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Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 – The Epic Story of the Last Great Stand of Empire
Fergal Keane
(This ebook contains a limited number of illustrations. Maps are best viewed on a tablet.)The epic story of one of the most savage battles of the Second World War.Kohima. In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a tiny force of British and Indian troops faced the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Outnumbered ten to one, the defenders fought the Japanese hand to hand in a battle that was amongst the most savage in modern warfare.A garrison of no more than 1,500 fighting men, desperately short of water and with the wounded compelled to lie in the open, faced a force of 15,000 Japanese. They held the pass and prevented a Japanese victory that would have proved disastrous for the British. Another six weeks of bitter fighting followed as British and Indian reinforcements strove to drive the enemy out of India. When the battle was over, a Japanese army that had invaded India on a mission of imperial conquest had suffered the worst defeat in its history. Thousands of men lay dead on a devastated landscape, while tens of thousands more Japanese starved in a catastrophic retreat eastwards. They called the journey back to Burma the ‘Road of Bones’, as friends and comrades committed suicide or dropped dead from hunger along the jungle paths.Fergal Keane has reported for the BBC from conflicts on every continent over the past 25 years, and he brings to this work of history not only rigorous scholarship but a raw understanding of the pitiless nature of war. It is a story filled with vivid characters: the millionaire's son who refused a commission and was awarded a VC for his sacrifice in battle, the Roedean debutante who led a guerrilla band in the jungle, and the General who defied the orders of a hated superior in order to save the lives of his men. Based on original research in Japan, Britain and India, ‘Road of Bones’ is a story about extraordinary courage and the folly of imperial dreams.
ROAD OF BONES
THE SIEGE OF KOHIMA 1944
THE EPIC STORY OF THE LAST
GREAT STAND OF EMPIRE
FERGAL KEANE
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_0244434f-c369-5b0c-adae-f4405d23aaa3)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2010
Copyright © Fergal Keane 2010
Fergal Keane asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Maps by Hugh Bicheno
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Source ISBN 9780007132409
Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780007439867
Version 2018-12-05
DEDICATION (#ulink_afac4121-382e-5cbb-b6c9-8e102f3e325f)
In memory of John Shipster, soldier.
CONTENTS
Cover (#u8da2b930-b0d8-5f9c-9c82-d91f71fcf946)
Title Page (#u47146549-574e-5e3c-a178-355df5546f42)
Copyright (#ue9fecb6e-497f-54ea-b527-704217a9933f)
Dedication (#u5e5be8e9-0f58-5f1f-8275-376d4c68047c)
List of Maps (#ub443a540-017f-55f0-a5c9-9a462682d73b)
Epigraph (#u7535ba64-2000-5597-aa5b-cc516d81a7b1)
Prologue (#ulink_e035d7f4-6b11-539f-bbe5-eac422d8d003)
1 An Empire at Bay (#ulink_75e7181e-d46e-54f7-b927-5982fdd391d0)
2 The Longest Road (#ulink_ba648ec6-dac8-50a3-8bf9-fbeaac81c23d)
3 At the Edge of the Raj (#ulink_b3aa5540-ee57-52af-8512-381026ce0c2d)
4 The King Emperor’s Spear (#ulink_7f9fd34b-8617-57d1-a439-2ebe7c6a3fbc)
5 Kentish Men (#ulink_77214015-a32c-57e6-82f5-90826cc1416b)
6 Fighting Back (#ulink_58052a8d-6b45-5ca1-a0d2-c3244a0b2edf)
7 Jungle Wallahs (#ulink_e63c923a-f8f6-5308-88f7-51228327c1d3)
8 The Master of the Mountains (#ulink_352a6a5e-0f61-5ac2-a0e6-cfbf8f356529)
9 The Hour of the Warrior (#ulink_bef69418-be30-5e08-889b-54eb1740cff7)
10 Sato San (#ulink_803a2e5a-bf26-53e9-8875-cf96d080703f)
11 Into the Mountains (#ulink_b6c6152f-d57b-5f35-813f-b966382161e8)
12 Flap (#ulink_90394c22-611c-54ec-af2d-5f46450cdb8a)
13 Onslaught (#ulink_7c18fa38-dab8-51ea-9750-92e1bf6e0f16)
14 To the Last Man (#ulink_f522c8cc-7a8d-5ba4-9323-4992240d8b99)
15 Siege (#ulink_f2b37de1-0a23-518f-b1b6-1165b63ef79d)
16 ‘Hey! Johnny, Let Me Through’ (#ulink_e1ce9fd8-2aae-55e9-91f1-fba8244ff42e)
17 Over the Mountain (#ulink_03c0bf9a-fcc3-59f9-97c6-53f1afd4f12b)
18 Dreams Dying (#ulink_993319a6-ca14-505c-a57d-6ab329d827aa)
19 The Black Thirteenth (#ulink_dda3cb73-1633-5b93-8c8b-7d42d192a64e)
20 A Question of Time (#ulink_3603bb92-94f2-5204-9f78-5052ceda66f7)
21 The Last Hill (#ulink_0b57c4e5-359d-59b9-abab-b8aa0ffea837)
22 Attrition (#ulink_42de0b1a-9507-5694-b72e-bc1d630c805f)
23 The Trials of Victory, and Defeat (#ulink_bf57c94b-2139-5cea-8456-a8712eed8e4d)
24 The Road of Bones (#ulink_50f1de02-0b90-53be-b33f-9fed5e623f0b)
25 When the War Is Over (#ulink_47d30b81-350b-50e5-aaf2-927a497c94c7)
26 The Quiet Fathers (#ulink_8e8451fb-9fb8-5bd2-82cf-8eca00b03500)
Epilogue: After Hatred (#ulink_32720c7f-3acc-5fd5-b235-cd4ace0f860a)
Select Bibliography (#ulink_a664b86e-dd60-5504-b2da-c0d21c3515a2)
Index (#ulink_90cf92f6-8863-5b6f-b2a2-9144f758d8b5)
Acknowledgements (#ulink_290c9534-4f4b-5a3a-b9b7-c1ceb26bd218)
About the Author (#ulink_fb72b570-86c9-5132-b1ee-b871cb78d24b)
Notes and Sources (#ulink_be02230a-bf1c-5ec9-8ecd-2bc4eda9e7aa)
Chronology (#ulink_d638c0c7-3e85-5c27-b7e6-cee922b37d81)
Dramatis Personae (#ulink_fdc2d1d7-3c69-5687-b431-6ec1ce98827b)
About the Publisher
LIST OF MAPS (#ulink_f78d7ac6-3abd-56de-ad91-c051853f5e7d)
India 1942–1945
Burma Theatre 1943
Kohima District
Arakan Battles 1944
U-Go Offensive, March – April 1944
Kohima, 5 April 1944, Kohima Defence and Japanese Attacks
Kohima Ridge
Final Stand and Grover’s Advance on Kohima
The Road of Bones, June – December 1944
Final Offensive 1945
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_ed955ae4-47b3-5048-9fbc-53ccd162d01d)
‘The dreams of empire lure the hearts of kings – and so men die’
CORPORAL G. W. DRISCOLL, BURMA, 1944
PROLOGUE (#ulink_0b1bcfae-099f-5cb8-8a50-195c181e014c)
In the morning the general left his house after breakfast and walked into the country. He did this for two years. In the heat of summer the old soldier found the going harder. He sweated heavily and his bones hurt in the evenings. When the winter came he wore an old army greatcoat and walked along the ridges of the frozen rice paddies. He did not stop when the snows came and might amuse himself by trying to count the white geese in the fields. It was hard to tell where the snow ended and the birds began. The general was born here in Yamagata, among fishermen and farmers on the north-east coast of Japan. Here, in the town that lay between the mountains and the sea, he would atone for the great disaster. Every time a soldier’s bones came home from the front he would set out on his travels. ‘I will finish this before I die,’ he told his son.
Kohima. It lived with him every day of his life. All of the men who had followed him lying in unmarked graves, lost along the mountain tracks, or drowned in the Chindwin river. At every house he bowed and introduced himself and having been invited in he would remove his shoes and sit with the family. Sometimes it would be a woman with young children, at other times a widow alone, or elderly parents. But all of them were linked to the general by the most immutable of bonds. He had taken their sons, husbands, fathers, over the mountains to India and they had not come back. At times they showed him photographs and letters. Many expressed surprise at his visit. The generals of the Imperial Japanese Army were not usually to be found calling on the homes of ordinary soldiers. The general carried a candle in his pocket and he would light this and read a poem for the dead. Its exact words have been lost with time, but he spoke of the soldiers’ courage and how sorry he felt that they had lost their lives. His son, Goro, believed Lieutenant General Kotuku Sato wished he had died with them. ‘I had the impression that he had very strong feelings of loss over what happened to his men on the battlefield,’ he said. The general knew there were many officers who believed he should have killed himself. How could he live with the shame of such a defeat?
I listen to the story in Goro Sato’s home in Ibaraki. He produces photo albums, a whole bundle of them, devoted to his father’s memory. There are pictures of Kotuku Sato in cadet’s uniform which date from the beginning of his career in the early 1920s. Later, in the 1930s, he is photographed standing next to Emperor Hirohito at a military exercise. There are images of the rising young officer dressed in furs and heavy boots on the Chinese border, and one of him relaxing in a kimono with a glass of sake and a broad smile on his face. There is one intriguing image. The general is dressed in a white linen suit, standing next to an American-made car. The photograph was taken outside a pagoda somewhere in South-East Asia. The general looks much older. There is a wariness in his expression that was not present in the earlier images.
‘Where is that?’ I ask.
‘That is in Java, after he was relieved of his command,’ Goro responds. He then tells me that a more senior general tried to have his father declared insane. He sent a medical team to Java to examine him. ‘The rumour was that he was crazy. How else could they explain what he had done?’ he says. But the doctors found that Sato was entirely sane. It is easy to see how his superiors might have thought him mad. A Japanese commander did not disobey orders to stand firm, he fought to the death. ‘You must never forget that the men who survived loved him,’ said Goro. ‘They were only alive because of him.’
By the Japanese account nearly half of the 84,000 men of the 15th Army who marched into India were killed or died of starvation and disease. It was a disaster without parallel in the history of the Imperial Army. General Sato’s 31st was one of three divisions of the 15th Army which crossed the Chindwin river in March 1944. Of his 15,000 strong force, almost half would never return, and those who did were emaciated fever-ridden ghosts. Yet Sato’s march into India had started with victory. The 31st Division had annihilated every outpost in their way until they came to the small town of Kohima in the Naga Hills. Over two weeks of savage fighting they were held off by a British and Indian garrison which they outnumbered by ten to one.
(#ulink_f1adeb9d-938a-510e-b9ce-f5a768b8cbea) The defenders were a mix of battle-hardened veterans and novices, thrown together in the last hours before the Japanese arrived. By the end, the defenders’ perimeter was down to a circumference of just three hundred yards, into which the Japanese fired shell after shell, blasting the wounded as they lay in open pits. In the trenches men fought with guns, knives, spades, anything they could lay their hands on. A British infantryman, Mark Lambert of 4th battalion, Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, recalled, ‘We were being shot at and shooting, we were kicking, using our rifles as hammers, using the butts of our rifles if they got close. From both sides we were animals.’ In one action a British subaltern sent his Indian troops to safety and faced the Japanese alone, a pile of grenades by his side and a gun in each hand. Another strangled a Japanese soldier, having woken next to him in a trench. Japanese officers charged with swords drawn into the teeth of British machine-gun fire.
Much of the fighting centred on a tennis court where men pitched grenades back and forth. Above all, the defenders were determined not to be taken alive by an enemy with a well-deserved reputation for cruelty. There were legion well-documented stories of prisoners being cruelly mutilated while still alive, or tied to trees for bayonet practice. ‘They had murdered people in the dressing stations and we just thought they were animals. We thought they had forfeited their right to be treated as humans because they didn’t behave like humans,’ recalled Major John Winstanley of 4th battalion, the Royal West Kents.
Both sides fought and died among the rotting corpses of their comrades. For Sepoy Mukom Khiamniungan of the Assam Regiment the battlefield remains a haunted place to this day. ‘I find Kohima appalling. By that I mean it’s a place where airplanes and bombs had mixed flesh and earth. That’s why I don’t like staying there. I don’t even have tea when I pass there.’
The defeat at Kohima precipitated the collapse of Japanese power in Burma and destroyed forever the Japanese soldier’s belief in his invincibility. A song written by a survivor from the Japanese 58th Regiment described how their positions were bombed by allied aircraft:
In the jungle, covered with green
Afternoon showers of bombing
Vegetation scattered, turning to empty field
Not a bird song to be heard.
To the Japanese the retreat was ‘the road of the bones’. Starving men begged their comrades to shoot them or blew themselves up with grenades. Lieutenant Yoshiteru Hirayama, a machine-gunner with 58th Regiment, saw dead soldiers lying along the river bank and others pleaded with him for scraps. ‘Most were too weak even to do that,’ he recalled, ‘I didn’t have food to give them.’
For the British it was a close affair. The defenders of Kohima and its smaller outposts bought vital time to bring in reinforcements. Even so it took another six weeks of bitter fighting for British and Indian troops to drive the Japanese from their well entrenched positions at Kohima. The story of the two week siege provides the core of this narrative not only because it describes an extraordinary struggle against great odds but because it offers a vivid portrait of a defining moment in the fortunes of two imperial powers. Both were in decline, and both desperately needed victory. It was the stand of the Kohima garrison which denied the Japanese a swift triumph and gave General William Slim’s 14th Army the platform on which to launch his campaign to rout a battle hardened enemy. Kohima is a story of empires colliding in a world where high imperialism was already an anachronism, and where defeat might have profoundly altered the story of the end of the British Raj. The India that the men of 14th Army fought to defend was struggling to free itself from British control. As the battle of Kohima was taking place the country’s main political leaders languished in colonial jails. Britain had brought India into the war without any reference to her people. The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared the war a fight for freedom and democracy, prompting the Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru to ask, ‘Whose freedom?’ But Nehru also knew that the war represented the last stand of British rule in India, and that defeat by Japan could change the political dynamic in ways that neither he nor any other Indian leader could predict or be certain of controlling.
As for the Japanese, they had crossed into India proclaiming their desire to free the oppressed peoples of the Raj, yet they ruled over an empire brutalised by massacre and enslavement. They brought with them Indian rebels who, they hoped, would raise the population against the British, but were defeated by an army whose component parts reflected the greatest empire the world had ever seen. The battle was fought on the territory of a tribal people loyal to the Raj, but whose fate is one of the most haunting strands of this narrative.
There was a third power in this great struggle and its influence would be decisive. American aircraft would help ensure the survival and ultimate victory of the British and Indian forces, but beyond a shared desire to defeat Japan the war aims and strategies of the United States and Britain diverged sharply. President Roosevelt was determined that victory in the Far East would not lead to a reimposition of the colonial status quo. The influential American commentator Walter Lipmann wrote that ‘there is a strong feeling that Britain east of Suez is quite different from Britain at home, that the war in Europe is a war of liberation and the war in Asia is for the defence of archaic privilege … the Asiatic war has revived the profound anti-imperialism of the American tradition.’ The American view was reflected in prolonged arguments over war strategy: Roosevelt believed the Burma campaign should be fought to aid his Chinese allies in the north and not as a battle of territorial redemption for the empire. The divisions over strategy were not a purely Anglo-American affair. The conduct of the campaign also produced the greatest rupture in Churchill’s cabinet of the entire war, with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General Sir Alan Brooke, and his colleagues threatening mass resignation over the prime minister’s plans for ambitious, and logistically impossible, sea-borne operations. These high-level arguments form an insistent drum beat in the narrative of Kohima.
