Road of Bones Read online

  On 27 March he wrote that he ‘felt no compunction [about leaving]. They had a day’s rice and knew where they were, and [had] the only blanket, cooking pot and kukris. I had a map and compass and a tin of bully and one of sardines and half a dozen K biscuits.’ Betts kept moving through jungle and up steep ridges, bypassing a village full of Japanese, their fires blazing and torches casting beams of light across the darkness. Clambering up an 8,000 foot ridge he attempted to sleep, covering himself in grass for warmth. Weary and disorientated from thirst and hunger, he found himself wandering along a dry river bed where the sharp stones sliced through what remained of his boots. At several points along the way Nagas had given him food and pointed him in the direction of Kohima. Using dynamite he had brought with him, Betts caught fish, and in abandoned huts he found firewood, rice and sweet potatoes. Ursula Graham Bower, who would later meet the young officer in her jungle stronghold, told how Betts met an old Naga lady who burst into tears on seeing his condition. ‘[She] gave him her only food … some pork … with that he carried on for another two days.’

  Tim Betts reached Kohima on 2 April, having walked across some of the most forbidding territory in the world. ‘Flat out with violent diarrhoea, feet like footballs,’ he wrote, ‘and so weak I could hardly stand.’ His normal weight was 11 stone 7 pounds. He now weighed just six stone.

  Through the hills from north to south, indications were mounting that the Japanese were coming. Nagas ran to alert British outposts. The V Force officer Lieutenant Colonel E. D. ‘Moke’ Murray managed to send a last message on his high-powered radio transmitter before he escaped into the jungle. Murray eventually ran into an Indian patrol on 16 March and gave them a note for their headquarters warning that he believed a full-scale offensive was under way. The patrol passed the message on to headquarters, where it was somehow mislaid and never passed up the chain of command. A patrol from the 1st Assam was settling down in a V Force stockade when they heard that three hundred Japanese were heading towards them. That night the Japanese attacked the stockade and found it empty.

  The only formations now standing between Sato’s advance and Kohima were the 1st Assam troops at Jessami and Kharasom and elements of 50 Indian Parachute Brigade, which arrived in the mountain-top village of Sangshak on 21 March. The CO, Brigadier M. R. J. ‘Tim’ Hope-Thomson, was a veteran of Palestine, where he had won the Military Cross, but had spent his time in India preparing the first ever Indian Army airborne unit for battle. The 50 Indian Parachute Brigade was carrying out training and patrolling around Kohima when news came of the first Japanese crossings of the Chindwin. Sangshak was crucial because it occupied a position astride routes leading to both Kohima and Imphal.

  Because much of the available transport was being used to ferry non-combatants out of Imphal, Hope-Thomson was short one company when his two battalions arrived in the area. They found themselves short of entrenching tools and barbed wire, and with a chronic lack of access to fresh water. The spiny ridges of the border area were notably short of water sources. Everything would depend on supply from the air. In the recriminations that followed the disaster, much was made of Hope-Thomson’s decision to make a stand at Sangshak. It was a barren hilltop, around which the perimeter stretched ‘about 600 hundred yards long and 300 yards at its widest, shaped like an hourglass’. With the exception of a small area in the middle, the ground was too rocky to be able to dig defensive positions deeper than three feet. ‘It was volcanic glass, or obsidian, as immovable as granite,’ recalled Lieutenant Harry Seaman, a platoon commander at Sangshak. Once the Japanese began to pour in mortar and artillery fire they could not fail to hit the defenders.

  The great chronicler of the Burma war, Louis Allen, chided Hope-Thomson for choosing his perimeter ‘without regard to its lack of water’, a serious problem in a siege. But Hope-Thomson had not chosen the position. He came to take over from an existing force and, his defenders argue, never had the time to construct a new base. Frequent requests to headquarters for more barbed wire elicited no response.* Wire is the infantryman’s first line of defence. It slows the enemy within killing range and prevents the kind of creep-and-rush tactics the Japanese used to terrifying effect in the darkness. A well-wired perimeter also allows defenders the possibility of some sleep during the day. Later, the survivors of Sanghsak would react with angry disbelief when they struggled into Imphal to find headquarters buildings surrounded by triple lines of barbed wire.

  Hope-Thomson had no intelligence on the size or direction of the Japanese forces in his area. As far as he knew, the main thrust of the Japanese attack was against Imphal, along routes a long distance from Sangshak. As one of his battalion commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Hopkinson, wrote later, they knew ‘nothing about any offensive towards Imphal … and Kohima from our front’. From Hope-Thomson’s point of view, the strength of his base and outposts should have been adequate to deal with a small Japanese formation. He had a thousand fighting men. There were another eight hundred or so support troops. However, a Japanese group of even regimental strength would have substantially outnumbered the defenders.

  Hopkinson wrote that he had ‘always been very puzzled as to how the Japanese managed to cross the Chindwin apparently entirely unobserved from the air and by ground posts’. But they had been observed. The intelligence was simply never passed on to 50 Brigade.* It meant that brigade was still adhering to a training schedule as the Japanese 58th Regiment bore down on its way to Kohima.

  Hope-Thomson had sent men from his 152nd battalion to join the 4/5 Mahratta Regiment at positions about nine miles from Sangshak, at a place called Sheldon’s Corner, along the route of any likely Japanese advance. Three miles further along again were the last defensive outposts at Point 7378. The CO of 152nd battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hopkinson, met V Force stragglers and Nagas who reported seeing parties of Japanese. But there was no suggestion that these were large groups or that they were advancing on Sangshak. However, on 18 March he received a wireless call from his outpost down the road. The officer told him that an exhausted V Force man had just stumbled into the camp with an alarming report. The Japanese were across the Chindwin in strength. As many as nine hundred had already been counted and they were heading up the track towards the forward positions. Early the following morning Hopkinson sent another message. Battle was under way.

  * * *

  * Barbed wire was banned in the Naga Hills due to a pre-war ordinance designed to protect local farmers.

  * A decade after the events in question Slim wrote that within a week (author’s italics) of the Japanese offensive … it became clear that the situation in the Kohima area was likely to be even more dangerous than that at Imphal. Not only were the enemy columns closing in on Kohima at much greater speed than I had expected, but they were obviously in much greater strength. Indeed it was soon evident (author’s italics) that the bulk, if not the whole, of the Japanese 31st Division, was driving for Kohima and Dimapur.’ (Defeat Into Victory, p. 305.) This assertion deserves examination. If one takes the start of the Japanese offensive into the Naga Hills as 15 March, Slim seems to be saying he was aware by 23 March that the Japanese were in much greater strength than a regiment. Colonel Hugh Richards wrote that he only became aware of the size of the approaching Japanese force from Naga scouts on 27 March. The 11 Army Group Commander, General Sir George Giffard, wrote in his official dispatch that ‘we became aware’ that a division was on the way on 29 March. Slim may have been mistaken in his recollection. It is hard to imagine the defenders of the Kohima area would have been left in ignorance of the size of the attacking force if 14th Army had known earlier.

  * Sangshak lay outside the Naga Hills and barbed wire was permitted.

  * The mislaid evidence of the V Force officer Colonel Murray was not the last instance of intelligence going astray. An agent of Z Force, one of the clandestine units operating inside Burma, was able to report that three Japanese battalions had crossed the river on 16 March. This was logged in the
intelligence diary of 4 Corps at Imphal on the same day, but was never passed on to 50 Brigade at Sangshak.

  THIRTEEN

  Onslaught

  It was only a week since they had left the Chindwin but to Lieutenant Yoshiteru Hirayama, machine-gun squad leader with 3rd battalion, 58th Regiment, it felt as if they had been marching forever. There was sun and clear air at the top of the mountains, and always a heavy blanket of wet air waiting at the bottom. ‘It was up and down and up and down every day. I couldn’t wait to get there. I had no map to see where we were or how long was left.’ They were tormented by leeches. No matter how tightly a man buttoned his tunic or wrapped his puttees, the bloodsuckers found a way in. There were occasional distractions from the monotony of the march, like the watercress the men found growing at the streams in the bottom of valleys. ‘We took them to our mouths as hungry locusts,’ remembered the war correspondent Yukihiko Imai. Later, he saw the bright green stools of several hundred soldiers scattered all over the ground.

  He also recorded how the Japanese recruited local labour. ‘As soon as we reached the hamlet we caught the women and the children, and the soldiers locked them up in the cottage. It was sure their husband or parent come back to help and they got their near relative in exchange for their own labour. When we reached the next village we released them and in the same way we got labour next.’ The Naga would remember this in a few months’ time when the Japanese were passing in the opposite direction.

  The first indications Lieutenant Hirayama had of the British presence were the machine-gun bullets zipping through the foliage around him. He found cover with the rest of his unit. The lieutenant was now able to see the British trenches, but every time a Japanese soldier moved there was a burst of fire in response. A day attack was impossible. Waiting for darkness, he understood that the China veterans around him would watch every move he made. Hirayama faced his first great test as a soldier and a leader. At school he had suffered bullying because of his class background: he was the son of a monk, well-to-do and well dressed, living apart from the peasant children whose tiny houses skirted the monastery gates. They would not accept him. Now he commanded a unit of tough peasants who were obliged to offer him respect because of his rank. He would not feel he had earned it until the men had seen him act bravely in battle.

  When night came, Hirayama was given orders to mount a flanking movement to the left of the British trenches. Once in position, he settled down and waited for further orders. Suddenly he saw figures moving in front of his position. Should he shoot? He held off. ‘It was actually our men and it was good I didn’t shoot!’ he recalled. It was his good judgement rather than physical bravery that first inclined his men to have faith in their young officer.

  Hirayama and the rest of 3rd battalion had bumped up against C company, 152nd battalion of the Parachute Brigade. The first Japanese assault was beaten off. But through the night there were two subsequent attacks which gained ground. There were about 170 defenders, among them seven British officers, but with the main mortar section out of range on another hill, the company commander could only hope to slow down the Japanese. Hopkinson received a last message from Point 7378 at dawn on 20 March. The commander, three other officers and forty men were already dead. Relieving troops had become bogged down in thick jungle or found the Japanese resistance too stiff to penetrate.

  The official history of the 58th Regiment described the closing stages of the fight. A party of about twenty British and Indians charged downhill, firing and shouting as they came. But between them and the Japanese was a wide ravine, into which some of the men fell. Most of the others were forced to surrender, while a few escaped. The Japanese then witnessed an extraordinary scene. ‘At the very top of the position an officer appeared in sight, put a pistol to his head and shot himself in full view of everyone below. Our men fell silent, deeply impressed by such a brave act.’ The suicide of an officer in full view of the enemy was not part of any British military tradition. But it was a gesture the Japanese understood perfectly and it gave them food for thought. These were different soldiers from the ones routed in Burma and Singapore.

  The 58th Regiment suffered 160 casualties in the thirty-six-hour battle, during which ‘the enemy had resisted with courage and skill’. In the immediate aftermath Hirayama was sent to check a nearby track. As the patrol moved along, a landmine exploded, killing his friend, Second Lieutenant Oshima. Years later, what would remain with Hirayama was not the blood and gore but the image of his friend’s sandals which were packed away in his backpack. ‘They were the sandals for mountain hiking which he loved. That was his personality, a man who loved the open places.’

  The defenders at the main blocking position three miles further back in the direction of Sangshak now retreated. On reaching Sangshak, Lieutenant Colonel Jackie Trim, CO of the 4/5 Mahratta, was allocated an area of about fifty square yards for his entire battalion, such was the confined space of the perimeter. ‘There was much confusion,’ he wrote, with considerable understatement. As his men were digging in, a heavy thunderstorm descended and a company commander received a severe electric shock. To add to his woes, Trim found himself under fire from his own machine guns. Frightened soldiers were shooting at shadows. ‘The men were hungry and tired and as a result became trigger happy but we managed to calm them down,’ he wrote. The storm did bring one benefit: the heavy rain provided a source of water for the parched Mahrattas.

  The Japanese were busy foraging for food in the nearby village of Ukhrul. Lieutenant Shosaku Kameyama of the 58th Regiment arrived to find, ‘to our great disappointment’, that the British had set fire to their stores before leaving. A sergeant major found a bottle of whisky which he presented to the infantry group commander, General Miyazaki, who had arrived to direct the battle. Kameyama’s men were desperate for rest after a tough six-day march from the Chindwin. Miyazaki had no intention of stopping now.

  By the time the Japanese encirclement was complete, Hope-Thomson had approximately 2,000 men inside his perimeter. They were well trained but facing battle together for the first time. Because of insufficient transport, the remainder of his 153 battalion was left behind in the village of Litan, between Sangshak and Imphal.

  General Miyazaki was not meant to stop at Sangshak. Kohima was his objective and any attack on Sangshak was supposed to have been left to the 15th Division, which was heading this way towards Imphal. But the 15th Division was behind schedule and 50 Indian Parachute Brigade was a threat to Miyazaki’s line of communications. In his view, marching past Sangshak was not an option.

  At dusk on 22 March the Japanese launched the first concerted attack. It came from the west, down a hill and across the village football field. As they flitted between burning native huts, the defenders saw them as shadows and spectres, smashed backwards by the fire from mortars and mountain guns, but regrouping for a second attack – a relentless enemy whose high-pitched war cries carried across the contested ground between the blasts of high explosive. In the darkness, and with the smoke from explosions, a defending soldier might only see a Japanese as he arrived in front of him. ‘With the firing, Very lights and shouting, we might have been watching a Hollywood movie,’ wrote medical officer Eric Neild. Another described the effect of seeing the troops tumbling in the face of machine-gun fire as watching men die in slow motion.

  A Japanese lieutenant urged his men forward screaming ‘Tsukkome!’ – ‘Charge!’ – and, reaching the first trenches, used his sword to cut down four Indian soldiers before being felled by gunfire. Lieutenant Yoshiteru Hirayama was surprised by the amount of artillery fire. ‘It felt like hundreds of shells.’ His platoon was driven backwards. ‘We set up our machine gun and we could see the British trenches. The British shot down at us as they had dug their trenches first.’ The heavy fire gave an impression of defensive strength at variance with the reality.

  The colour-bearer with the 58th Regiment, Second Lieutenant Hiroshi Yamagami, smoked a last ‘Java’ cigarette with his co
mrades before going into the attack. If he were killed, it was agreed that one of the NCOs would take up the flag. If the nominated man were killed, another would take over, and so on. The last man would burn the colours with gasoline and destroy the coat of arms with a grenade. A canteen full of gasoline was permanently on hand.

  Lieutenant Kameyama of the 3rd battalion saw his company commander break down in tears because the enemy fire was too heavy for his men to recover the bodies of the dead. The CO was wounded in the neck but continued to shout instructions. ‘Hearing my report, the commander finally realised that the attack could not be carried out and he broke down in tears, a man weeping in front of his subordinates, saying, “Too shameful not to recover the bones of Lieutenant Ban and soldiers of 8th Company.”’

  At dawn on 23 March, the defenders looked across the football field to see around one hundred dead Japanese. Only twenty men had survived from one company and they had lost their commander. One battalion would lose more than four hundred killed and wounded in repeated attempts to breach the perimeter. The sight of so many dead Japanese gave heart to the encircled troops.

  The mood of optimism did not last long. An air drop of supplies that afternoon fell outside the perimeter and into Japanese hands. The Dakota pilots, with one exception, were flying too high for the accurate drop the tight perimeter demanded. Day after day the same scenario was repeated. The Dakotas flew too high, except for one which flew so low that the defenders ‘could almost distinguish [the pilot’s] features in his cockpit, and watch the dispatchers at work in the doorway as the aircraft passed attracting a storm of small-arms fire from the enemy on each circuit, as the brave and skilful crew delivered every last pound of its priceless cargo within the bounds of the perimeter’. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hopkinson, 152nd parachute battalion, later discovered that this particular aircrew had taken part in training with 50 Brigade and felt a special responsibility to the men on the ground.