大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Bill Ross of the 鈥楢ction Desk 鈥� Sheffield鈥� Team on behalf of D. Howard Woodcock, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Woodcock fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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The Second Division served in India and Burma for 3陆 years, 1陆 years in action. Howard Woodcock was wounded in action near Imphal, and was out of the fighting for four months. He was mentioned in 'Despatches'. He was finally dembilised in 1946.
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The following has been transcribed from an audio recording of a talk (with slides), given to The Rotary Club.

See also Howard Woodcock - 大象传媒 Radio Interview With Jack Shaw:

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I joined the Territorial Army in May, 1939. In the morning, I tried to join the navy, but it didn鈥檛 suit me. In the afternoon, I had to queue to join the territorials at Edmund Road, for nearly an hour to get in. My father had to sign me in because I was seventeen and a half. I joined the Sheffield Territorials as a gunner. I stayed with them for a year, first in Sheffield, then on the coast. When I was 18戮, my battery commander, who was Douglas Brown (of H.L. Brown, the jewellers), suggested that I might like to go for a commission, which I did. I got through the interview, then I went to Catterick where I had five months of hard training to get my commission.

There were forty of us that started and twenty of us finished. I was the only grammar schoolboy there, the others were public schoolboys, all very posh, they鈥檇 been in the public school, A.T.C.鈥檚, all born leaders, but they knew damn all about gunnery. I had the advantage of having had a year as an artilleryman, and I knew my gunnery, and that pulled me through. I got a very good posting. When they put the twenty postings on the board, most of them were to reserve regiments. I started at the bottom and when I looked up, I found I was one of the two on the top, and I was posted to the crack second British Infantry Division, one of the three regular division that at the start of the war, came back from Dunkirk. I was posted to a regular artillery regiment, the 16th Field Regiment and the Fourth Infantry Brigade. I could have fallen through the floor. I thought, 鈥淚 can鈥檛 cope with a regular regiment." Anyway, I joined the regiment in March of 1941.

Most of the senior officers and down to the rank of captain were all regulars, most of them were old enough to be my father and they looked down on me as though I was a baby. I never opened my mouth for about three months, but one thing I did know, I knew my gunnery and that stood me in good stead.

In March of 1942, we sailed in a very big convoy. In front of us was the Eighteenth British Division; they were going to the desert and we were going to the desert to fight with Montgomery. They got diverted to Singapore, and we were diverted from going to the desert, to go to India because Ghandi was creating havoc in India, and they thought it was a good idea to have an all British division there to do the police work. The Indian Army didn鈥檛 want us there, and we weren鈥檛 popular. A British division cost three times as much to maintain and provision as it's Indian equivelent.

So there we were, out in India, training heavily in combined operations. In 1943, the Japanese pushed right through Burma and pushed the Indian army back into the Imphal Plain, which was alright, because it lengthened the lines of Japanese communications and brought the Indian army into the Imphal Plain where they could use all their armour. It was ground of our own choosing, and that was where they sat right through 1943, stalemate, the Japs sitting on the River Chindwin which was the border of Burma, and the Indian army sitting at Imphal. The railhead for Imphal, was a place called Dimapur, and from Dimapur, it was 140 miles to Imphal. Half way between was Kohima on a high ridge at 5,000 feet, a natural defensive barrier.

In March, the Japanese army decided they were going to invade India and get to Delhi. Three divisions attacked Imphal, came over Chindwin, and further north, the Thirty-first Division of the Japanese army aimed for Kohima and caught everybody by surprise. We didn鈥檛 reinforce Kohima properly; there were only about two thousand troops there, and the thirty-first division suddenly appeared at Kohima, and the great siege of Kohima started. These troops had to hang on to Kohima Ridge. If they hadn鈥檛 hung on to it, we鈥檇 have had another Cassino. It would have been a terrible ridge to capture, it was concentrated into five or six hundred yards square, but our troops hung on by their eyebrows, and the Second Division, at long last, was needed, and we were needed to fight one of the classic battles of the war, which was the battle of Kohima.

We had five divisions that were surrounded in Imphal by the Japanese, for six weeks. We had to win the battle of Kohima, then we had to open up the road down to Imphal. We went into action about fifteen miles short of Kohima because the Japanese were not only attacking the ridge, but they were sending raiding parties and putting road blocks in beyond Kohima to stop relief forces getting through, so our Fifth Brigade, the Camerons and the Dorsets were having to fight their way down the road, knock out all the road blocks to relieve the Kohima Garrison.

Our guns went into action, and suddenly, we realised we were at war. We were sitting there on the right hand side of this long valley, the Kohima Ridge was way in the distance, and that was our target, but we had Japanese raiding parties coming round.

I must first explain how things are formed: a division has about thirteen thousand men. A division is divided into three brigades. Each brigade has three battalions and one field regt., so we had nine battalions and 3 field regiments. We were Fourth Brigade. We were operating with the Royal Berks at this time, but we were defending our guns, and the road carefullly, because it was no good moving up the road and forgetting the Japs who were coming round to try and get behind us and put road blocks in. I was at the time, battery command post officer, I was the senior lieutenant in the battery. My job was to co-ordinate all the artillery, technical work and the two troops and communications with the regiment, and run the gunnery in the battery position. The troop commanders who were the captains, and the battery commander, were forward with the infantry. That was going to be my next step. They wanted so many observation posts; I was sent out with the Royal Berks on the first night, and the next morning, we were sitting there. We鈥檇 dug our trenches, when all of a sudden we were raked with machine gun fire and we suddenly realised we were at war. Smoke was coming up, just across a little valley from where these machine guns were firing at us. Of course, it was my great big chance to start my bit of the war, directing artillery fire.

We had two nights of that, in pouring monsoon rain, and at night, we had to sit in the trench, because anything above ground was killed. So we sat in the trench with our heads just above ground, and we could see all these shadows moving about, which were just leaves, plus the jungle noises. It was raining and we were sitting there with the water in the trench, above the level of our boots and were soaked to the skin.

Anyway, I was withdrawn from that and I was whipped out straight onto another hill feature, where Japanese patrols were operating, with the First Battalion Royal Scots, and again, we had the same thing; Japanese patrols coming round behind us. We were coming under machine gun fire that was raking the position. We took hygiene quite seriously in those days; we used to dig a trench and put a bamboo pole over it and we got quite used to the system.

That evening, the colonel came to see me and he said, 鈥淲e鈥檝e got a job for you tomorrow.鈥� I knew he was telling me something unpleasant, there was a rumour. A whole Japanese brigade, that鈥檚 3,500 to 4,000 Japs, was doing a great big encircling movement to try and capture the rail head at Dimapur. It was rumoured they were coming down the valley, and I had the job of going out on an artillery patrol. The good news was that I had the whole of the divisional artillery on call on my wireless, and I鈥檇 absolute priority. I was taking ten Royal Scots with me. A section of the Royals Scots, a corporal and my own men, and it was arranged we鈥檇 meet at seven o鈥檆lock the next morning. I had to go right down the valley, walk up the river, do a big triangular patrol, then back to the position again, and I didn鈥檛 like the look of this. I liked having the whole of the divisional artillery on call, but I didn鈥檛 like the idea of looking for four thousand Japanese in a jungle valley. We set off down this hill, and the Royal Scots were looking forward to this. We were dressed in gymn shoes and I鈥檇 got grenades all round my belt, tin hat on and we鈥檇 all got automatic weapons, a pocket full of sten gun magazines, and my radio. It wasn鈥檛 my job to get killed.

Anyway, we鈥檇 gone half way down the hill and where we鈥檇 come from, there was a hell of a battle going on; we鈥檇 passed a Japanese fighting patrol going up the hill, who鈥檇 hit the position we鈥檇 come out of and the only people who鈥檇 had a safe ride that day were us.

The Fifth Brigade fought their way into Kohima and our guns moved into our battle position which was 3000 yards short of the ridge, for five weeks and the whole divisional artillery was concentrated there, and I was there all the time myself. In that position, we were fighting a classic artillery battle; we did everything in the drill book. We fired barrages, moving barrages, moving creeping barrages, and we did everything that could be done with artillery there. My job was Battery Command Post Officer. It was a classic battle of 鈥榰p the middle and round the flanks'.

The Japanese held one half of the ridge and we held the other half. The fighting on the ridge was intense hand to hand fighting. As we expanded our front, yard-by-yard, our infantry were using Japanese dead bodies to revet their trenches. Our wounded and dead were lying out for days, we couldn鈥檛 get them. The place was littered with dead men. Stretcher bearers couldn鈥檛 do their job properly, many of them got killed; we had loads of casualties. We had four brigadiers who got hit, two of them were killed; we had colonels killed, medical officers and padres. Two Victoria Crosses were won on the ridge there. At lease 3陆 thousand were wounded.

The infantry were decimated, they finished up with a third of their officers, and the artillery as well, if they were with the infantry as Forward Observation Officers.

We were supplied by air continuously because the road was very very bad, the road up from Dimapur was a terrible road. There was a dividing line on the ridge, one side was Japanese, the other British. The number of casualities on there was tremendous: the Royal Berks., the Durham Light Infantry and the Welsh Fusiliers were involved in continuous close fighting. They couldn鈥檛 leave their trenches safely during daylight 鈥� they could only relieve each other at night by crawling, one lot crawling out, another lot crawling in.

On the fourth of May, after we鈥檇 been going about three and a half weeks, we put in a big attack and tanks went into Japanese held ground. One of my colleagues, Bob Makepeace went with a tank. I heard him say that the tank had been hit and he was baling out, and within seconds, he was dead. That was the first officer we had killed. It was fifteen days before he was buried. The tank he was in is still there to this day. Our battery alone fired twenty five thousand shells.

When the battle was won, we then started to move forward and immediately, they formed an armoured advance guard of tanks, carrierboard infantry and an artillery of O.P. One or two of us got allocated to this job. By this time, the big battle at Kohima was over and we now had to open the 60 miles of road down to Imphal.

First of all, I joined the D.L.I. and we went up the road to this place called Viswema and our guns moved up. Our whole regiment was there, it was the only flat bit of land for scores of miles. Our guns were lined up and the infantry were attacking across the valley and a tremendous battle took place here. Later, I was still with the tanks on the road, waiting to go forward with the D.L.I. and the battalion were on the hillside; there was this big ridge and our regiment had the job of firing a barrage onto it for the attack. The colonel told me to get myself round the corner and register our right hand gun of the regiment, by ranging onto this ridge. He said, 鈥淏e careful because there are snipers all around there,鈥� so we went round the corner in my carrier and immediately, we were hit by sniper fire on the carrier. We stopped the carrier because I could see the target and I rolled out of the carrier, registered the target, then I threw myself back into the carrier and my driver swung it round and we shot round the corner; we got away with that one. That was rather unpleasant; it was probably the first time I was under close fire.

Then came the Battle of Maram. The armoured column got up there and we were stopped by the Japanese. They decided they would have to put a big attack in on Maram. I was sent with a company of the Camerons up the hill, and I reported to the company commander, who was a big Scot carrying a walking stick. He had a great big walrus moustache and he was smoking a big crooked pipe. He gave his orders to platoon commanders and was cursing Japs, right and left, puffing at his pipe. Then we set off up the hill where we hit Japanese, and had quite a battle. The Camerons lost one or two men there and the Japs were hurling grenades at us, so he decided he鈥檇 go back down again and we鈥檇 attack under an artillery barrage the next day.

The armoured column got going again, I was going forward with the Dorsets. The Dorsets鈥� carrier came up and took over, dropping off these infantry units on the way down, to keep the road open; we were skirmishing all the way down the road. It went on and on and on, until finally, I was with the Royal Scots and their carriers, and tanks. On the night before we opened up the Imphal box 鈥� my vehicle was the second vehicle in the whole division. There was an armoured car in the middle of the road and there was my bren carrier. We had one or two tanks with us, and the Royal Scots with their bren carriers and we dug ourselves in.

During the night, a Japanese Patrol approached and there was a short sharp battle. Everything went quiet again. It was all very scary because you鈥檙e trying to pretend you want to sleep, and you find you鈥檙e sitting there shivering with a grenade in one hand and a revolver in the other, hoping you weren鈥檛 going to have to use them. Anyway, the next morning, all the dead Japanese were lying on the road, except for one man, he was unconscious. He was the only prisoner I ever saw 鈥� the second division only took a hundred and fifty prisoners in a year and a quarter 鈥� we didn鈥檛 take prisoners. This chap was unconscious and was lying on the floor. A medical officer came up and tried to see if he was shamming or not. He hit him so hard across the face, and although he was unconscious, we couldn鈥檛 find a wound on him, so I don鈥檛 know what was wrong with him.

Continued in Part Two:

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