Fighting Through to Kohima

Fighting Through to Kohima PDF Author: Michael Lowry
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
ISBN: 9781844158027
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This author is extraordinarily lucky to be alive! All those who read this splendid Second World War memoir will doubtless come to the same view. After joining up in 1939 with the Queen's Royal Regiment the Author was posted to the North West Frontier of India where he cut his teeth chasing Pathan tribesman bandit gangs for two years. This was exciting enough but only a taste of what was to come. The Japanese advance into Burma threatened India and along with many thousands of British and Colonial troops Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region. Conditions were appalling and the fighting was extremely bitter by any standards. His Battalion was cut off by the Japs for three weeks but refused to surrender yet even worse was to come as the Battalion was thrown into the thick of the action at Kohima which is rated as the most desperate defensive action for the campaign. In one week 173 members of this Battalion were lost. Lowry himself was seriously wounded when a Japanese officer dropped out of a tree onto him. All this is vividly described in this fascinating and inspiring book.

Fighting Through to Kohima

Fighting Through to Kohima PDF Author: Michael Lowry
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
ISBN: 9781844158027
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This author is extraordinarily lucky to be alive! All those who read this splendid Second World War memoir will doubtless come to the same view. After joining up in 1939 with the Queen's Royal Regiment the Author was posted to the North West Frontier of India where he cut his teeth chasing Pathan tribesman bandit gangs for two years. This was exciting enough but only a taste of what was to come. The Japanese advance into Burma threatened India and along with many thousands of British and Colonial troops Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region. Conditions were appalling and the fighting was extremely bitter by any standards. His Battalion was cut off by the Japs for three weeks but refused to surrender yet even worse was to come as the Battalion was thrown into the thick of the action at Kohima which is rated as the most desperate defensive action for the campaign. In one week 173 members of this Battalion were lost. Lowry himself was seriously wounded when a Japanese officer dropped out of a tree onto him. All this is vividly described in this fascinating and inspiring book.

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.

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.

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.

Japan's Last Bid for Victory

Japan's Last Bid for Victory PDF Author: Robert Lyman
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 184884946X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
“This is an excellent account of a series of very hard fought battles that helped prepare the way for the British re-conquest of Burma.” —History of War Robert Lyman’s deep knowledge and understanding of the war in Burma, and the great battles at Kohima and Imphal in 1944, are well known. In this book he uses original documents, published works and personal accounts to weave together an enthralling narrative of some of the bitterest fighting of WWII. Not only does he use British sources for his research but he has also included material from the Naga tribes of north-east India, on whose land these battles were fought, and from Japanese accounts, including interviews with Japanese veterans of the fighting. Thus he has been able to produce what is arguably the most balanced history of the battles that were pivotal in ending the Japanese empire. Fergal Keane, journalist and author of Road to Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 wrote to the author saying “What a triumph! I finished it last night. You have done a wonderful job. I only wish I’d read it before writing my own book!” He goes on to say “Robert Lyman is one of the great writers about men and war and in this book he has succeeded in conveying the courage, genius and folly of an epic struggle. I cannot think of a writer engaged in the subject of the Second World War who can match Lyman for his integrity or the soundness of his judgments.”

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: 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.

Fighting the People's War

Fighting the People's War PDF Author: Jonathan Fennell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107030951
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 967

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Book Description
Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

Imphal 1944

Imphal 1944 PDF Author: Hemant Singh Katoch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472820177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
In March 1944, the Japanese Fifteenth Army launched an offensive into India from Burma. Named 'U Go', its main objective was the capture of the town of Imphal, which provided the easiest route between India and Burma. Whoever controlled it, controlled access between the two countries. Facing off against the Japanese was the British Fourteenth Army and its Imphal-based 4 Corps. For the next four months, over 200,000 men clashed in the hills and valley of Manipur in what has since been described as one of the greatest battles of World War II. Although numbers vary, it is estimated that some 30,000 Japanese soldiers died and 23,000 were injured at Imphal–Kohima in 1944 due to fighting, disease and in the retreat back to Burma. It remains the largest defeat on land ever for the Japanese Army. With fully commissioned artwork and maps, this is the complete story of the turning point in the Burma campaign in World War II.