Authors: Fergal Keane
The C company runner Ray Street saw lorries in flames and drivers running for their lives down the Dimapur road. Some were trapped in their blazing cabs. The next thing Dennis Wykes remembered was his captain walking up the road through the hail of fire
and shouting at his men to get up and dig in. ‘So we all bolted up the hill in spite of the fire and dug in.’ Lieutenant John Wright, an officer of King George V’s Own Bengal Sappers and Miners, was travelling further back in the convoy. Having seen what was happening to the West Kents, he stopped half a mile away from the shelling, got his men on to the road, and started climbing the slope to Garrison Hill. Once on top, they began digging in at speed. Looking back down the Dimapur road, Wright witnessed the disheartening spectacle of troops fleeing. ‘We saw a large number of State Battalion [Shere Regiment] troops with their officers in front pass through our lines and shove off down the road back towards Dimapur.’ An Assam Regiment officer who saw the West Kents arrive felt relief. ‘There can be little doubt that had the battalion of the Royal West Kents not arrived that day, Kohima must surely have fallen before night was through. This fully equipped and fresh force, under command of Lieutenant Colonel Laverty, put new heart into the defenders.’
Laverty was met by Hugh Richards. ‘Our meeting was not happy,’ Richards remembered. He told Laverty how glad he was to see him and briefed him on the latest situation, as well as providing guides to the sectors where the West Kents were to deploy. Laverty was brusque. ‘Where’s Kuki piquet?’ he demanded. Taken aback, Richards pointed the way and Laverty marched off, followed by several of his staff. To Hugh Richards, Laverty’s attitude was inexplicable. It hurt and it would not be the last of rejections from the man who was technically his subordinate. It may have reflected something more than Laverty’s lack of interpersonal skills. The scenes on the road with stragglers streaming away in panic, the reports of units fleeing before they had fired a shot, had profoundly affected Laverty, as had his earlier reconnaissance when the West Kents had been briefly dug in before being pulled back to cover Dimapur. The badly dug trenches and the critical water situation convinced him that Richards and his garrison staff were incompetents who could not be trusted with the lives of his men.
In an account given to a sympathetic author, Laverty claimed to have found a British officer cowering in a foxhole at the start of the
siege. ‘John stopped and said, “Who the hell are you?” The man replied, “I’m from the stores depot and I’ve got to get out of here quick. My men have all gone, the rotten bastards, and I’m no good. You must let me out I’ve got to get back to Calcutta.”’
*
Appalled, Laverty left him there and walked on. Anybody who has ever spent time in the company of well-trained troops on the front line will understand that hostility towards other formations is part of a long tradition; men need to believe their unit is the best if they are going to risk their lives. That ingrained sense of superiority is multiplied dramatically when they encounter line of communications troops like many of the Kohima garrison. Added to this was the battalion’s experience of successive disasters, from Dunkirk through Alam Halfa to the Tunnels.
There was a natural fear that the men holding the positions alongside them would cut and run. Given what had happened in the previous twenty-four hours it was a reasonable fear. Laverty found approximately 2,000 troops waiting in the garrison but ‘no account had been paid to the quality, organisation and leadership’ of these men. The Assam Regiment troops were exhausted from hard fighting and marching, and the rest of the British and Indian troops, while ‘excellent material … were not organised in proper fighting sub-units, did not know their officers and the latter did not know them’. The remaining 40 per cent of the garrison were line of communications troops or non-combatants, ‘a heavy liability, unable or unwilling to fight, whose low morale was a danger in itself, and whose supply requirements, protection and disposal was an extra burden on a strained system’. The real fighting strength of the garrison now, including the West Kents, amounted to about 1,500 men. This to face a Japanese force around 15,000 strong.
The 4th battalion war diary’s criticism of the garrison officers is an extraordinary combination of anger and condescension. On the
defensive preparations, it remarks: ‘The Garrison Comd’s own immediate HQ area was the only area well provided in this respect. Vital wireless sets were not dug in … Water points themselves were in exposed positions and no effort had been made to construct other points … no less than 5 separate uncoordinated R.A.P.s [regimental aid posts], not dug in, were operating when the Bn. Arrived.’ The clear implication is that Richards had taken care to make his own bunker safe while failing to ensure others were equally well protected. A disparaging reference in the diary to staff officers at Richards’s headquarters is scribbled over in thick pencil, Laverty apparently employing some restraint on re-reading the entry. Such restraint would vanish after the war, when accounts of Richards’s alleged failings began to appear. At least one 4th battalion officer was horrified by Laverty’s attitude. ‘Laverty brushed him [Richards] aside with an “I’m in charge now” sort of attitude, which was unfortunate,’ said Major Donald Easten. ‘You had these two men each saying, “I’m in charge.” And it was really uncalled for. He went around visiting chaps in the trenches and so on. I had great respect for him. He was an old man compared to us. But the sort of chap you had respect for. He was brave and a good soldier.’ The conflict was not limited to Laverty and Richards. The CO of the 1st Assam Regiment, ‘Bruno’ Brown, also clashed with Laverty. As one of his officers put it: ‘Friction soon arose over the exact distribution of command.’ After a row with the West Kents commander Brown, a far more combative character than Hugh Richards, left the headquarters area and set up his own command post.
From their first meeting Laverty treated Richards as a man he would only do business with out of necessity. As for Richards’s orders stating that he commanded
all
the troops in Kohima, Laverty ignored them. ‘The position as it so transpired’, wrote Richards, ‘was that Laverty regarded himself as under command of Warren … Warren so regarded Laverty. My orders were quite specific. I was placed in operational control of
all
[author’s italics] troops in Kohima.’ If Warren had decided to give orders directly to Laverty there was precious little Richards could do. The garrison now had two separate
commands: Laverty directed the operations of his men, while Richards was left in command of the Assam Regiment and the various other detachments of local and composite troops. All Richards would say publicly was that ‘my relations with the CO were strained and I found him difficult to deal with’. Laverty now believed himself to have ‘virtually assumed command of the defenders of Kohima’. It was humiliating and frustrating for Richards and would take all his reserves of patience to endure.
While the exchange between Laverty and Richards was going on, the West Kents’ various companies were deployed. Ray Street and his C company comrades were sent to Detail Hill, close to the centre of the defence; Major John Winstanley’s B company was despatched to Kuki Piquet, adjacent to Garrison Hill; Donald Easten’s D company was detailed as the reserve; the battalion headquarters company under the schoolmaster Major Harry Smith joined A company on Garrison Hill, where Laverty set up his own command post a little way from Richards’s but further up the slope. Laverty’s trench was about nine feet long, with room for himself, four of his officers and the all-important wireless set. He immediately ordered telephone lines to be run out to each of the company positions and to Richards’s post just down the slope.
John Faulkner sent a party of men back to the road to collect their baggage, including essential bedding, from the trucks. A sergeant returned with bad news. Faulkner wrote down the exchange:
‘Christ, sir! There’s a hell of a mess down there.’
‘What happened?’
‘Japs are shelling the trucks and most of the Indian drivers have fucked off back to Dimapur.’
Faulkner raced down to the roadway and saw the trucks blazing and oil leaking everywhere. A water main had been punctured, probably the garrison lifeline from Aradura, and ‘a dozen miniature fountains’ were spraying the road and the boxes of mortars and grenades strewn across it. Faulkner could find no sign of his own kitbag. He made his way back up the hill and heard a voice calling out, ‘Would you mind giving the doctor a hand sir.’ Looking round, he saw a West
Kent soldier lying between two native bashas with blood streaming from his arm. The man spoke quietly and was waiting for the medic, who was busy dealing with another casualty. The second man was ‘lying on his back in a grotesque attitude, his shoulder smashed’. Faulkner handed the doctor bandages and scissors as he needed them. Then he helped hold the ‘poor chap’ down as the doctor applied a tourniquet. ‘What happened?’ he asked the doctor. ‘Jap machine gun caught them in here,’ came the reply. Faulkner felt very scared. The same machine gun could easily open up again. But the medical officer kept working, quickly and quietly. When it was done, Faulkner ‘pushed off, covered in someone else’s blood and feeling a little sick’. His baptism by fire was not over. Heading back to his own position he heard two loud bangs. Two Sikhs with 3.7 inch Howitzers were trying to find the range of the Japanese guns. Faulkner had only gone a few steps when he was blown on to his face by a salvo of Japanese mortars. He heard a scream of agony and a yell for stretcher-bearers. Faulkner moved quickly to his own trench. The four-gun mountain artillery battery that had accompanied the West Kents was deployed in the bungalow area. The commander, Major Richard Yeo, was talking to Hugh Richards when the Japanese opened fire. Enemy observers had seen the guns being assembled and brought into position.
Richards ran for cover while Yeo tried to bring his guns into action. It was futile. The Japanese would knock them out once they had the range. Yeo hid the guns and decided he and his men would act as observers for 161 Brigade artillery outside the perimeter. It was a decision that probably did more to prolong the life of the garrison than any other.
Ray Street had a lucky escape from the Japanese guns. He and the runner from Easten’s D company were in a trench behind a tree but feared it was too obvious a target. They moved further up the hill and started digging again. ‘We were worn out and lay in our trench to rest.’ He looked out and saw a man standing in the doorway of a basha, close to one of the water tanks. Suddenly a shell exploded on the spot and the man vanished, blown to pieces by a direct hit. Street
threw himself down as more shells screamed over. When the barrage ended he looked down and saw that his old trench behind the tree had been blown up.
Private Norman was shouting to a corporal to jump into the pit he was sharing with his friends Dick Johnson, a bank messenger in civilian life, and Ernie Thrussel, a bookbinder. No sooner had the corporal arrived in the pit than a mortar exploded a yard from where he had been standing. To make matters worse, the food-conscious Norman was left unfed, there being no ‘tiffin, dinner or tea’, only endless firing. At about half past five he witnessed an unsettling spectacle. An Indian unit sharing the position was mortared and ‘they started running away but we drove them back. We were told we were only here to stop [them] running away.’
*
Towards nightfall Ray Street heard that the Japanese had closed the ring around Kohima. The rest of 161 Brigade was down the road and cut off from the garrison, and in the process of being cut off from Dimapur. Sato had carried out a double encirclement. Hopes of being reinforced ‘within a day or two’ evaporated. As Major Donald Easten put it, ‘the door was shut behind us and that was it. It was as close as that.’
At the other end of the perimeter from where the West Kents had arrived, a fierce battle was taking place on Jail Hill. Lieutenant Bruce Hayllar was told by Richards to take another hastily formed unit and go up Jail Hill to help the Assam Regiment and other defenders. His immersion in combat had been short and swift, but he had learned an important truth: ‘You don’t lead people in battle. You drive them!’ He screamed at men who were simply holding on to their rifles to shoot at the Japanese. As he pushed the Indian soldiers up Jail Hill men fell dead around him.
When some of his troops made to flee, Hayllar forced them back at bayonet point. At one point he turned to the sergeant and asked him who was in charge. ‘You are,’ he said. When Hayllar asked where the other officers were, the man pointed to a dead soldier lying on the ground. ‘Now you’ve got to decide what to do,’ he shouted. Very soon after that Hayllar was shot himself. The bullet struck him in the back and his courage vanished. ‘The Japs were close and all my nerve went like a pricked balloon. I staggered up and fled flat out for safety.’ Before leaving he had seen his orderly, a Muslim soldier from the Punjab named Allahadad, shot dead. The guilt over his death would live with Hayllar for years. ‘He had a wife and a little son in India … I was the silly volunteer. He was just someone who was told to go.’
Jail Hill was turning into a charnel house for the defenders. By 10 a.m. on 6 April the forward positions had been lost. A petrol dump was struck by Japanese fire. Clouds of acrid black smoke now billowed into the sky, choking attackers and defenders alike. With streaming eyes and chests heaving with dry coughing, men looked frantically through the smoke for the enemy. Japanese mortars blasted groups of Indian stragglers who tried to shelter near the jail itself. With no NCOs or officers to steady them, they blundered around, screaming in panic and agony as the mixed force of British, Indian and Burmese troops was driven off Jail Hill.
The only hope of regaining the position was a counter-attack by the best infantry in the garrison. A message was sent to Laverty, who in turn summoned Donald Easten. As commander of the reserve, Major Easten could expect to be given the nasty jobs that cropped up around the perimeter. Laverty was under the impression that the position was occupied by no more than a platoon of Japanese. Accordingly, he sent only a platoon to try to dislodge them. Easten soon realised the odds were against him and the attack was called off. Hugh Richards estimated that two hundred men were killed or wounded in the fighting at GPT Ridge and Jail Hill. The Japanese were also bleeding heavily. At GPT Ridge alone they lost 110 men. Lieutenant Shosaku Kameyama, wounded in the jaw at Sangshak where he had seen his company reduced to twenty battle-fit men, was
horrified at the fresh casualties. ‘One hundred and ten men killed just to break through a position!’ The southern perimeter now began at Detail Hill, where Ray Street and C company were entrenched. Soon the Japanese were pounding the West Kents from the newly captured positions at a range of a couple of hundred yards. The defenders had one big advantage, however. There was a high bluff on their side of the road. It would prove a formidable obstacle for the Japanese trying to cross and scale the ridge in the days ahead.