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  However, it was on the 19th also that the 5th Division began its move from the Arakan; and that Sato’s second-in-command, Miyazaki, who was commanding the southern column of the 31st Division, bumped the 50th Parachute Brigade, which had come down from Kohima on the 10th March, at Sangshak, eight miles from Ukhrul and thirty-six from Imphal. Miyazaki’s orders were to move through Ukhrul to Mao, on the Kohima-Imphal road, then turn north for Kohima. But learning about Hope-Thompson’s brigade he decided to deal with it, as he did not wish to leave such a powerful force in his rear, threatening his line of communications to the Chindwin. This, as he was to discover later, was a great mistake. Slim, of course, did not know the identity of Miyazaki’s column, or whether it had been ordered to turn south to Imphal or north to Kohima; he had to fight the battle as it came.

  Next day, the 20th March, Slim and Giffard flew to Imphal for a meeting with Scoones. Slim did not yet realize the extent of the trouble that was brewing for him at Kohima, but he did realize that he’d made one big mistake. Knowing ‘the big picture’ he should have ordered the withdrawal of the 17th and 20th Indian Divisions himself, before they got embroiled. As it was, Scoones had left things too late and the battle was starting very untidily; 17th Division was having a very hard fight to get back at all, and whether it would do so without a severe mauling was still in doubt. However, one thing had become apparent, and that was that a new Corps commander was needed to operate south from Dimapur and reopen the communications to Imphal should these become cut. As it will be appreciated, both the Dimapur-Kohima-Imphal road, and the railway behind it, ran laterally across the front and were therefore vulnerable. (‘Whoever designed Burma,’ said Slim, ‘designed it for the Japanese.’) So, for the first time, it would appear, the suggestion was made that Stopford and his headquarters, now troopless in India, should be brought up to join in the battle. It was also arranged that the 1st Burma Regiment, then en route for Fort Hertz, should be diverted to Dimapur to act as local protection, and that the first brigade of the 5th Division to arrive, the 161st Brigade, should be based there as a mobile striking force. ‘These measures,’ says the Official History, ‘it was believed would enable IV Corps to hold up the Japanese while a counter-stroke was prepared.’ Whether this is a fair reading of the situation, it is impossible to say, but, knowing the characters of the three men involved, one very much doubts it. However, if that was what they hoped, they were to be disappointed. And before very long.

  *

  On the 22nd March Colonel Hugh Richards flew to Imphal and reported to Scoones at 4th Corps headquarters. He had been commanding the 3rd West African Brigade, which had been training for Wingate’s Chindit expedition, but when Wingate learned that he was fifty years of age, he promptly sent for him and announced that the maximum age for any officer on the show was forty. (Wingate, of course, was forty himself.) Richards was therefore out of a job, so Giffard found him a place on his headquarters at Delhi, until something suitable turned up. So, it happened that on the 20th, when it was rapidly becoming obvious that someone must take charge of Kohima, Giffard wired Richards and told him to come at once. At the 4th Corps headquarters, he was given an operation order which stated quite categorically: ‘You will be in operational control of all the troops in Kohima and of 1 Assam Regt. You will be directly under command of 4 Corps. Your role will be to hold Kohima, and to deny the area JESSAMI-KHARASOM-KOHIMA to the enemy by the use of 1 Assam Regt.’ From this last paragraph it would appear that 4th Corps had either not received many of the intelligence reports flooding through its signal offices, or did not believe them. In fact, the information paragraph showed that the advance of three columns was now known, each estimated to have a maximum strength of one battalion. It added somewhat sinisterly: ‘There may be one more regiment in reserve.’ So the probability was that with one battalion Richards would have to defend a triangle of country thirty-five miles in length and ten miles at the base against a force of three battalions; and at the worst, six. To comfort him, perhaps, a staff officer gave an assurance that ‘it was most unlikely that the enemy would have any artillery, as the tracks were too bad’.

  Pocketing the order, Richards walked out of 4th Corps headquarters and next morning travelled the sixty-five miles to Kohima, where he arrived that afternoon. The first of the principal actors in the Kohima drama was now in position. An hour later, a second arrived in the person of General Stopford who reported to 14th Army headquarters at Comilla. While he was having tea with General Slim, General Auchinleck, C.-in-C. India, was addressing the Council-in-State in New Delhi: ‘I am satisfied,’ he said, ‘that the quality of the men and the strength at the Allies’ disposal should enable the latest Japanese “counter-attack” to be dealt with. There is no need to be unduly concerned about the fact that the enemy columns are advancing….’

  But a lot of people were concerned; Stilwell and his Americans, for example, who were expecting the railway to be cut and, with it, their only line of communications; also the seething denizens of the base at Dimapur. There is no uglier spectacle on earth than a base in a flap; and here the temperature was mounting as quickly as the barbed wire fences round the Area offices. Only Mutaguchi at Maymyo, and Sato, sweating along the jungle paths with his advance headquarters towards Jessami, had any cause for contentment.

  At Kohima, Colonel Richards went on inspecting the defences till it was too dark to see.

  3

  A Conference at Midnight

  Two main problems confronted Richards: to decide how much of the Kohima area, he could put into a state of defence before the Japanese arrived, and to discover how many men he would have to fight under him when they did. As his reconnaissance soon revealed, the whole place was in a complete mess. Various people had been toying with the job of preparing defences, before being replaced by others, who in turn had been replaced by someone else. Such trenches as had been dug were too wide and lacked head cover. Some of them were badly sited too. On making inquiries Richards discovered that they hadn’t been dug by troops at all, but by Naga labour, working under inadequate supervision. Worse still, there seemed to be a complete lack of defence stores—especially barbed wire; in his whole reconnaissance he didn’t see a foot of it.

  The defence was organized into four boxes. The main one was sited in the central area, from the Treasury (north of the D.C.’s bungalow) to Jail Hill. It included the series of wooded hillocks enclosed by the road: Kuki Piquet, D.I.S. Hill, and F.S.D. Hill, and, in its northwestern sector, the I.G.H. Spur. In short, the ‘duck’s head’ shaped region, enclosed by the road. Stationed in the box was a medley of administrative units, including a petrol depot, an ordnance store, a field bakery section, a transport company, and a cattle conducting section. As to fighting troops, there were some rear details of the Assam Regiment, some platoons of the Assam Rifles, and the bulk of a State Forces battalion. This force was totally inadequate. A second box was sited at the Reinforcement Camp, a couple of miles along the Bokajan road, to the north of the main position. A third box was sited at milestone 44, two miles along the Dimapur road; and a fourth on G.P.T. Ridge, below the Aradura Spur. Out at their boxes at Jessami and Kharasom, thirty-five miles to the east (sixty along the track), were the rifle companies and headquarters of the Assam Regiment, who were under Richards’ command. Guided by Major Giles, of the R.I.A.S.C., Richards toured the whole area for two days; he had to see and study the ground now, for, as he realized, he wouldn’t get another chance.

  On the afternoon of his arrival, Richards had been taken to the D.C.’s bungalow, where he met Major-General Ranking (commander of 202 Area), and Brigadier Haines (commander of 253 Sub-Area), and Lieut.-Colonel Borrowman, who was adviser to the State troops. They gave him all the information they could, but concerning one of the main problems facing him, they were vague in the extreme: and that was the number and composition of the troops available to defend the place. The plain fact, as he soon realized, was that they did not know; and it was very doubtful whether 4t
h Corps or anyone else knew either. All Richards could do was keep working and planning from day to day, and see what turned up.

  On the 24th March, the 2nd Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment turned up, to his great relief and delight. This was a famous unit which bad already fought the Italians and the Germans, apart from the Japanese; and by a happy coincidence, Richards had at one time been second-in-command of it for three years. His old adjutant was now the commanding officer. The obvious task for the battalion was to dig themselves into the central box and constitute themselves the main buttress of its defence. As far as Richards had been able to ascertain from his subsidiary commanders, the number of men in the area, at the moment, thought to be capable of bearing arms, was about eleven hundred; but the difference between a collection of troops from various detachments and a crack British infantry unit is immense. The arrival of the West Yorks virtually quadrupled his strength; it made the defence of the main box at least feasible.

  But there was one big snag; and that was that the local administration of Kohima still came under 253 Sub Area. As Richards was soon to discover, troops were coming and going all the time, without any reference to him, so the total of weapon-bearing men rose and fell with every hour that passed, and would continue to do so. He had absolutely no powers to detain anyone for the garrison; and it was possible, at least, that by the time the Japanese arrived his ‘eleven hundred’ would be reduced to nine, or even six. Seldom in history can a commander have prepared to defend a vital position in circumstances of such chaos.

  Two other events happened on the 24th, though Richards heard of neither of them. The Chiefs of Staff, told Mountbatten that the Americans’ view of his role was ‘to develop, maintain and protect the air link with China’. And General Wingate was killed in an air crash.

  On the 25th, Richards ordered the West Yorkshires to send out a detachment to liaise with the Assam Regiment. Though he could sense that the tide of war was sweeping closer, his information concerning the enemy was vague and fragmentary—all intelligence reports were still being routed via the Sub-Area ! The officer commanding the West Yorkshire detachment arrived at Jessami to find the Assam Regiment evacuating its bivouacs to occupy the bunker position. Patrols were still going out, however, and recently had reported increased Japanese activity in the Laruri area, which had caused the withdrawal of all V Force personnel to Phek. This information was carried back to Kohima before nightfall.

  In fact, the exact point reached by the Japanese that day was Layshi, some sixty miles from Kohima, and eighty along the track. Jessami lay directly in their path, still twenty-five miles off. The column commanded by Colonel Torikai was still going well, even after ten days of tremendous exertion. Very little opposition had been encountered so far, and the information reaching the advance guard commander, and relayed to Sato who was moving with his tactical headquarters, indicated that even less lay ahead. Mutaguchi was evidently right: the British had not expected such a lightning thrust and were unprepared for it. A few more days and Kohima would be in sight.

  Behind the forward troops things were not going so smoothly, and it is difficult to understand how the momentum of the advance was maintained. According to the Divisional War Correspondent, Yukihiko Imai:

  ‘It was cold on the journey and the rivers were full. Large numbers of horses and oxen fell down into the ravines. The horses kept going to the limit of their strength, but the oxen were much more trouble. When tired they would sit on the path and would not move a step even though the soldiers beat them. As a last resort the troops had to set fire to their tails.

  As soon as we reached a village we caught the women and children and locked them up. We then asked the men folk to guide us to the next village, promising to release their families as soon as they had done so. This was the only way we could get guides or labour to help with the transport. By the time we had got half way we had lost most of the horses and oxen, either through their falling down the hillside, or being shot by enemy gunfire.’

  While Sato was passing through Layshi, Mutaguchi was at Torburg near Tiddim, where he had gone to see Lieut.-General Yanagida, commander of the 33rd Division. Mutaguchi was in great spirits, for not only was the news from Sato good, but the British were falling back on Imphal, just as he knew they would, and already much of the Kabaw valley was in his hands. Yanagida, however, was pessimistic. He’d lost a considerable number of men in his fight with the 17th Indian Division, and it was still moving back in good order. No one had panicked; no one had thrown their arms or equipment away and this Yanagida did not like. He’d never had much faith in the operation, and now things were going wrong, just as he’d predicted. He told Mutaguchi: ‘You’d better give up your idea of the March on Delhi.’ This outburst did not deter Mutaguchi; he merely noted that Yanagida was unfit to command a division in action, and resolved to replace him with a younger, more vigorous officer, who wouldn’t argue. Within six weeks Lieut.-General Nobua Tanaka had taken over.

  However, while Mutaguchi was talking to Yanagida, there were two other developments in the situation which were to have a considerable effect on the battle to come. At a meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, General Arnold promised Mountbatten the loan of 400 transport aircraft, to reach S.E.A.C. in groups of 100 a month from the 1st July; and two brigades of the 5th Indian Division began their fly-in to the Imphal front.

  On the 26th events continued to move steadily if unspectacularly. During the previous night the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade had pulled out of Sangshak, leaving 100 seriously wounded behind. In all, counting killed, wounded, and missing, the brigade had lost 500 men. Miyazaki had lost 220 killed and 350 wounded out of a total strength of 2,180; also the action had delayed him twice as long as he’d calculated. However, his line of communications was clear now, and he headed north-west towards Tuphema and the Imphal-Kohima road.

  While Miyazaki advanced, Giffard flew into Comilla to see Slim, and there took a most important decision; this was that, pending the arrival of Stopford’s headquarters, or a divisional headquarters, operational control of the Dimapur area, as far south as, but excluding, Kohima, should be handed to Major-General Ranking of the 202 Area. This was an emergency move, as Area commanders and their staffs are not equipped or trained to run operations, being purely administrative. But something had to be done, and this was apparently the best arrangement anyone could think of. The 2nd Burma Regiment, and the 161st Brigade, as it flew in, was to come under Ranking’s command. The latter consisted of the 4th Royal West Kents, the 1st/1st Punjab, and the 4th/7th Rajputana Rifles; the commander was Brigadier D. F. W. Warren, and what he said when he heard that he was under the Area commander is neither repeatable nor printable.

  At Kohima, Richards went out to Jessami to see Colonel Brown of the Assam Regiment, and about half-way there, at Chezumi, he ran into Pawsey who had just been up to Phek. Around him were hundreds of Naga families, all refugees from the country west of the Chindwin, and Pawsey was laying on food for them, calming them, listening to their troubles, and at the same time working out arrangements to have them sent on to Kohima. Richards began to realize the qualities of this remarkable man, and the complete faith that the Nagas had in him. As he says: ‘They truly regarded him as their father who would solve all their troubles.’ Richards also came to realize that the intelligence information passed on by Pawsey, from his Nagas, was always accurate—even when intelligence officers further back thought otherwise.

  At Jessami Richards found ‘an atmosphere of complete confidence and eager anticipation among the Assam Regiment… they were in great heart’. The whole defensive position was wired in, and included a command post, mortar positions, and a Regimental Aid Post. Also, a field of fire had been cleared. Now, as Richards had learned two days previously, the orders to the Assam Regiment from 4th Corps were that they were to fight ‘to the last round and the last man’. This meant that the whole regiment must sacrifice itself to slow down the Japanese advance on Kohima, which, even for me
n of great courage, was a very stern task indeed. Just as Richards was about to leave, Brown took him on one side and asked if the order still stood. Obviously Brown’s idea was that if there were to be any change now was the time to make it, as he added: ‘I expect to be attacked by anything up to a battalion of Japs tomorrow morning.’ Richards told him that the order must stand. Brown did not argue or dissent in any way and was obviously prepared to do his duty. However, on the way back to Kohima, Richards began worrying about the order and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t justified. No one could fight indefinitely without an adequate source of water inside their perimeter, and this Brown lacked. Furthermore, the basic role of the battalion was now collecting information by patrolling. There was no intention to give battle to the Japs as far east as Jessami, and no intention either to reinforce Brown’s positions. Once contact had been made the battalion should concentrate on harassing and delaying the enemy, which would obviously be much superior in strength. Richards, in the light of this reconsideration, decided to take the matter up as soon as he reached Kohima.

  In fact, he did not reach there till the morning of the 27th. By then a signal had arrived informing him that the West Yorkshires must not be used in any forward role; and this was followed by a second signal saying that they should be sent to Imphal forthwith. So Richards was left with his ‘odds and sods’ again; and he had no troops for any delaying actions on the precipitous gullies along the Jessami track. The position was deteriorating fast. Then he learned that at 0600 hours Captain Young, commanding the company of the Assam Regiment at Kharasom, south of Jessami, had phoned through to his CO. To say that a column of Japs, a battalion strong, with mules, elephants, and artillery, was approaching his position. He had just opened fire. After this conversation, the telephone wire was cut, and no further news was received.