Inferno - Max Hastings [354]
Chiang declined to commit his own troops to further this objective unless or until the British advanced from Assam. Britain sulkily acceded to American wishes, though both Churchill and his local field commander, Lt. Gen. William Slim, recognised that, win or lose, the Fourteenth Army’s operations could contribute little to Japan’s defeat by comparison with America’s Pacific campaign. The initial Allied plan for 1944 called for two of Slim’s divisions to launch a new offensive in the coastal Arakan; two Indian divisions would probe from Assam into northern Burma, while Stilwell directed a thrust south from China to take Myitkyina and reopen the Burma Road. The latter operation would be supported by the deployment of an expanded Chindit force, six brigades strong, airlifted into northern Burma behind the Japanese front, then supplied by American aircraft.
Yet even as the Allies began to concentrate their forces, the enemy preempted them: two Japanese divisions attacked in the Arakan, to pin down British forces before launching a major offensive into Assam, with Imphal as its principal objective. The operation was recklessly ambitious now that Indian and British troops were deployed in such strength. Lacking air superiority, with few tanks and guns, it was folly for the Japanese to dispatch infantry hundreds of miles across terrible country against Slim’s positions. The Japanese offensive provided the British with an opportunity such as they had never previously enjoyed: to fight on their own ground, with powerful artillery, armoured and air support.
The Arakan thrust was smashed so swiftly and comprehensively that Slim was able to airlift some of his units northeastwards to strengthen the defence of Imphal and Kohima, key road junctions separated by a hundred miles. The battles there in the spring of 1944 produced the heaviest fighting of the war on Britain’s eastern front. Climatic conditions in Assam and Burma were as wretched as those of the Pacific, with the added hazard of mountain terrain; even before men began to fight, mere movement on precipitous hill faces strained their powers to the limit. “The physical hammering one takes is difficult to understand,” said Lt. Sam Hornor, a signals officer in the 1st Norfolks.
The heat, the humidity, the altitude and the slope of almost every foot of ground, combine to knock hell out of the stoutest constitution. You gasp for air which doesn’t seem to come, you drag your legs upwards till they seem reduced to the strength of matchsticks, you wipe the salt sweat out of your eyes. Then you feel your heart pounding so violently that you think it must burst its cage … Eventually, long after everything tells you you should have died of heart failure, you reach what you imagine is the top of the hill only to find it is a false crest … You forget the Japs, you forget time, you forget hunger and thirst. All you can think of is the next halt.
Bert May, a bugler, said of Kohima: “It was a stinking hell of a hole. All the vegetation on the ground was dead … Leeches, they used to get through on to any part of your body that was open. You used to get a lighted cigarette, stick it on his tail and ‘bonk,’ he’d pop off.” For weeks after the Japanese attack began on 7 March, the issue seemed to hang in the balance. The Japanese encircled Slim’s positions. There was panic at Dimapur, the big supply dump beyond Kohima. Lt. Trevor Highett of the Dorsets said later, “There are few things more unpleasant