At 2:30 am on this day seventy-seven years ago my father was facing another screaming attack by Japanese soldiers around a garrison set up on the grounds of a Deputy Commissioner's bungalow in India. It was overlooked by a series of small hills near the town of Kohima. Along with his regiment, he was involved in a siege that lasted a fortnight. It involved fighting described as 'desperate as any recorded in history.'
Most people have never heard of the Siege of Kohima. Probably because it was fought by men involved in the Burma campaign, 'the forgotten army', whose story has never been given the glitzy Holywood treatment, like many military events of WWII. It was hardly reported at the time, the people of Britain were facing enough perils of their own, yet two Victoria crosses were awarded and Lord Mountbatten described it as one of the greatest battles in history.
Those that have read my recent book will know that my father, Samuel Wait 614883 was flown to Imphal with the rest of the 161 Brigade when the Japanese launched a major offensive to invade India. At Kohima, the Japanese hurled three infantry regiments, of over 6,000 men at the Fourth Battalion of the Royal West Kents. Together with what they called the 'odds and sods' the West Kents, known as "The Dirty Half Hundred," formed a scratch garrison of approximately 1,500. So began the siege of Kohima, one of the pivotal fights of the war against Japan.
The siege, which a Japanese colonel would later call, 'that great bitter battle', lasted for a fortnight, with hand-to-hand combat, fierce and ruthless, by 'filthy bedraggled, worn-out men, whose lungs were rarely free of the noxious smell of decaying corpses inside and out the perimeter'. By the night of the 18th April 1944, the Japanese had cut the garrison in two with wave after wave of attacks. They were everywhere, in all the trenches and just one hundred yards from the Battalion Headquarters that held 600 hundred casualties.
If the Japanese were to achieve the great prize, the blooming rose of eastern India, they would first have to grasp the thorn of the hill station at Kohima. The Indian Official History records that the whole defence was about to crumble and the perimeter had been reduced to a little square with each side being no more than 350 yards. The tennis court became the front line between attacker and defender and where tennis balls had been idly lobbed, grenades whizzed back and forth across the width of the court.
When I asked dad how he felt during this siege, he replied, "I did not want to let my mates down". His Commanding Officer, Major John Winstanley later explained that they had no idea that they were confronted by a whole Japanese division. But they had no thought of surrender at any level.
The garrison did not fall. The thin line of the West Kents held. On the morning of the 20th April, the Royal Berkshire Regiment relieved the garrison and witnessed little groups of grimy, bearded rifleman standing at the mouths of their bunkers and staring with bloodshot sleep-starved eyes. The siege was finally over. My father and the rest of the shattered West Kents went down the hill in two's and three's. They had fought and lived in trenches for almost a fortnight. For rest, they had thrown themselves on the ground with their boots on, ready to fight at a moments notice.
This epic battle was a decisive turning point in the Burma Campaign. It demonstrated categorically that the Japanese were not invincible. Major General William Slim, Commander of the 14th Army later said that "sieges have been longer, but few have been more intense, and in none have the defenders deserved greater honour than the garrison of Kohima."
Today, the cemetery in Kohima is located exactly where the battle took place. There are two memorial crosses. One is dedicated to the Indian and Sikh soldiers, the other has the epitaph:
'When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.'
My father survived this horrific siege and remained in Burma fighting with the 14th Army until August 1946. By then, the Japanese had been driven out of Burma and surrendered.
