When the National Army Museum in London invited people some years ago to nominate ‘Britain’s greatest battle’, there was a clear winner. To the surprise of many, however, it wasn’t Blenheim, or Waterloo, or El Alamein that won the top spot – but the Battle of Imphal and Kohima, fought near the border between India and Burma (now Myanmar) on 8 March-18 July 1944.
Despite this accolade, Imphal and Kohima remains relatively unknown. The multinational British Fourteenth Army, which achieved a savagely fought victory over the Japanese and their allies in the battle, was nicknamed the ‘Forgotten Army’; and the wider Burma campaign of 1942-1944, of which it was a part, is often still described as a ‘forgotten war’. We should be careful not to overstate this: many books have, after all, been written about the campaign. But while the 80th anniversary this year of the D-Day landings will rightly be celebrated amid much pomp and ceremony, it seems likely that events to mark the same anniversary of Imphal and Kohima will be considerably more low-key.
Partly, this is a result of geography. Now, as then, the landing beaches of Normandy, along with other key European battlegrounds, lie within easy reach of Britain. By contrast, Imphal and Kohima was fought more than 5,000 miles away, amid the steep hills and dense jungles of one of the Second World War’s least accessible areas of conflict – and against an enemy who presented no direct threat to the homeland. As we shall see, the courage of the Allied soldiers who fought there seems only more remarkable in the context of the battle’s remote and inhospitable location.
