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Chapter One ~ The Beauty and the Beast

This is just one man’s story, and very many others serving in units other than his own would all have been similar stories to relate.

To set the scene Imphal was a valley in the mountains from the railhead at Dimapur one road twisted its way through the Naga Hills 5,000’ to 7,000’. At milestone 47 was a staging post at Kohima, then a further 47 miles to Imphal. At the valley’s northern end another mountain road went from Palel through the Shenam Pass to Tamu on the Burma border. Down a dirt road of the Kabaw Valley to the River Chindwin this was another 80 miles. The latter being the most pestilent place on earth, with over 400 inches of rain falling in the 1944 monsoon. Apart from these road links it was cut off from the outside world, but to the Japanese it was the gateway to India and the capture of Imphal would provide them with a forward base. This was the last place to conduct a military campaign, the area had the two extremes — beauty in its trees, -oak, teak, bamboo, flowers — purple iris, jasmine and Lake Loktak with snipe, duck, geese and golden oriel. Wildlife — tiger, leopard, deer, foxes, wild elephant, cobra, python and Krait. To tourists on a short visit they would admire the sheer beauty of the place and there it would end. The terror was the pestilent diseases, spinal and cerebral malaria, black water fever, scrub typhus, of this 100 men of the Devons on a hillside 70 caught scrub typhus and 15 died, the blood sucking leech and the mosquito we called Mark 5’s, so thick at dusk you could have a block of them out of the sky and after all this there were the bites, sores and rashes, to add to the misery.

Over long lines of communications from the Chindwin River in Northern Burma the Japanese sent in three divisions — 15,31,33, with men carrying 20 days supplies, no doubt hoping to catch Imphal and its supply dumps before the monsoon broke, they cut the road back to Dimaphur, besieged Kohima and Imphal, this on the 3rd April. The Japanese 31st Division had covered 160 miles across endless mountain ridges up to 8,000’, covered in dense jungle to reach Kohima and its garrison of 3,500 men, they were besieged by 15,000 Japanese, likewise at Imphal their 15th and 33rd Divisions encircled and in places could look down to the valley below.

What was to follow was some of the heaviest hand to hand fighting of World War 2 with neither side giving any quarter. The British and Commonwealth troops contested every inch of land. The siege of Imphal was lifted on 22nd June 1944 after 13 weeks of bitter fighting, the start of the monsoon and no food or ammo what Japanese were left alive retreated to the Chindwin.
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Added by: Alan Brigham - www.hullwebs.co.uk
Transcribed by Karen/Alan ´óÏó´«Ã½ Open Centre Hull

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