Authors: Fergal Keane
Khumbo Angami, a teacher at the government high school, witnessed the same incident. ‘I saw one of the Japanese shoot and kill two Gurkhas with one shot, because these two Gurkhas were standing quite close together each one facing the opposite side.’ Angami was nearly shot himself because he wore khaki trousers and militaryissue
boots. He immediately ran to his uncle’s house and changed into Naga dress. Later that morning he encountered several Indians in military dress. They were officers of the Indian National Army who had advanced with the Japanese to spread propaganda in the villages. ‘But these Indian soldiers said they were fighting for the side of the Japanese, they also showed us Indian national flag and some badges. I therefore told them they must not be so “nimok haram”, that is “so ungrateful”, because they were wearing British uniforms and had British arms and all they have belongs to the British. When they heard these words from me one of them got angry and said, “Do you know what English people are doing for us? The English people are taking away all good things from us. The world knows that India is one [of the] richest countries” … I told them there will never be peace if the Indians rule … the Indians hate our hill people and Indians are always after our women folks.’
Another Shere Regiment soldier was wounded in the knee but pulled a sackcloth over himself and played dead. When night came he crawled to the house of an old Naga woman, who sheltered him. He was eventually discovered by the Japanese, who tried to bayonet him. But the old woman stood in their way, saying he was her son.
At 0900 hours a party of Shere troops came down to the village to draw rations, happily unaware of the presence of hundreds of Japanese soldiers. They were immediately set upon and taken prisoner. Panic spread as the villagers realised what was happening. A visiting Indian missionary and his daughter escaped only by dressing up as servants. Hunger was overcoming the restraint toward civilians noted at other villages. Rushukhrie Angami saw them killing pigs and fowl, ‘and if the owners tried to resist they threatened to stab with their bayonets or shoot with rifles’. They moved from house to house, searching for valuables ‘and snatched away whatever money, and precious jewels found on the bodies of the people’.
Some of the Kohima Nagas were forced to carry their own rice to other villages where Japanese troops were based. This amounted to humiliation in front of other tribes, something no self-respecting warrior could easily forgive. According to Rushukhrie, the marches
took as long as nine days, without any food, prompting the Kohima Nagas to pronounce a curse on the Japanese. ‘Under this brutal treatment every man and woman uttered in low voice the words, “We will pay you in your own coin when our British will come back.”’
Masao Hirakubo’s immediate preoccupation was with finding food supplies. He discovered a huge warehouse containing what he estimated was three years’ supplies for the entire 31st Division. It was an unimaginable treasure trove. Men were hurriedly set to work dragging bags back to a safe storage position. Hirakubo took what was required for his own battalion and left the other supply officers to look after their men. The British across the road in Kohima were now awake to what was happening and the warehouse was promptly bombed and the rice burned to ashes. It was a small moment at the beginning of a great battle, but it would resonate through the weeks to come.
The war correspondent Yukihiko Imai was with the first troops into the Naga Village. He sent an excited message to Tokyo which was immediately flashed around the world. ‘Kohima has fallen,’ it declared. The report was seized on by Mutaguchi, delighted to have some good news for his anxious superiors. Henry Turner, a Royal Artillery officer, was a prisoner of war on the Burma railway and heard the news from a gleeful guard. ‘I recall working on the railway one day, when a Nippon corporal, who was in charge of our party, announced that India had been captured by the mighty Nippon forces. We learned afterwards that they were at Kohima near Imphal and that technically they were on Indian soil. We were delighted with this, because it meant a break of a few minutes in our work. In order to keep the conversation going, we asked about Europe and were told that mighty Nippon had long ago conquered Europe. Apparently they had not heard of Hitler, who was the resident landlord at the time.’ But a British denial was quick in coming via the Reuters news agency. Imai later gracefully acknowledged that he had been wrong.
The Naga Village lay outside the northern end of Richards’s defensive perimeter and it gave the Japanese a foothold for mortars and artillery. Closer to Kohima Ridge they began building bunkers and
trenches for the infantry, overlooking Hugh Richards’s headquarters on Garrison Hill and Charles Pawsey’s bungalow. There were also Japanese gun positions to the south on Aradura Spur, the 5,000 foot ridge where the British patrol had been scattered the previous day.
At the other end of the perimeter, on GPT Ridge, Lieutenant Donald Elwell of the 1st Assam discovered that his platoon of mule drivers was now on its own after a composite Indian company had fled. Elwell set off alone to find reinforcements and was given a platoon of the unfortunate Shere Regiment. On his way back he felt the ground heave as the Japanese started shelling. The Shere Regiment troops vanished. Fire whipped through the vegetation from garrison troops nearby. Elwell got back to find that his own troops had fled. Back he went again to get reinforcements, always one step ahead of the mortar blasts. He eventually rounded up his own men and a company of Gurkhas and went back to the ridge. As the day progressed, the Japanese increased their bombardment. That night, INA soldiers in the front line began calling out to Indian troops to change sides. Intriguingly, the Assam Regiment war diary refers to the ‘defection’ of some Indian troops; this, and the bombardment, ‘affected the Gurkhas, some of whom withdrew during the night’. The remainder fought bravely and suffered heavy casualties. Japanese infantry were now swarming on to the ridge and outnumbered the defenders. By dawn, the remaining defenders had withdrawn from GPT Ridge to Jail Hill. The first of Richards’s positions was gone.
Arriving at Jail Hill the ninety or so survivors found there were no trenches for them. Those that did exist were occupied by Assam Regiment troops and had been dug too shallow by garrison labour. Japanese shelling had already caused a large number of casualties and panicky shooting by garrison troops was getting worse. An Assam Regiment captain worried that his ‘men were shaky and control by the NCOs was poor’.
The rain had only stopped just before midnight and had nearly ruined the troops’ enjoyment of the Jane Wyman film
Tail Spin
, a tale of daring in the skies projected on to a screen under the slender shelter of a basha. Private Norman was aggravated by the downpour but had found yet another dietary consolation. Padre Randolph, ascetic and lean, looking as if he had never enjoyed a meal in his life, had taken over running the tuck shop. Norman enjoyed the packet of biscuits he had purchased. While he and the rest of the battalion struggled through the film, Lieutenant Colonel John Laverty was attending a conference with Brigadier Warren.
Now that the entire Japanese 31st Division seemed about to arrive in Kohima, Warren explained, the West Kents would have to go back up the road as quickly as they could. Transport would be ready to move them at dawn. At 2330 hours Laverty gave orders that the battalion was to be ready to move off at 0630 hours. The men knew that an order that late at night meant they were heading into battle. They had heard about the Japanese probes the previous day. There were curses about the incompetence of the brass. Sending them all back down to near Dimapur meant the West Kents had lost three full days when they could have been working on the defences and getting to know the lie of the ground.
The trucks arrived at 0430 hours. Inside the cabs, exhausted Indian drivers rubbed the sleep from their eyes. They ferried men and supplies, day and night, up and down the road to the British positions along the road to Kohima. Captain Donald Easten and the other company commanders were busy supervising the loading of equipment and supplies. Lance Corporal Dennis Wykes thought it was all a bit of a ‘scurry around. They said “into the trucks we’re going back to Kohima.”’ NCOs like himself and Lance Corporal John Harman moved around, hurrying the men along, making sure no important pieces of kit were left behind. Before they left, the cooks served up a breakfast of tea, porridge, fried eggs and sausage, before packing up their utensils and joining the convoy to the threatened village.
The West Kents made up the main body of the convoy. With them were supporting artillery – four guns – as well as sappers and a field
ambulance platoon. The rest of 161 Brigade, including Brigadier Warren, would follow the advance group up the road. Lieutenant John Faulkner had only just joined the battalion and was posted to A company. It was his first appointment, and first experience of battle, after having been commissioned in Bangalore two months previously. Faulkner was stocky, with fair curly hair and penetrating blue eyes, and had been born in Bombay where his father worked for the Greaves Cotton Company. When his mother became ill with malaria, Faulkner was brought home to Plymouth, where his father took a job as manager of the Spillers flour mill. John was sent to Plymouth College, a private school, and groomed to follow his father into the flour business. In fact, he was working as a trainee at Spillers when war broke out. ‘We think he may have lied about his age to get in early,’ his daughter Margery said. ‘He joined the army before being conscripted, very keen!’ John Faulkner shared the Irish Protestant roots of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Laverty; his maternal grandfather, who came from Cork, had been a career soldier in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. As the convoy moved up towards Kohima, Faulkner was ‘fully expecting and prepared to meet opposition around the next bend’. But in the initial stages all was quiet. The schoolteacher Captain Harry Smith remembered being ‘entirely ignorant’ of what might await them until they met ‘groups of frightened non-combatants fleeing down the road’.
These were some of the men Richards had ordered out of Kohima. ‘There was all these bedraggled-looking troops coming down, all dispirited,’ Dennis Wykes recalled. ‘I thought to myself “if these are running the Japanese are not going to be far behind”.’ According to Ray Street, the fleeing men were shouting frantically and threw their weapons and bandoliers of bullets into the Royal West Kents’ vehicles. There were trucks packed with men, some hanging on to the back and sides as they hurtled down the road. ‘Others ran, trotted or walked. They all looked petrified.’
Private Ivan Daunt was staggered by the sight of so many fleeing men. ‘Blimey they come down the road, hundreds of them, all pulling out of Kohima. You know, orderlies, hairdressers all that sort
of thing. Can you imagine?’ In addition to the ‘disheartening stream of deserters and stragglers’, Lieutenant Tom Hogg had by now learned that positions in Kohima were being abandoned without a shot being fired. ‘Chaos and low morale reigned supreme. The prospect did not appeal.’ John Laverty travelled at the head of the convoy and watched the oncoming stream with growing unease. ‘Officers dispatched by the Commander of the Kohima garrison to meet the Bn … brought news of the contact battle, painting such a picture of disorganisation and lack of spirit within the perimeter …’ At one point he ordered the convoy to stop and sent word back along the line that the fleeing men were not deserters but were being allowed back to reduce the number of ‘mouths’ in Kohima.
It was partially true. Richards was still trying to rid Kohima of the non-combatants, who did nothing more than consume rations and provide targets for the Japanese. Laverty had a harder time explaining why fully armed men were among the throng. He decided to disarm any of them carrying automatic weapons that would be valuable to his own men. But the West Kents’ commander now faced his most difficult choice. For all he knew, Kohima might be about to fall; his signals men had tapped into the telephone line at the roadside but were unable to contact the garrison or 161 Brigade headquarters. In view of the emerging picture, was there any point in continuing? Might the better course of action be to return to a more defensible position along the road? Proceeding to Kohima, if it was already overrun, could result in the slaughter of his battalion. Laverty decided to go on, hoping ‘the situation would not have deteriorated to a complete collapse’ before his men were in.
Donald Easten’s D company was the first to come under fire. They were leading the convoy as it came into Kohima. Easten saw at least two of his men killed as they got down from the trucks. There was no time to ponder the losses. ‘We just debussed and charged into the position where we were told roughly where to go.’ The lead vehicles had come to a halt on the road close to Garrison Hill where Hugh Richards had his command post. Lieutenant John Faulkner of A company was among the first to climb the hill. He saw the truck ahead of him pull
into the side of the road. There was a bend here and a high bluff on one side of the road, with a steep drop on the other. He marched his platoon up a pathway ‘past a very pleasant looking bungalow, round a cabbage patch, past two corrugated iron huts, across a flat stretch dotted with numerous tents and on up the main hill to the top’. The bungalow he had passed belonged to Charles Pawsey and would cease to look pleasant very shortly. As his men started to dig in, Faulkner heard bangs coming from the roadway below.
The Japanese gunners on ridge ranged the stationary convoy and began shelling. Lieutenant Hogg saw ‘all hell let loose with artillery and mortars. Shell and small arms fire came in from all sides.’ Private Ivan Daunt jumped off his lorry and crawled towards the steep bank for cover. The explosions set fires burning around him. ‘You can imagine, bang here, and bang there, and a lorry catching fire a few yards away and all the drivers shouting and hollerin’ … don’t know what to do, no one to lead them, tell ’em what to do.’ Lance Corporal Dennis Wykes was convinced the Japanese had waited until the convoy was right beneath them before opening fire. ‘We was staggered and shocked, but the Captain said “come on, out of the trucks,” and fortunately at the side of the road was a monsoon ditch.’ The men lay head to toe along the soaking ditch. Rounds cracked around their ears. Men were being wounded as they jumped out of the trucks. Wykes saw the doctors trying to treat screaming men in the shallow cover of the ditch. A pit was hastily dug for the wounded. But the mortars kept coming. ‘They were the worst. With an artillery shell you can hear it coming ’cos of the trajectory, but a mortar just comes right down on top of you.’ A private named Fred Worth was hit in the foot. ‘He said to me: “I got hit in the foot but when I shake me shoe I can hear it rattling.” I thought that was funny. When I went back later to see how he was getting on, he had died, as quick as that, from gangrene. It just galloped through his body and took him.’