A largely Indian victory in World War II, mostly forgotten in India

Times of India ^ | 23 JUNE 2014 | Gardiner Harris

[PAR35]

I’d rank it ahead of D-Day, but behind Waterloo in the list of Britain’s greatest battles.

[driftless2]

My wife’s father was an airplane mechanic with the RAF in Burma and India.

[Peter Libra]

Thank you indeed for this post. I immediately went to my store of books and pulled out this one.

Straight On For Tokio.
Lieutenant-Colonel O.G.W. White, DSO.
Gale & Polden Ltd. Aldershot 1948.

It was about my Dad's old regiment, 2nd Battalion Dorsets. The old 54th of foot. They fought a rearguard action to help get men off to safety at Dunkirk. It was with their Indian comrades that they dueled it out with the Japanese at Kohima.

I always remember in WW2 there was disappointment by the troops. This was at the news coverage about the 14th Army in Burma. The tremendous excitement at the defeat of Germany seemed to overshadow the gallant men of the British Army. The Dorsets took their heaviest loss at Kohima.

Your enemy was in your face in those days. Today, soldiers are faced with a different type of warfare. They too, will be written about with pride in future years.

[gura]

Crazy battle. _I_ still remember checking out a book about it when I was 12. If it wasn’t for the Brens they would have been easily overrun, and it showed the flawed tactical leadership of the Japanese Army.

[IndianChief]

India might have weapons, plenty of soldiers, nukes... Pakistan would probably kick their ass

Perhaps you could read up on the Indo-Pak wars of 1965,71 and 98. In 1971, India dismembered Pakistan and midwifed the birth of Bangladesh. In '98 - the Kargil conflict saw Indian forces evicting Pakistani troops bunkered significantly above them and still suffered fewer casualties.

Hence the Paki preference for Mumbai 2008 style fidayeen attacks.

[colorado tanker]

There was an awful lot at stake here. If the Japanese had broken through at Kohima and gotten down into the Brahmaputra River valley, they could have cut the railroad leading to the bases from which the Hump flights into China were launched. With Burma under Japanese occupation, that was the only means of supply from the Allies to the Chinese. And we were trying to launch B-29 raids on Japan from China, which had to be supplied the same way.

I agree with all that Slim was brilliant. When he realized what the Japanese were really up to he redeployed his troops just in time to stop them.

The whole thing was a disaster for the Japanese. They had no way to cut a supply line through the jungle and depended on being able to seize supplies in Imphal and Kohima, which they failed to do. They engaged the British and Indian troops in ideal defensive terrain. The magnitude of their defeat opened Burma to Slim's later reconquest.

[DuncanWaring]

IJA-in-India Ping.