In Slim’s view, his troops were received as if they were in disgrace. He acknowledged that to some extent they were paying the price for the ‘rabble’ of deserters, refugees and non-combatants that had crossed the border ahead of them over the previous weeks, but he could not excuse their treatment. According to official figures, 13,000 men were killed, wounded or missing on the retreat, not counting those who would die later from disease.
As the troops made their way into the main British base at Imphal, they were sent to camp on steep jungle hillsides, where there was no shelter apart from the trees and scant clothing, blankets, water or medicine. The psychological effect was devastating. Men lost the will to carry on. By Slim’s estimate, as many as 8 per cent of those he watched come out of Burma died from illness. Yet when he said goodbye to them he was cheered by the men, an experience he found ‘infinitely moving – and humbling’. Leaving Imphal he did not even have a jeep and it was left to his ‘faithful Cameronian bodyguard’ to coax back into life an abandoned refugee car that would carry them towards a small hill town called Kohima. Here the engine gave out. This town, with its small garrison of local troops and a military hospital and engineering works, was one of the furthest outposts of British power in India, an insignificant and sleepy place which had, in recent months, found itself directly in the path of a mass flow of refugees from Burma. Slim did not stay long. Together with his bodyguard he pushed the car out of Kohima until they reached a steep descent. From there they coasted downhill towards the railhead at Dimapur until a rise in the road stopped them. After that, they hitched a ride in a lorry and then found their way onto a crowded train. Slim would not see Kohima again for more than two years, but when he did it would be in vastly changed circumstances, and the little village he had passed through without fanfare would be associated forever with the fortunes of his army.
Many of the sick from Burma Corps were sent to hospitals in Ranchi in Bihar, where Slim went to visit them and argue for better conditions. He saw officers and men dying in squalor, the wounded lying on verandas and under trees waiting for admission, while overworked medical teams laboured relentlessly with the bare minimum of supplies.
But it was also at Ranchi that Slim began what was probably the most painstaking analysis of defeat undertaken by any British general of the war. In his account of the campaign Slim wrote of the despair that can descend on a defeated general. ‘In a dark hour he will turn in upon himself and question the very foundations of his leadership and his manhood. And then he must stop! For, if he is ever to command in battle again, he must shake off these regrets, and stamp on them, as they claw at his will and his self-confidence. He must beat off these attacks he delivers against himself, and cast out the doubts born of failure. Forget them, and remember only the lessons to be learnt from defeat – they are more than from victory.’ Although there were many more setbacks ahead, Slim was already preparing to take the war to the Japanese.
* The American Volunteer Group, or ‘Flying Tigers’, was a clandestine unit of American pilots operating in support of the Chinese Nationalists. Established in 1941, it became part of the United States Army Air Force in July 1942.
* Calvert wrote in his autobiography of being threatened with court martial because of allegations that he had shot deserters during the retreat. He vigorously denied the claims but asserted that Slim’s intervention had saved him from court martial. ‘I thought back to Wingate’s approval of Slim and silently added mine to it.’ Michael Calvert, Fighting Mad (Pen and Sword, 2004), p. 105. The account of Sergeant Butcher appears to contradict his denial.
† The Commonwealth War Graves Commission register of men killed in action during World War Two lists a Private Benjamin Ramsden, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, as having died on 26/04/1942. He is named on the Rangoon War Memorial alongside soldiers of 2/KOYLI who died in battle.
* The Friends Ambulance Unit on the China – Burma front was staffed by Quakers from America, Britain, New Zealand, Canada and China. The FAU was originally established during the Great War as a form of service for conscientious objectors. About 170 were active on the Burma front. (Source: Anthony Reynolds, ‘Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding.)
In the hottest or wettest of weather the deputy commissioner wore a jacket and tie. Tall and with a face that invited confidence, he seemed like a Victorian housemaster remoulded as a servant of the Raj on its most remote frontier. But those who stayed longer than a few hours in his company found a man whose stiffness was in fact shyness, and when his reticence faded with acquaintance Charles Pawsey was a kind companion. Advice on the Naga Hills was freely offered, once he was sure the visitor would do nothing to disrupt the calm.
By early 1942 the peace of the hills had been disrupted. Charles Pawsey was standing on the Imphal road just outside Kohima when the first refugees from Burma came trudging in. The early arrivals seemed to be in good health and had some money. But in February Pawsey began to report the arrival of destitute groups of soldiers. A camp was established at the Middle School in Kohima to provide shelter. Soon the passage of exhausted, starving people had become ‘out of control’. An English volunteer who helped in the relief effort remembered these destitute thousands ‘hungry, thirsty, exhausted, numbed with shock … One’s taskmaster … is the crying need of hundreds of fellow beings displayed daily in all its nakedness.’ There were separate canteens for Europeans and Indians, with sandwiches for the former and rice for the latter.
The Daily Refugee Report from the Governor of Assam to the Viceroy of India for 14 May 1942 reported large parties of refugees trying to reach the railhead at Dimapur, about forty-six miles north-west of Kohima. They were being joined by Chinese troops fleeing the front. It was in this chaotic phase that the army staff formed their grim impression of the retreat. ‘Binns reports [the Chinese] Army [is] mere rabble who will reduce refugees behind them to pitiful condition … disarm and control Chinese if possible as otherwise will consume all food … including dumps and will become embroiled with hillmen whose loyalty will be seriously shaken if they are looted by our allies.’ Four days later, on 18 May, the Governor was reporting that approximately 3,000 refugees a day were on their way to Dimapur, and that the maharajah of neighbouring Manipur had abandoned his administration and vanished. In the middle of this Charles Pawsey was trying to provide assistance for the multitudes arriving in Kohima, and was becoming angry about the government’s failure to help him. Delhi had never planned for a retreat. Amid the stink of the refugee camps, Pawsey struggled to acquire adequate supplies of rice and to find labourers who could construct shelters or improve the tracks along which supplies would have to come. ‘There was no equipment of any kind,’ he wrote. ‘Supplies were a nightmare. So was lack of transport.’ With the help of civilian volunteers, many from tea-planting families, Pawsey was able to establish a system to feed and then transfer the refugees deeper into India.*
By July the flood of refugees had diminished to a trickle, and once the influx had come to an end Kohima and the Naga Hills settled into a nervous peace. The Japanese 15th Army was sitting on the other side of the Chindwin river, about seventy miles away at the nearest point. But they had halted for now. The Indian official history recorded that, by June 1942, ‘the onset of monsoon, long lines of communication in the rear,