Kohima: The Furthest Battle

Kohima: The Furthest Battle PDF Author: Leslie Edwards
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750952601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 926

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Book Description
By the end of 1943 the Japanese had occupied most of South-East Asia. On 6 March 1944, the first units of the Japanese 15 Army crossed the inhospitable border of what was then Burma, and invaded India. At the township of Kohima they were met by a small, hastily assembled force of Indian and British troops, later reinforced by 2 Division of Slim's 14 Army, who fought valiantly and forced the Japanese to retreat. Described by Mountbatten as 'the British/Indian Thermopylae', Kohima was a turning point in Japanese fortunes, heralding their continued defeat in battle until their formal surrender on 2 September 1945. Using extensive research in primary sources and many previously unpublished first-hand accounts, Leslie Edwards presents a definitive analysis of this pivotal battle.

Kohima: The Furthest Battle

Kohima: The Furthest Battle PDF Author: Leslie Edwards
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750952601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 926

Get Book Here

Book Description
By the end of 1943 the Japanese had occupied most of South-East Asia. On 6 March 1944, the first units of the Japanese 15 Army crossed the inhospitable border of what was then Burma, and invaded India. At the township of Kohima they were met by a small, hastily assembled force of Indian and British troops, later reinforced by 2 Division of Slim's 14 Army, who fought valiantly and forced the Japanese to retreat. Described by Mountbatten as 'the British/Indian Thermopylae', Kohima was a turning point in Japanese fortunes, heralding their continued defeat in battle until their formal surrender on 2 September 1945. Using extensive research in primary sources and many previously unpublished first-hand accounts, Leslie Edwards presents a definitive analysis of this pivotal battle.

The Road to Kohima

The Road to Kohima PDF Author: Charles Chasie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781913022211
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A unique collaboration between a senior Naga journalist and an eminent British historian looking at Naga involvement in the Second World War after Japanese and British forces converged on their land. The devastating battle lasted only a few months but in that time the Nagas played a key part in what was recently voted Britain's greatest battle.

Kohima 1944

Kohima 1944 PDF Author: Robert Lyman
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 9781846039393
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Osprey's Campaign title for the Battle of Kohima during World War II (1939-1945), which saved India from Japanese attacks. In March 1944 the Japanese Army launched Operation U-Go, an attack on Assam in India intended to inspire a rising by the Indian populace against British rule. The Japanese plan would rely on mobility, infiltration and captured supplies to maintain the momentum of the attack. A month earlier the Japanese had launched Operation Ha-Go, which was intended as a feint to draw British attention away from the Imphal area where the brunt of the U-Go attacks would take place. But British forces employed new defensive techniques to counter the Japanese infiltration tactics; forming defensive boxes, supplied by air, they held out against determined Japanese assaults until the Japanese were forced to withdraw, short of supplies. These tactics were again employed on a larger scale when Imphal and Kohima were surrounded during Operation U-Go. Kohima (the 'Stalingrad of the East') was the crucial key point to the successful defence of Imphal, and took place in two stages. From 3 to 16 April the Japanese attempted to capture Kohima Ridge, which dominated the road along which the British and Indian troops centred on the Imphal plain were supplied. As the small garrison held out against fierce and repeatedly desperate attempts by the Japanese 31st Division to destroy them, so the British 2nd Division fought to break through and relieve them. Then for over two months from 18 April, British and Indian troops counter-attacked in an effort to drive the Japanese from the positions they had already captured that blocked the road to Imphal. The battle ended on June 22 when British and Indian troops from Kohima and Imphal met at Milestone 109, thus ending the siege.

Road of Bones

Road of Bones PDF Author: Fergal Keane
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007132417
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Winner of the British Army Military Book of the Year 2011The story of one of the most brutal battles in modern history - fought at a major turning point of the Second World War.

We Fought at Kohima

We Fought at Kohima PDF Author: Raymond Street
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473863856
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
The Japanese advance through Thailand, Malaya and Burma appeared unstoppable and the fate of India looked utterly precarious.The garrison of the Kohima outpost numbering some 1500 British and Indian Army soldiers faced over 13,000 fanatical and previously victorious Japanese troops. The following sixteen days marked the turning point of the war in the Far East thanks to men like Raymond Street who fought with legendary courage and tireless persistence.Raymond was a member of the 4th Battalion The Queen's West Kent and as a company runner he was uniquely placed to witness the dreadful and dramatic events as they unfolded. Not only did he miraculously survive but he made a superb record of the battle as fortunes ebbed and flowed. His memories have been transcribed into this first-hand account of one of the most decisive and hardest fought battles of the Second World War. We Fought at Kohima will surely be judged as a fighting man's memoir of the highest quality to rank alongside such legendary works as Men at Arnhem and Quartered Safe Out Here.

Battle Story: Kohima 1944

Battle Story: Kohima 1944 PDF Author: Dr Chris Brown
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752493949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
The Battle of Kohima was the turning point in the Japanese invasion of India and known as 'the Stalingrad of the East'. It was a bitter battle fought in three stages, spanning three months and ending with the siege of Imphal. Against the odds, the Commonwealth troops conducted a brilliant defence and counter-attack to pave the way for the re-conquest of Burma. If you want to understand what happened and why - read Battle Story.

Fighting Through to Kohima

Fighting Through to Kohima PDF Author: Michael Lowry
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 178346013X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
A decorated British officer’s wrenching and inspiring firsthand account of the worst battle of the Burma campaign. Lt. Col. Michael Lowry MC MBE, was awarded the Military Cross for his role in the desperate defensive action at Kohima, considered the worst of the campaign in Burma. After joining up in 1939 with the Queen’s Royal Regiment, Lowry was posted to the North West Frontier of India, where he cut his teeth chasing gangs of Pathan bandits for two years. As the Japanese advanced into Burma, Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region, where his battalion was cut off by the Japanese for three weeks. Having survived that, next came the action at Kohima—where in the course of one week Lowry’s battalion lost 173 members. Lowry was seriously wounded in the conflict but fortunately lived to tell the tale. This is a fascinating and inspiring book, one of the most action-packed memoirs of the war in Burma ever published.

Triumph at Imphal-Kohima

Triumph at Imphal-Kohima PDF Author: Raymond A. Callahan
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624279
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
In the spring of 1944, on the eastern front of India near the Burmese border, the seemingly unstoppable Imperial Japanese Army suffered the worst defeat in its history at the hands of Lieutenant General William Slim's British XIV Army, most of whose units were drawn from the little-esteemed Indian Army. Triumph at Imphal-Kohima tells the largely unknown story of how an army that Winston Churchill had once dismissed as “a welter of lassitude and inefficiency” came to achieve such an unlikely, unprecedented, and critical victory for the Allied forces in World War II. Long the British Empire's strategic reserve, the Indian Army had been comprehensively defeated in Malaya and Burma in 1941–1943. Military historian Raymond Callahan chronicles the remarkable exercise in institutional transformation that remade the British Indian forces to reverse those losses. With the invaluable help of the American DC-3 on the Burma front, Slim overhauled the British XIV Army with the Imperial Japanese Army's strategic weaknesses in mind; namely, an utter disregard for logistics and an unrelenting addiction to the attack. Callahan shows how, on an enormous battlefield—over five hundred miles from north to south—the XIV Army surmounted the challenges of terrain, disease, wretched communication, and climate to draw the Imperial forces under Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya ever deeper into ever stronger British defensive arrays until the Japanese Army's vaunted offensive aggression finally exhausted itself. Following this epic battle from build-up to aftermath, this book brings overdue detailed attention to Lieutenant General William Slim's handling of perhaps the most complex battle any Allied commander fought during World War II—and to the long-belittled British Indian Army that became the magnificent fighting force that triumphed at Imphal-Kohima and went on to reconquer Burma.

Burma Victory

Burma Victory PDF Author: David Rooney
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782006109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
In the final years of World War II, the campaign against Japan stepped up in a series of bloody battles with each side having much to lose. While much of the history of the period focuses on the Pacific Campaign and the American island hopping, this book studies the 'forgotten war' and the Allied fight to push the Japanese out of Burma. The Allies (British, American, Indian and Chinese soldiers) saw the battles of Imphal and Kohima as a way to avenge the crushing defeats of 1942, while the Japanese viewed the battles as the precursor to a victorious drive into India and domination of Asia. David Rooney examines the aims of both sides alongside the battles themselves, which secured victory in Burma, and the roles of Wingate, Stilwell and the Chindits. Following the defeats of 1942 the Allies re-emerged to fight the Japanese; their troops had seen a revival of morale with the new Fourteenth Army under General Slim and the development of new tactics and and Allied air and firepower superiority.

Not Ordinary Men

Not Ordinary Men PDF Author: John Colvin
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1781594309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Having driven the British and Indian Forces out of Burma in 1942, General Mutaguchi, Commanding the 15th Japanese Army, was obsessed by the conquest of India. In 1944 the British 14th Army, under its commander General Slim, drew back to the Imphal Plain, before Mutaguchis impending offensive. To the north, however, the entire Japanese 31 Division had crossed the Chindwin and, on April 5, arrived at the hill-station and road junction of Kohima, cutting off Imphal except by air, from the supply point at Dimpapur.Kohima was initially manned by only 266 men of the Assam Regiment and a few hundred convalescents and administrative troops. They were joined, on April 5, by 440 men of the Fourth Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment, straight from the Battle of Arakan.In pouring rain, under continual bombardment, this tiny garrison held the assaults of thirteen thousand Japanese troops in hand-to-hand combat for sixteen days, an action described by Mountbatten as probably one of the greatest battles in history ... in effect the Battle of Burma, naked, unparalleled heroism, the British/Indian Thermopylae.