����ý

Part VI B

The weather at this time was reasonable but we knew that the Monsoons would soon be with us, of these conditions I will speak later. The next small task which came our way was to mend a bridge which had been set on fire by the Japs, an interesting point is, that the Japs up to this time had not made much use of demolitions, there had been plenty of places where the enemy could have held up our advance by blowing the road or dropping the cliff to form a barricade. The bridge was mended with new timbers and we returned to our ‘box’, we had moved to the 37 milestone and taken up positions on a hill overlooking the road, from here we could see and also be seen by the enemy which was far from a pleasant thought, but apart from a few 75mm shells we were fairly lucky, we had several ‘stand to’ warnings but we were not attacked. Running parallel to the Kohima road is another ridge of hills on which the Jap kept a few guns, he would fire one or two shots and then move to another position, it was a very hard job for our Artillery to find them owing to the movement. On the 17th of April the 161 Independent Brigade was relieved and the first ambulances took away the sick and wounded, these men had been cut off and were forced to fight until we arrived, it must have been tedious for them to watch us slowly moving up the road for days before finally reaching them. The following few days were rather quiet for us but the Infantry were always fighting, when I say that the days were quiet I do not mean without incident, merely small happenings which were an everyday occurrence. On Saturday the 22nd of April the ‘powers that be’ decided to send the 5th Infantry Brigade across the hills on their own to fight their way round to Kohima, the move was made at night and with the aid of the local Nagas, the Brigade moved off with stores and equipment, this had to be manhandled which made things even more difficult. The going was hard, the hills offered a stiff climb, but the men went on until they reached the top of the ridge. “Boxes” were made at night and these were attacked strongly by the Japs who gave our boys no rest, they marched and fought until they worked their way round to Kohima, we lost many men and the remainder were tired and weary but there could be no stopping, they had to go on. At this time No 1 Section moved to a position known as Gunners Valley, here the Divisional Artillery was concentrated, the Infantry had fought hard and cleared more ground of the Jap but the final assault on Kohima was to come. The Monsoons had started and everything was becoming difficult, supplies were dropped by air, some to us and some to the Japs! Before I go any further I must say something about the Jap positions. Many people imagine them to be like a trench but this is not quite right. They range from small holes covered with a thin roof to a concrete structure in which many men can live in safety no matter how much Artillery bombard it, the D.C’s bungalow was one of the latter type which caused us to loose many lives, it was said to be an air raid shelter but everyone was rather doubtful. The hills in this area all had names, Parachute Hill was where the supplies were dropped and the parachutes hung from the trees, behind these the Jap snipers tied themselves and picked off many of our men, and so on, the names were very useful to us when we used them as a rendezvous. Number 1 Section then had orders to move to join the company who had consolidated with the Infantry on a hill feature known as 5120. For this move the small convoy had to move whilst under observation from the enemy, the journey was a tedious one, we saw Kohima for the first time, or rather what was left of it, the bodies of Japs lay in the road, some were completely flat as though they had been run over by a steamroller, the trees were but burnt stumps and the native huts were smashed beyond repair, we reached the unit without any trouble and unloaded stores and ammunition, it appeared from the descriptions that the boys gave us, that this was a ‘hot spot’ so we had to find some reasonable cover, for the first night we dug small positions to give us some protection from shell fire, they were not very deep but we could at last sleep in them.
The enemy was approximately 100 yards away from our positions and he was always letting us know that he was still occupying his positions, mortars were going all day, his 75’s made us keep ourheads down while his small arms fire kept the infantry busy on the outer perimeter. Our part of the perimeter was too crowded so we moved to another place in the same area, our positions consisted of large trenches long enough to lay in at night with a sturdy roof of timber, tin and earth, we needed it as well! There was plenty of work for the Company in general, the roads had to be made for the tanks to get up to the crest of the hill, water supply had to be laid on for the Brigade and many other tasks of an Engineering nature. I have mentioned the tanks for the first time, yes we did have some and they served us faithfully but they were getting rather out of date. On the 18th of May a large attack on the enemy positions was ordered but this was postponed until the following day. The night before this large attack the unit was called together for a talk by the O.C., who was then Major Edwards, a man who should have never been put in charge of a company of men but that is beside the point. The Engineers were going to have a picnic, Pole Charges had to be taken, these are charges on a bamboo pole which should be put in the entrance of the enemy position, but any man who attempted this hardly ever came back. Booby trap parties had to go with the Infantry to get rid of any enemy Booby Traps. The plan of attack was told to us, two companies of the Worcesters would take a certain feature and consolidate while the other two companies would move through them and take another enemy position and hold it, there was to be an air strike by our powerful air force, perhaps six Spitfires would do the job, that was if we had them! All this sounded very easy the night before but on the actual day things were very much changed. The morning of the attack arrived, the Engineer parties reported to the various Infantry commanders and waited for zero hour which was at 8 o’clock. No air strike came, the men were looking at their watches hoping that some planes would come and help to make things easier, none came, the Artillery opened fire from the valleys below us and the minutes were ticking by, it would soon be time to move forward to the attack, the air was tense and the men waited, many knew that they would not come back but they clung on to the chance of survival because life was very sweet for all of them, they had wives and mothers waiting for their return, but for the soldier there is no turning back. Eight o’clock, the order came to advance, slowly the columns of Infantry moved forward like a snake taking advantage of what cover there was, the tanks had opened fire and were answered by the enemy, some tanks were put out of the fight within the first few minutes and our boys were being carried in by the stretcher bearers, some had legs hanging off, others were shot in the stomach with their lifes blood dripping from them onto the stretchers, what chance had they of living under such conditions as we were fighting?. The battle went on, the Infantry were still advancing and the bullets were whistling overhead, Mortars were dropping at regular intervals and we did our best to keep out of the way of the flying shrapnel, 75’s were landing all round us but we managed to keep going because our first objective was not far away. The Infantry stopped under cover and the order ‘fix bayonets’ was given by the Company Commander, something was going to happen but what was waiting around the corner nobody knew. We moved forward again, the bullets were now getting a little too close to be comfortable, the leaves were being cut off the trees just above our heads so we kept as low as we could, we again consolidated by some old tombstones to wait for further orders, it was decided to send a section of infantry to probe the enemy positions, they moved off again while we waited for the results, we did not have to wait long, men came back wounded and the only cry heard was ‘stretcher bearer’, of these we hardly had enough but they did as best they could and carried the wounded to comparative safety. All the sections went in, one by one they came back badly cut up by the enemy fire, we could do nothing to ease the situation and so we waited while the Officers tried to think of other plans, they attacked again only to be repulsed with further losses, this was the attack which sounded so easy the night before, but time was wearing on and it would soon be dark, we all realized that we could not hold on through the night but we could not withdraw until we had orders so we waited hoping that we should not be expected to stay there for the night, the order came late in the afternoon to withdraw back to our old positions, a sigh of relief ran amongst the men, the sections were formed up, some stayed to cover us as we moved out, these would come back after the main body had moved, slowly we crept along the winding paths, shells still landing, Mortars were firing and men were still dropping but on we went until we reached the ‘box’, it seemed like home to us at that time, strange as it may seem. When we arrived back to the unit lines we were told that the R.E’s had lost some men, for us it had been a black day, Joe Moore and Tommy Canon were killed and we had several wounded, and, after all that the tactical position remained the same as before the attack. The nights in this position were always noisy, there were a few Indian troops in the vicinity who fired at anything which made a noise, this naturally put the rest of the troops on the alert, sleep was a thing that we could not get much of in those days, we had most of our meals in our holes as it was not safe to put ones head outside for long, in fact we were living like animals for quite a time, but the battle continued. More attacks went into the same enemy positions with the same results, we could not move forward without suffering losses to the Brigade. It would be interesting to mention the other members of the Brigade. The Infantry Battalion were Camerons, Worcesters and Dorsets, then came the Royal Engineers, Royal Army Medical Corps, Signals, Royal Army Service Corps and the Artillery, actually I should have mentioned them first after the Infantry because they gave us wonderful support for all our operations, that was the 5th Infantry Brigade, on other sectors of the front there were the 4th and 6th Infantry Brigades, in the area there were also Indian troops but the less I say about them the better. Time passed and we were still held on 5120 and the fighting continued until one day we were told that the Brigade was withdrawing and another Indian Brigade was taking over from us, anything could happen now! Number 1 section moved to another hill feature known as Two Tree Hill, here things were quiet and the men appreciated the short rest after their recent experiences. The next job was to build a position for the Artillery to take a 5.5 gun, this was to blast a certain Jap position which the Infantry could not get near. We started on the task and at the same time a Divisional attack was going in just in front of us, the noise was terrific, mortars were firing as fast as possible, the Artillery were doing their best and the Infantry were still pushing on, the Japs fought hard and tried to counter attack many times during the afternoon. The gun position began to take shape, R.E stores were used, Crib Piers were put into position and large R.S.J’s were placed on top to form a skeleton roof, then came small timbers, approximately 5,000 sandbags were used to finish covering the structure but the final work had to be done after the gun had been put into position. Charges were laid on the trees which were in front of the gun and when everything was ready the trees were blown down, a few minutes afterwards the enemy replied with his 75, the position had three or four direct hits and several near misses, the men outside were killed while the people inside did not get a scratch, the Commander of the Royal Artillery wrote to the O.C of the unit and thanked him for the fine workmanship of his men. I might add that the enemy position was removed in a very short while. Nissen Huts gave us our next job of work, we had to build some to make up part of a hospital, this lasted for about a week and again we moved on. The Monsoons by this time were getting bad, the men worked in the rain but had no dry clothes to put on when they had finished, in fact they lived in the rain and mud for a long time but there was nothing that could be done to help matters after all, the men were only part of the Forgotten Army who were fighting miles away from England.
By this time the men of the Fourteenth Army realized that they were forgotten, we had no headlines in the daily paper, if there was any news at all about us it could always be found on the back page in the smallest possible print but why should we worry?.. A new tactical move was to take place, some part of the Division were to cut over the hills once again while the remainder would fight their way round by another route. The day came to move off, most of our fathers were gypsies so we were quite used to all this movement, the march started very early in the morning and Number 1 section was to contact the Dorsets at the top of a very large hill, the march was long and weary, the hills seemed to get steeper at every step, our rifles suddenly became heavier than the regulation eight or nine pounds but on we marched. We caught up with the Dorsets at dinner time and looked forward to a short rest but this was not to be, the Dorsets were moving off immediately we arrived so we stayed on our feet, down the great hill we went, sliding more than walking but we did get to the bottom eventually, the hills in those parts are not a bit like the Sussex Downs, if anyone saw hills like it in Sussex they would think that the world was coming to and end! It was hard going all the way, passing through small streams, mud and undergrowth and slowly making our way up narrow paths, the last part of the journey was the worse, it was a slow tedious climb lasting about five hours, we arrived at the top of the hill, enemy machine guns opened up and greeted us with a hail of lead, more men fell and we waited for the next move, it came, we were to go to the bottom of the same hill and make our way up by another route, this was the last straw but we had to make a box before night fell so once again we marched and slid down the hill. We arrived at the bottom and move across the damp muddy paddy fields and the climb started again, this hill proved to be even worse than the last one, we did reach the top and here found a small Naga village with plenty of Jap positions dug all round the outside, here we would stay for the night and we were all ready for a few hours sleep if we could get it.

Continued in Part VI C

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.