War. Gruesome and ugly, it is, we are told. As bad, or worse than famines, floods and plagues. The very scythe of Hades and the charging buffalo of Yama. If there has been one feature constant in the history of human existence, it has undoubtedly been war. Perhaps we, of these last few generations who have lived in areas of the globe that soon came to terms with the idea of nation states, are the minority in human history to not have seen war at our doorstep, and perhaps that is why, we will never fully understand or appreciate the glory of it…nor the insanity of it.
The term ‘World War’ for both the great wars seemed quite redundant to me as I suffered through the memorising of dates and events in preparation for the annual test of my cerebral retaining capacity. Why call it a world war, when we Indians never really fought in it. Yes, some Indians did have to fight for the British, but then we were slaves, so why did we care who won or lost, nor was there any reason for us to take up arms, and to compound matters, they weren’t even fought around the world. Not in India at least, or so we were led to believe through heavily attenuated telling of the stories.
The Battle of Kohima
And then a couple of decades later, I find myself on a hill in the capital of the state of Nagaland, squarely on Indian soil, staring at a World War II (WWII) memorial, and graves of soldiers from different countries including, and in quite a sizeable number, all regions of undivided India! It was shocking. It was numbing. This wasn’t skirmishes along the border with our half-brothers. This was us fighting shoulder to shoulder with our colonial masters and their neighbours against a people from the other side of the globe. This was World War. And it was fought in India – at home.
The incalculable, almost simultaneous and incessant developments from the war at a time where communication was struggling to keep pace with world events, would be a Herculean task to ever list out chronologically. To sum it, the mega-war was fought between the Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) against the Axis (Japan, Germany, Italy), along with a host of other countries on both sides who were affiliates or co-belligerents, between 1939 and 1945. It was brought to an ignominious conclusion with the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, quite like a movie plot, till the almost wee end (which then could not have been imagined was the wee end), it seemed like the Axis had the upper hand. Most, if not all, of continental Europe was under German control, and Japan had completely bulldozed over Southeast Asia, including Burma which they won from the British. It was in such an ecstatic atmosphere for the Japanese that they implemented their ‘Operation U-Go’ against the forces of the British Empire in India, specifically at Imphal (Manipur), and Kohima (Nagaland), with an ultimate plan to ‘March on Delhi’. Kohima amongst these was a more prized and important target as it ensured a good supply line for them through Burma, and they could cut off the British supply lines to Imphal.
Within two weeks of preparation, a small group of Japanese soldiers had reconnoitered the entire area and chosen the best routes to use, in what is now often regarded as “one of the most brilliant feats of reconnaissance in the history of war”. The Japanese swiftly marched onto India towards Kohima. It was only 10 days later that the British learnt of the advancing mammoth Japanese army from refugees fleeing before the host that had gathered to descend on India. It found the British completely unprepared and wanting, with some reports suggesting that there was no clarity regarding who was the officer in command and how many men he was commanding. There were inexperienced fresh recruits, others who had not seen action in a long time and to compound it, the British forces were spread thin not just across India, but across the globe. It is estimated that when the war started, there were approximately 1500 British and Indian soldiers pitted against an army of 12000-15000 Japanese.
Fighting began some 35 miles east of Kohima on 28 March, with the Assam Regiment which had set up defensive posts there. The sheer difference in the numbers was insurmountable odds, and withdrawal to Kohima was inevitable. The attack at Kohima began on 13 April, but some accurate artillery firing from the British held them back. The numbers were still too large and the Japanese attacked with renewed vigour on 17 April. Fortunately, and against unimaginable odds, the Allies managed to hold their position just till one batch of reinforcements arrived on the 18th, and before long came the second one, completing the relief of Kohima
The Japanese attacked once more on 22-23 April in the dead of the night, but an ammunition dump was hit, sparking off a huge explosion and illuminating the night, making it easier for the well-trenched British and Indian forces to pick out the Japanese against the blaze with small arm fire. Repeatedly through April and May, the Japanese kept trying to force a way to capture Kohima, with the besieged replying with all they could muster, just about keeping them at bay.
As the war extended, other factors came into play. The hilly terrain was taking its toll. Monsoon set in and with it came fever, dysentery and further problems with use of transport. Sleep became a luxury as the Japanese began to try anything they could to secure Kohima. A desperation driven by one major flaw in the Japanese preparation – food. They had started with 5000 oxen, confident that the war wouldn’t last too long and these many oxen would be sufficient to provide meat for the allotted 50 days. However, many died on the journey and the Japanese reached the battleground with only around 1000 oxen.
During this time, the British could get their hands on some tanks which played havoc with the Japanese bunkers. Japanese were seen abandoning their posts. The food and ammunition problem was also enormous and it was only stern orders from Japan that made them stay back. The tanks steadily gained ground, weeding out all Japanese resistance and the last major Japanese unit moved back on June 6-7. The Battle of Kohima had lasted for 64 days. A Japanese war correspondent, Shizuo Maruyama, summed up the Japanese experience at Kohima quite succinctly, when he wrote, “We had no ammunition, no clothes, no food, no guns. At Kohima, we were starved and then crushed.”
It was during the same time that the Allies had breached Normandy, and amidst the steady ground being gained everywhere, distant Kohima and Imphal were simply overlooked. Post-war analysis accord the battle the same importance in the war, and perhaps more, as the battles of Stalingrad in Russia and El Alamein in the middle-east. In 2014, a contest was run by the National Army Museum to identify “Britain’s Greatest Battle” and Imphal-Kohima topped the public poll. Some believe that the most significant impact of the battle was psychological. It showed that the Japanese were not invincible, and could be defeated, and decisively at that.
Netaji and ‘The Battle’
Ironically, there were Indians fighting on both sides of the war. Netaji Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj was in cahoots with the Japanese, and there were also Indians on the British side. Eventually, the Japanese toll stood at 53,000 dead and missing in the battles. The British forces sustained 12,500 casualties at Imphal, while the fighting at Kohima cost them another 4,000 casualties.
‘The Battle’, as it is now being known as, is slowly gaining the importance it deserves in the broad public sense, though those in the know, eulogised it and the impact it had on the outcome of the war, much earlier. Earl Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Allied Commander in the theatre, described Kohima as “probably one of the greatest battles in history…naked unparalleled heroism…the British/Indian Thermopylae”, moving it in the same league as the epic war fought in 480 BC. A war that demonstrated the power of a patriotic army defending its native soil.
There are several memorials to the British and Indian troops who fought in the area including the war cemeteries maintained at Digboi in Assam, Imphal in Manipur, and of course the one at Kohima with an inscription that has become famous as the ‘Kohima Epitaph’. It reads: “When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today’. And truly they did, for imagine the world, were they overrun. Better or worse, we cannot say. But definitely not freedom as we now know it.
Like it is said in ‘300’ – the movie adaptation of the Thermopylae battle, “Freedom isn’t free at all, that it comes with the highest of costs. The cost of blood.”