Road of Bones Read online

  At Harper Collins my editor Arabella Pike was a wise, encouraging and patient presence who was always proved right in the end, and without whom much valuable time would have been spent floundering in the wood instead of seeing the trees; Michael Upchurch at HarperCollins did much of the hard work needed to pull the manuscript the last crucial yards to completion; my agent David Godwin has the happy knack of knowing precisely when to insert his presence and when to leave well enough alone. I would, on several occasions, been lost without him. At the BBC Sarah Ward Lilley, Jon Williams and Francesca Unsworth have been the soul of understanding and support. In Ireland, where much of this book was written, I am indebted to the hospitality of my friend John King who gave up his hilltop studio overlooking Ardmore Bay to allow me space and quiet. At home in London my thanks are due to Dr Niall Campbell and Christina Garcia Llavona whose work on war trauma provided many valuable insights, and to Dr John Taylor of Toronto who answered my queries on the physical wounds of war. My friends Rob, David, Cecilia, Gordon, Paul, Fred and Ava all helped me to stay the course. Above all I am grateful to Daniel, Holly and Anne. Anne helped me to excavate the life of Charles Ridley Pawsey and was always the first to read and offer wise comments on the manuscript. The book would never have been completed without her. Nobody around me knows better what comes home from the wars.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FERGAL KEANE was born in London and educated in Ireland. He is one of the BBC’s most distinguished correspondents and an awardwinning broadcaster and author. He has reported for the corporation from Northern Ireland, South Africa, Asia and the Balkans. He has been awarded a BAFTA, been named reporter of the year on television and radio, winning honours from the Royal Television Society and the Sony Radio Awards, most recently for his BBC Radio 4 series Taking a Stand. Keane has won the George Orwell prize for literature and the James Cameron Prize. He is the author of a number of bestselling books including Letter to Daniel and his memoir All of These People. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  A note on sources

  The main documentary material sourced from archives and museums is abbreviated as follows: National Archives of the United Kingdom – NA; National Army Museum – NAM; Imperial War Museum – IWM; Royal Military Academy Archives – RMAA; National Institute for Defence Studies, Japan – NIDS; National Diet Library, Japan – NDL. The sources of all other quotations and significant points of information are to be found in the footnotes and endnotes. The classic book on the battle written by a participant is Arthur Swinson’s account Kohima (Arrow Books, 1966), now sadly out of print. Captain Swinson kept a daily diary and after the war had access to the senior British Generals. He wrote his book while the main participants were still alive and I had the sense that there was material he felt obliged to exclude. I discovered that he had left his papers to the National Archives who had in turn given them to the Imperial War Museum, where they were presented to me with the words every writer longs to hear: ‘You seem to be the first person to have asked for these.’ The papers contained a wealth of material, including correspondence with senior generals and extracts from their diaries. This unpublished material helped cast an invaluable light on the extent of the pressures, political as well as military, facing the British command. I am indebted to Arthur Swinson’s widow, Mrs Joy Benson, for permission to quote from his work. The papers of Brigadier Hugh Richards, who commanded the Kohima garrison, illuminated not only the conduct of the battle but the deep rift which emerged afterwards between some of the leading figures in the defence. His son Roger gave me access to this trove of letters and narrative accounts. These included different drafts of his account of the battle. They were delivered to my home in a Second World War issue brown suitcase belonging to his father. Other words which proved immensely helpful to an understanding of the battle were Brigadier C. E. Lucas Phillips Springboard to Victory (Heinemann, 1966), Major A. J. Barker’s March on Delhi (Faber, 1963) and Major Anthony Brett James’s Ball of Fire – the Fifth Indian Division in the Second World War (Aldershot, Gale and Polden, 1951). Leslie Edwards’s Kohima – the Furthest Battle (The History Press, 2009) provides an illuminating day-by-day survey of the fighting from existing records; John Colvin’s Not Ordinary Men (Pen and Sword, 1994) is rich in detail and suffused with nostalgia for an idea of Britain that vanished in his lifetime. On the Burma war as a whole Louis Allen’s magisterial Burma – the Longest Battle (J. M. Dent, 1984) provided important insights into Japanese thinking about the battle. Allen was an intelligence officer who interviewed high ranking Japanese after the war. For an insight into the thinking of Lieutenant General William Slim, commander of the 14th Army, Robert Lyman’s Slim, Master of War (Robinson, 2004) is indispensable.

  Extracts from C. E. Lucas Phillips, Springboard to Victory appear by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.

  Every effort has been made to obtain copyright clearance for material quoted in this book. Any omissions brought to the attention of the publisher will be gratefully received and corrected in any future editions.

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader’s search tools.

  Epigraph

  p. xiv ‘The dreams of Empire’ Corporal G. W. G. Driscol, ‘To a Dead Jap’, Muse in Exile, p. 14, Burma 1944.

  Introduction

  p. xvi ‘I had the impression that’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. xvi ‘That is in Java’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. xvii ‘We were being shot at’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. xviii ‘They had murdered people’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. xviii ‘I find Kohima appalling’ Interview by Kohima Educational Trust, Kohima.

  p. xviii ‘In the jungle, covered with green’ Lieutenant Shosaku Kameyama, translated by Keiko Itoh, The Burma Campaign Society Newsletter (March 2005).

  p. xviii ‘Most were too weak’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. xix ‘The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow’ Cited in Gerald H. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers (Osprey Publishing, 1975), p. 68.

  p. xix ‘there is a strong feeling’ Walter Lippman to John Maynard Keynes, April 1942, cited in Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind (Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 149.

  One: An Empire at Bay

  p. 1 ‘bloomed with tropical profusion’ James Lunt, A Hell of A Licking (Collins, 1986), p. 23.

  p. 2 ‘was entertained by dancing’ Andreas Augustin, The Strand, Yangon (The Most Famous Hotels in the World, 2007).

  p. 2 ‘full of squealing pigs’ Cited in Max Hastings, Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (HarperPress, 2007), p. 220.

  p. 3 ‘supposed to have been’ NA, WO 106/3655, Report by Captain T. M. H. Pardoe, 8 February to 8 April 1941.

  p. 3 ‘over some of their Asiatic’ Ibid.

  p. 3 ‘She also owns a mine’ Ibid.

  p. 4 ‘A very good report’ Ibid.

  p. 5 ‘China had exhausted Japan’ BBC People’s War, Fred Millem.

  p. 5 ‘remote contingency’ NA, CAB 69/2.

  p. 5 ‘a semi-surrender to Japan’ George Orwell, Orwell Diaries (Harville and Secker, 2009 edition), p 268.

  p. 6 ‘Should Burma be visited’ A Handbook for Visitors to India, Burma and Ceylon (John Murray, 1903) .

  p. 7 ‘ablaze with flowers’ E. C. V. Foucar, I Lived in Burma (Dennis Dobson, 1956), p. 11.

  p. 7 ‘insisted to the stationmaster’ Foucar, I Lived in Burma, p. 209.

  p. 7 ‘Things aren’t what they were’ Ibid., p. 23.

  p. 8 ‘a tendency among Englishmen’ Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, ‘Notes on Burma Operations’, cited in Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War (J. M. Dent, 1984), p. 90.

  p. 8 ‘driven the more apathetic’ Annual Report on the Administration of Burma (Rangoon: Government of Burma, 1884–85), p. 84, cited in Subir Bhaumik, ‘The
Returnees and the Refugees’, in Refugees and the State, ed. by Ranabira Samaddara (SAGE, 2003), p. 187.

  p. 8 ‘birds of passage who’ Cited in Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons (Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 120.

  p. 8 ‘The indications were plain’ Foucar, I Lived in Burma, p. 85.

  p. 8 ‘in the 1930s’ U On Pe, ‘Modern Burmese Literature’, Atlantic Monthly, February 1958.

  p. 9 ‘stout lady, popular with’ Foucar, I Lived in Burma, p. 111.

  p. 10 ‘The suspense had been snapped’ BBC People’s War, Fred Millem.

  p. 11 ‘The bodies were mangled’ Donald Mellican, private memoir.

  p. 11 ‘We made makeshift’ Ibid.

  p. 12 ‘wild and half-baked’ Cited in Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide (Reprint Society/Collins, 1957), p. 295.

  p. 12 ‘much has been done to strengthen’ ‘New Leader Appointed for Burma’, Melbourne Argus, 29 December 1941.

  p. 13 ‘taken the responsibility’ Hans J. Van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, 1922–45 (Routledge, 2003), p. 29.

  p. 13 ‘The effect that the loss’ S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan, vol. 2: India’s Most Dangerous Hour (HMSO, 1958), pp. 100–101.

  p. 13 ‘In the streets of this’ W. H. Prendergast, A Galway Engineer in Assam (Galway Library, private memoir).

  p. 13 ‘Others, both soldiers and civilians’ Bisheshwar Prasad, Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War (Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, India and Pakistan, 1966), p. 208.

  p. 13 ‘the deserted city and oil’ Ibid., p. 213.

  p. 13 ‘behind it pathetically followed’ Prendergast, A Galway Engineer in Assam.

  p. 13 ‘It was to me a smell’ Clare Boothe, ‘Burma Mission’, Life, 27 April 1942.

  p. 14 ‘distended bellies supported on’ Pat Carmichael, Mountain Battery: Burma 1942 (Devin, 1983), pp. 212–13, cited in Jon Latimer, Burma: The Forgotten War (John Murray, 2004), p. 105.

  p. 15 ‘I found the bodies of’ Geoffrey Tyson, The Forgotten Frontier (W.H.Targett, Calcutta, 1945), p. 80.

  p. 15 ‘the incongruity of the items’ Ibid., p. 19.

  p. 15 ‘striding along like a Rajput’ Lunt, A Hell of a Licking, p. 173.

  p. 15 ‘A bright red skirt’ Ibid.

  p. 15 ‘which made him go’ Ibid.

  p. 16 ‘Before the next bend’ Donald Mellican, private memoir.

  p. 16 ‘No sooner had we finished lunch’ Gordon S. Seagrave, Burma Surgeon (W. W. Norton, New York, 1943), pp. 202–203.

  p. 17 According to one official estimate NA, WO 106/2677, Branch Memorandum No 6921, VCIGS to the India Office, Withdrawal of Forces from Burma to Assam.

  p. 17 ‘They had heard evacuees’ .

  p. 17 ‘One man, a civilian whom I had known’ Lunt, A Hell of A Licking, p. 273.

  p. 17 Emboldened by the Japanese Cited in David Horsfield, From Semaphore to Satellite (Privately published).

  p. 18 ‘The hitherto axiomatic acceptance’ British Library: L/PO/6/106b. Privy Seal, Clement Attlee, for the War Cabinet on ‘The Indian political situation’, February 2 1942.

  p. 18 ‘We will never be able to’ M. Collis, Last and First in Burma (Faber, 1956), pp. 181–2.

  Two: The Longest Road

  p. XXX ‘worn army leather’ Private W. Norman, personal account .

  p. 19 ‘I shouted at’ Ibid.

  p. 19 ‘Get on your feet’ Ibid.

  p. 20 ‘using coloured tracer’ NA, WO 203/5733, Narrative of First Burma Campaign, p. 161.

  p. 20 ‘As we crossed’ Private W. Norman, personal account.

  p. 21 ‘The houses in the town’ Kazuo Tamayama and John Nunneley, Tales by Japanese Soldiers (Cassell, 2000), p. 38.

  p. 21 ‘There were many fish’ Ibid., p. 40.

  p. 21 ‘I asked him in my’ Ibid, p. 64.

  p. 22 ‘he told us to go and get’ NA, WO 361/206, Statement re Missing Soldiers, Ref. your MB/M/326, 22 November 1944.

  p. 22 ‘the sound of the machine’ NA, WO 361/206, Statement of No. 4690408 Pte Toplis J.

  p. 22 ‘flatly refused to attempt’ NA, WO 361/206, Resume of the Fighting by the 2/KOYLI from 20–23 Feb 42 by Capt. J. F. Laverick.

  p. 22 ‘our troops have fought well’ NA, CAB/68/9/17.

  p. 24 ‘the sodden ground’ Field Marshal Lord Slim, Defeat into Victory (Cassell, 1956), p. 109.

  p. 24 ‘We carried on marching’ NA, WO 361/206, Statement by no./690787 L/Cpl W. Long in respect of No.4689410 Pte W. Powell 2/KOYLI.

  p. 25 ‘I tied him to a tree’ NA, WO 361/206, Statement by 4687544 Sgt Butcher W. 2/KOYLI.

  p. 25 ‘At 1930 hrs signalling’ Lieutenant Colonel C. E. K. Bagot, MC, ‘The 28th in the Concluding Phase of the Burma Campaign 1942’, Back Badge Regimental Magazine.

  p. 25 ‘The impact of witnessing’ Gerald Fitzpatrick, No Mandalay, No Maymyo (79 Survive) (Book Guild, 2001), p. 255.

  p. 26 ‘swallow tail butterflies’ R. E. S. Tanner and D. A. Tanner, Burma 1942: Memories of a Retreat (History Press, 2009), p. 112.

  p. 26 ‘During these days we saw’ A. Tegla Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit – the Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War 1939–1946 (George Allen and Unwin, 1947).

  p. 26 ‘a less flashy’ Fitzpatrick, No Mandalay, No Maymo, p. 256.

  p. 26 ‘They might look like’ Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 110.

  p. 27 ‘This let the pus’ Tanner and Tanner, Burma 1942, p.112.

  p. 27 ‘infinitely moving – and humbling’ Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 114.

  p. 27 ‘faithful Cameronian bodyguard’ Ibid.

  p. 28 ‘In a dark hour’ Ibid., p. 121.

  Three: At the Edge of the Raj

  p. 29 ‘out of control’ RMAA, Pawsey Papers, Part 2: The Year 1942.

  p. 29 ‘hungry, thirsty, exhausted’ Ursula Graham Bower, Naga Path (John Murray, 1952), p. 155.

  p. 30 ‘Binns reports [the Chinese] Army’ NA, WO 208/799, From Viceroy to Secretary of State for India, New Delhi, 15 May 1942.

  p. 30 ‘There was no equipment’ Pawsey Papers, Part 2: The Year 1942.

  p. 30 ‘the onset of monsoon’ Bisheshwar Prasad, Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War (Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, India and Pakistan, 1952), p. 34.

  p. 31 ‘those trenches remained’ H. Fitzmaurice Stacke, The Worcestershire Regiment in the Great War (Cheshire, 1926).

  p. 31 Then he and a few Firm and Forester: Journal of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment (November 1972).

  p. 33 ‘shaggy village’ Graham Bower, Naga Path, p. 4.

  p. 33 ‘One behind the other’ Ibid.

  p. 34 ‘He was always calm’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. 34 ‘I remember him calling’ IWM, Oral History Project, file no. 23088/6, interview with Pat Whyte.

  p. 34 ‘sort of sickly sweet’ Ibid.

  p. 35 ‘fiendish shriek’ W. H. Prendergast, A Galway Engineer in Assam (Galway library, privately published).

  p. 35 ‘The going was appallingly’ Henry Balfour, Diary of a tour in the Naga Hills, Assam, 1922–23. Pitt Rivers Museum Manuscript Collections, Balfour Papers, Box 3/1, entry for 19 September 1922. Reproduced courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

  p. 36 ‘barbarous tribes’ J. McCosh, civil assistant surgeon of Goalpara, 1835, cited by Kekhriesituo Yhome in Politics of Region: The Making of Nagas Identity during the Colonial and Post-Colonial Era, [Borderlands e-journal, Volume 6 No. 3, 2007].

  p. 36 ‘armed with only spears’ Colonel L. W. Shakespear, History of the Assam Rifles (Naval and Military Press, reprint, 2005), p 19.

  p. 37 ‘A party from one village’ NA, WO 106/141, Detailed Report on the Naga Hills Expedition of 1879–80, by Captain P. J. Maitland, Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General.

  p. 37 ‘They would cut close’ Interviewed for this book.


  p. 37 ‘Before, the British did’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. 39 ‘had not in all respects’ NA, WO 106/141, Detailed Report on the Naga Hills Expedition of 1879–80.

  p. 39 ‘pitiful sight it was’ RMAA, Pawsey Papers, The Siege of Kohima.

  p. 40 ‘This had the desired effect’ NA, WO 106/141, Detailed Report on the Naga Hills Expedition of 1879–80.

  p. 40 ‘Their lands have all been’ Ibid.

  p. 40 ‘the Nagas have asked’ Hansard, Parl. Debs. (series 3) vol. 260, col. 364 (31 March 1881).

  p. 41 ‘break[ing] the Kuki spirit’ NA, WO 106/58, Report presented by Lieutenant General Sir H. D’U. Keary, General Officer Commanding Burma Division, Maymyo, June 1919, cited in Dispatch on the Operations against the Kuki Tribes of Assam and Burma, November 1917 to March 1919.

  p. 41 ‘For had they not surrendered’ Ibid.

  p. 41 ‘energetically carried out’ Ibid.

  p. 41 ‘Presumably the District Commissioner’ Hansard, Parl. Debs (vol 301), cc1343–54 (10 May 1935).

  p. 42 ‘they are an extremely moral people’ Ibid.

  p. 42 ‘There was overwhelming evidence’ Ibid.

  p. 42 ‘whatever they eat’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. 42 ‘Civilisation was no good’ Interviewed for this book.

  p. 42 ‘Any observer of the’ B.R.Rizvi, J.P.Mills and the North-East, p.76, in The Anthropology of North-East India, ed. by Tanka Bahadur Subba and G. C. Ghosh (Longman Orient, 2003).

  p. 43 ‘My friend’ Gordon Graham, The Trees are All Young on Garrison Hill (Kohima Educational Trust, 2005), p. 31.

  Four: The King Emperor’s Spear

  p. 45 ‘Some of them gave us’ Cited at