Japan's Last Bid for Victory by Robert Lyman

Author:Robert Lyman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781848849464
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2011-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

The offensive by Major General Ouvry Roberts’ 23rd Division (1 and 37 Brigades) to open the Ukhrul road as far as Kasom following the victory at Nunshigum succeeded by 20 April in ejecting 15th Division from the area. With the road open, 1 Brigade (1st Seaforth Highlanders, 1/ 16th Punjabis and 1st Patialas) then continued its pursuit and harassment of Yamauchi’s HQ. By early May Ouvry Roberts had driven 15th Division twenty miles east to Litan, scattering its units through the remote jungle vastness and persuading Scoones that no further serious offensive could be expected from this direction. He was right and although no further threat to Imphal emanated from Ukhrul the Japanese caught in these mountains continued to fight with the life-or-death desperation of a cornered animal. Lieutenant Ken Cooper joined 2nd Borders at Milestone 16 at the height of the fighting in May shortly after the battalion had been transferred from the Shenam fighting. At 4,241 feet he noted that his company positions lay 1,000 feet higher than Snowdon. Thunder clouds dark with rain sat ominously above the mountain peaks, pouring out their contents in heavy torrents, filling the trenches with water and turning the ground into a muddy morass:

My first night near Battalion HQ was startling. There were distant flashes, followed by dull reports, and every now and then a hastening whirr … which seemed only feet overhead, almost immediately followed the deafening slap and crash of exploding shells. The impersonal whine and crunch of the howling missiles coming out of nowhere, left me trembling and in a cold sweat, although the night air was clammy and hot.

The Japanese stubbornly refused to relinquish their hold on the hills. A Company, 2nd Borders occupied a position on a hill astride the track the troops called ‘Sausage’, cut off by the Japanese, being forced to rely on air supply, parachuted supplies landing outside of the tiny perimeters being fought over savagely by both sides. It took five hours of exhausting toil to climb from Battalion HQ to each of the company positions. Cooper’s recollection of the fighting forms a deep sear in his memory:

I was left with vivid nightmare pictures of walking wounded –ragged men, carrying their weapons and little else, hobbling and sliding and cursing towards the Regimental Aid Post; of the half light dawn, beneath dripping trees, with the wounded huddled in groups under sodden blankets or lying, heads in the mud, torn and gashed with appalling injuries, some already turning gangrenous in the festering conditions.

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