew were coming and could therefore counter with a withering fire from big guns and mortars, followed by deadly fire from Bren guns and grenades at those of the enemy who survived the initial barrage. Every morning the tennis court was festooned with bloated, festering bodies, which provided a smorgasbord for the millions of flies that rose at dawn and were so numerous they covered the corpses like a thick blanket.91 The physical conditions on the confined battle-field were unspeakable. The defenders on the ridge had to eat, sleep, perform all bodily functions and then fight in slit trenches. It was difficult to sleep much at night, water was always scarce, and when this was relieved by a tropical downpour, everyone ended up soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow. Dead bodies lay everywhere, and the stench of corpses mingled with that of human faeces and the smell of acrid cordite to produce an unspeakable, noisome fetor.92 The wounded fared especially badly, with dying men lying in agony amid the stench of stale sweat, blood and rotting flesh; not surprisingly, many of those wounded, but not mortally, lost the will to live when they were abandoned in the open in such conditions. There was no way to evacuate the wounded, and on the way to the reserve water pipe at night the water-carriers frequently tripped over the bodies of the dead or dying.93 The Japanese tried to stretch the defenders’ nerves to breaking point by attacking at night, using psychological warfare, especially noise and simulated Anglo-Indian panic, but all to no avail, though some of the Indian troops did crack.94 Yet after a week of the most terrible close combat and carnage, the Japanese managed essentially to slice the British defence in two. Just when hope was fading and success for Sato seemed certain, on 16 April 5 Brigade arrived to relieve Jotsoma, allowing 161 Indian Brigade to advance to the relief of Kohima. The attackers were diverted from their primary task by this new threat, and the sortie from the Jotsoma ‘box’ allowed 161 Brigade to open the road to Kohima. The Japanese counterattacked vigorously, occupying other hills in their path and inflicting heavy casualties.95

  Finally, though, heavily outnumbered and starving, the Japanese had to withdraw and lift the siege on 20 April. They had come very close to success, but lack of food and ammunition weighed heavily against them; additionally, the terrain at Kohima made it difficult for them to ‘cash’ their local numerical superiority. Now the tables were well and truly turned, for Stopford had received four brigades as fresh reinforcements, while the Japanese had no reinforcements, no air support, no tanks, inadequate artillery and a shortage of ammunition. While 2 Division advanced cautiously from Dimapur (most of it had been trained for the wrong kind of warfare – amphibious operations), 7 Indian Division moved to the north of Kohima to pre-empt any enemy move towards the Brahmaputra.96 For the moment, though, the longer-term prospects were dismissed, while the British enjoyed the triumph of lifting the siege. Although 19 British and Indian regiments would win the battle honours ‘Kohima’, the more distinguished honour ‘Defence of Kohima’ would be reserved for the Royal West Kents and the Assam regiment.97 What the troops of 161 Brigade found when they marched in appalled them. Kohima itself was unrecognisable, its buildings in ruins, its walls pockmarked with bullet holes or shell bursts, all trees stripped of leaves, the wooded slopes of Kohima ridge denuded, and the tattered remains of parachutes hanging raggedly from the few branches that remained. The defenders were like bloodstained scarecrows, in ragged clothes and rotting boots, grimy, bleary-eyed, unwashed, bearded, suffering from shell shock, tinnitus and general alienation, all experiencing sleep deprivation and desperate for slumber. Smelling of blood, sweat and death, they had nothing clean about them except their weapons. It was a scene by Hieronymus Bosch out of Passchendaele.98 One observer, who had known Kohima when it was a beautifully fresh and green hill station, described it as follows: ‘The place stank. The ground everywhere was ploughed up with shell-fire and human remains lay rotting as the battle raged over them. Flies swarmed everywhere and multiplied with incredible speed. Men retched as they dug in … the stink hung in the air and permeated one’s clothes and hair.’99 The unsung heroes in keeping the defenders supplied this time had been not so much the Allied air forces as the Naga tribesmen, but it was typical of Slim that he did not neglect this fact either. To show his support for them he sent the 23rd LRP brigade, withheld from Wingate, on a three-month sweep through the Naga hills, gradually flushing the Japanese out of the tribal heartlands all the way to Phek.100

  Although the siege was over, the battle itself was far from won, for all the gains made by the Japanese had now to be laboriously retaken, inch by bloody inch. A good Japanese commander would have pulled out completely at this moment, and Sato wanted to, but he was under continual pressure from Mutaguchi, always urging him on to one final effort. Absurdly, on 17 April, when the tide was already turning and reinforcements were advancing, Mutaguchi told Sato that he had at all costs to take Kohima by 29 April; naturally he did not say where the necessary food and ammunition were to come from. The publicity-crazed Mutaguchi had hit on the date arbitrarily because it was the emperor’s birthday.101 And so Sato was condemned to continue with a now hopeless fight. Stopford concentrated on removing the Japanese from Kohima ridge before taking the fight to nearby Naga village. He experimented with fighting a holding action in the centre at Kohima with one brigade while outflanking the enemy with the other two, but Sato was no fool (despite Slim’s strictures) and the attempt failed.102 Meanwhile the Japanese, who still held much of Kohima ridge and were dug in at an extremely strong position 7,000 yards long, counterattacked on Garrison Hill and the defenders were as hard put to it on the nights of 22–23 April as the orginal besieged troops had been. On 27 April Stopford switched attention back to the deputy commissioner’s bungalow and tennis court (both a shambles by this stage). After heavy fighting his men took this position and the Japanese counterattack (on the night of 29–30 April), though pressed forward with all the old ferocity, failed to dislodge them. The fabled tennis court was once again a no-man’s-land, with hand grenades winging from one side of the court to the other instead of tennis balls. For 16 days the stalemate around the tennis court continued, until fi
nally the British were able to move tanks up to the bungalow. As these armoured behemoths began to devastate the foe, slowly the bloody battle for the bungalow grounds was won. The Dorset Regiment cleared the ground of all enemy bunkers and foxholes, using flame-throwers and showing no mercy; since the Japanese still held the high ground on three sides of the bungalow, they did not do so without considerable cost.103

  Slowly and stubbornly the British began to make inroads on the Japanese-held hills, although the tightness of enemy discipline and the brilliance of their interlocking defence systems made progress almost unbearably painful. The Japanese bunkers and defensive positions, exhibiting their genius for intersupporting concealed fieldworks, aided by the natural protection of steep-sided ridges, made them the toughest of nuts to crack. Unlike the Anglo-Indian troops, who liked to fight in front, facing the enemy, with the emphasis on individual valour, the Japanese bunkers were sighted to the flank rather than the rear, allowing them to fire on their own positions if they were under attack. Enemy mortars, as lethal and accurate as the legendary German machine-gunners, time and again prevented the Anglo-Indian attackers from digging in.104 Eventually 4th Brigade managed to worm its way towards GPT Ridge in late April and storm it on 3 May but without securing the entire position. Unfortunately, 6 Brigade failed to take its target of Kuki Piquet, which the British had been hammering away at ever since the raising of the siege. It fared rather better on its second objective, FSD Ridge, but again, as with GPT Ridge, secured only part of it.105 Meanwhile 5 Brigade entered Naga village but was then thrown out by an enemy counterattack. A British attack on the key point of Jail Hill was also beaten back with heavy losses on 7 May. As Slim commented: ‘Our troops were again discovering that it was one thing to reach a Japanese bunker, another to enter it.’106 The British were deeply frustrated. Airpower could make no impression on the Japanese positions and the only effective weapon, the tank, was largely impotent because of the impossible gradients of the ridges and the heavy rain that churned everything into liquid mud. Finally in mid-May yet another brigade, from 7th Division, was brought in. Now heavily outnumbered, almost out of ammunition and starving – on a diet of bamboo shoots and wild game – the Japanese also began to sustain high fatalities from beri-beri, dysentery and, especially, malaria. With no quinine, they had no defence against the latter disease. The combination of all these factors finally cracked the warriors of Nippon. Jail Hill, GPT and FSD ridges fell to the British in quick succession during 11–13 May.107