British besieged on Indian border

9th April 1944: One man distinguishes himself in desperate close-quarters fighting as a decisive battle against the Japanese begins

The British had hastily re-inforced the hilltop outposts of Imphal and Kohima as over 100,000 Japanese troops mounted their invasion of India.

The Japanese 31st Division had now pushed aside the minor diversionary outposts that held them up as they invaded India from Burma. They now confronted the British administrative outpost at Kohima, where a hastily organised system of defensive trenches had been dug. Kohima Ridge was to see a desperate battle unfold as around 1,000 British troops, not all of them combatants, were encircled by 12,000 Japanese.

The Japanese 31st Division was at the end of a long supply and their strategy was to capture British supplies in order to continue their campaign. The British and Indian troops were now cut off and soon dependent on airdrops for supplies, including water.

The area around Kohima and the road leading south to Imphal are characterized by wild and inhospitable terrain.

The terrain did not lend itself to defence because there were not enough men to hold onto all the high ground along the ridge. Many of the positions were overlooked by Japanese, who brought down fire as soon as the British moved out of their trenches. All the time the Japanese were trying to move closer, either with attacks in the open or sneaking in between the British positions overnight:

Major Donald Easten of the Royal West Kents describes the situation on the 8th April¹:

The Japanese had infiltrated between my ‘D’ Company and ‘C’ Company [now under Captain Tom Coath] which was next to us. When we woke up the next morning they had a machine-gun post [in a bunker] between the two companies, making movement extremely difficult, if not impossible, during daylight. I was discussing how we were going to tackle this with the Sergeant-Major when Lance-Corporal Harman, without saying anything to either of us, ran forward.

He got under the line of fire of the Japanese machine-gun. We saw him take a grenade out of his belt, most probably a three or four second one, pull the pin out, count ‘One, two’, and put it through the slit of the bunker. He dived into the bunker after the grenade had gone off, then came out with a japanese machine-gun and said ‘There are two dead japanese in there.’ It was amazingly brave.