On April 4, Richard Dey, a 92-year-old World War II veteran, returned to the scene of what some consider the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the Second World War, the Battle of Kohima, after seven decades. It is a battle that is believed to have halted Japan’s march in South Asia.

Dey, who now lives in London, remembers the bloody battle between the Allies and the Japanese army on the Naga Hills in April 1944; April 4 marked the 75th anniversary of the battle.

He doesn’t want to talk about it, though.

“It was a very lump in the throat kind of a morning,” Dey said of Thursday, when he laid a wreath at the Kohima War Cemetery. “Have you seen animals being run over? The sight of humans dying in war is no better. We soldiers don’t like to recount it.”

When he fought the battle, in 1944, Dey was a man-child, a little over 18 years old.

He was part of the Royal Welch Fusiliers assigned to the Second Division.

He left the country in 1946.

The Battle of Kohima saw over 11,000 casualties; more than half from the Japanese forces and the rest from the British and Indian forces.

Dey said that back then, he arrived in Kohima as part of the reinforcements. “We were part of the relief force from the second division which came to help the men under siege.”

“Kohima is still very grubby,” remarked Dey at the cemetery. “I would have imagined it to be cleaner, but it is still very untidy.”

On Friday, a band of the Assam Rifles played at the event, which saw visitors, including the British high commissioner to India and the Japanese ambassador to India. The event is part of a year-long commemoration of the anniversary of a battle which ended in June 1944.

Back then, Dey travelled four days in a train from Bombay to Ranchi before being sent up to Kohima. “In Ranchi, there were four days of jungle training. There would be cardboard cutouts with Japanese faces hanging on the trees and we would take potshots at them,” he said.

“I wonder how we did it,” he added, of the battle. “How did we climb these hills even as we were being shot at all the time?”

“In the car, seeing the jungles and the hills, I was reminded of how we would cross them as we moved about up and down from Dimapur,” he said.

Dey is grateful to the Nagas, some of whom helped the Allied forces. “Had it not been for them picking up the rifles, I would not have been here.”

Nagas fought on both sides with some helping the Allied forces while others, including AZ Phizo, regarded as the father of the Naga national movement, were with the Japanese in a quest for liberation from the British. The Indian National Army’s Subhas Chandra Bose was also on the side of the Japanese.

The war cemetery stands on the site of Garrison Hill. In 1944, it was the location of the tennis court attached to the British deputy commissioner’s residence. The court was the site of fierce fighting and savagery.

The epitaph at the cemetery reads, “Here, around the tennis court of the deputy commissioner, lie men who fought in the battle of Kohima in which they and their comrades finally halted the invasion of India by the forces of Japan in April 1994.”

“They were all comrades, friends. We were all in it together,” said Dey.

First Published: Apr 08, 2019 07:36 IST