1944 |
|
15 March |
31st Division under General Sato crosses the Chindwin River |
19 March |
Leading units of 31st Division go into action against 50th Indian Parachute Brigade at Sheldon’s Corner |
21 March |
50th Brigade concentrates at Sangshak to deny the Japanese a direct approach to Kohima |
26 March |
Supply shortages and heavy casualties force Brigadier Hope-Thompson to withdraw from Sangshak |
27 March |
31st Division continues its march to Kohima |
29 March |
Japanese units cut the Dimapur-Kohima Road |
3 April |
4th Battalion RWK arrive at Kohima but are promptly ordered to move to Dimapur |
4 April |
Leading elements of 31st Division start to engage at Kohima |
On 15 March 31st Division crossed the Chindwin and started the march north-west, making good time despite the difficult terrain until elements of Col Fukunaga’s 58th Regiment (a force of nearly 4,000 men) encountered Brig. Hope-Thompson’s 50th Indian Parachute Brigade at Sangshak. After six days of heavy fighting, in which his brigade suffered the loss of about 600 men, Hope-Thompson was obliged to withdraw due to a combination of water and ammunition shortages as well as the heavy casualties. Hope-Thompson’s defence at Sangshak effectively delayed 58th Regiment’s advance to Kohima by a week, and had seriously weakened their offensive power. Hope-Thompson, therefore, made a major contribution to the successful defence of Kohima, but in a shameful example of professional jealousy he was widely discredited by a raft of rumours claiming that he had had a nervous breakdown. In reality he had conducted the action with skill and determination, and had successfully extricated his brigade despite being surrounded by a much more powerful force.
In addition to the damage inflicted on 58th Regiment, Hope-Thompson’s 50th Brigade had captured maps and documents which clearly showed that the Japanese intended to commit an entire division to the capture of Kohima and Dimapur, as opposed to the single regiment that Slim and his staff had estimated as the maximum force that they could assign to the operation.
Kohima lies on the Manipur Road between Dimapur and Imphal, the closest thing to a reliable all-weather route between the two and, therefore, a crucial route for troops and supplies. A single-track road until improved in 1943, it was still a very challenging drive – it might easily take ten hours or more for a truck to traverse the 40-odd miles (65km) between the two towns.
The ridge-top town of Kohima occupies a very strong position dominating the road from Dimapur to Imphal, the crucial communications link from the railhead to the town and plain of Imphal, where Slim intended to fight a major battle that would effectively cripple, if not destroy, the Japanese Army before he invaded Burma. With an adequate garrison it would be a hard objective to carry, but it is overlooked from virtually any direction by the surrounding mountains. The colonial town is situated on a sharp ridgeline overlooking an extensive Naga village. Almost all of the locations were named for military or colonial installations, such as FSD Ridge for the Field Supply Depot, DIS Ridge for the Daily Issue Store, GPT Ridge for the General Purpose Transport depot and Jail Hill for the local prison which lay below it.
HA-GO TANK
The Japanese 14th Tank Regiment fielded three models of vehicle in the Burma campaign: the Chi-Ha, the Ha-Go and, for a while, a company of Stuarts captured from the Commonwealth forces in 1942. The Ha-Go entered service in 1935 and was considered one of the best tanks in the world at the time. It was relatively light and fast, and was armed with a 37mm gun and two 7.7mm machine-guns. The Ha-Go was deployed in large numbers in China and a few hundred were taken into service by the opposing forces of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong at the end of the war. Production of Ha-Go’s came to an end in 1943, but they continued to be a significant part of the Japanese armoured forces until 1945, used largely for reconnaissance purposes.
The road passes along the eastern edge of the ridge and then around the northern point before running west through passes to Imphal. Possession of the town would deny the use of the road to an enemy, but a garrison would be very vulnerable to artillery fire directed from higher ground. The close nature of the countryside – steep hills and a mixture of thick scrub and jungle – means that an attacking force can make a close approach to positions on the ridge with little chance of detection.
Kohima has two other major disadvantages as a defensive location. The ground is very rocky and it is, therefore, extremely difficult to build adequate fighting trenches or dug-outs for command posts, stores and medical facilities. Also, there is very little water. Several water tanks had been constructed on the ridge, but none of them were properly protected against small arms fire, let alone shelling, and there was only a small spring which could not possibly provide a sufficient supply of fresh water for a substantial body of troops.
28 A dug-out at Kohima. (AB/AWH)
In April 1944 there was hardly a garrison at all, and certainly not one designed to withstand a major assault. There were around 2,500 men in the town at the beginning of the month, nearly half of which were non-combatants and convalescing casualties. The combat troops comprised elements of the Assam regiment which had already seen fierce fighting at Jessami, where they had inflicted heavy casualties on Col Torikai’s 138th Regiment; two companies of the Burma Regiment (about 250 men) of the Assam Rifles; a battalion of the Shere regiment of the Royal Nepalese Army which was as yet only partially trained; a modest number of men from 1/3rd Ghurkhas and the Burma Rifles; and elements of an Indian Army Battalion, the 4/7th Rajputs, who joined the garrison early in the battle. With the exception of the Shere regiment, none of these units were present in any strength and, in total, there was only a force of about 1,500 men available to defend the town against Sato’s 31st Division, many of who were insufficiently trained and some of who were ‘scratch’ bodies of men under unfamiliar officers and NCOs. The sum total of artillery in the garrison amounted to one 24-pounder gun which had been allotted for training purposes; however, since the town was used as a major staging post for supplies to Imphal there was a very large stock of food and small arms ammunition.
The arrival of the RWK was obviously a major benefit, but led to a significant command problem. The commander of the RWK, Col Laverty, refused to recognise the authority of the station commander, Col Richards. Laverty went so far as to describe himself as the ‘commander of the fighting troops’ in Kohima, though in fact he was only the commander of one element of the force and was not responsible for the elements of the various other units present. He frequently undermined the station commander, even refusing to allow him to make use of the RWK’s radio equipment to communicate with army command.
The experience of the RWK at Kohima started badly and got worse. After fierce fighting in the Arakan they had been abruptly pulled out and transported by air to Assam, and by 29 March had arrived with their animal and motor transport at Dimapur. The following day they made their way to Kohima, where they would be joined by the rest of their parent formation, 161st Brigade. On arrival at Kohima the battalion was bombarded with rumours that a divisional-scale attack by the Japanese was imminent, despite courageous delaying actions by the Assam Rifles and the Assam Regiment some 30 miles (48km) to the east of the town, and of 50th Indian Parachute Brigade at Sheldon’s Corner and the village of Sangshak. So the RWK set about preparing defensive positions, which was a challenging undertaking given the nature of the ground, and before they had time to complete their trenches and foxholes the battalion was moved again, this time back to Dimapur.
Map 4 The actions proceeding Kohima at Ukhrul, Sheldon’s Corner and Sangshak. (Butler, p.248)
HURRICANE/HURRIBOMBER
The Hurricane fighter remained in service in the Burma theatre as a frontline combat aircraft until the end of the war, nearly two years after it had been superseded on other fronts. Although it was inferior in several respects to Japanese aircraft, such as the Mitsubishi Zero, the Allies had achieved almost complete air superiority by early 1944 and the fighter-bomber variant – the Hurribomber – was widely used as a ground-support aircraft and flown by several British and Indian squadrons.
The reason for this move and counter-move had been a decision by Gen. Rankin, who was the commander of what was known as 202 Administrative Area. Rankin had received instructions from Slim that his primary task was to ensure that the railhead at Dimapur, along with the huge stockpiles of food, ammunition and other supplies, as well as very large numbers of non-combatant troops and Indian labourers, did not fall into the hands of the Japanese. Rankin’s position was unenviable. In an earlier conversation with Slim he had remarked that his ration strength was something in the order of 45,000 men, but that it was unlikely that as many as 500 of them were capable of using a rifle. There were persistent rumours that Japanese troops were closing in on Dimapur (which later proved to be untrue) and Rankin interpreted his orders to mean that Dimapur must take priority over all other considerations. Superficially this was a reasonable assumption since there was little point in having possession of a relative backwater like Kohima if the stores at Dimapur were lost to the enemy; although equally the value of the stores would be very limited if there was no means of transporting them to Imphal.
Initially the situation at Kohima was not viewed with great alarm by Gen. Slim or his subordinates. Clearly Dimapur was the more important asset, but there was also a strong belief that a Japanese attack on Kohima could not be mounted in overwhelming strength. Slim and his staff had calculated that the Japanese would only be able to bring one regiment (three battalions) with very limited artillery assets to bear due to the extreme nature of the terrain they would have to pass through. Therefore, they believed, the Japanese would not commit themselves to a full-blooded assault on Kohima, but would instead leave a modest force there to compromise the existing garrison, while the bulk of 31st Division pressed onto Dimapur, a much more significant location in terms of the ‘big picture’. This view continued to hold sway for some days after the general thrust of the Japanese offensive had become apparent.
Although the garrison at Kohima was very slender, General Sato’s 31st Division had suffered considerable casualties at Jessami, Sangshak and Kharasom, and the fighting must obviously have been a drain on the relatively slight stock of ammunition that the division could carry. This was not an unreasonable conclusion since Sato himself already had concerns about his supply situation, particularly in regard to ammunition for his artillery. However, the division was still a potent force and, despite the hard trek to Kohima, was in fairly good spirits, enhanced by the prospect of a quick victory. Sato himself was confident of capturing Kohima, pressing on to Dimapur and resupplying the formation at the expense of the Commonwealth forces.
The leading elements of Col Fukunaga’s 58th Regiment arrived at Kohima on the evening of 3 April. Of all the three infantry regiments of 31st Division, 58th Regiment had had the shortest and least challenging route, although it had been held up for nearly a week by the action at Sangshak and had sustained a substantial number of casualties. The first battalion of the regiment mounted an attack the following morning as the second and third battalions closed up on the town. The initial Japanese attacks were tentative and dealt with relatively easily by the defending garrison, but clearly they was evidence that a major force had arrived in the area rather earlier than had been expected. As soon as the news of the attacks reached Gen. Stopford’s XXXIII Corps HQ, 161st Brigade were ordered to return to Kohima with all possible speed since it was now clear that the Japanese had selected Kohima as a major objective rather than a mere road block which could be contained and by-passed. Of the three battalions of 161st Brigade, only the RWK was able to make its way into the Kohima perimeter during the morning of 5 April before the road was cut behind them, leaving the remainder of 161st Brigade 2 miles (3.2km) to the west at Jotsoma.
This represented a major addition to the infantry strength of the garrison as a whole, but still only amounted to around 450 men, well short of the complement of a full-strength infantry battalion. The majority of the brigade was in contact with the enemy and, therefore, had problems of their own, but they were able to provide some artillery support which would prove crucial to the defence of Kohima. The garrison was now confined to the ridges, spurs and glens that stretched from IGH (Indian General Hospital) Ridge to DIS (Daily Issue Stores) Hill.