Authors: Fergal Keane
By the night of 16 April the garrison had been under siege for eleven days. Advancing from the south, the Japanese had captured a succession of hills, GPT Ridge, Jail Hill, Detail Hill, and they were entrenched in the bungalow sector. They now moved against the last two positions on the ridge before Garrison Hill where Richards, Laverty and the wounded were sited. At both Supply Hill and Kuki Piquet there was a mix of West Kents, Assam Rifles, and a composite formation of Indian troops. John Laverty’s skill was in the fine measurement of defence; he was constantly revising the perimeter to what he believed he could hold, and sappers were sent to booby-trap any approaches where troops were thin on the ground. Still, he was now hemmed in to an area roughly 500 by 500 yards, with around seven hundred men of the garrison still able to fight, and another 1,700 either non-combatant or wounded.
Laverty and Richards had been promised by wireless on 15 April that relief would arrive the following day. A patrol of 4/7 Rajput from Jotsoma succeeded in getting through and reinforced the message. But help did not arrive on 16 April. Richards went up to Laverty’s bunker later and found the West Kents’ CO talking to Warren on the radio. ‘I also spoke to Warren and said that unless relief came quickly, it would be too late. He replied that he was doing his best but intended to make a proper job of it.’ Some measure of Laverty’s frustration can be gauged from the regiment’s war diary. ‘This was the fourth occasion on which, after statements by relieving forces that they hoped to make contact on the morrow, hopes of relief, reinforcement or evacuation of casualties were dashed.’
Richards, too, was becoming exasperated. Wherever he looked there were wounded men in desperate straits. ‘We had many disappointments. On 10 April a message from 161 Bde that it was hoped to make a speedy relief. On 13 report from 161 Bde that effect of their advance should soon be felt. On 16 a message saying that they hoped to make contact “this morning”.’
The men were briefly buoyed by an intense bombardment from Warren’s 161 Brigade and 2nd Division artillery. Hugh Richards wondered how anybody could have survived the pounding given to the Japanese lines. He was sure that without the accurate fire drawn down by Major Yeo and his observers the Japanese would have long ago broken through. The RAF joined in with bombs and cannon fire.
The Japanese pressure was making life a misery for the cooks. They hunkered in covered pits trying to heat the ubiquitous bully-beef stew on open fires the constant smoke of which tormented their lungs. There was still enough food, but the problem was getting it to the men in the trenches. Ray Street saw the 6 foot 4 inch frame of Sergeant Jack Eves crawling into small trenches with tins of bully-beef stew and hot tea, apparently oblivious to the bullets whizzing past him. ‘It was actions like his that lifted morale.’ When the pangs of hunger hit Street he thought of Firpos restaurant in Calcutta where the men went on leave and ate duck with green peas and potatoes.
Army cooks are among the world’s most highly evolved scroungers and in the early stages of the siege, when some movement was still possible, they liberated large quantities of tinned fruit and vegetables. At least one case of whisky was discovered and buried near the tennis court for distribution at the appropriate moment, presumably when the garrison was either relieved or on the verge of being overrun. The air drops helped to vary the diet, although Mark Lambert of the West Kents grew to loathe the soya-link sausages. ‘They were made of soya flour and came in the shape of sausages. They tasted bloody awful!’ The men at the edge of the perimeter, in places like the tennis court, could spend days without a hot meal, eating only the cold bully beef and hard-tack biscuits they had
brought with them. There was another challenge, which affected them more than the rest of the garrison. With snipers constantly on the watch for movement, how were men to go to the toilet? Most waited until nightfall and crept a little way away from their position. Tom Hogg at the tennis court recalled men filling empty bully-beef tins with their excrement and then hurling it at the Japanese. ‘You had to go the best place you could,’ said Dennis Wykes. ‘You wouldn’t stand outside doing whatever. You had to keep the latrines under cover.’ For men with diarrhoea or dysentery the conditions were impossible. Unable to control their bowels in the confinement of the trenches they either fouled themselves or risked a sniper’s bullet.
By now the troops on Garrison Hill could see signs of fighting on the hills where 161 Brigade was trying to break through. The delay had been partly down to Sato’s original roadblock, Grover’s caution and the slowness of troops advancing into unfamiliar and difficult terrain. The 2nd Division commander feared being outflanked and having his line of communications cut, the perennial fear when facing the Japanese. Parties of the enemy were probing along his flanks, and captured Japanese plans showed that Sato wanted to occupy a ridge overlooking the main road. Japanese artillery could then wreak havoc on the advancing brigades. When he went forward to see Warren at Jotsoma on 16 April the latter was desperate to get his men into Kohima immediately, but Grover refused because of ‘lack of security of the right flank’ and because he wanted a proper reconnaissance. Rather than rush to save the garrison, he would ensure the safety of his advance; as Brigadier Hawkins had shown him, the ‘country is very big and difficult and rapidly absorbs large numbers of troops. It gives great advantage to defence.’
The troops moving along the hills were facing the Naga Hills for the first time; the lack of experience slowed them. An intelligence officer with 4 Brigade wrote that it ‘seemed we had not patrolled enough to gain information, that the troops were too slow to advance after the artillery concentration and that it was doubtful whether we had attacked from the right direction’. Both Stopford and Grover
were planning for the battle to retake Kohima Ridge and drive the Japanese back to the Chindwin; rescuing the garrison was not incidental to this, but neither man would alter what they considered to be the best plan for the larger battle.
From his headquarters, miles away in Comilla, Slim studied the battle reports and radio messages with concern. The Japanese had caught him unawares at the beginning. He had been saved then by the ferocity of the defence at Sangshak, Jessami and Kohima, by the airlift of reinforcements from the Arakan, and by General Kawabe’s fateful order to Mutaguchi not to attack Dimapur and the railway. But having got heavy reinforcements on the road towards Kohima, he now risked seeing the campaign descend into a lengthy slogging match. In his memoirs he says simply that ‘progress was at times slow, as the enemy reacted with fierce local counter-attacks’. It was an understatement belying the continuing pressure on Slim. He could console himself that he was on the point of overtaking the Japanese in numbers and firepower; he was establishing a secure line of communications back to the railhead at Dimapur; and the garrison at Kohima was proving itself a match for the attackers. At Imphal the 4th Corps had stopped the advance of the Japanese 15 and 33 Divisions. But Sato was close to taking control of all of Kohima Ridge, and once in place his troops could dig in and do what the Japanese did best: defend to the last man and delay Slim’s counter-strike into Burma.
The Americans were pressing Mountbatten for the return of the loaned aircraft on which Slim’s massive supply operation was based; and a prolonged battle of attrition in the Naga Hills could convince the doubters in London, among them the prime minister, that the 14th Army could never defeat the Japanese in the jungle. The pressure to speed up the advance passed from London and Washington to Mountbatten, from the supreme commander to Slim and then to Stopford and Grover. On 16 April, Stopford attended a church parade in the garden of his residence and noted that there had been no startling developments at Kohima. But his expectation of imminent good news was growing. ‘I expect to hear any time now that 2 Div have
kicked out the Jap.’ Just twenty-four hours later, Stopford erupted in frustration. Grover’s plan for Kohima was ‘much too slow and cumbersome’, he was ‘boot bound’ and slow in his methods, a point Stopford intended to make forcefully when he met him.
The mist had turned to rain and across the perimeter the Japanese were attacking. They had recovered from the shock of Calistan’s raid at the tennis court and put in an assault of their own. The Brens kept them out. Up at the Indian hospital buildings behind the headquarters, a raid against the Assam Rifles’ trenches was beaten back with twenty-four Japanese killed. The hospital position was the ‘back door’ to the perimeter; situated on a steep bluff on the northern edge of Garrison Hill it was the most daunting prospect for the Japanese infantry on the road. But it did not deter them from attacking.
Up here Charles Pawsey was sharing a bunker with the Assam Rifles’ CO, Buster Keene, an old friend, responsible for the policing of the Naga Hills. As the days ground on, the old soldier Pawsey was consoled by his own appreciation of the battle. He was increasingly convinced that the Japanese had thrown away the chance of a great victory. ‘Had the Japs attacked with everything they had on the 5th or 6th of April they could have taken this place,’ he wrote. They could have ‘created panic in India’, but had now lost the initiative. They might still take Kohima Ridge, though, and kill Pawsey and everybody else. He did not dwell on the prospect of imminent mortality. At the Somme, and in the high mountains of the Tyrol fighting the Austrians, he had been a whisker from death more than once. For Charles Pawsey the answer to fear was to remain occupied, to be useful to the fighting men. So whenever the shelling eased or stopped he made his rounds of the trenches and visits to the wounded. An account by an Indian officer of the Assam Rifles described how this ‘unarmed civilian in the midst of all the carnage, a more unruffled man one could not imagine … a source of inspiration …’
On the southern perimeter the strain of relentless attack and declining numbers was showing. Ever since the fall of Detail Hill, where John Harman had died in Donald Easten’s arms, the next position, Supply
Hill, had been the Japanese focus. The West Kents of C and D companies fell back to this larger hill with numerous small buildings. They joined the 4/7 Rajput and composite Indian troops – mule drivers, cooks, clerks, signalmen – and fought off repeated attacks before the Japanese gained a foothold. A platoon of Assam Rifles was dispatched to help and pushed the enemy back. Back and forth it went.
Donald Easten returned to the battle. With his arm in a sling he gave an outward appearance of courage. ‘You mustn’t let the soldiers think you are frightened. Obviously you were terrified but you didn’t let anybody know that. You went out and did it.’ One of the early casualties was Easten’s Company Sergeant Major, Bill Haines, who was blinded by an explosion. He refused to leave the area and leaned on the arm of a private who directed him as he shouted encouragement to the men. The pressure continued to intensify. Blasted backwards by shelling, the 3 Assam Rifles and 4/7 Rajput pulled out of their positions. Laverty sent John Faulkner and his platoon from A company to try to plug the gap. Faulkner spotted a gun hidden behind a tarpaulin on the Japanese position opposite. He was about to call in a mortar attack when the Japanese opened fire. ‘We kept our heads down as round after round came over onto the positions … It was horrible to hear the solid steel shell knocking and ricocheting through the trees.’ Leaves, branches, shards of wood and thick shot showered down. Private Norman of C company missed death by inches. A piece of shrapnel embedded itself in his pack. ‘Luck was with us,’ he wrote in his diary.
Faulkner saw the Japanese ground attack coming, the ‘dimly flitted shapes outlined in the darkness’, creeping towards his positions. Here the fire control of the West Kents was essential. Wait and wait, until it seems as if they are nearly on top of you. At fifteen yards the West Kents opened fire. A sergeant in one bunker shot three Japanese in quick succession as they tried to enter. The attack was beaten back. The following morning Faulkner sent a man to check whether there was any sign of the Japanese digging in around the area. It was just as well he did. ‘Suddenly I heard a voice, a subdued scuffle, and he reappeared, this time with his eyes popping out of his head. “There’s
Japs in a bunker 30 yards over there,” he said – “and one of ’em said ‘Come ’ere’ to me.”’ Faulkner went to check. Poking head and shoulders out of his own bunker, he saw the Japanese. There were four of them sitting by the path, ‘talking away as if their lives depended on it’. One of the Japanese turned around and saw Faulkner. They looked at each other ‘for a long minute’ and then the man spoke: ‘Come here.’ Faulkner was astonished. ‘I thought this was a bit thick.’ He returned to the cover of the bunker and sent a party out to shoot the Japanese. The Bren-gunner killed all four.
That afternoon the Japanese came again, this time under cover of mist and armed with sticks of dynamite. They blasted the trenches to Faulkner’s left. Here the composite Indian troops were driven back. The Japanese were now moving between the West Kents’ positions like wraiths. The Brens scythed through the smoke at unseen targets and the attack eventually fizzled out. But that night, at around 2200 hours, they were back. The trenches were silent. Only a darting shape alerted a West Kent private to the arrival of the enemy. There was the sound of guns being cocked. A tin can was kicked somewhere to the front. Then came a burst of fire. ‘[Private] Steele had fired at a shape that came too close.’ But the silence returned. A private crept up to Faulkner and told him the Japanese had entered a basha close by. Suddenly grenades were being thrown from the basha. The West Kents opened up with a Tommy gun and grenades. The Japanese inside were still fighting. Another grenade was thrown from the basha and landed at the edge of Faulkner’s trench. The West Kents now resorted to one of the simplest and most effective of all close-quarter weapons, the Molotov cocktail. After opening up with his Tommy gun Faulkner ran across to the basha and threw in the Molotov. It glowed but failed to ignite properly. Next they tried an incendiary bomb, but that failed too. Faulkner could not leave the Japanese with a foothold in his perimeter. He took a bottle of petrol and crept back to the basha. Kneeling outside he doused the walls. It was a recklessly brave thing to do. At any moment the occupants could have opened fire, or an infiltrating Japanese could have seen him. With petrol in his hand and all around him Faulkner would
have been set on fire by a shot. His luck held. He ran back to his bunker and threw a grenade at the basha. It erupted in flames. ‘There was more scuffling and the inmates dashed out and back down the slope. Ferguson was waiting for them with his Bren. He pulled the trigger and the gun jammed – much to his disappointment.’ Another attack had been repulsed. The jamming of Brens was becoming frequent, a symptom as much of the handlers’ fatigue as of wear and tear on the weapon. Exhausted men will struggle to clean a weapon properly and to make sure that it is ready to fire.