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In 1942 they needed artillery officers and it was a short way of getting a commission. To get commission in those days you had to go through the ranks and have to be put forward for commission training.
But they were so short of Artillery Officers they made a special ruling that anyone who went to school where there was an OTC (Officer Training Corp) and knew a bit about soldiering and provided you had a school certificate including maths then you qualified to go on this special course. You had to pass a WOSB as well — a War Office Selection Board. I went straight to an OCTU — Officer Cadet Training Unit up at Catterick and subsequently from there I was commissioned into the Royal Artillery. Fortunately I was put into the field artillery which was what I wanted — the lighter guns - not the great big ones that are 20 miles behind the lines and fire 20 miles. We were the ones up at the front.

It wasn’t a rude awakening going into the army. I’d been at boarding school Barnard’s Castle in Co. Durham. It was a bit like being in the army there, there was a lot of discipline, you were very much kept under control, you were always hungry, the food was very basic. It didn’t come as too much of a shock. In fact, I enjoyed it.

I first got my commission in June 1943. And I was posted to a field regiment in Sevenoaks in Kent. That was only to get me acclimatised to the job. They were actually at full strength, they didn’t need any more officers but that was only a temporary thing till I was drafted out to the Far East. In January ‘44 I was on the boat to India. After a while in India to get acclimatised to the climate I was bunged off to Kohima.
The Kohima Battle was just starting.. Have you heard of the Kohima epitaph?

When you go home
Tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today.

At the Battle of Kohima it was the turning point of the war. Up till then the Japanese had advanced; they’d captured the whole of Burma, the British army had retreated 1000 miles — in 1942 we’d retreated 1000 miles! — the biggest retreat in the history of the British army.
Kohima — it wasn’t in Burma it was just over the border in India. In the spring of ‘44 the next phase of the Japanese war was to invade India and by then we’d realised they’d got to be stopped and they’d never been stopped before. They were determined to go on and the British and Indian troops were determined they’d got to be stopped and so at Kohima there was quite an horrendous battle that lasted for about 6 weeks.

That was my introduction to the war.

Fortunately the Japanese were defeated and then the reverse happened. From June until the end of the war they were in retreat and we were pushing then all the way back down through Burma, all the way down to Rangoon. I came in at the right time, I should hated to have been on the loosing side.

I was in the Second British Division and they were the main force. Up till then my division had been down in India waiting for what events would happen. When the Japanese started their invasion of India our division was sent up to stop them.
The strength of a division is about eight or nine thousand men and in the division there are nine infantry battalions and the fighting strength of a battalion is about 800 men. After four or five weeks fighting our infantry battalion was reduced from 800 fighting men to 100 and at least 100 of those had been killed and the rest were either wounded or ill with the various diseases that went with this country.
There were an awful lot of people killed and there’s a cemetery now at Kohima where there are 1400 graves — nearly all of them chaps in my second division.

I’ve been back there. In 1994 my wife and I went out to Kohima on the 50th anniversary of the battle.

It was very moving.

The cemetery there is reckoned to be one of the most beautiful in the world. It’s on a sloping hill where some of the worst fighting took place which was really hand to hand fighting. On this hill there was a tennis court originally because it was where the local British Commissioner or Governor lived and literally on one side of the tennis courts we had dugouts and on the other side the Japanese had dugouts. It was as close as that and it was really quite horrific and the looses you can imagine..

And the losses were almost worse for the attacker. When a chap’s defending a place he’s well dug in to a hole and he’s just got his Tommy gun or rifle sticking out — the attackers have got to come out in the open to get to him. All these Japanese were so well dug in round there that they had to be winkled out and that’s where the loses occurred.

As an artillery man of course we were a mile or 2 further back and we were able to lob our shells into the Japanese. Of course we had to spend as a n officer out time with the infantry to see where the targets were to be able to give instructions by wireless back to the guns to shell the various places so we had out share of excitement

I was 19.

There was only one road from Burma through the mountains into India. Further down the road was a place called Imphal. The Japanese had cut that road and Imphal was completely surrounded we’d got troops there they were surrounded and the Japanese as attacking from all sides.
We had to go down the road to open the road to Imphal. In Kohima there’s a sign that says here on 7th June 1944 began the advance to Imphal and I was 20 that day.

I wouldn’t have missed it.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Genevieve Tudor of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire on behalf of Tom Norman and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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