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00:00Monsoon in Burma.
00:21If you can imagine the heaviest rain you'd ever get in this country,
00:25going on for six to eight weeks without a break,
00:28this was monsoon period.
00:31Five months in every year.
00:34Sloshing through mud, living in mud, lying in mud,
00:38and sleeping in mud, and drinking in mud, and eating in mud.
00:42That was a monsoon in Burma. It's just a nightmare.
00:47War in Burma made up in ferocity what it lacked in scale.
00:53Here in 1944, in these conditions,
00:58the British were defending the frontiers of India against the Japanese.
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01:55The Burmese jungle, a steam bar closing out the sky, dense, imprisoning, and a
02:24long way from home.
02:25I'd never seen a jungle, I'd seen a forest, but I hadn't seen a jungle.
02:31We went in there, dark, dirty, damp, rain, there was all sorts of animal noises that
02:38we never heard before.
02:39In actual fact, it was really scary.
02:42I liked the jungle, and it did not have the fear it seems to have had for some of the
02:49Allied soldiers.
02:50It was a friendly place, dark, where you could cover yourself and camouflage yourself.
02:55Burma, jagged mountain and foetid swamp, clothed in jungle and scored by steep river valleys.
03:08Burma, endless green growth spawning every kind of disease, malaria, dysentery, scrub typhus,
03:20dengue fever, prickly heat, particularly in monsoon.
03:27It might have been Flanders in the First World War.
03:37The monsoon in Burma turned camps into swamps, roads into quagmires.
03:42After the rains, the country was just one great bowl of mud.
03:59For the British, Burma was a shield and barrier protecting their Indian Empire.
04:05The Japanese saw they could use Burma to screen their new territorial gains in Southeast Asia,
04:12to cut the Allied supply route to China, and to secure new sources of oil and rice.
04:18In December 1941, they invaded.
04:22They had the advantage of surprise, and for this jungle war, they were thoroughly prepared.
04:30I don't think any country could have been more unprepared for war than Burma was at this particular time.
04:38The government was unprepared, the civil organization and the people were unprepared,
04:45and the defense forces practically didn't exist.
04:51Some of the Gurkha who came along had 400 recruits straight from the depot,
04:57and the British had been milked of reinforcements and officers to Europe,
05:03and you might say only the Dal left behind.
05:07The Japanese from the start swept all before them.
05:23They used the jungle to out-march and out-maneuver Britain's weak Burma army.
05:35The British retreated in confusion.
05:44It was a crashing disadvantage to me in the 1942 campaign,
05:50in that I hadn't got a wireless set which would contact my air support in Rangoon.
05:58And therefore, believe it or not, the only thing I could do was to tap in onto the railway telephone line,
06:09get the Babu in the post office in Rangoon,
06:14and try and persuade him that it was vitally important for me to be put on to Air Force headquarters.
06:23And that was really one of the reasons why, in our withdrawal to the Satan,
06:32we were terribly badly bombed by the RAF, as well as by the Japanese Air Force.
06:39The Japanese had heavy air superiority.
06:46They bombed and strafed almost at will, spreading terror among raw troops and civilians.
06:52Only a small force of American volunteers, and the few RAF planes that were in Burma,
07:04challenged their dominance and rose to battle with them.
07:07The damage the Japanese bombers dealt was, as much as anything, psychological.
07:22People couldn't believe this was happening to peaceful Burma.
07:42Resistance, valiant at times, was swept aside.
07:45I was discharged from hospital at Mandalay, having broken three ribs,
07:56left absolutely stranded on the roadside.
07:59And a civilian picked me up, took me home to his house, and said,
08:04what did I do? And I said, I'm catering.
08:07Well, he said, if you like, you can come to our house and cook for us.
08:10We were there two hours, no more than that.
08:14When the message came through, evacuate, the Japanese are here.
08:26The Japanese march north continued, leaving a trail of chaos and destruction the length of Burma.
08:36The British retreated.
08:38I had nothing, only what I stood up in.
08:41I raided someone's kit, found a stout pair of boots, and we began to walk.
08:47In the mounting confusion, the wounded were a problem.
08:50We had to leave, giving treatment and just bandage up, do best we could.
08:54Some we had to leave behind, some we had to leave behind.
09:01All those that we could put on transport to get them on the roads, this was all we could do.
09:07And eventually, we had to finally give it up as a bad job and make our own way out, as we were only 24 hours in front of the Japanese through the length and breadth of Burma.
09:20The Japanese took everything in their strife.
09:35Ahead of them, the last recourse of a retreating army scorched earth.
09:48The invaders seemed to have made the jungle their friend.
10:00They were racing to win the rich prize of Burma's oil, but found instead a blazing inferno.
10:06At one installation, 11 million pounds worth of oil and plant went up in 70 minutes.
10:22Refugees, Eurasians, Chinese, Indians.
10:28Indians we saw die on the roadside. We just could do nothing about it.
10:31We just had to think about ourselves and go on.
10:36The Japanese were driving Burma people. In their thousands, they were coming through.
10:45There were some terrible sights up there.
10:47Men were left behind, and it was heartbreaking very often just to see them being separated from their people,
10:52wondering whether they'd ever meet up with them again.
10:55They were dying in their hundreds.
10:57Well, all they used to do then was just pile them up and throw petrol over them and set fire to them.
11:02And that was the end of those.
11:06We had to hack our way through virgin jungle practically to get out of that country.
11:18And we had to find our own way to India.
11:21I think the overall impression I had of that horrible trek out of Burma was that it seemed to bring the best and the worst out of people.
11:30Some people who I had looked up to and respected, I found I couldn't respect any more because they became entirely different on that march.
11:39In fact, I felt that it was a question of survival of the fittest.
11:46British prisoners.
11:485,000 in one engagement alone.
11:53The Japanese despised those who surrendered.
11:56They believed soldiers should fight to the death.
12:01We felt the British officer was a very good fighter.
12:04Although the ones we captured, they always said to me, we will win the war, you see.
12:10Now this I couldn't understand because here is a man who has surrendered and he still says, yes, we will win the war.
12:17Through the deserted cities of Burma, the conquering Japanese marched in triumph.
12:40The Burmese people were now exchanging one set of Imperial masters for another.
12:53Watch out! Watch out!
13:00In five months, by May 1942, the Japanese chased the British up past Rangoon, through the Irrawaddy and Chintwin valleys,
13:09to the frontiers of India and out of Burma altogether.
13:13It was the longest retreat in British history.
13:17The Japanese also drove another army, the Chinese, up to Mandalay towards China.
13:23The Chinese, at war with Japan since 1931, were protecting their supply line, the Burma Road.
13:30China was allied to the Western powers.
13:34In command of Chinese forces in Burma was the American General Stilwell.
13:39Stilwell, Chief of Staff to the Chinese Supreme Commander Chiang Kai-shek, watched America's interests.
13:48The Commander-in-Chief India was General Wavell.
13:52Transferred from the Middle East, he now faced a formidable foe with scanty resources.
13:57But while his Burma army licked its wounds, he planned a comeback.
14:02A limited offensive for late in 1942.
14:05Wavell chose to mount this offensive in the Arakan, on the Bay of Bengal, near the Indian border.
14:13After a hopeful beginning, everything went wrong.
14:18The British were outmaneuvered and out-fought again, and pushed back to their starting point.
14:23They still had not learned to adapt to the jungle.
14:28In the jungle, fortunately, the Burmese jungles, there are many bamboo groves.
14:33You see, and we, in Japan, we all eat bamboo shoots.
14:37So that there's a lot of natural food in the form of bamboo shoots all over the place.
14:43Apart from that, we all know that what a monkey can eat, we can eat too.
14:48So if you watch the monkeys, and avoid what the monkeys also avoid, you're fairly safe.
14:55Apart from that, there are such creatures as bandicoots, or type of rats, you see.
15:00Snakes, jungle lizards, and small lizards.
15:04You cut off their head and chop them up and make into curry, you know, mixed with pepper.
15:08You can make good curry.
15:10We have our meats and Yorkshire puddings and so forth.
15:13They lived on rice.
15:15Now, you can't get meat and Yorkshire pudding and greens and potatoes out there.
15:19So we had to reorganize ourselves and lived on the things that the army could produce for us.
15:26Like corned beef.
15:27And this is the only place that I know where you could open up the tin of corned beef and pour it out like a liquid.
15:34One man who was going to use the jungle.
15:37Old Wingate, an experienced guerrilla fighter supremely unorthodox with the touch of the fanatic.
15:43Now, he planned a raid deep in enemy territory to be supplied from the air.
15:49He commanded the Chindits, ordinary British and Gurkha troops, but intensively trained.
15:55The first operation was initially to accompany a general advance into Burma, but the general advance was cancelled.
16:08However, Wavell wanted the expedition to go forward.
16:13February 1943, the first Chindit expedition.
16:19The going could not have been worse.
16:22Long distances in dense hilly jungle and always one more river to cross.
16:28The heat was extreme, drinking water was short, and malaria was rampant.
16:44But at last, the British were fighting as the enemy did, learning to turn the jungle to their own advantage.
16:51The heat and the smell of the jungle was vile, very vile.
17:06You couldn't live in the jungle for an eternity.
17:10You'd never stand to smell them.
17:17Even if you went downhill, you knew you had to go up early again.
17:20And we were carrying 60 to 70 pounds in our pack.
17:23Five days rations, plus arms and ammunition.
17:26You'd think, oh, would it ever end?
17:29Just went on and on and on and on.
17:31Then the rain.
17:32Then, of course, the fear that you would be ambushed or attacked.
17:44It was absolute hell in the first Wingate expedition, where jungle was a friend of the Japanese, but our enemy.
17:53We were wet all the time, and while we were wet, we got the leech onto our bodies.
18:01They were there all the time because of the dampness of them.
18:05They got onto your body, they sucked the blood from your body,
18:08and unless you burned them the right way with the cigarette in,
18:12they fell off and left black spots all over your body.
18:15Once they had their fill of blood, they dropped off from your body and burst inside your clothes.
18:22And you were smothered in blood.
18:35The thought that you would get wounded and have to be left behind,
18:38that was always in our minds, I think.
18:40I'm sure it was in most people's minds.
18:42I saw chaps having to be left behind.
18:45Hand grenade, pistol, flask of water, water bottle,
18:51rations.
18:52And he was propped up against a tree, left.
18:54Four hundred and fifty died.
18:59For some, a simple cross in a jungle clearing.
19:06In June, after four months, the first Chindits returned from Burma.
19:13Out of the three thousand men who had gone in, less than two thousand came back.
19:19Weary and emaciated, most had marched a thousand jungle miles.
19:23Whatever the expedition's military results, it did teach valuable lessons in jungle operations,
19:33in air supply and in morale.
19:36This was a raid.
19:40Its effects, its tactical and strategical effect was not great.
19:46Its main effect was on the morale of the British and Indian troops.
19:51Our forces were not picked men, they were ordinary British and Gurkha battalions.
19:57And the rest of the army said, my God, if those people can do it, we can.
20:03Very slowly, the British were getting the measure of the jungle.
20:07They loathed its stench, its sticky heat.
20:11It was hard for them to realise that the jungle was neutral.
20:15The enemy carried on a crude but effective war of nerves.
20:36The troops still thought of the Japanese soldier as master of the jungle.
20:40A man who could go for days on a handful of rice.
20:43Didn't seem to know the meaning of fear.
20:46Would never surrender.
20:47Was perhaps unbeatable.
20:58A sort of superman.
21:01The Japanese was a good soldier.
21:04He was a good soldier.
21:05If he was told to do a job, he would stop there until he died.
21:09Animals.
21:10They were great soldiers.
21:12Great fighting soldiers.
21:15Their battle drill was fantastic.
21:18You could not help but admire them.
21:20If they were ambushed, they were at you in 20, 30 seconds.
21:25They were pounding you with their mortars.
21:27And in the frontal attacks, nobody could beat them, I think.
21:30They would just come on and on and on.
21:32He hadn't the mentality, I suppose, to think for himself.
21:36He just obeyed orders.
21:38And he came at you with everything he had.
21:41Even if he meant losing his life.
21:44He just...
21:45He didn't care about life.
21:47We have been taught from the very beginning that we must...
21:52Our lives are the emperor's.
21:54For instance, when I left for war duty,
21:59I had to clip my nails and hair and light the last will and testament.
22:04Because from that moment, our lives are in the emperor's hands, you see.
22:08In other words, my family will put that in the urn
22:12in case my body is not recovered anywhere.
22:15So, our training is to die for the emperor, you see.
22:19.
22:21四孔の手首
22:28五三作詞
22:34五三代百度
22:37五三三代百分
22:39五三代百合の参戦
22:41六三代百合の参戦
22:44三名百合の参戦
22:46We had what we call the officers' clubs, where there were Japanese geishas.
23:14These were mostly for officer grade.
23:18For the other ranks, we had what you might call the comfort girls.
23:26And of course, in the officers' parties, you all drank.
23:33The thing was to get drunk very quickly, sing songs.
23:37And because of the limitation of the girls, only the higher officers got them later, you see.
23:42But the songs would be like, I think the English have a song called Roll Me Over in the Clover and you go one, two, three, four like this.
23:50Our songs are very similar.
23:52They're always one, two, three like this, you see, and similar in content too.
23:56For the enlisted men, our entertainment, because of you entertaining only between battles or on one day's leave and you may die next day, we don't have too much time for any lengthy entertainment.
24:14We go straight to the comfort girls.
24:17You pay your money and you come out feeling refreshed and like a new man, you see.
24:25Most of the comfort girls for the enlisted men were, many were Koreans.
24:29And I must say, I respect all of them very much because who else would come to the front lines to give us the last entertainment for us, for many of us on this earth.
24:42The British had their own, very different entertainment.
24:46Burma was the furthest point and very few artists were going there.
24:51So I said, right, that's for me.
24:53They really thought they were the forgotten army and I think they probably were.
24:57In fact, just for them to see me was quite a lot to them because that I had gone to all the trouble and traveled so far just to see them made them feel that they weren't a long way from home, you know.
25:16If I could pop on a plane and nip out there, they weren't too far away and not forgotten.
25:22In this jungle stalemate, the message was certainly welcome.
25:27It's a lovely day, tomorrow, tomorrow is a lovely day.
25:57Come and feast your tears in the eyes on tomorrow's clear blue skies.
26:11If today your heart is weary, if every little thing looks gray, just forget your troubles and learn to say,
26:36tomorrow is a lovely day.
26:48October 1943, things are looking up.
26:58Lord Louis Mountbatten arrives as Supreme Commander of a newly created Southeast Asia Command.
27:04His mission, to end the stalemate and knock out the Japanese.
27:08Mountbatten's immediate aim was to rebuild morale in an army that felt itself forgotten and wondered why it was there.
27:20We shall march, fight and fly through the monsoon, he declared.
27:28Another new appointment, General Bill Slim, commander of the newly formed 14th Army.
27:34He knew Burma and he knew the Japanese.
27:46Bill Slim was essentially a soldier's general.
27:50Watchful of his troops' well-being, he wanted them fit and ready to go over to the attack.
28:02Bless them all, bless them all, bless them all.
28:06The long and the short and the tall.
28:10The long and the short and the tall were, in this case, two-thirds of them Indian troops.
28:16More than their thinking sons, cause we're saying goodbye to them all.
28:22As back to their billets they crawl.
28:26You'll get no promotion this side of the ocean, so cheer up my lads, bless them all.
28:35Malaria.
28:37At the first hurricane, this and other diseases had claimed 120 victims to every battle casualty.
28:44I had malaria seventeen times.
28:47The last time they thought I had spinal malaria, I couldn't walk and I couldn't even move my arms.
28:52And I was getting inoculations all day and every day, three times a day.
28:59To stamp out the scourge at source, clouds of a new insecticide, DDT, were sprayed over the swampy breeding grounds.
29:14December 1943.
29:20A second offensive at Arakan.
29:23The Japanese counter-attack.
29:26One enemy force advanced north, wheeled behind the British, and turned west to capture Natchi Duk, or Okidok Pass.
29:35Another split the British divisions and encircled one of them.
29:47British and Indian units, trapped in a small enclave, fought for their lives.
29:53Isolated groups fought on, surrounded.
30:00A skeleton force held out against an entire Japanese division in what came to be known as the admin box.
30:10Clerks, mechanics, drivers, even a general joined in.
30:15In the first Arakan operation, the troops had withdrawn.
30:21Now, on Slim's express orders, there was no withdrawal.
30:27It was applied from the air.
30:34By day and night, the planes of Troop Carrier Command flew in to drop essential stores.
30:40What seemed certain defeat was averted by this tactic of air supply.
31:04Casualties were heavy.
31:06The wounded were tended in improvised dressing stations.
31:09Surgeons performed major operations in sweating heat, plagued by flies.
31:14At one field hospital, doctors, medical orderlies, and wounded alike, were butchered by Japanese.
31:17At one field hospital, doctors, medical orderlies, and wounded alike, were butchered by Japanese.
31:18At one field hospital, doctors, medical orderlies, and wounded alike, were butchered by Japanese.
31:25At one field hospital, doctors, medical orderlies, and wounded alike, were butchered by Japanese.
31:37At one field hospital, doctors, medical orderlies, and wounded alike, were butchered by Japanese.
31:42The sufferings of prisoners taken by the Japanese also stirred the troops to fury.
31:54Thousands of allied prisoners of war slaved and died building the Burma railway.
32:09They captured us.
32:10They captured us.
32:11And from then on, we were no longer men.
32:12They literally despised us for giving in.
32:22We didn't have the food.
32:25We had to work anything up to 16, 18 hours a day.
32:35If you argued with one, if you hit one, you automatically got six set about you.
32:44And they thought nothing of beating you into your arm was broke, your leg was broke.
32:51They sent him outside the guard room in the blazing sun.
32:56Take a great delight in pricking him with a bayonet point to make him stand upright.
33:07There were men with terrible horses.
33:09And the only treatment they had was taking maggots and dropping the maggots onto the horses
33:14and letting the maggots go round and round the horses and eat out the pus and clean the horses out.
33:18And that's the only treatment we had for them.
33:21To find a chap that was 12 stone down to about five stone and crawling about trying to beg for food or scrambling for food,
33:30I mean, it took some living with them.
33:34At that time I was going to the toilet on all fours because my balls had dropped.
33:41The latrines were concrete.
33:45There was just one absolute sea of maggots.
33:49This chap in particular was in such a bad way, I think it was cerebral malaria,
33:54but they found him with his head down there.
33:57He'd committed suicide.
33:59A very close friend of mine in my own regiment.
34:08He'd suffered from everything, from beriberi, cholera.
34:12When he died, he was just skin, skin over a skeleton.
34:19Nothing else.
34:20His legs had been eaten away with ulcers and there was just nothing of them.
34:25I only just recognised him.
34:26And there were 16,000 died just on the railway.
34:37For every sleeper that was laid there was a human life given up with a proper food, proper treatment.
34:44We could have carried on, built their blasted railway and thought nothing of it.
34:55I could never understand people being like that.
35:01So terrible in things that they'd done and the sadistic nature of them.
35:09Thinking of this, I felt sorry for them.
35:13As much as anything.
35:33Japanese troops would die rather than surrender.
35:37Dig themselves in, resist to the end.
35:40But now a change.
35:42At Arakan, some Japanese gave themselves up.
35:47They'd had enough.
35:48The Superman myth was exploded.
35:52These troops were not unbeatable.
35:54But many Japanese wounded still took the traditional way out.
35:59It was almost impossible to take care of the wounded.
36:03And the wounded, knowing this, would ask the comrades to please give them a grenade so that they can commit suicide.
36:10And maybe three or four wounded who could not walk could commit suicide that way.
36:14We picked up a number of Japanese who've been badly shot up.
36:26It was quite necessary in our little field hospitals to tie their hands down because if you didn't do that, they merely tore at their bandages, opened their wounds and literally tried to commit suicide.
36:39Late in 1943, from Lido on the India-Burma border, Stilwell and the Chinese advanced to open the way for a new route, the Lido Road, joining the old Burma Road at Bamo.
36:58The Chinese had to fight to clear the path which would lead them back to China.
37:05Stilwell's two divisions went ahead, seeking out the enemy.
37:12Edging south-eastwards, in three hard months, they killed 4,000 Japanese.
37:19The Chinese
37:35Edging south-eastwards, in three hard months, they killed 4,000 Japanese.
37:43Behind them came the engineers, blasting as they went.
37:57And in their thousands, the laborers who would build the highway.
38:10The Lido Road, driven hundreds of miles through atrocious country, was to ensure continued
38:15supplies to China.
38:21For Stilwell's troops, conditions were as hard as anywhere in Burma.
38:36From Winget, too, a new offensive.
38:39Promoted general, he was to lead, despite opposition from more orthodox colleagues, a second Chindit
38:45expedition to the interior.
38:48They flew in, and were again supplied from the air.
38:54March 1944, Operation Thursday, air transport for 10,000 men, and a thousand pack animals,
39:03with stores, to jungle sites deep in enemy territory.
39:10So, landing so many gliders in rough, hostile country was a form of a disaster.
39:17Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.
39:24In spite of their training, this was a venture into the unknown.
39:31Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.
39:32Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.
39:37In spite of their training, this was a venture into the unknown.
39:44Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.
39:45In spite of their training, this was a venture into the unknown.
39:51Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them, by way.
39:58Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.
40:05Guerrilla fighting was new to most of them.
40:10Now, the second Winget operation was ten times the size of the first.
40:30The object was, in effect, to cut the lines of communication of the Japanese.
40:37Burmas, like a great bow, with mountains all the way round, and communications running
40:45to the rim of the bow.
40:48We fanned out to cut these lines of communication.
40:58The Chinjits were on their own, marooned in mid-Burma, hundreds of miles from their base.
41:05But now it wasn't hit and run.
41:07This time they fought pitched battles.
41:14The bombers were called in time and time again to save the soldiers.
41:21The bombers were called in time and time again to save a tricky situation.
41:28Early on, the leader Winget was killed in an aircrash.
41:35The operation went on.
41:42We just marched on our own two feet with militeers.
41:49If we were taken ill, we were just sort of slung off across the pony.
41:51till such time your temperature went down in your body.
41:58And after that two days, you were slung off the pony.
41:59And after that two days, you were slung off the pony.
42:00And another unfortunate got put on back on.
42:05Any units operating in those circumstances have to be mobile all the time.
42:12And a wounded, of course, immediately bring you to a halt.
42:19Fortunately, Winget was able to obtain assistance from the United States and we were given some remarkable aircraft, which was a very short takeoff landing aircraft and could get into any little valley or bit of paddy and field and so on and evacuate our wounded for us.
42:34Long weeks in the jungle, weeks in the jungle, weeks of dysentery, jaundice, jungle sores and malaria, aircraft like this meant rescue for thousands, sick as well as wounded.
43:04The Chindits killed Japanese, where they thought they were safe, and forced them to divert troops from other purposes.
43:13Fighting without respite in these conditions, told on the toughest.
43:19Most of the brigades, through casualties and disease, they'd been behind the lines for four to five months, were finished.
43:28My own brigade had only three hundred fit men out of the four thousand who originally came in.
43:43Meanwhile, pushing down from the north were Merrill's marauders.
43:47Named after their leader, Brigadier General Merrill, the marauders were American volunteers.
44:02Among their targets, the important airfield of Michina.
44:05But the Japanese, again, had launched an offensive themselves.
44:11In March 1944, three divisions crossed the Chindwin to attack Kohima and Imphal, inside India itself.
44:19One division struck towards Kohima, two towards Imphal.
44:23They advanced rapidly, threatening to isolate both objectives.
44:26From the Chinwin River to Michan, there are many precipitous mountains sticking out like the fingers of the hand.
44:37We advanced, climbing up and down these steep mountains.
44:41On the map, the distance is only about 150 kilometers, but when the mountains and valleys were taken into consideration, it was about 300 kilometers.
44:55Without rest or sleep, it took us 13 days to reach Michan, where we cut the road.
45:03For the Japanese, Kohima was a tempting prize.
45:06Its capture would cut the Allies' supply line to the great base at Imphal.
45:19The British aircrews flew dangerous sorties to prevent their advance.
45:36But the columns came on.
45:45Steadily, the enemy tightened their circle round Kohima.
45:50They squeezed the small garrison into a tiny central area.
46:08Losses were heavy. Reinforcements desperately needed.
46:13I sent the 2nd British Division down to support the fighting at Kohima, and they went in to Kohima.
46:20The front line was on either side of the District Commissioner's tennis court.
46:25They stood shoulder to shoulder.
46:28Where they were killed, they were buried.
46:31Out of three British infantry brigades,
46:35two brigades killed, two brigades, three placements, seriously wounded.
46:41That's what the fighting was like in Kohima.
46:44They attacked us at the tennis courts,
46:48and it was just like playing tennis.
46:52So much so that I would believe that the area, from one side of a tennis court to the other,
46:57was the positions between the Japanese and the two I was with.
47:01The fighting I saw was literally hundreds at a time coming towards us.
47:07The manpower strength just pushed us back from one trench to a trench ten foot behind us.
47:14Eventually, they kept overrunning us due to the manpower.
47:18Kohima was the ordinary soldier's battle.
47:22Small groups of Japanese and British fought hand to hand.
47:26Every one of us was fine.
47:33If we put our hands up and surrendered, our battalion would have been finished.
47:39We knew that if the Japs had got us, they would have shot us and tortured us,
47:43like they did do to some of our boys.
47:45So we stayed in the holes and prayed to God.
47:50After the first seven or eight days, the ammunition, the food was running out,
47:57the water was almost nonexistent.
48:00Then we were told that the Second Old British was on their way to get us out.
48:04At last, they got there.
48:14The British were now struggling to force the Japanese back from the ridge they had seized.
48:19And a continuous artillery duel went on.
48:21Japanese had started with a force of 15,000 against a garrison of three and a half thousand.
48:31When the British supplies dwindled, they were replenished entirely from the air.
48:52I think everyone on the ground felt just how much they owed to these air crews,
49:03who were going flat throughout the day and sometimes during the night.
49:07And at that time of the war, there weren't that number of spare crews around,
49:13so that each crew had its aircraft and that aircraft had to be kept flying.
49:19And they were going absolutely flat out.
49:29Kohima was relieved after seven weeks.
49:33The troops could now see the suicidal price the Japanese had paid in their bid to capture it.
49:38They were fanatics.
49:41When I mean fanatics, you could be holding a position there about 30 yards away from you.
49:47And all of a sudden, they come flying at you, shouting and yelling.
49:51They always amazed us, or amazed me rather,
49:54how anybody could come flying at you and expect them to kill you with shouting at you.
50:00I know it might nerves you and all that, but you can get used to this eventually.
50:04And when we did get used to it, this is where we took a great toll of the Japanese.
50:09We just held fire and just got in and said,
50:11you shout on lad, you come on.
50:13And they came on and they filled up in front of our trenches, our little weapon pits.
50:23Fighting the Japanese was totally committed war.
50:26There was no question of heroics, mock heroics or chivalry in the sense that one read about prior to the war with Biggles.
50:37We were totally committed to killing as many Japanese as possible.
50:43Probably prompted by the fact that we knew from bitter experience that there had been atrocities.
50:48And we were always fearful of the fact that we didn't wish to be taken prisoner.
50:57I've seen one of our lads tied up with Danit Wire.
51:01I don't want to say no more.
51:05It was impossible to feel sorry or pitiful for them.
51:09Because we knew what they'd done to our boys.
51:15They didn't give us a chance and we didn't give them a chance.
51:21After Kohima, the relief of Imphal.
51:40Fighting there had been as bloody as at Kohima and as heroic.
51:45The Japanese now had to be cleared from the Kohima-Imphal road.
51:57In July 1944, the Japanese broke off the offensive.
52:02Kohima and Imphal had been the high point of the Japanese effort.
52:07They will never come back, said General Slim.
52:24On Stilbel's front, the Chinese, with Merrill's marauders, had taken the China airfield.
52:30But with heavy casualties.
52:31Under monsoon skies, more wounds to be addressed.
52:54Mountbatten had said the troops would fight through the monsoon.
52:58Now in the deluge, they were driving the Japanese back across the Burmese frontier.
53:04Ahead, the long road they had come two years before.
53:08Mandalay, Rangoon and much bitter fighting.
53:13There would be no rest till all the Japanese in Burma were defeated and destroyed.
53:21So M
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