In December 1941, the Japanese invasion of Burma opened what would be the longest land campaign for Britain of the entire war. It began with defeat and a chaotic retreat, as Rangoon fell to Japan in March 1942, and British, Indian and Chinese forces were driven back into India. The fighting would stretch on, over a varied terrain of jungles, mountains, plains and wide rivers, stopping only for the monsoon, until the Japanese surrender in 1945.
After the initial retreat, the British began to rebuild their army and resources from Assam in north-eastern India. This process was slow because priority was given to the war against Germany. The British position was also complicated by discontent in India, the result of British failure to clearly address the issue of post-war independence. The Japanese capitalised on this anti-British sentiment, recruiting captured Indian troops into the 40,000 strong Indian National Army, commanded by Subhas Chandra Bose, that fought alongside the Japanese.
Pictured above: troops entering the Burmese jungle.
With most of the Chinese coast under Japanese control, the Burma Road was the main supply route available to the Chinese Nationalists, fighting the Japanese in China. This gave the Burmese campaign great strategic importance. In December 1942, a limited British offensive to capture the Arakan coastal region met with failure. The only hope came from the Chindits, long range penetration groups which waged guerrilla war in the Burmese jungle. Despite limited military success, their exploits boosted public morale.
Throughout 1943, prospects looked bleak for the British, who lacked the resources and organisation to recapture Burma. In November 1943, the South East Asia Command was formed to centralise and organise Allied forces. General Slim slowly rebuilt morale and forged an efficient offensive combat force: the cosmopolitan Fourteenth Army, made up of British, Indians, Gurkhas, and East and West Africans.
The Japanese had also been regrouping. On 7 March, Operation U-Go was launched. Although this bold attempt to invade India surprised the Fourteenth Army, new tactics and growing confidence ensured that they maintained their positions on the crucial roadways to India. When General Slim’s forces found themselves surrounded at Imphal and Kohima, an epic struggle ensued. By 30th March 1944 the Japanese had cut the Imphal-Kohima road and isolated the settlements. General Slim ordered his subordinate commanders not to withdraw without permission from higher authority, as it was imperative to deny the Japanese the mountain roads which led down into the Indian plain. Pictured below: The British Army in Burma, 1944:
At Kohima, last-minute reinforcements were rushed in from Dimapur by the commander of the British XXXIII Corps, Lieutenant-General Montagu Stopford. Two battalions, supported by artillery, were positioned 2 miles (3km) west of Kohima itself on the highest hill in the ridge, later to become known as Garrison Hill. Fighting began on the 30th March as General Sato’s 31st division pushed back the scattered units of the Assam Rifles and other regiments which were defending the approaches to Kohima. The commander at Kohima, Colonel Hugh Richards, had a force of approximately 1,200 men to resist the all-out attack of 12,000 Japanese jungle veterans. He had to rely on the arrival of a breakthrough force from Dimapur, the British 2nd Division, without which his defences would be overwhelmed.
The Japanese arrived at Garrison Hill on 4th April, and fighting began the following day. Men crouched in slit trenches sometimes only yards away from the enemy. One officer of the West Kents calculated that from the plop of a grenade being fired to its arrival was no more than 14 seconds. The intensity of Japanese artillery, mortar and sniper fire in such a small space meant that movement between units was virtually impossible by day and extremely hazardous at night. Few of the men locked in this fight for survival had a clear idea of what was happening beyond the lip of their own trench. Day and night the British and Indian troops were subjected to Japanese broadcast appeals to them to surrender. Sato’s aim was to exhaust the defenders of Kohima, and when darkness fell, the Allied troops had to stand in the dark before the moon rose, straining to catch the rustle of Japanese infiltrators moving behind them. By 11th April, the situation at Kohima was desperate. A message was sent to the 5th Brigade that unless help arrived within 48 hours Kohima would fall: ‘The men’s spirits are all right but there aren’t many of us left….’
On the 17th the Japanese launched their fiercest attack on the slopes of Garrison Hill. Phosphorous bombardments were followed by howling infantry assaults with grenades and machine-guns. To the din was added the fire of the defenders’ howitzers. By the night of the 18th April the men holding Garrison Hill were on their last legs. One young private asked Colonel Richards, ‘When we die, sir, is that the end or do we go on?’
The Japanese swarmed everywhere but were unable to mount a co-ordinated battalion-strength attack which would have spelled the end at Kohima. The ground around Garrison Hill – just 350 yards (320m) square – was now all that was left of the perimeter, but the men of the West Kents hung on until dawn of the 20th April when troops of the Royal Berkshires, the advance guards of 2nd Division, broke in to relieve them.
The stench of rotting corpses was so thick on Garrison Hill that many of the Berkshires were physically sick as they dug in on the battle-scarred hill, whose blasted trees were festooned with blackened shreds of the parachutes used in the air supply of the Kohima garrison.
The evacuation of the West Kents did not mean the end of the battle. The Japanese still occupied most of the Kohima massif and would have to be driven off amid the downpours of the monsoon, which brought with it mud, malaria and dysentery. The most savage fighting of the battle erupted in mid-May. The sliver of ground at stake was the British Deputy Commissioner’s bungalow and its adjacent tennis court. This had been seized on 9th April 1944 by the Japanese, who had built a warren of bunkers and weapons pits on the surrounding terraced hillside. The task of winkling out the Japanese was given to the men of the 2nd Battalion Dorsetshire regiment. It was a dirty business made more difficult by the terrain which denied the Dorsets any armoured support. A solution was found by the Royal Engineers who cut a path to a spur behind the bungalow. They then winched a Grant tank up and pushed it down the slope. It came to rest on the baseline of the tennis court, where its commander, Sergeant Waterhouse of the 149 Royal Tank Regiment poured a hail of fire into the Japanese bunkers at no more than 20 yards (18m) range. The Japanese fled on to the waiting rifles of the Dorsets. Only the chimney stack of the bungalow remained. The rest of the landscape around was a shell-churned rubbish dump alive with rats. When he saw it, General Stopford compared it with the Somme in 1916: ‘One could tell how desperate the fighting had been.’
Above: The tennis court and terraces of the District Commissioner’s bungalow in Kohima
By now the Japanese had run out of time, supplies and ammunition. On 31st May, Sato ordered his men to withdraw to Imphal. Exhausted and riddled with disease, they were harried all the way by the Allies. Imphal was relieved on June 22, after over 80 days of siege, and now it was the turn of Mutaguchi to throw in the towel. Early in July, his 15th Army pulled out, the survivors struggling down liquefied roads to cross the Chindwin on to the Burma plains. Only 20,000 of the 85,000 Japanese who had come to invade India were left standing, and 30,000 Japanese had been killed, causing the largest defeat ever suffered by the Japanese army. The cost to the Allies had been 17,857 British and Indian troops killed, wounded and missing. The dead at Kohima have their own simple and moving monument which bears the Epitaph: ‘When you go home, tell them of us, and say: For your tomorrow, we gave our today’.
An ambitious amphibious operation allowed General Slim’s army to re-enter Rangoon on 6 May 1945. Although this was effectively the end of the campaign, the remaining Japanese forces in Burma did not surrender until 28 August 1945. Below: View of Kohima Ridge after the Battle.
Kippax Roll of Honour 