Authors: Fergal Keane
Hope-Thomson was starting to run short of mortar and artillery shells. Patrols scouting outside the perimeter sent back reports that elephants were hauling Japanese artillery in the direction of Sangshak. The 15th Division’s artillery was arriving, along with another of Miyazaki’s infantry battalions. There was heavy shelling on the night of 23 March. The medical officer, Eric Neild, remembered that ‘anyone in the open was likely to become a casualty’. The machine-gunners who had wreaked such destruction on the advancing Japanese were being picked off by snipers. The attackers adopted a new tactic that night. Instead of men attacking in large formations, an officer and perhaps five or six troops would try to rush the perimeter. But concentrated firepower still stopped them every time. The 2nd battalion, 58th Regiment, lost three company commanders whose experience Miyazaki would struggle to replace.
On one of the night raids a treasure trove fell into the hands of the defenders. A full map of plans for the Japanese 31st and 15th Divisions was found on the body of a dead officer. It showed that Slim had initially guessed wrongly about the Japanese intentions. Instead of a regiment, an entire division was now heading for Kohima. Immediately realising its importance, Hope-Thomson dispatched his intelligence officer on a hazardous thirty-six-hour round trip through the Japanese lines to Imphal, where the papers were given to 4 Corps. Here the story becomes murky. The 4 Corps war diary makes no mention of receiving the documents. Lieutenant Harry Seaman concluded that 4 Corps staff either failed to understand their significance or lost the material. Either way, a vital warning was not passed on to the garrison at Kohima.
On 24 March, as the Japanese tightened their grip, a message of congratulations from headquarters was transmitted to the defenders. ‘Well done indeed … of greatest importance you hold your position. Will give you maximum air support.’ To men who had spent the last few days watching precious supplies drift into Japanese hands it was a hollow promise. By night the men were ordered to stay in their
fixed positions. Anybody moving around would be treated as an enemy and shot. This imposed a terrible burden when men heard their own wounded screaming. A shell landed directly on a three-man bunker, killing two and leaving another terribly injured. As Lieutenant Seaman recalled, ‘the rest of the company had to endure his screams until daybreak before venturing out of their own bunkers to see if they could help’. Across the intense blackness of the jungle night they heard the Gurkha soldier calling for his mother. He died shortly before dawn, and before his comrades could reach him.
The relentless threat of attack meant sleep was impossible. Men were growing weak from lack of food and water. By the third night of the siege, the defenders found their reactions slowing and sleep overcoming them. Officers were dispatched to the sentry positions to keep the men awake. At four in the morning on 25 March the Japanese launched another sustained attack, this time on the 152nd battalion positions at the church on the north-west perimeter. A fierce fight saw the position occupied, retaken by the defenders and then lost again. The Japanese account speaks of ‘how those who entered the enemy’s position were annihilated and the remainder withdrew with heavy losses’.
Lieutenant Kameyama saw two grenades tumbling down the slope towards him. His battalion commander seized one and threw it back, while Kameyama kicked the one nearest him back towards the defenders. ‘The one I kicked must have killed an enemy soldier. The rule of the battlefield is “If you do not kill the enemy you will be killed.” That is why war is a vice.’
On the same day, Lieutenant Susuma Nishida, the intelligence officer who had made the first reconnaissance of the area the previous year, was near the British positions when he heard a voice calling out in Japanese. Crawling along, he found a corporal who had been shot the previous day. He recognised him as a tough old veteran of the China campaigns. The corporal was wounded in the stomach. ‘As I pulled him into the shade, he pleaded for some water,’ Nishida recalled. But they had been told in training that a man with a stomach wound cannot be given water. The wounded soldier told Nishida
he knew he was not going to survive in any case, so it would make no difference. ‘Just one mouthful of water,’ he begged. Nishida relented and gave the man his flask. ‘He looked me straight in the face and said clearly, “I never dreamed that I should have the honour to be given my last drink of water by you, Sir Commander,” a bit tongue-in-cheek with a big smile.’
Nishida now had to decide what to do with the remainder of the company. There were about ten soldiers able to fight. The wounded were being hit again and were dying. He had orders not to retreat but recognised that his situation was hopeless. He made up his mind to send back the wounded and to blow himself up. ‘Those who can move, withdraw. Help those who can’t move!’ he shouted. Nishida was in the process of taking off his medals and tearing up his documents when several subordinates ran up to him. They insisted on staying and making a last attack with him. All were now committing themselves to death, yet Nishida described himself as ‘suffused with the joy of having such dedicated subordinates’. He sent one man back so that somebody would be alive to command the remains of the company. Then Nishida and three others ran into battle. He was the only survivor. ‘I sob at the irony of fate,’ he wrote. But Nishida’s attack made a strong impression on the defenders. Captain Eric Neild remembered that the raiding party overran two of the mountain artillery gun positions.
On the West Hill another group had hauled an artillery piece up the slope so that they could fire over open sights on the British below. The position at Sangshak was untenable. Hope-Thomson’s men faced annihilation. All the officers of two companies were dead or seriously wounded. The British weapons pits were, in the words of the 152nd battalion war diary, ‘a shambles of dead and dying, both our own and Japanese’. Lieutenant Colonel Jackie Trim of the 4th Mahratta was making his way to brigade headquarters when he saw a fellow officer, Major Smith, ‘lying by the path with his intestines spilled out’.
The Japanese were suffering equally devastating losses. Six of the eight company commanders in the attacking battalions were dead
or wounded, and both formations had lost about three hundred men each. Of the 120 men Nishida led into battle, only eight survived and all were wounded. But the Japanese still had numbers, ammunition, artillery and momentum on their side. Nishida had eleven bullet wounds in his body when he was carried back to General Miyazaki’s headquarters about a mile north of Sangshak.
Masao Hirakubo, the 3rd battalion supply officer, was watching the battle from headquarters and remembered Nishida as ‘a typical professional Japanese soldier, not like us who were conscripted. He was a real professional.’ As the battle raged on, Hirakubo and his men were foraging for food in the surrounding villages. The British had done a thorough job of burning any supplies before they retreated. It compounded the sense of unease that Hirakubo felt. The plentiful British food that Mutaguchi had promised was being burned before they could capture it. At night Hirakubo could see the artillery and tracer fire ‘like a very beautiful fireworks’, and he thanked heaven he was not on the receiving end of it all.
As dawn broke on 26 March, Hope-Thomson realised he was facing the final Japanese onslaught. All around him were the corpses of the dead. British, Indian and Japanese rotted and stank in the rising heat. Scores of pack mules, trapped inside the perimeter, had been killed and the decomposing carcases added to the stench. The 152nd battalion had run out of grenades, losing their best weapon for breaking up Japanese attacks at close range. ‘Rations were down to a bare minimum and what little there was had to go the Field Ambulance for the wounded … we had enough for one small mug of tea per man per day.’
Lieutenant Harry Seaman described how an ‘imperturbable Gurkha cook, served up an unvarying stew made of the only items in more or less constant supply: mule in different stages of decomposition, curry powder to disguise the mule, and apple puree to soften the whole’. It was a vile mix but was eaten ravenously. At each evening conference held by Brigadier Hope-Thomson, the officers wondered who would be left alive to attend the next night. Even getting to the
command post involved the risk of death. The crawl trench leading to headquarters was 150 yards long but only eighteen inches deep, pitifully shallow cover for a crawling soldier. The only other choice was to make a dash across open ground, which was invariably greeted by a burst from the Japanese machine-gunner. Luckily the gunner’s reaction was slow, Hopkinson remembered, and ‘one was well on one’s way and the burst came behind one’.
The colonel sent a party to set fire to the church in an attempt to deny the Japanese an important position from which they could fire down on the remaining guns and the field ambulance. The 153rd battalion commander, Dick Willis, also sent his Gurkhas into the attack. A Japanese survivor, Warrant Officer Isamu Yamamoto, of 2nd battalion, 58th Regiment, testified to the ferocity of what followed. ‘We had completely occupied the corner of the enemy’s position … The Gurkha soldiers, famous for their courage, rushed on and on though many had fallen, screaming as they advanced despite their wounds. Hand to hand fighting was everywhere and hand grenades flew everywhere. Our comrades encouraged us, the enemy screamed at us. Thus the top of the hill turned to hell on earth.’ A friend of Yamamoto’s fell badly wounded by his side. When he went to help, Yamamoto heard his friend ask him which way was east. Turning the wounded man towards the east, Yamamoto held his head. ‘He slowly raised both arms and whispered: “Long Live the Emperor!” Lowering his arms, he died.’
By now infantry from the 15th Division were arriving and manoeuvred through the jungle to within two hundred yards of the defenders’ trenches. In order to coordinate their attack with the 58th Regiment, an officer talked to Miyazaki by field telephone. He was harangued. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Miyazaki shouted. ‘Don’t you know the meaning of “the soldier’s compassion?”’ This was at a point in the battle when Miyazaki was about to commit the battered remnants of his 2nd and 3rd battalions to a final and, he believed, victorious assault on Sangshak. His men had borne the brunt of the fighting and he did not want any other regiment seizing the glory. The ‘soldier’s compassion’ was the unspoken respect
one warrior should have for another. He told the young officer to inform his commander that once Sangshak had fallen, his troops would be free to take as much food and ammunition as they wanted.
As the Japanese pushed their way through a break in the perimeter Brigadier Hope-Thomson committed his only reserve, the platoon set aside for defence of brigade headquarters. They were annihilated.
As night approached on 26 March men inside the perimeter went around saying goodbye to their comrades. At 1800 hours Hope-Thomson received a message from divisional headquarters. ‘Fight your way out. Go South then West. Air and Transport on the look out for you. Good luck our thoughts are with you.’ The order posed a terrible dilemma. What would he do with his wounded? There were around 450, among them 150 men who could not be moved. If past experience were anything to go by, leaving them behind was an invitation to murder. A heartbreaking process of triage was carried out. Captain Eric Neild recalled ‘much discussion and heart-searching’ before the decision was taken to sedate heavily and leave the wounded.
Lieutenant Colonel Jackie Trim of the 4 Mahratta was reluctant to abandon any of his men and wavered. Eventually he agreed. A major was given the job of detailing men to take care of those who, it was felt, had a chance of surviving. They crawled over the corpse-strewn ground, shaking each body for signs of life. There was no moon and they were unable to use lights for fear of attracting snipers, so the officers could only feel their way in the darkness from body to body. All too often they were forced to leave wounded men behind. Those who were conscious were left in an opiate stupor. ‘[They] could do little to help themselves or realise what was happening,’ wrote Lieutenant Colonel Hopkinson. Even among those who were unwounded, the state of exhaustion was so great that there were cases of men who were ‘too worn out to realise the time had come’.
At 2200 hours Hope-Thomson ordered what was left of his artillery to fire their remaining ammunition. By 2230 the survivors of
the Sangshak garrison were filtering out in small parties. With as much stealth as they could muster, and under the cover of the shelling, they found a way through the encirclement.
Lieutenant Harry Seaman looked back at Sangshak from a point about a mile distant and saw the torches of the Japanese moving into the abandoned positions. Everybody waited for the sound of shooting as the wounded were finished off. It never came. ‘At this distance in time,’ Seaman wrote later, ‘survivors are uncertain which of two emotions were uppermost in their minds at that moment: their physical craving for water or their mental anguish for helpless friends left behind in Sangshak.’ Jackie Trim of the 4 Mahratta led a party of around three hundred which reached Imphal in three days, crossing terrain that included two climbs of around 4,000 feet. On the way they encountered a lone Japanese officer who called out to them not to fire. He was immediately shot down.
Lieutenant Hiroshi Yamagami passed numerous corpses as he moved forward. Could it be that the firing was really over? The air had been full of the noise of machine-gun and small arms fire. Hundreds of bullets skimmed overhead. Shells exploded in the midst of the advancing men. Yamagami had dug frantically with his hands but the ground was too hard. After two terrifying hours the shelling ended. Suddenly an orderly appeared with news that the British were gone. Warnings about landmines were sent along the line of men. He saw a few Indian soldiers coming forward to surrender. ‘The trenches looked horrible. There were dead British soldiers on their backs, lapped over dead Indians, all were comrades then with big holes in their chests and heads. The sight told everything about the terrible combat that had taken place.’ Wandering through the abandoned positions, he saw a young British soldier lying across an artillery piece, facing up to the sky. ‘He looked so young. It made me feel so sorry for him.’ Yamagami thought it looked like what a battlefield of the Russo-Japanese war must have been like. Then he and his men set about collecting rations from what was left of the British supplies.