Authors: Fergal Keane
But Ranking was merely the messenger. Slim and Stopford had now decided that Dimapur was the more likely target for a Japanese attack. There was a logic to their decision. Why would the Japanese pause to give battle at Kohima when they could take the greater prize at Dimapur? Should the Japanese arrive in the next few days, the base, with its paltry defence and milling refugees, would certainly fall. Ranking called Brigadier Warren and told him that 161 Brigade would have to leave Kohima. The pressure from on high had been
exacerbated by intelligence received from RAF pilots that a sizeable Japanese force was threatening the rail line near Dimapur. When Warren told Pawsey about this he thought the idea was nonsense. Any movement on a large scale would have been reported by his Naga scouts. In fact, all the indications from his informants were that the Japanese were bearing down on Kohima, and at some speed.
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The West Kents claimed the Dimapur story was invented by a radio unit that fled a village having ‘left their equipment behind and brought instead this story’. The inaccurate report was not of itself decisive, but it chimed fatefully with what the higher command believed.
Brigadier Warren pleaded with Ranking to visit Kohima to see the situation for himself and at least to listen to the arguments for staying in place. The general drove up and met with Richards, Pawsey and Warren. They were unanimous. The brigade must stay in Kohima. Warren argued that the Japanese would not bypass Kohima if it contained a sizeable force. The threat to Sato’s rear and his line of communication would be too great for him simply to march on to Dimapur. Conversely, if Sato succeeded in taking a poorly defended Kohima Ridge, it would take a long hard fight, with many casualties, to drive him off. Why leave now, when there was a chance of stopping Sato in his tracks? Besides, argued Pawsey, the Nagas would feel they were being abandoned by the Raj. Ranking defended the orders he had been given. Richards wrote that ‘It was a frightening situation for him, with his responsibility, to contemplate.’ There were angry words. Warren and Pawsey offered to fly and put the case directly to Slim. Ranking rejected this and promised he would relay their fears. At midnight on 31 March, Slim went to see the 33 Corps commander, General Stopford, who would take overall control of the battle, to tell him that Ranking had been on the phone. He told him about what the ‘political people’ – Charles Pawsey – had said about the impact on the Nagas. ‘I had to refuse to listen to these
suggestions’, Stopford wrote, ‘and made it clear that I had my plan and must stick to it.’ In the greater scheme of things the vast supply base, railhead and airfield at Dimapur mattered more, at that point, than Kohima.
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There were other ‘political people’ with more influence than Charles Pawsey. Stopford knew that Churchill and the Americans would create ‘a hell of a row if we lose [Dimapur]’.
Hugh Richards was given another order on 1 April, but one that he decided to keep to himself. The ‘202 Area Operation Instruction No. 3’ from Ranking said that he was to hold Kohima ‘as long as possible without being destroyed yourselves’. The next part of the order filled Richards with foreboding. ‘If and when it is decided to withdraw the Deputy Commissioner should be told to impress on all Nagas that such a withdrawal will be of a temporary nature only and it is the intention of the British to return and destroy all Japanese west of the Chindwin.’ It concluded with a blindingly self-evident statement: ‘such an announcement must NOT be made prematurely’. Nobody knew better than Richards the potential effect of such orders on his garrison or on the local population. The garrison commander stuffed them in his back pocket, mentioning them only to his second-in-command, who was sworn to secrecy. ‘I regarded this [order] as highly dangerous from a morale point of view,’ Richards wrote. ‘Nothing could be more unfortunate or undesirable
than that there should get abroad any idea that there was a possibility of a withdrawal from Kohima, however remote.’
It was still pouring with rain when the West Kents and the other elements of 161 Brigade in Kohima began to pull out at lunchtime on 2 April. Pawsey watched them go with a feeling of anger. For over two decades he had preached to the people of the Naga Hills the gospel of a caring and paternal Raj, and asked that in return they give their unconditional loyalty to the crown. How was he to explain this betrayal? Pawsey’s answer was typical of the man. As a civil servant, there was no question of his being expected to stay in a battle zone. In fact, the idea would have been positively discouraged. The Japanese would kill or torture him as quickly as they would any soldier. He could leave on any of the numerous trucks that were evacuating non-combatants by the hour. There was still something of the warrior in Charles Pawsey. The veteran of the Somme and the Italian front had already seen the horrors of total war and, without a wife or children, he might have felt he had less cause than most to take a ride away from danger. But at the root of his decision to stay was loyalty. If he stayed with the Naga, they might see that the Raj still had honour. So he told Richards he would be staying put and helping to coordinate relief for Naga refugees, as well as doing what he could to help with the defence. Together they watched the West Kents mount their lorries in the downpour. Rain rattled violently on the roofs of the bungalow, hospital, treasury – on all the buildings of the little outpost, adding to the feeling of desolation as the last of the vehicles vanished in the direction of Dimapur.
Kohima settled into a nerve-racking wait. The young cavalry officer Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar, who had arrived the previous day, found Kohima at ‘real panic stations. Everything was a bit all over the place.’ He was a trained tank and troop-carrier man but found no armour in Kohima. ‘The defences were poor. It was really surprising … we really were useless.’ Hayllar was given a composite group of Indian troops and told to man a position on Jail Hill. Before heading up, he was introduced to Charles Pawsey at his bungalow. ‘I remember saying to myself “this is going to be a proper war and they are
going to destroy this bungalow so I better go and use the loo!”’ Lieutenant Hayllar’s only wish was that the fight would last long enough for him to be shot at.
Richards’s best hope now was for the arrival of Brown’s men from Jessami. The survivors of 1st Assam did not begin to appear in any numbers until 3 April, and when they did appear they were all exhausted and hungry, many without boots and in tattered clothing. In all, 260 men would be available to help strengthen the defence. The first seventy to arrive included twenty who were ill or wounded and had to be evacuated to Dimapur. When Lieutenant Colonel ‘Bruno’ Brown arrived his ragged condition so moved Charles Pawsey that he went to his bungalow and found him a polo sweater to wear.
Kohima Ridge was about a mile long and roughly four hundred yards in width, a series of hills and gullies that ran alongside the road. With steep slopes along much of the road side of the perimeter, it presented a formidable obstacle for any attackers trying to scale their way up. But it was a narrow space from which to repel an enemy attacking in strength and the other side of the perimeter, away from the road, was overlooked by mountain slopes which offered enemy artillery any number of ideal firing positions.
Across the garrison, work parties were busy digging in, frantically trying to rectify the weaknesses. Richards had already moved to consolidate his defence around a single box. At the southern end of the ridge was GPT Ridge, where the Assam and Nepalese troops watched the road to Imphal. Beside it, but on the other side of the road, was Jail Hill. From there the defensive line swung back across the road in front of Detail Hill, Supply Hill, Kuki Piquet and Summerhouse Hill, soon to be renamed Garrison Hill, where Colonel Richards had his headquarters.
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Above him, on what was known as Hospital Spur, was a series of hospital buildings; on the lower slopes stood the district commissioner’s tennis court and below
that his bungalow with its gardens tapering down to the road. From his headquarters, looking north across the road towards Dimapur, Richards could see the Treasury and the huts of the Naga Village.
The great difficulty for anybody trying to defend Kohima Ridge was water. All the water sources lay outside Richards’s perimeter, at the mercy of a besieging force. There was a steel tank near Charles Pawsey’s bungalow which was filled by a pipe that ran all the way south to a source on Aradura Spur; the pipe could easily be cut once it was discovered by the Japanese. Worse still, the other eight tanks, a mix of canvas and steel, had not been dug in and presented an obvious target for Japanese snipers. Soon, Richards would watch helplessly as thousands of gallons of precious liquid spilled across the ridge. He would later blame himself for the failure to conceal the water supply. Happily, Kohima’s position as a major store for the area meant that there was no immediate shortage of food or ammunition. Fifteen days’ rations were distributed, along with grenades, ammunition for 2 and 3 inch mortars, pistol rounds and cartridges for Very lights, the flares so important in the howling darkness of a Japanese night attack.
News of the approaching enemy crackled through Kohima. Pawsey’s Nagas were invariably first with reports of sightings. Richards’s outlying patrols were also bringing regular information. At 1800 on 2 April the Nepalese Shere Regiment had reported some Japanese about three miles outside Kohima. A patrol brought in three Japanese ears as proof of the enemy presence.
The following day Lieutenant Dennis Dawson of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps went with a patrol to Aradura Spur to the south. A Major N. R. Giles had asked him if he wanted to join him for a ‘spot of fun’. They reached the foothills of Aradura and made camp for the night. Dawson heard digging near his position. Then there was a shot. ‘Round about three or four in the morning a Japanese sentry came across our sentry and he shot my chap dead. So that gave our position away. We had just time to drag him to where I was.’ A friend of the dead man took his personal papers and the patrol fled, leaving the body. The Japanese were now all around them. Another
member of the patrol, Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar, was enthusiastic for the battle. ‘We went to try and find the Jap and beat him up … at dusk we met the Jap and after a bit we lay in the circle in the wood, with the Major in the middle.’ Then it started to rain heavily and Hayllar felt afraid. He recited Psalm 23:
Even though I walk
Through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil
For you are with me;
Your rod and your staff
They comfort me.
Hayllar was astonished that Major Giles, a jungle veteran, could fall asleep when the Japanese were just twenty-five yards away. He cursed himself for a being a fool and having volunteered. Then the attack started and his fear vanished. ‘I just felt very excited and concentrated on the job of keeping control of my own fire and trying to locate the Japs creeping in towards us … The men all seemed to feel the same, some sort of savage instinct comes to ones [
sic
] aid when logically a man should be scared stiff.’ A man was shot through the heart beside him, but Hayllar was too busy to pay much attention.
Dennis Dawson remembered his men shooting and killing several Japanese. The shouting and the shelling from the Japanese side wore at the men’s nerves. ‘It was horrible. It just went on and on,’ recalled Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar. He prayed again to overcome his fear. The men fell back to Kohima in groups of three and four. On the way they shot four or five of the encircling Japanese. Hayllar was moving from tree to tree, trying to avoid presenting a target, when he saw a Japanese standing on the track in front of him. He squeezed the trigger and the man fell. For a moment Hayllar had the sense of being caught in a dream, as if the dead man lying in front of him was merely play-acting and would rise to life again. ‘It is pretty horrid to kill. But if you have seen them killing our lot then you want to repay. It’s a horrible feeling.’ The patrol reached Kohima later that morning
with Dennis Dawson wondering if anybody would go back for the body of his sentry. Decades later he was still thinking about the dead man.
From dawn on 3 April patrols were sent out from Kohima, but there was no sign of the Japanese until 1600 hours, when some were spotted working round to the right flank of GPT Ridge. The defenders here were a mix of 1st Assam, a composite Indian infantry company, a Gurkha company and some V Force. The rain of the past few days had gone and a bright moon lit the landscape beyond the trenches; anybody attempting a frontal assault would be spotted early on.
Men did their best to sleep. The only noise came from the work parties still trying to improve the dugouts. At 2000 hours a Japanese sniper fired shots over the position. What followed appalled the 1st Assam commander, as the war diary recorded: ‘The immediate result of this was that almost every L.M.G. [Light Machine Gun] and rifle in the position opened up and fired wildly in every direction for about an hour. Complete lack of fire control and discipline and troops obviously shaken.’ Several soldiers were wounded by the firing of their comrades. To make matters worse, a platoon of the Shere Regiment came galloping through the position at 2045 hours, fleeing from some Japanese who, they claimed, had attacked their post. Their lack of steadiness was to cost the garrison dearly. Wild firing at real or imagined threats is known as ‘starting-gun’ syndrome: a man who is frightened, but not trained in fire discipline, will open fire, sparking general mayhem. To a disciplined enemy it is a gift. All they need do is carefully to spot the muzzle flashes and they will be given a clear picture of the defences. The Japanese were nothing if not diligent in this regard. Captain Walter Greenwood, a staff officer with the garrison, gave a stark assessment of the difficulties facing Richards: ‘The difficulty of controlling a body of men consisting of perhaps 10 infanteers, 50 RIASC drivers, mule-drivers, a few signallers, pioneers, sappers and miners, etc., with no officer and perhaps no senior NCOs has to be experienced to be believed, and it is remarkable that there were not very many casualties through our own fire.’